Hello,

i asked myself if you can shoot at an enemy spaceship if this one is on boarding action with an ally. That seems fine as the targets arent puny.

Thanks for your answers

Don't see why not...but it would be risky for the allied fleet, as you're likely to inflict casualties on your own boarders. You could probably come up with some quickfire rules for allocating casualties between the two vessels locked in a boarding action, perhaps based upon the respective size of the crews involved in the action modified by the size of each vessel involved.

So for example if a Frigate is attempting to board a cruiser, a ship allied to the cruiser firing on the frigate might find it harder to avoid inflicting casualties on its ally as the Frigate has a smaller crew and is physically smaller (and thus harder to target effectively.)

Because when a 40k starship brews up, it tends to blow the absolute living sh*t out of everything in a large radius.

A better idea tactically might be to board the enemy vessel. Since its going to be in a boarding action anyway, i'd assign some pretty hefty bonuses for an extra boarder.

As for shooting, i'd be careful with macro batteries. The description of them says they fire a salvo that fills an area of space, they aren't precision weapons like lances. Maybe a bit of splash damage to the other ship would be appropriate.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

This all makes a lot of sense. Given the vast scales 40k starships operate at, and the huge distances between them, by the time you're close enough to avoid hitting an allied ship in a boarding action, you're close enough to board yourself.

The alternative would be like trying to shoot a single participant in a close fought wrestling match using an autoloading shotgun....from a distance of 400 metres. Things are either going to get messy for everyone or have no impact at all.

At first i also thought about the spalsh damage done to the other ship, yet, when you hit an enemy, the weapons are accurate enough to let you choose the components targeted by your critical hits if you have revealed em.

So the both ideas are puzzling me.

Tactically, you're probably better off just launching masses of hit-run missions on it rather than risk all 3 ships, do enough critical hits to vital components while they're otherwise too pre-occupied to oppose you properly. I'd at the very least give a +/-10 or so to the command rolls to reflect the fact they'd be splitting their forces to cover all the holes in their defences while you just cripple and set fire to things... very bad things they can't live without!

Xanatov said:

It really depends on the weapon. A lance weapon is a precise beam. Macrocannons shoot numerous shots. Think sniper rifle vs a machine gun.