about the universe forum commander Shop Now Commanders Circle
Product List FAQs home Links Contact Us

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Unasked Questions

This is Steven Petrick posting.

One of the things that keeps happening in Star Fleet Battles is people finding new ways to interpret old rules, or simply to try to apply an old rule to a new idea.

A case in point is the minimum crew rules, or more honestly, falling below the minimum crew.

Most ships in the Star Fleet Universe have sufficient crew that suffering a loss resulting in being at minimum crew is not a problem. If your ship has taken that much damage, it has probably blown up anyway.

So why are there minimum crew rules?

For one, there are "space monsters" that can kill crew units and not damage the ship.

For another, there are terrain conditions which, if a shield is down, can kill crew units such that a sustained battle could see excessive crew losses on a ship with relatively little structural damage.

Then there are campaigns. In some campaigns a given ship might have a very good crew, and the commander of the ship's empire may choose to allow that crew to gradually fall in numbers rather than dilute their quality by assigning replacements. Also, a given campaign might involve a single ship in prolonged action against monsters and hazardous terrain while cut off from the rest of the fleet.

Even so, the above has apparently happened so rarely that, in more than 25 years, no significant problems were found in the rule.

All of that changed when a player decided to do a fiction story in which a ship had its crew reduced to below minimum levels.

In almost any action, a ship reduced to near minimum crew levels in a game would either disengage (if it could), have other friendly ships beam over "help," or in a worse case self-destruct to avoid having the ship captured. These are probably the reasons the issues have never come up before.

Thus, questions arise that have never (apparently) previously been asked, and answers must be provided, which in turn leads to resolutions of those questions being developed.

In the pre-internet publishing days, an errata sheet would be developed and published in an issue of Captain's Log (or previously in Star Letter or Star Fleet Times). Most often in the last decade these would appear in Captain's Log under the rubrics "Ask Admiral Growler" (Mike Filsinger), but now are usually covered by "Ask Admiral Vanaxilth" (Andy Vancil).

Now, the Master Rulebook is itself available on line, and for those who bought it, an updated copy will soon become available to them for download (the Update "D" for the Master Rulebook will probably be available next week).. Those who have printed copies will be able to download the Update D errata file (which will include all the fixes to the less than minimum crew rules among other things), and starting next week anyone who orders a copy of the Master Rulebook will get one that incorporates the updates. Getting the Update D file will help those who download the updated book quickly find where the changes are without having to reread the entire rulebook to find them.

But Star Fleet Battles is still alive and still growing. There is little doubt that down the road someone will ask a question about a rule that has never previously been asked, and this will have to be answered. These will again appear at least initially in future Captain's Logs by Admiral Vanaxilth, and will accumulate in an "Update E" until such time as we can again release the Update and updated copies of Master Rulebook, but also of the Advanced Missions and Basic Set rulebooks.