GSF FAQ

Here is the first draft of the GSF FAQ. Christopher has reviewed the FAQ, which means that everything in it is confirmed by him. If there is a difference between the rulebook and the FAQ, the FAQ is correct.

I explained each concept where it is most likely to occur. For example, Energy Removal is mentioned during the Damage Event, even though it can apply during any phase.

I kept it as a google doc, so I can edit it without causing the forum to show an update each time. As more clarifications are needed, I will add to the document. If you have any questions that should be there, please ask. If you think something could be worded better, please mention it. If you think something could use an example, please say so, etc.

EDIT: I wanted to say thank you to Christopher and Paul for answering all of my questions!

Set Up: #6: Put tokens on each Opp equal to starting value.

I do not recommend this, however correct it may be. I wouldnt put tokens on any Opp ships unless their values are different from the starting values. Saves on bookkeeping and makes moving ships much less of a hassle.

Thanks for this Pydro

That looks really useful.  Thanks!

#8 in Setup - isn't blue the Strike Force side?  You say "strike force side up - orange side".  Also, small typo in #4 ("one", not "on").

UPDATE: it looks like you've peppered in some advice along with the actual rules, which I think is great.  An example is telling people not to play a Boost at the end of the Travel phase unless you can prevent a card from activating an "R" icon.  Maybe the advice sections should be visibily differentiated from the actual rules, by italicizing the advice or coloring it or something.  Otherwise, it may look like the advice is actually how the game must be played.

UPDATE: Is this paragraph correct?

If all of the Opposition Ships in a Sector have a Primary Engager, any remaining unengaged Strike Force Ships in that Sector need to engage, though they may choose to be Secondary Engagers.

If all Opp ships have a primary engager, then any remaining SFS must be secondary engagers since you can't have multiple primary engagers.  Or should it say "any remaining unegaged SFS in that sector DO NOT need to engage"?

UPDATE: why is this true?

An Opposition ship is engaged with a Primary Engager and Secondary Engager, and the Secondary Engager moves to a different Sector: All ships are still considered engaged, but no damage will be calculated during the Damage Event.

If the secondary engager moves to a different sector, the Opp ship and the primary engager are still going to blast each other, no?

UPDATE: under Damage Event, what does this sentence mean?

However, pairs of ships will remove tokens sequentially.

Thanks for the help. Always good to have a new set of eye.
It should be that they do not need to engage.

Yes, the primary and and Opp ship still engage.

Here's more:

If an Opposition Ship is scrapped for any other reason, no one gains the Bounty.

Would it be good to give an example of when something like this could happen?  It may not be obvious to a new player.

If a Player has more than five cards in their hand, they must recycle cards so that they have four or fewer cards

Wha?  This is not mentioned in the rules (although I suspected it was just an oversight).

That's a great doc.  I love it.

Thanks, I got most of them. I will go through and separate the advice when I can.

What I meant to say is taht pairs of engaged ships (An Opp ships and at least one SF ship), remove tokens one after the othre. First fully resolve on pair, then go to the next.

I will put in that example later. Any other places that should have one? I am thinking one about removing tokens.

Here's one question I had that I don't think is answered completely by the FAQ, but could be easily - when a stack of Station Cards is emptied, we're supposed to shuffle the Station Scrap and refill it.  But it's not clear that during setup, when it says to "set aside" the remaining Station Cards, that those cards you're setting aside ARE the Station Scrap pile.

This confused me my first game, because we burned through a stack of Station Cards in our first game before any Station Cards had been scrapped, so we weren't sure what it was we were supposed to be shuffling and refilling from.

Also, just to say it, one reason I'm so pleased by this doc is because I'd decided to not manage a GSF FAQ myself this time around, so I'm super glad that someone else is doing it.  And it looks like it's going to be really useful.

Once the doc is mostly finalized, I'd be happy to host it on my GSF site, if you think that'd be a good idea.

Do we think it would be a good idea to suggest a first game that doesn't pit the noobs against the Syndicate?  Maybe also some other ways to tone down the difficulty while you're getting your feet wet, like reducing the number of starting Opp ships perhaps.

This FAQ looks really helpful. Some initial feedback (mostly to make it easier to read - my copy of the game hasn't arrived yet, so I don't have a lot of gameplay questions yet):

• One suggestion for readability (assuming the FAQ will stay in a plain text format): put phase letters in parentheses and the energy letters in curly brackets (i.e. (R) instead of R for Requisition and {W} instead of W for Weaponry)
• In the examples in step 4 of Battle, you have a few duplicated scenarios.
• In each of the phases, when you talk about playing boost cards, it's a little confusing to parse. You might consider rephrasing or using formatting to make it clearer (i.e. change "Play Boosts or Boost - Travels" to "Play Boost or Boost-Travel cards"
• You might add a brief Table of Contents to the beginning, just so people have an idea of the structure of the document. After all, this is primarily to be used for reference rather than reading in its entirety, right?
• Little typo-stuff. I haven't compiled a list, but I can. Or if you want to give me permission to edit temporarily, I can fix them as I see them.

I haven’t even worked on formatting yey. The FAQ is an update from the one I made for PTing. That one was in Word, and formatting doesn’t translate well. My goal was to get it out first, then make it look good second. Besides feedback on the formatting is helpful.

Some of the nomenclature is based on previous versions, like how to write W, D. To me {*} means Energy, not a specific one. We can coe up with a standard format which would be fine.

If anyone wants to have access to the doc to help keep it updated and neat, just PM me your email address that you have a google account with (I think that’s the info I need).

Here's one: I don't believe the icon that has all the TRIBA letters on it is ever explained anywhere. We play it where the player can choose which of the letters it is each round so that the ability activates at the chosen letter's event, but it will only activate once per round, and which letter it is can be changed from round to round. But maybe it's supposed to mean that the ability can be activated on each of the lettered events each round, meaning the ability can be activated five times per round. Would be nice to know which one of those interpretations is correct and have that in the FAQ. 

It's each phase for the TRIBA icon spiff

OCS Waypoint would be terrible with a restriction of once per round. Would make wrath cry. 

Well there you go. Needs to be in the FAQ. 

Did some perliminary formatting, as well as throwing in a Key for the various symbols at the bottom. I'll do another pass sometime this weekend.

Key

[ W ] = Weaponry (red pentagon)

[ D ] = Defense (blue shield)

[ E ] = Energy (green triangle)

[ W ] + [ D ] = [ E ]

Phases

{T} - Travel

{R} - Requisition

{ I } - Installation

{B} - Battle

{A} - Aftermath

Nice job!

Not a bad idea. I was thinking about this and twio questions came to mind: 1) how many starting games should there be? 2) What are the key skills mechanincs? Once those questions are answered we can divide up those skills by the number of games, and come up with a new Flagship Panel for the first few games.

Also, I added in a bit about TRIBA Icons.

This is really helpful. I think the official rules were too condensed to be easily followed. The FAQ, as of right now, is really just a reiteration of the rules - unzipped.

I think I'll share these with anyone who wants to play tonight, not the glossy rules. it's an open gaming night rather than a dedicated SOTM/GSF thing, so who knows.

Would it be helpful to add the info Donner provided in this post about a general ship overview to the FAQ?  I think it would:

Bjarlspire can take damage for othes and is a tank.

Ranak Warbeast like to hit all unengaged ships and blow up its own tech.  Especially effective when outnumbered.

Basillios likes installing and reinstalling tech for carious effects.

Tharendim assassinates ships that have low shields.

Karrach's (sp?) Claw rams ships with less defense than it has offense.

Vigilance converts shield energy to weapon energy often.

Marrot's Folly gambles on some tech and has tons of cash.

Conclave of Nyphon supports others and also has cash (gives them weapons and temp shields)

Uxshenti's Wrath is very mobile and can go through its deck quickly.

And Grey Hammer blows up its tech to damage other ships.  Especially effective vs. individual strong ships.

It needs some tweaks, but here would be my recommendation for a first game:

Setup

Take out the BTS, but remove all Qubrin Smugglers from the Opp Ship deck from the game.

Remove the Mission Cards from the game.

Remove the Flagship Panel from the game.

All other setups as normal.

In place of the Flagship Panel and Mission cards, you will have the following rule:

TRAVEL: Play the top card of the Opp Ship deck into the Sector with the most Opp ships.

The idea is to teach you alsmot of the rules, while taking a few things out. PLaying the top card of the deck each round can be rough, but you will quickly learn to minimize the damage. Instead of a Flagship fight, the final battle here will be against a Sector full of ships, with more coming. This will also show you how to handle multiple ships at once for the greatest effect. Using the right cards, making your move at the right time, etc.

An errata section would be nice. For instance, I've heard that a few of the mission cards have the wrong backs, but I have no idea which ones or what text they should have. I don't think we have to concern ourselves with typos - only things that are going to affect gameplay.

I would really like more clarification on bounties. Reading the rules conservatively, you only get the Bounty if you scrap the ship in battle. Not if you scrap it by playing a card, or by something one of your techs do, or anything. It would be nice to have a generalized list of the things that get you the bounty and the things that don't, if it isn't what my reading says.

We ran into an interesting situation where someone scrapped a card from their hand. It was a green boost card though. We decided it should be scrapped not recycled, since it wasn't being played. The correct answer to that situation might be nice to have in the FAQ.

And finally, there's a "Boots" typo in the doc =)

Not sure if you meant in general or in the FAQ, but you get the bounty whenever an SF ship scraps an Opp ship, whenever that is, during battle or not.

It should be scrapped. I will look into putting that in.

Thanks for the typo.

If you play a card that causes an Opp ship to be scrapped, is it "the SF ship" scrapping it though? That's what's not clear to me.

For example, there's a boost where all strike force ships in the sector lose one energy and you can scrap any non-boss ship in the sector. Would that get you the bounty for the scrapped ship?

I am only waiting for the official answer to those questions before adding them in. I also want to add in a section about specific card interactions.

Yes. Scrapping an Opp ship with Strike Force Tactics counts for the Bounty.

I just got my copy and haven't had a chance to play.   So what affects come into play that would scrap an opp ship but not result in any of the Strike Force ships to get the bounty?

Apologies, but I don't know any of the names for anything yet. I played last night with a sector that, in the Aftermath phase, removes one energy from every engaged ship. It happened to remove the last energy from an opposition ship that I had fought, but not quite taken out. I assume that the bounty for this would be lost since the sector directly caused it to be scrapped, not my actions.

Grysqrl is correct.

There are a bunch of Sector effects, Mission effects, and Bounty effects that can remove energy from Opposition ships. None of those effects are coming from your SF ship or its deck, so if an Opp is scrapped by them no one would get that bounty. 

A friend asked if there is a GSF FAQ, so I found the link to the Google doc Pydro is keeping and  sent it to him.

I am not very familiar with Galactic Strike Force, so it's difficult for me to tell at a glance how much of the information in this doc is new or different from what is in the rules for GSF.

I did not see a question/answer format in the doc, as I expected from a FAQ, but rather what looks like an attempt to write a complete set of rules. Is that correct? Am I misinterpreting this document?

No, it is more of a complete set of rules than a true FAQ. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to mention that there are no questions in the FAQ. It initially started as a collection of questions that Christopher answered. I eventually changed the format, but kept the same name.

The FAQ has a lot more detailed info then the rulebook, and I didn’t specifically point out the new info.

Thanks for the clarification. I think that will help me both understand how to use it and how to explain it to others.

But it doesn't contradict the rulebook, right? Just adds details / clarifications?

It does contradict the rulebook at least once I can recall offhand, regarding setup.

If you have to scrap a tech from your ship (due to a card saying to do so, not from loss of energy), do you have to go from the outside in? I couldn't find anything in the FAQ to say one way or the other.

No. I will try to add it in.

If it's not due to damage from combat or an ability that does [E]  damage you should be able to can scrap any tech you want.  

Aside from the component anatomy, glossary, and list of pilots and enemies, is there anything in the rulebook that is NOT in the FAQ?

At first glance it looks like the answer is "no."

Nope.

Thank you for the excellent clarifications on the rules Pydro.  I printed this out to keep in the box as part of the rulebook.  This game is going to be a lot more challenging now that I know I can only engage one ship at a time!