Are unsupported fighters able to retreat?

I started a thread on the BGG forums ( boardgamegeek.com/article/27711294 ), but no conclusive verdict was reached.

Capacity is not checked until the end of combat. Retreats happen as part of combat.

67.7 of rules reference:

Quote

To retreat, a player takes all of his ships in the combat and move them to an adjacent system.

49.8 of rules reference:

Quote

If an ability moves a unit outside of the “Movement” step of a tactical action, players follow the rules specified by that ability; neither a unit’s move value nor the rules specified above apply.

This seems to indicate that unsupported fighters can retreat (capacity would then be checked in the system they retreated to), but this is a little odd from a thematic standpoint. It's not clear that this is what was intended.

Wow. By those rules, it would seem so

I would venture to guess if you sent in that question to the support team you would get an answer. I do agree with Robofish by the rules as written it would appear that Fighters can in fact retreat, though I agree with you that this is not very thematic and it may turn out to be an unintended effect of the rules as written.

Anyway it make sense: the fighters use all their [energy/fuel/whatever-it-is] to reach the nearby sector and the ones that can dock to resupply are saved, the others (without a mothership to support them) are lost.

So this brings up another interesting situation which is the Naalu special ability.

Does this movement ignore transportation requirements?

What about ground forces, can they come too?

Can the Naalu forces leave even if there is already a Naalu command token in the system?

Basically, just how broad it 49.8 supposed to be?

3 hours ago, pirbawa said:

So this brings up another interesting situation which is the Naalu special ability.

Does this movement ignore transportation requirements?

I think it does: it just say to move the ships to the adiacent sistem (so apply 49.8), which is some sort of retreat.

For ground forces, you can bring only the ones that can be transported by the moving fleet.

49.8 is clear, so apply it anytime it happens.

Well, are fighters actually ships?

17 hours ago, Dreepa said:

Well, are fighters actually ships?

Yes, they are.

They just have a few restrictions that set them apart from other ships.

14 hours ago, Pretorian said:

Yes, they are.

That's true but so far when it comes to the term "ship", based on the "email question/answer" errata provided by FFG for other circumstances, the term "ship" is not always a keyword, definition or rules based object governed by the standard rules for "ships". Its sometimes just an adjective in the game rules, the rules for governing when something is a ship and when its not have been different and on a case by case basis. So whatever we believe the rules for "ships" are, they aren't generally applied to everything.

Examples include ships blocking enemies ships from passing. Fighters do not block by the rules, but when they are advanced fighters they do, so even though the rule is, ships block except fighters, when they are advanced fighters they are less fighters and more ships. There is no rules supporting that in the rules reference its just a errata call.

Another example is the Alastor Nekro Flagship fighters, they are ground forces that act as ships for a combat, but by ship they don't mean "ships" the keyword but the adjective hence by the errata ruling they are not governed by fleet supply or capacity as neither ships or fighters for the purposes for the rules except I guess when they are. They are snowflakes you have to guess at to know when the term "ship" does or doesn't apply to them. For example we can presume "applying hits to ships" applies to them, perhaps action cards that affect ships apply to them.. but what about Anti-Barrage fire... are they ships or fighters?

Fighters have some more special rules than other ships but ships they are. Anti-fighter barrage is an ability (so it is a special rule for a class of ships) that target specifically a particolar class of SHIPS.