What happens if a nantex tractors itself onto/over a debris cloud? I've been mulling the question over since it came up at my weekly game night and the way I think it works is this but I'd appreciate anyone else's thoughts. As I understand it you gain the tractor token, resolve it, then do your rotate action. The problem here comes when in resolving the tractor token you gain a stress and can no longer resolve the effect for which you paid the cost of gaining the token since you can't pay a cost if you cant resolve the effect. At first I was thinking maybe landing on the debris and becoming stressed invalidated paying the cost and I would have to roll it back but the more I thought about it the less that made sense since there's also the possibility of rolling over a rock and criting into panicked pilot and there's no way to predict that so you can't just ban it outright.

The way I've decided it works is this and let me know if y'all agree or disagree. Since at the time of taking the tractor token you ARE able to take the action then whatever happens after can't invalidate that so if you become stressed in the process of resolving the tractor you just skip the rotate without running afoul of the "you can't pay a cost if you can't resolve the effect" rule.

Well I guess that depends on whether the triggered effect of landing on the debris cloud enters the "Ability Queue" or whether the effect of the Debris Cloud resolves in the middle of the an existing effect already partially resolved, akin to what used to be called "Nested Actions". Assuming that all game effects use the ability queue you wouldn’t roll for damage and take the stress till after the rotate arc part of the ability had finished resolving.

The other distinct possibility is that you don’t resolve the tractor effect until after you have performed the rotate Arc action. If getting a tractor token is considered triggering an ability that then enters the queue but resolves after the current ability is fully resolved you would need to rotate the arc before suffering the effect of the tractor token (reducing your agility and being "Tractored".

Honestly though at this stage there seem to be far more questions than answers.

TL:DR nobody knows.

YES THIS ONE TOO.

To Mace's point:

1 hour ago, Mace Windu said:

Well I guess that depends on whether the triggered effect of landing on the debris cloud enters the "Ability Queue" or whether the effect of the Debris Cloud resolves in the middle of the an existing effect already partially resolved, akin to what used to be called "Nested Actions". Assuming that all game effects use the ability queue you wouldn’t roll for damage and take the stress till after the rotate arc part of the ability had finished resolving.

Game effects such as receiving a stress from a debris cloud always resolve before player effect. this is part of the ability queue description on page 3 of the RR. So you would never be able to rotate after you rolled onto a debris cloud.

As for whether you could do the rotate action before or after the roll that is still up in the air. if gaining the tractor token and performing the rotate occupy the same timing window then you can chose to do one before the other, if the tractor token comes first then i would lean towards not being able to rotate before performing the boost/roll as i believe these would be considered game effects as well and would then automatically happen before the player effect of the rotate. But who knows, if the tractor roll/boost counts as a player effect then its fair game to do whatever you want.

as Mace put it:

1 hour ago, Mace Windu said:

TL:DR nobody knows.

Is this not simply a case of game effect versus card effect? At best the rotate action would occur at the same time as receiving the tractor token. The barrel roll and subsequent stress would then jump ahead of the rotate action as they are game effects. Please chime in if you think I’m wrong on that…

I don't think they thought about this when they wrote it tbh.

So heck knows.

You know you don't have to do the compulsory movement when you get tractored.

44 minutes ago, DaProfezzur said:

You know you don't have to do the compulsory movement when you get tractored.

Of course. But if you do, the effects should get applied immediately.

2 hours ago, DaProfezzur said:

You know you don't have to do the compulsory movement when you get tractored.

Correct.

but if you choose to do it and you messed up and get stressed as a result (or specifically choose to roll onto the debris for the ensnare, or the extra defence die, or to arc dodge or whatever) what happens?

Who knows?

Is this a question because of those additions on purple actions mucking up when to pay costs and when you are and are not obligated to costs?

For me under "Paying Costs" the Rules Ref. says: "A ship can pay a cost for an effect only if the effect can be resolved." It is logical that this entire chain must start somewhere.

Nantex executes a blue or white maneuver and is thus not stressed or otherwise prevented from performing a rotate action.

Nantex now has opportunity to add "after executes a maneuver" abilities to the queue.

Nantex adds "gain a tractor token to perform a rotate action" to the queue.

Prior game experience suggests: Get tractor token and rotate arc, start new queue beginning with "game effects" consequences of getting a tractor token, start queue for anything that might trigger from the rotate action.

However we're confused because of the conflicting entries on spending force tokens with failing actions and combined with the Cova rulings all of our abilities are now Schrodinger's Cat trapped within a pre-destination paradox. Am I understanding correctly?

Something like that.

The whole "can't pay the cost if you can't resolve the effect" seems to imply the best way to view things as the effect happening first, then the cost is paid. Rotate first, then tractor, and then deal with any effects from where the tractor moved you. That strikes me as fairly clean, and kind of matches how red actions work. Do the thing, then gain the stress.

*edit*

This mostly checks out with the official rulings on 10/10/2019, in effect if not terminology.

I have been rewarded with a double-post.

6 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

The whole "can't pay the cost if you can't resolve the effect" seems to imply the best way to view things as the effect happening first, then the cost is paid. Rotate first, then tractor, and then deal with any effects from where the tractor moved you. That strikes me as fairly clean, and kind of matches how red actions work. Do the thing, then gain the stress.

Maybe we could call it a simultaneous trigger and resolve in desired order thus Rotate -- > get tractor token. 🤷‍♂️

I think that if you can fail a red boost/barrel roll (effect) and still have to take the stress (cost), then you can take the tractor beam cost and end up on a debris cloud where you then fail the rotate action effect.

The trouble with that is that the arc rotation is supposed to be a cost of the tractor beam. Because having to rotate your arc makes the ship more difficult to fly - if you could BR onto a debris to force not rotating, it would potentially make the ability a lot more powerful with Ensnare in particular, but in general with being able to not move your arc, and still reposition.

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

The trouble with that is that the arc rotation is supposed to be a cost of the tractor beam. Because having to rotate your arc makes the ship more difficult to fly - if you could BR onto a debris to force not rotating, it would potentially make the ability a lot more powerful with Ensnare in particular, but in general with being able to not move your arc, and still reposition.

I disagree. You may do X to do Y. The tractor X is the cost, in order to do an action Y you normally can't do. Just because the cost can have a benefit (like with stress on Ten Numb or Braylen) doesn't mean it isn't a cost. Just because the effect can be detrimental doesn't mean it becomes the cost.

1 minute ago, Something Wicked said:

I disagree. You may do X to do Y. The tractor X is the cost, in order to do an action Y you normally can't do. Just because the cost can have a benefit (like with stress on Ten Numb or Braylen) doesn't mean it isn't a cost. Just because the effect can be detrimental doesn't mean it becomes the cost.

Fair, I should have been a little more precise with my language.

The rotation is supposed (I believe) to be a balancing factor of the repositioning. It makes the ship harder to fly. Being able to have the option to turn it off in certain contexts is incredibly powerful.

Just now, thespaceinvader said:

Fair, I should have been a little more precise with my language.

The rotation is supposed (I believe) to be a balancing factor of the repositioning. It makes the ship harder to fly. Being able to have the option to turn it off in certain contexts is incredibly powerful.

From a balance perspective rather than a game mechanic perspective, possibly. But 1) it isn't just turning it off. You're still taking a stress and risking a crit on a shieldless 4 hull ship, and 2) If you get into a position where you can tractor yourself onto a debris cloud and also be in a position where the stress/crit is worth it, I'd say that is good flying and obstacle placement. And there is counter play to it.

5 hours ago, Something Wicked said:

I think that if you can fail a red boost/barrel roll (effect) and still have to take the stress (cost), then you can take the tractor beam cost and end up on a debris cloud where you then fail the rotate action effect.

It's unfortunately not quite that simple. As per the "Paying Costs" entry, we've paid the cost for the effect that we could resolve, but now the cost of the effect is causing a situation in which we can't resolve the very same effect. From there we seem to have 2 options:

1) We tell the Nantex that it's attempt to resolve PTA is illegal because of the "Paying Costs" rules and reset back to before the Tractor token was taken. But now we're in a time travel paradox: an ability has failed because of its own cost so we've gone back in time and now the very reason it failed (the stress token) no longer exists so why did it fail in the first place?

2) We tell the Nantex that the cost was legal at the time it paid it, so it's stuck being on the Debris and taking the stress. But this seemingly violates the "Paying Costs" entry of the rules because the effect was not resolved despite the cost being paid.

It's all just a huge mess.

I feel like they way this goes is this:

Execute your maneuver:
Nantex ability enters Queue
The Nantex ability is gain a tractor to rotate your arc
You gain a tractor token, which enters the queue after the Nantex ability fully resolves
Rotate your arc to finish the Nantex ability
Tractor effect moves your ship
If you overlap debris you receive a stress token.

I don't believe there's anything in the rules reference that talks about interrupting effects. So even though you receive a tractor, it doesn't immediately trigger, even though its a game effect, because it enters the queue, is placed in front of any other non game effects that may be occuring (IE Snapshot), but the current effect needs to finish resolving first. Thats where the rotate occurs.

Quote

If resolving an effect from the ability queue triggers additional effects, they are added to the front of the ability queue using the above rules.

I think this is the relevant section of the RRG. Gaining a tractor token on the Nantex adds the Tractored effect to the front of the queue, but the full Nantex ability which has already started resolving needs to finish resolving first.

Quote

but the full Nantex ability which has already started resolving needs to finish resolving first.

Exactly this. I think the answer lies in the way red actions work:

Quote

As a cost to attempt to perform a red action, a ship must gain 1 stress token.

You have to put the stress token down before the action is even performed, which means that the effects of the stress token do not apply until the effect of paying the cost is resolved.

This whole problem hinges on the answer to one question: Does adding triggered effects to the front of the ability queue interrupt the ability that is currently resolving?

I think the red action rules prove that the answer is no. The effects of the tractor are added to the front of the ability queue, but they do not interrupt the resolution of the current ability (pinpoint tractor array), and so the rotate actually happens before the tractor barrel roll.

On 9/25/2019 at 12:38 PM, jklasdf said:

Exactly this. I think the answer lies in the way red actions work:

You have to put the stress token down before the action is even performed, which means that the effects of the stress token do not apply until the effect of paying the cost is resolved.

This whole problem hinges on the answer to one question: Does adding triggered effects to the front of the ability queue interrupt the ability that is currently resolving?

I think the red action rules prove that the answer is no. The effects of the tractor are added to the front of the ability queue, but they do not interrupt the resolution of the current ability (pinpoint tractor array), and so the rotate actually happens before the tractor barrel roll.

im.... actually ok with this. Its weird, and doesn't follow usual logic in how you read the ability, but mechanically, it makes sense and makes it the easiest to rule over and remove confusion.

When you overlap a debris, if you are not executing a maneuver, you receive the stress AFTER you move, while the rotate action happens simultaneously to the tractor effect. So the proper order seems to be: 1. Gain a tractor token, 2. Move the ship (as the tractor effect is a game effect it should happen before rotating), 3. Rotate, 4. Gain stress.

14 minutes ago, FilipeFreitas said:

2. Move the ship (as the tractor effect is a game effect it should happen before rotating)

Game effects take precedence when they are overlapping triggers. The tractored from the pin point isn't over lapping anything so the move comes after the rotate. In the ability queue section it states that if an effect triggers other effects they're added to the front of the ability queue, meaning they resolve after the current ability is resolving.

Theoretically every nantex should be rotating their arc before they move. While it doesn't always make a difference letting them move first, then rotate gives them more information about where they should rotate their arc.