If it hits...any ships within range one suffer a hit...

I've been playing that if I evade the attack even if my opponent roles hits (but cancelled with my evades) the other vessels should not take damage.

Surely this is right? That even if he rolls a hit and its cancelled the other vessels in range one should be safe?

Have a look at section 6 on p.12 of the rule book. Rolling 'filled in explosion' or 'empty explosion' (I really wish we had those as emoticons in this forum!) on the dice is not a hit in of itself. A hit only during occurs during the 'Compare Results' step of the attack when the defender is unable to cancel all of your explosion results with evade results/tokens, so if the target of an assault missile evades the attack, the assault missile deals no splash damage.

That is a rather long winded way of saying that you're playing it correctly!

The definition of a hit is on page 12 of the rulebook:

If there is at least one uncanceled hit or crit result remaining, the defender is considered hit (see page
13). If all hit and crit result are canceled, the attack misses and the defender does not suffer any damage.

If everything gets cancelled by evade results or tokens, there is no hit. And no damage to other ships.

If the Assault missile doesn't "hit" the target, defined in the rulebook as uncancelled [hit] and [crit] results, then there is no splash. If the missile does hit then the splash targets have no defense.

Rolling 'filled in explosion' or 'empty explosion' (I really wish we had those as emoticons in this forum!) on the dice...

"{hit}" is the icon on the die, "hit" is a hit as defined in the rulebook.

But I agree, it would be nice to add these two, and the {focus} and {evade} icons, as smilies in this forum.

Rolling 'filled in explosion' or 'empty explosion' (I really wish we had those as emoticons in this forum!) on the dice...

That's why many of us use {hit} or {crit} in our posts: to indicate the hit or crit icons on the die.

"{hit}" is the icon on the die, "hit" is a hit as defined in the rulebook.

But I agree, it would be nice to add these two, and the {focus} and {evade} icons, as smilies in this forum.

Yep, here though I specifically wanted to avoid using {hit} because I wanted to stress that the only time there is a hit in the rules is when you compare dice results. Otherwise you're telling people that you rolled these {hit}s but didn't actually hit...

Rolling 'filled in explosion' or 'empty explosion' (I really wish we had those as emoticons in this forum!) on the dice...

That's why many of us use {hit} or {crit} in our posts: to indicate the hit or crit icons on the die.

"{hit}" is the icon on the die, "hit" is a hit as defined in the rulebook.

But I agree, it would be nice to add these two, and the {focus} and {evade} icons, as smilies in this forum.

Yep, here though I specifically wanted to avoid using {hit} because I wanted to stress that the only time there is a hit in the rules is when you compare dice results. Otherwise you're telling people that you rolled these {hit}s but didn't actually hit...

Bob: (rolls dice) "I've got two hits and one crit."

This is to describe the two {hit} icons and one {crit} icon and not that the actual end results were two hits and one crit. The only difference between RL and here on the forum is that we are both looking at the dice results whereas here we have to describe the roll. So I don't think it is really that confusing to people here to use {hit}, {crit}, {focus}, or {evade}.

Although, I do feel that this post should be part of a sticky FAQ post, if I were this forum's moderator.