Hi folks! Brand new at this game, only played 3 games so far. I though I understood the rules really well until I started reading some of the battle reports. I'm not understanding the use of blockers and bumping. From what I've read blockers are being used to bump into higher PS ships thereby denying them their action when the activate. I don't get how this works? I thought that you only lost your action if you overlapped a ship at the end of your movement. I don't see anything about losing your action if you're ran into by another ship.

Am I ready the rules wrong or just missing something?

Help!!!

Yes you do not lose your action if a ship overlaps you whether you've moved or not. (If you've moved you've already performed your action.) Blocking means moving to where you think a higher PS ship (or equal PS ship that moves after you due to initiative) will move thus denying them their action when they overlap you.

Welp, when two star ships love each other VERY much...

You would NOT lose your Perform Action step just by having another ship run into you but rather by running into another ship plus another thing or two. Now a huge ship running into a large or small ship has severe consequences for the smaller ship but generally when another ship runs into you there is nothing big that happens to you.

"Blocking" is using a ship to move into the space a later moving ship is expected forcing them to run into your ship and lost its perform action step in the process. Another result of an overlap, which we often call bumping, is that the ships which remain in contact after an overlap may not fire at each other. Other ships may shoot at them and they can still shot at other ships but they can not shoot at each other as long as neither has moved since the overlap occured.

Ah ha! Got it now. So it's not the act of hitting the other ship that hurts it it's positioning yourself so they wind up on you. It all makes sense now.

A typical ship used for bumping is the Academy Pilot Tie Fighter. With PS1, you move where you feel your opponent will be going and take your action. If his ship overlaps you when he moves, he loses his action. The advantage is that without ability to modify dice or perform other actions, his offensive and defensive capabilities are reduced significantly. You move other ships where they can attack his ship and if you focus fire, can seriously damage or destroy that ship.

Not sure if this is used as I am a new player but I have deliberately bumped a ship into an enemy when I needed time to get other ships into range, I was limiting my opponents ability to shoot the bumping ship as I knew it was unlikely to survive a one on one shoot out.

Not sure if this is used as I am a new player but I have deliberately bumped a ship into an enemy when I needed time to get other ships into range, I was limiting my opponents ability to shoot the bumping ship as I knew it was unlikely to survive a one on one shoot out.

Yep, that's also a valid tactic.