Robot RULES
collected here from scenario 4 and 6
THE ROBOT
OPPONENT
1. The robot ship moves at a speed of 12 every turn. The robot ship will
try to fire every weapon every turn. The robot ship will obey the rule
prohibiting the firing of a single given weapon twice on two consecutive
turns within 1/4-turn (4 impulses on a 16-impulse system).
2. The robot ship will follow your ship (as a seeking weapon) until the
first impulse of the turn in which the robot ship is within four hexes of
your ship. At that point, the robot ship will fire every weapon that will
bear on (can be pointed at) your ship. This is known as the Primary Fire
Point and will (theoretically) happen once every turn. If this point has
not been reached by the end of the turn, the robot ship will fire all
weapons that can bear on the last impulse of the turn.
3. After the Primary Fire Point, the robot ship will cease following your
ship and will turn 60degrees (as soon as his turn mode allows) toward a
direction that will allow him to fire any weapons which have not fired yet
on that turn. Additional requirements: If there are no unfired weapons, do
not turn the ship. See 4A below. If there are unfired weapons available in
both directions, or if a ship could turn either way to bring a given
weapon to bear, turn in the direction of the larger number of weapons. If
there are an equal number of unfired weapons in both directions (or the
same distance to a single weapon), turn to the side with the most
undamaged shields, if equal then toss a coin to decide. During
this part of each turn, the robot ship will fire every unfired weapon as
soon as it can be pointed at your ship. (For example, if the only unfired
weapons are on the right side and your ship is to the left, the robot will
turn left until that weapon can fire.) These are known as Secondary Fire
Points. Regardless of any instructions, the robot ship will not leave the
map and will not turn to a course that would take it off the map before it
can turn again. Regardless of any instructions, if the non-robot ship is
in a map edge hex and MUST leave the map on the next impulse, the robot
ship will fire all weapons which can be fired at the target (within the
various rules on firing rates and firing arcs).
4. Instruction #3 will be repeated every time the robot ship fires, until
one of two things happens:
A. If the robot ship has no more weapons
that have not fired, it will continue moving in the same direction until
the end of the turn.
B. If the end of the turn arrives and there
are still unfired weapons available, they do not fire.
5. If the robot ship is armed with drones, it will launch one of them
targeted on your ship on the first impulse of every turn.
6. At the end of each turn, all weapons on the robot ship (except drones)
are reloaded and the robot ship will repeat instruction #2 through #5.
These instructions are repeated every turn until the scenario is over.
7. If the Federation ship is used as a robot ship, it will fire one (and
only one) photon torpedo each turn (since they require two turns to arm).
8. If the Romulan KR (see Scenario #6) is used as a robot ship, it will
launch its torpedo A on the first impulse (that the target is in the
acceptable arc) of the 1st, 4th, 7th, (etc.) turns.
9. After you complete the first six scenarios and leave the Cadet ships
for the standard ships, the robot ship rules can be adapted for those
standard ships. For example, the Federation heavy cruiser has four photon
torpedoes, so two would fire every turn.
PLASMA
(FP1.23) Ships do not begin the scenario with torpedoes armed(except F torps), but must arm them during the scenario. The robot ship is something of an exception.
CLOAK
The robot rules are simply not smart enough to control cloaked ships. For the robot to fight against the cloaked ship, use these modified rules. The robot ship will fire at an uncloaking ship on the first impulse. The robot ship will fire any available phasers at a torpedo if it moves within two hexes of the robot ship. This will be done when the Impulse Procedure calls for phasers and when armed phasers have the torpedo in their firing arc; it might happen (with different phasers) on more than one impulse. The robot ship will turn away from the torpedo and move at the best speed away from the torpedo. The robot ship will ignore all other targets until the torpedo strikes or is reduced to zero strength (by phasers and/or range); then it will resume normal operations.
DAMAGE
if not using the DAC
Each time internal damage is scored, the first point must be scored on a weapon (if one is left), the second point must be scored on a warp engine box (if one is left), and the remaining points can be scored on any internal boxes (not other shield boxes and not the drone rack ammunition track). The bridge cannot be destroyed. When there are no boxes (including Excess Damage boxes) remaining except the bridge, the ship is destroyed by one more damage point. For a robot ship, do not score the ?extra? damage on warp engines or weapons unless there are no other boxes remaining. Then score them on warp engine boxes first. Each damage point scored on a warp engine reduces the speed of the ship by one point for the rest of the scenario beginning at the start of the next turn; 12 damage points scored on warp engines will bring the ship to a halt. (This approximates the energy allocation process. It is a little too generous for the robot ship, but this offsets some of the limited aspects of the robot ship system.)