What happens if Capacity is reduced before space combat, say, by PDS with Graviton Laser? Do you adjust according to current capacity before the combat starts?

Example: A daring player attacks with 1 carrier, 2 destroyers, 2 GF and 4 fighters. The defender has 1 cruiser and 2 PDS in the system (and Plasma Scoring & Graviton Laser). The defender hits with all 3 PDS shots and destroys the carrier and the destroyers. Obviously, the GF will be destroyed before landing on a planet, but what about the fighters? Can they fight the defender's cruiser before they die?

The only rule I have found is this:

16. 3 A player’s fighters and ground forces can exceed capacity

during combat. At the end of combat, he must destroy the

excess units.

So it seems you have to adjust before combat. But is says "combat", not "Space Combat".

How do people play this? Seems especially important for the Xxcha and their flagship.

If a PDS kills your capacity, what ever was supported by it dies.

Combat is defined as an attribute in the game, so it doesn't specifically state anywhere what the generic reference "combat" is. However logically there are two types of combat in the game. Space Combat and Ground Combat which are very specifically defined. These are two separate phases, another words, during a tactical action two different combats can take place, space or ground which illicit the state "during combat" when not specified as either a space or ground combat. Another words if an action card said "during combat" it would work during space or invasion combat as both qualify. Both are combat, but are segregated which means capacity is checked "at the end of combat" as stated in rule 16.3, another words at the end of a space combat and at the end of a ground combat. However capacity rules outside of combat are quite clear in 16.3, if you exceed you remove.

Because PDS fire takes place "before" any combat and is not a combat itself, the standard rules of capacity apply which are very simply outlined in rule 16.3 (main point), which is irrelevant to the exception it lists where it explicitly states that you can exceed capacity during combat which is an exception to the rule that at any other time if you exceed your capacity you must destroy excess units.

So what Stefan said... but in case anyone is making an argument, the above explains how it works by the rules. One thing I don't like about rules references is that they don't repeat relevant information already stated in another section. So for example if it says X=5 in section 1.1, when talking about X in section 5.1, it assumes you already know what X is. Hence the rules reference is a great reference, but not a particularly great way to understand how stuff is linked together.

Ok, thanks guys. It just felt so weird to remove all the fighters when there were enemies in the same system to fight ?

Imagine the Carrier being killed before the fighters are launched, and it makes a lot of sense.

Moral of the story, destroy your capacity requiring units first, maybe save 1 GF if you have to, but best to wipe out as many ships as you can then come back.

As a kind of follow-up question, if a player with Assault Cannon (level 4 red technology) destroys a carrier full of fighters, or a Yin player with Impulse Core (racial technology) causes a hit that is assigned to a carrier, or a Mentak player uses Ambush as a pre-combat action and the hit is assigned to a carrier full of fighters, if any of these blast a carrier full of fighters are the fighters also destroyed because it happened pre-combat?

OR

Do the fighters on carriers survive in all these cases because the hit was assigned at the start of combat, as opposed to a pre-combat action like PDS fire or Anti-Fighter Barrage?

I'd lean towards the second, but just wanted to be sure I understood.

@IndyBart That actually makes me wonder, say you have 3 carriers each with 2 fighters and 2 GF, when PDSs fire on them, can you even assign hits to the fighters?

I think it might be pre-combat(?)

If you couldn't assign them to fighters, what would be the point of the Yellow 2 tech that forces hits to be assigned to non-fighters?

Capacity is checked when entering the system and after the battle. So the Fighters survive.

On 2018-01-27 at 11:38 PM, Conza89 said:

@IndyBart That actually makes me wonder, say you have 3 carriers each with 2 fighters and 2 GF, when PDSs fire on them, can you even assign hits to the fighters?

I think it might be pre-combat(?)

I'd say yes you can assign PDS hits to Fighters. Thematically, I see it as a Fighter squadron sacrificing itself to protect the Carrier, and by extension the other fighter squads, by going on a collision course with whatever projectile it might be.

On 30/01/2018 at 2:01 AM, Fnoffen said:

I'd say yes you can assign PDS hits to Fighters. Thematically, I see it as a Fighter squadron sacrificing itself to protect the Carrier, and by extension the other fighter squads, by going on a collision course with whatever projectile it might be.

Yep agreed. I mean the rules say as much as possible, but when there's points of uncertainty, common sense prevails, and I think that line of reasoning rings true for me.

The big thing to remember is that all Fighters are Ships, but not all Ships are Fighters. That always helps when a someone in my group is confused.

Well because of the rules it sort of just forces to make sure you lose a fighter (they are the cannon fodder of TI). Lets just say you had a carrier full of fighters and just had an overwhelming victory of total annihilation with no losses what soever. Well Gravatron still reduces capacity so in that case some of your fighters will never make it back. But odds are you are going to take at least 2 hits so 2 fighters go down and gravatron will have no effect as capacity still checks at the end of combat. If no fighters then some ground forces get sucked out if you have carriers filled to max capacity.

PDS fire takes place before combat, so you would lose whatever infantry or fighters are in excess of the remaining carrier if Graviton Lasers are used. In the example above, there are a total of 6 infantry and 6 fighters with 3 carriers. Without Graviton Lasers you could take the hits on the fighters and still have 4 fighters as a screen.

Can nekro virus get faction technology from agendas prediction?

I believe that they can, but they are limited to only the 2.

2 hours ago, Husker949 said:

I believe that they can, but they are limited to only the 2.

They are limited to only 2 at a time. My reading though is that they can change the 2 if given the opportunity.

That's an interesting point, hopefully it will have an errata or rules clarification in a FAQ.