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When firing a Nova Cannon, the rules state you "place the template so that its outer edge is at the range guessed." Is that the near or far edge, or shooter's choice? (Sorry, kind of a stupid question, but someone asked...)
A: Far edge of course
My Imperial cruisers are shooting at Kenny's Chaos escort squadron which falls in two different shooting categories. Half of the squadron fell in the abeam category and half fell in the closing category. It was kind of weird cause it was exactly half. We weren't sure what to do in the situation so we just diced off (we were more concerned about having fun and drinking some beers). How is situation normally resolved? Any help would be appreciated.
A: Hi Jason, the way it works is like in Epic, you can count the targets as closing if you want, but then you can only hurt the ones which are actually closing (so excess hits will be wasted). If you want to be able hit all of them count the target type as abeam. Hope that helps.
When a ship is crippled we know that lances and firepower are halved. We were curious is this applied to torpedoes (boarding or otherwise), and attack craft.
A: Yep,all armament is halved
When a ship suffers a 1/2 weapons effect for what ever reason, can you still fire weapons with only 1 firepower / strength? i.e. Nova Cannon, Eldar pulse lances, etc.
A: Nova cannon may not fire if the ship's crippled (p23). Others reduced to 1 or less may fire because the total is always rounded up.
If column shifts take the shot off the edge of the table, just stop at the left or right most column, right?
A: Yep
Nova Cannon
1. "To fire a nova cannon you must nominate a target ship and guess the range to it. Then place the nova cannon template so that its outer edge is at the range guessed (Note: The template can only be placed up to the cannon's maximum range)."
Do you have to place the template that its center touches the line of fire? Or can you place it any way you like, as long as its outer edge touches the range guessed?
A: It's center must be positioned along the firing line
2. How do the rules for MINIMUM RANGE and TARGET PRIORITY work together (i.e. a target is 15cm in front of a ship with nova cannon)?
A: Ignore targets inside the minimum range for the purposes of target priority.
The rules say that "weapon batteries may split fire between several targets." Just to clarify, This means you cannot split the fire of lances. For example. I have a Lunar Class with two equidistant Chaos cruisers abeam on the port side. Can I fire one Lance at the each one or must I pick only one of the Chaos cruiser to recieve the fire of from both lances?
A: Splitting lance batteries sounds fine too, it isn't intended that they must be fired at just one target
Nova Cannons. Oh boy. Nova Cannons. Grrr. :)
A few questions came up on league night here:
The rules for target priority say to shoot the closest "enemy." Are ordnance "enemy?" Do I have to shoot incoming bombers if they are closer than opposing cruisers?
A: No, ordnance are not 'enemy' for target priority purposes.
I read "on the net" (yeah, yeah, stop your laughing you!) an answer it seems you gave about ignoring targets inside 30cm for choosing a target with a Nova Cannon. The implication here is that even though the weapon is a guess weapon, you must still shoot the closest available target with it (unless a Ld test is passed). Correct? I hope so. There's nothing in the rules saying that you can ignore closer targets with it but almost all the Imperial players here are firing at whatever they want.
A: Correct, though I've repeatedly played this wrong myself!
Torpedoes and nova cannons, like any front arc weapon, can be fired along a path anywhere in that arc, right? Not just straight ahead?
A: Yep, they're front arc, not 'fire in a straight line'
Column shits what if they shift right off the firepower table (eg an eldar escort is abeam of a imp cruiser at a range of 41cm, so say fire power 10 thats 2 dice, but shift right due to over 30cm away.. plus another shift right due to eldar holofields) = -2 off the table what do u do???
A: Just you the furthest right(or left) column
Lances: Incidently, for anyone who's interested in more on lances I dug up this bit of info from the back-files
Lance Info:
The attacks that ships make are divided into two sorts, direct firing and ordnance attacks. Direct fire attacks are weapons like lasers, fusion beams and plasma launchers which are fired and hit almost immediately even across tens of thousands of kilometres. Lances are incredibly high powered direct fire energy weapons capable of burning straight through an armoured hull or cutting an escort ship in two. On Imperial and Chaos ships lances are usually mounted in huge turrets with quad or triple energy projectors which focus into a concentrated beam of destruction.
Visually this would be along the lines of the advanced races’ weapons in B5, like the Minbari and Shadow ships - a coruscating beam of pure energy which is swept across a minute arc.
A lance turret would need to work something like this;
Immense power conduits enter at the bottom of the turret, feeding into house-sized capacitors and storage cells which form most of its base (ie magazine/ammo hoist area). The power conduits tap into the ship’s main power core, which in turn is energised by huge, throbbing plasma reactors.
The lance weapons themselves would be enormous energy projectors - each one the size of a factory chimney. They work by combining focussed coherent light (ie lasers) and electromagnetic pulses as a propellant for highly energised particles (ie plasma). The closest naturally occurring equivalent would be a solar flare but foccussed into a narrow beam. This means that lances would consist of a central particle/plasma chamber surounded by a series of enormous electromagnetic coils forming the barrel and muzzle, behind this would be a cluster of laser rods in the place of the breech/shell.
Other things in a lance turret would include;
- bunk rooms, mess decks and a chapel for its crew (they would live eat, work and probably die inside their turret, never seeing the rest of the ship) -estimate around 200-500 gunners, officers etc.
- Probably a tech-priest shrine (ie workshop/computer mainframe),
- the turret winding gear and gun laying sections, plus engines and backups.
- Stores of coolant to keep the turret efficient as it starts to heat up after a few shots.
Is the damage sustained by a Nova Cannon applied to shields or to the ship directly? It says "automatic hit"--but one of my players argued that it is an "automatic hit" to the shields. We had always played it ignored shields until he brought this up.
Frankly, I used to think the Imperials had a fighting chance with the Nova Cannon, but if this is the case--that shields protect against it--and that the Eldar can save versus an massive, area affect explosion with holofields, the value and point of this weapon have become moot.
A: Thank you for that insight but I regret that Nova cannon do have to knock down the targets' shields just like weapons fire - however doing a D6 hits means that they have a better than evens chance of doing so versus cruisers and smaller