Re: Mr. Droscha: One More Rules Question

["James K Droscha" <jdroscha@...>]

--- In piecepack@y..., "arealgamenut" <lightwriter4x5@h...> wrote:
> I forgot to include one question about Silver Isle in my original post

First things first... Mike, I DID get your email that you sent privately with this 
question, but hotmail bounced my reply.  Excerpt of bounce message:
[Your message was not delivered within 1 days.
 / Host hotmail.com is not responding. / The following recipients did not 
receive this message: / <lightwriter4x5@...> / Final-Recipient: 
RFC822; <lightwriter4x5@...> / Action: failed / Status: 4.4.7
 / Remote-MTA: dns; hotmail.com)]

Now for some shaky answers to your excellent questions.  I shall paste the 
text of my reply to the personal email, but the quoted context will hopefully be 
sufficient for others to make sense of my ramblings.

 On Thursday, October 3, 2002, at 02:48  PM, arealgamenut wrote:

> Thanks for you quick response. I have one more question that I
> forgot to post in my message. The rules state "If a null-value crew
> is ever involved in a fight, it will be eliminated whether it is on
> the winning or losing side." The only way a null-value crew could be
> involved in a fight and win would be when a ship or port was the
> attacker.

   There is one other possibility, and that is if you move a crew onto an enemy-
controlled tile that contains more than one enemy crew.

>  So does that mean that if a ship with a crew of 4 and null
> attacked a crew of null, both would lose their null crews, even
> though 4-0=4?

   Yes.

>  Likewise, if the ship had a crew of 4 and null, and
> the defeated crew was of value 2, the 4 would be replaced with a 2,
> the null would be lost despite being on the winning side, and the
> defeated crew would be removed? Thank you for your help.

   Correct.

   Please keep in mind that the current ruleset is still in beta, so some of the 
answers I just make up as I go along.  We have played the game only twice 
(in my recollection) and I am still open to suggestion, should you have any.

   When I get around to revising the rules, one of the clarifications I need to 
make is that ships and forts can't really attack.  Only crews attack, and they 
only attack other crews.  It's just that when the crews are on a ship, or in a port, 
or there is more than one crew on a tile, there are special circumstances.  This 
is hinted at in the current ruleset (which states that a ship can only attack if it 
has one or more crews aboard, for example) but I wasn't really thinking in 
those terms when I wrote them up.

   If you get a chance to play, please let me know how it goes for you and if 
you end up with any more questions.  My primary goal when making 
clarifications during the revision will be consistency, so if something doesn't 
make sense to you during play, it would be helpful to hear about it.

Much Thanks,
James