Hi all,

I flew against a souped up Scum Falcon last night and we had a situation where the shuttle started the game undocked. It set off the self-destruct timer. The next turn it bumped with the falcon until it was down to 1 charge. It then re-docked with the falcon to pause the countdown.

Later in the game the escape shuttle flew out of the REAR of the falcon and immediately exploded causing bad times for all my ships.

My questions are:

Can the escape shuttle undock from the REAR of the falcon?

Can it charge up for the explosion then re-dock to halt the countdown?

As per the undocking rules, it can undock from either front or back. Only the ghost / Phantom specifically state a direction.

As for the charges, nothing stops it from doing that, the card states while the ship is undocked. Nothing stops it from redocking mid countdown.

Ninja'd but still.

First question:

Quote

1. Choose a non-stationary, non-reverse maneuver on the docked ship's dial.
2. Using the corresponding template, the docked ship executes the maneuver using the front guides or the rear guides of the carrier ship as if those guides were the ship's starting position.

Seems like this works just fine. Second question: yes; a docked ship is placed in reserve, where its pilot ability no longer applies until it is redeployed.

I imagine that was a nasty shock, though essentially he was just spending a bit of setup to give the Falcon an expensive, single-use Proton Bomb.

As @JJ48 says, it's both entirely legal and also pretty terrible. The shuttle doesn't really do much while it's out early on and reducing its charges. Also, you need to be range 0 to dock, so it means your Falcon has to give up a turn to allow it to dock. Then when it comes out it's a fairly accurate Proton Bomb for more than twice the cost. That's a lot of points and effort for what it does. Once you see it once it's not hard to play around.

22 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I imagine that was a nasty shock, though essentially he was just spending a bit of setup to give the Falcon an expensive, single-use Proton Bomb.

If he played it right, the Falcon also gained two shields, which then doesnt make it too expensive.

2 minutes ago, Rangor said:

If he played it right, the Falcon also gained two shields, which then doesnt make it too expensive.

Except he would have had those anyway just from using the shuttle.

My take isn't on the shuttle itself, but on the specific way his opponent used it (i.e. burning the charges first and then bombing with it) vs. the alternative of starting with it docked and launching with full charges.

So from the responses it seems completely legal, but I hate it. It just feel that charging up and then re-docking isn't what the developers intended. The value seems to me to be pretty good as you get two shields and a bomb that can come out at an angle. Pretty sweet.

3 minutes ago, william1134 said:

So from the responses it seems completely legal, but I hate it. It just feel that charging up and then re-docking isn't what the developers intended. The value seems to me to be pretty good as you get two shields and a bomb that can come out at an angle. Pretty sweet.

As opposed to what the developers clearly did intend, which is two shields and a bomb that can maneuver independently, helping you control your opponents' movements?

This is pretty clever.

Sounds legit to me.

Thematically I hate this ("ooo lets start the bomb timer, then re-dock, which pauses time for us, then when we undock the bomb timer will be almost done!"). But in-game wise, as others have said, it's good but it's not game breaking.

I hope they errata it though just because thematically I think it's lame. Just add a clause to the autopilot drone's ability saying "this ship cannot dock during the system phase".

I don't want to be boring with the fluff, but IMO the escape craft shouldn't be able to start undocked to a a ship. Being more boring, shouldn't be able to redock. Kind of like a better nashta pup.

The escape craft should also have to deploy front the front of the Falcon.

Wait, can the escape craft redock, it didn’t say anything in the rules in the Expansion?

That is AWESOME!! LOL

It seems fun but would just need to fly correctly and have it re-docked.

yeah, thematically should have to undock and redock only from the front of the ship

1 hour ago, RedLeader23 said:

Wait, can the escape craft redock, it didn’t say anything in the rules in the Expansion?

All ships that have the ability to dock can redock during the game (Except the Nastah Pup of course, since it can only deploy via emergency deployment). You just have to be at range 0 of your carrier at the start of the systems phase (The Phantom can dock at range 1 thanks to the title) (And the carrier needs an upgrade or ability that lets a particular type of ship dock with it).