Quick question about the FTL jump:

The instructions state:

> If the fleet marker has moved to one of the blue spaces of
> the Jump Preparation track, players may force the fleet to
> jump using the “FTL Control” location. If the fleet jumps due to
> someone activating this location, there is a chance that the
> fleet will lose some population.
> The current player rolls the die, and if a “6” or lower is rolled,
> then a number of population is lost equal to the number listed
> on the current space of the Jump Preparation track. Players
> then follow all steps for “Jumping the Fleet” on this page.

My two questions are:

1) If the activate player choices to use the FTL controls to jump early, and they roll a 7+ result, does the fleet jump without losing any population? Or does the action just fail?

2) When the FTL prep reaches "auto", at the final phase of a person's turn, will the fleet will jump without needing someone to activate the FTL during their action phase of their turn, or do they still need to choose to do it, albeit with no chance of failure or population loss?

Thanks in advance! We played a game tonight, but made a few mistakes, and we're unsure about the ruling here in regards to jumping to FTL. If you're able to jump with no chance of failure in the blue portions of the FTL prep counter, it seems a bit too easy to skip away from combat to some people.

strudel said:

1) If you roll 7+ then you jump and do not lose Population. Its a benefit to roll 7+ and humans save 'Strategic Planning' cards for just that occurence. Yes you can jump early, but you never know where you are going and you just tied yourself to a chain of cards with possibly more attacks. Early jump is not always a good idea - if the next crisis is an attack card then you went one turn to early. Even with Strategic planning it is still a 50/50 chance to lose the population. Do it regularly and thats 1/3 of your population at -1 pop and most of it at -3 pop jumps without taking into account losses from civilian ships and other crises. Population at 12 makes it seem a safe dial to hit - but that can be deceptive as it is also the one where I have seen the biggest loss in one turn of a card (8 population due to raider activation).

2) If a symbol on a crisis card or other card event moves the jump track to auto jump the game is interrupted and the Jump is immediately processed with no player 'Action' input. The taking of an action in the FTL by a player is purely for jumping early - not for autojumps

Just to be clear, the wording is for sequencing. The jump always occurs. First you do the population loss die check. Regardless of the out come, you continue with the jump (clear the board, destinatioin, etc).