Well, I have been mulling this over for days now, and I just cannot come up with a reasonable explanation for the rule in my own head, so I figure I will put it out there and let one of you explain it to me since I am probably missing something.

We understand and accept the following to be true in X-Wing.

1 - You can fly "through" another ship because X-Wing is considered to be taking place in a 3D environment, and the ships can pass above / below / beside each other.

2 - You can't fly "through" an asteroid, because for some reason, the pilots who can dodge moving starships in 3D space can't seem to dodge a stationary piece of space debris.

3 - Landing on an asteroid means you can't shoot and get no actions - got it, basically you flew into a rock and have to recover, makes perfect sense.

(Now the big one)

4 - When you "overlap / bump / collide" with another ship, you can't shoot at them because you are considered to be above/below/beside them and can't get your guns on target from that angle, but this is still taking place in 3D space, and you are NOT considered to have physically "struck" your opponents ship, otherwise you would be rolling for damage.

Knowing all of that - why do you lose actions on a base overlap if the ships are not physically touching. Assuming that in 3D space, an overlap looks like this:

|-o-|

:>(o)<:

Obviously, since we have no way to indicate shots taken with vertical variance, they cannot shoot each other.

But, assuming that if you watched an X-Wing game as a stop-motion animation, it is meant to represent an ongoing real-time dogfight - consider the following.

1 - Viewing this in a 3-turn stop-motion, if you could represent the vertical plane - these two ships are simply passing each other and at this particular point in the dogfight, they have no shot on each other.

2 - While passing under / over / beside another ship, what prevents you from taking an action?

Anyways -

TL:DR - losing actions on base contact considering the 3D environment does not make sense to me.

If it's simply ruled that way to allow the use of blocking as an action removal technique, I can accept that.

But I would at least like for someone else to say that it doesn't conceptually make sense, or tell me that I'm crazy.

Oh, and BTW - I am actually making a stop motion video of a complete game sans peoples hands, just the ships moving around the board, I'm interested to see how it turns out. The game should actually end tonight after I get home assuming I can get my game partner to come back over and endure the camera delays.

You're crazy

My take is that it is a near miss, and the pilot is too busy avoiding a collision to concentrate on taking an action. Thematically it works for me!

You're crazy

My take is that it is a near miss, and the pilot is too busy avoiding a collision to concentrate on taking an action. Thematically it works for me!

Fair enough - but wouldn't this mean a "fly through" would also result in loss of action?

I'm sure at the end of the day, the rule was made to allow blocking - a tactic which I use to good effect frequently.

I'm just more wondering if that's the only reason.

Is it really relevant? Game balance. Level of Abstraction. There are plenty of reasons.

Does everything have to be 100% realistic? If so, the whole flying through space the way Star Wars fighters do and the level of damage each ship can sustain, among many other things are called into question.

Lets just go with "its a game not real life"..

Look forward to the video though. Sounds cool.

What Simple31 said. Also, I don't get your asteroid statement. They absolutely can move through an asteroid. And they dodge them most of the time. In the movies at least, asteroids were portrayed as close together and moving about erratically.

You're crazy

My take is that it is a near miss, and the pilot is too busy avoiding a collision to concentrate on taking an action. Thematically it works for me!

Fair enough - but wouldn't this mean a "fly through" would also result in loss of action?

I'm sure at the end of the day, the rule was made to allow blocking - a tactic which I use to good effect frequently.

I'm just more wondering if that's the only reason.

I would say it's because of where the ships ended their movement. It's not that the ships that passed through each other can take actions because they didn't need to concentrate on maneuvering to avoid a collision, but rather that they already did , in the course of their movement. Two ships in base-to-base are in a freeze frame of time trying not to collide, and so they get no action.

Now what is really strange is when for a turn (or two) a ship's movement is so fully blocked that it doesn't actually move on the board, though I suppose you could chalk that up to hitting the brakes and making very minute adjustments or something. Though if that's the case, that begs the question of why doesn't every ship get a 0 Red then?

I always looked at it as you needing to take the mandatory "don't crash into that ship" action.

Why assume that asteroids are stationary?

Bumping is the worst part of X-Wing. Actively rewarding a strategy that involves attempting to collide is moronic.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to rectify it without totally redesigning the game. If collisions start doing damage, than you'll see tactics that utilize that. If you let pilots retain their actions, you'll see formations built around running into each other

You could, I suppose, compare the relative 'speeds' of the two ships and position accordingly. Eg, if I go first and do a 2 left bank, and then you go and do a 3 forward and bump me, you (since you were going faster) get positioned in front of me with your proper facing. Everyone gets actions, shots, etc. In the event that both ships were going the same speed, each rolls one attack die with a crit meaning destroyed, a hit doing damage, and a miss nothing.

Really, though, best to just hold your nose and play it as written. It's not optimal, but the rest of the game is fun enough to overlook it.

Bumping is the best part of X-wing. Being able to use your ships to control your opponents flight paths and space is one of the most realistic pieces they've added. Without bumping the game would lose about half its depth, if not more.

Consider it this way.

Can you focus when you have to avoid the car cutting you off in traffic? How about change the song on the radio (Target Lock) Pull a fancy drift turn? Most likely not. Maybe if you had some kind of advanced warning from some kind of sensor system though.

Adds depth to the game.

If you could "crash " into another ship and still get actions then that would make maneuvering that much easier and pointless

Otherwise you could just fly around crash into others with no consequences.

This makes the game more strategic

Look at it like this:

When a pilot his doing an 'easy' (read: not red) move, he has time to flick some switches on his console (TL) or pull some fancy flying (BR).

Two ships, flying at high velocities at one another? The pilot spends that precious time reacting, yanking back on that stick to avoid pulling an Arvel, placing himself under/over the other ship.

Makes sense when you think of it like that!

All I can say is mekanix. And that this game is based on a WWII dogfighting game.

Look at it like this:

When a pilot his doing an 'easy' (read: not red) move, he has time to flick some switches on his console (TL) or pull some fancy flying (BR).

Two ships, flying at high velocities at one another? The pilot spends that precious time reacting, yanking back on that stick to avoid pulling an Arvel, placing himself under/over the other ship.

Makes sense when you think of it like that!

This would needlessly bog down and alow the game. The best answer there is that all movement ia sort of simultaneous... But that breaks down in logic too. Because then low PS ships should rarely if ever hit high PS ones starting positions. Just remember. Tactical game, not simulation.

Answer - it's a game. Not real life.

You're crazy

My take is that it is a near miss, and the pilot is too busy avoiding a collision to concentrate on taking an action. Thematically it works for me!

Fair enough - but wouldn't this mean a "fly through" would also result in loss of action?

No, because you can think of it as all ships moving at a similar time-frame, and while you may pass THROUGH a ship, that ship is not really there... he/she is either moving TO there, or moving FROM there.

You lose your action because you're dodging the other ship with your action. Asteroids you do dodge but you roll for scraping them. They're much bigger and harder to avoid than ships. You can't shoot while on them because they're in your way and all your focus is on not ending up like those TIEs in ESB.

The way I consider the astroids is that they are bigger than they are actually represented on the board. Remember when the falcon almost gets eaten by the slug and the bombers are bombing the astroid holes looking for the falcons hideout?

I think of the overlap to be the ship flying on the surface of the astroid in that case. From farther off thats why you can shoot through them (mostly). Also you just might mess up and take a glancer from an astroid.

You lose your action because you're dodging the other ship with your action. Asteroids you do dodge but you roll for scraping them. They're much bigger and harder to avoid than ships. You can't shoot while on them because they're in your way and all your focus is on not ending up like those TIEs in ESB.

another way to look at this isn't the size of the asteroid but to consider the difference between crossing an asteroid and another ship in your flight path is that the other ship is assumed to be being piloted by someone who may want to interfere with your maneuver but doesn't want to collide with you.

That raises an interesting option for a house rule which would be that when an opponent would either bump or cross you could declare yourself to be either avoiding collision (act like a ship as per standard rules: block on overlap ignore on template crossing) or don't avoid collision/ram (act like an obstacle, both players roll for damage as if crossing an asteroid; no blocking, both players lose actions.)

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/108931-how-would-the-game-be-different-if-colliding-didnt-remove-actions/#entry1125423

Some more responses here.

I consider asteroids to not be a single big rock but a big one surrounded by many small ones. The pilot always manages to evade the big one (which would otherwise destroy him) but sometimes has small ones hit the ship. If he is really close to the bit one he has to worry about not hitting that rather than targeting his enemy.

Regarding 'overlap' for ships. Pilot does a clean bank and attempts to shoot the enemy he is focused on, or because it is a clean bank he can jink his ship a bit more to make himself a harder target, or whatever.

Once the pilot has to concentrate on avoiding a mid-space collision with another ship, not only is that ship out of his weapon arc, he didn't have time to do anything special. In some ways it is like a mini-stress.

Oh, and BTW - I am actually making a stop motion video of a complete game sans peoples hands, just the ships moving around the board, I'm interested to see how it turns out. The game should actually end tonight after I get home assuming I can get my game partner to come back over and endure the camera delays.

That's awesome.

I've totally thought about doing that, but I lack the time and tripod to pull it off.

If you actually do this you have to post a link here, I'm very interested to see how it turns out.

Also if you have any CGI skills you should totally include sounds effects, cannon fire and explosions.

Oh, and BTW - I am actually making a stop motion video of a complete game sans peoples hands, just the ships moving around the board, I'm interested to see how it turns out. The game should actually end tonight after I get home assuming I can get my game partner to come back over and endure the camera delays.

That's awesome.

I've totally thought about doing that, but I lack the time and tripod to pull it off.

If you actually do this you have to post a link here, I'm very interested to see how it turns out.

Also if you have any CGI skills you should totally include sounds effects, cannon fire and explosions.

Oh, and BTW - I am actually making a stop motion video of a complete game sans peoples hands, just the ships moving around the board, I'm interested to see how it turns out. The game should actually end tonight after I get home assuming I can get my game partner to come back over and endure the camera delays.

That's awesome.

I've totally thought about doing that, but I lack the time and tripod to pull it off.

If you actually do this you have to post a link here, I'm very interested to see how it turns out.

Also if you have any CGI skills you should totally include sounds effects, cannon fire and explosions.

I reccomend placing the ships along the templates as you go so they don't telport from place to place. Otherwise this could turn really cool.

We are doing a somewhat modified game in which the ships set the templates off to one side of the base so they can move along it without picking them up.

I am 100% aware that this can affect the game, but in order to avoid the teleportation issue you aptly described, it was the best solution I could come up with.

I didn't want game peripherals or hands visible in the shots, and trying to lay template, pick up ship, move ship, pickup template, set down ship, take photo (times 500) was getting old really fast.

....

1 - Viewing this in a 3-turn stop-motion, if you could represent the vertical plane - these two ships are simply passing each other and at this particular point in the dogfight, they have no shot on each other.

2 - While passing under / over / beside another ship, what prevents you from taking an action?

Anyways -

TL:DR - losing actions on base contact considering the 3D environment does not make sense to me.

If it's simply ruled that way to allow the use of blocking as an action removal technique, I can accept that.

But I would at least like for someone else to say that it doesn't conceptually make sense, or tell me that I'm crazy.

Oh, and BTW - I am actually making a stop motion video of a complete game sans peoples hands, just the ships moving around the board, I'm interested to see how it turns out. The game should actually end tonight after I get home assuming I can get my game partner to come back over and endure the camera delays.

2. Distraction prevents you from taking Action. The first guy there doesn't have anything in the way so he's usually ok to do other stuff. The second guy comes in and say "OH $***!" and needs to do a bit of fancy flying to avoid actual contact; this also means he doesn't have time for other things and when he avoids plowing into the other guy he inadvertently points his guns somewhere else.

I'd say Asteroids can cause damage because they are "too dumb" to do anything to try moving out of the way. When two ships are about to crash both probably take some amount of action to avoid the crash (even when the second ship needs to do a lot more) but the asteroid will just sit there. It may also be that the cold, dumb, space rocks aren't always stationary and could even be hard to track.

To me the reason you can land "on" an Asteroid but not another ship is simply because asteroids lay flat on the game surface while ships do not. Another reason is that if you can't land "on" the Asteroid that will guarantee that next turn you will run into the Asteroid again as it always affects your movement yet has zero chance of moving out of your way.

Now for the photographing the action try to see if you can set things up so the camera is always in the same place and hopefully using the same setting. If you want to represent movement but leave the templates out of the picture I'll suggest adding a little "trail" behind the ship for the picture after it moves to show its movement while leaving the template out. When you put things together you transition from one pict to another you'll see this little tail showing what moved from where before something else moves. If you move "in mass" you could show tails for everyone.