hi,

last night we had a game of bg and the situation occured that 6 vipers were in space when the hangar deck was damaged.

shortly afterwards the human players used the ftl drive to jump. we put the vipers back to the reserves, but i think, that with a damaged hangar they have no place to land and should be destroyed.

this leads to another interesting question: when the hangar deck is damaged, what happens when a crisis card states that vipers should be deployed?

i found nothing in the rules to solve this problem, so maybe somebody of you can help me out...

Does it specifically say anywhere in the rules that vipers can't land on a damaged Hangar Deck? If it doesn't, then the rules only state that a character can't use the action listed on the location. Pilot-players can't launch themselves into a viper using the Hangar Deck, but that's it.

I believe the only damage restriction that exists is the inability to choose the action at the damaged location. We had a similar question arise concerning the auto-jump when the FTL location was damaged. I think in both cases not being able to complete each action is limiting enough for balance purposes.

When the location is damaged, you can't use the listed action for that location until it is repaired; that is all.

Vipers can still land, and vipers that are placed as part of a crisis card are still placed.

Thematic justification - in the series, vipers are launched and recovered in two seperate ways (launch tubes vs. landing bay). Just assume that the damage is to the launch tubes. The landing bay is mainly a big "hole" in the ship, that cannot really be damaged much without destroying the entire thing.

Game balance justification - a forced jump with 6 vipers out would (if vipers were destroyed on jump) slaughter the humans.

azuredarkness said:

The thematic justification doesn't realy work as you can still launch vipers through the command location even if the hangar deck is damaged. You just can't pilote them.

But I have no problem with the rule and it does make sens from a balancing perspective.

Blankshield said:

Can they still be launched via the Command location when the Hangar deck is damaged as well?

The only thing that happens whne a location is damages is that you cannot use the action on that location. If the hangar deck is damaged then you cannot use the action ability to launch your character in a viper. That is all. Damaging the hangar deck affects command as much as it affects the admiral's quarters.

Can they still be launched via the Command location when the Hangar deck is damaged as well?

Strictly speaking, yes - the only action you lose is the one on the Hanger deck,

So you can launch unmanned vipers, just not manned vipers... (apart from Apollo anyway)