Star Fleet Warlord Rules (Updated) - Play By E-Mail

Class Abbreviation Approximate Cost
Police Cutter PC 40-60
Frigate FF 60-90
Destroyer DD 90-110
War (or Heavy) Destroyer DW 100-120
Light Cruiser CL 100-120
War (or Medium) Cruiser CW 110-130
Heavy Cruiser CA 120-170
Heavy Battlecruiser BCH 170-200
Dreadnought DN 200-280
Battleship BB 300+
Not all races possess ships of every class shown above. When looking through the Ship List, take note of which races
are missing which classes, as gaps in the force structure indicate racial weaknesses you should be aware of.
4.6 Ship Statistics
The most important statistics to remember about your ships are their combat factors and their movement rate
(speed). Combat factors are broken out into three types: Attack Factor (AF), Defense Factor (DF), and Shield Factor
(SF).
Simply put, AF and DF indicate the damage a ship can cause in combat. It's important to understand the
difference between the two. If your ship moves into a hex and attacks enemy units, your combined AF determines how
much damage you can cause, while your enemies resist using their DF. So, AF is used when you attack, while DF is for
when you're attacked.
Ships are also equipped with shields, noted by the SF statistic. Shields will absorb damage in combat until
reduced to zero, and then the hull itself will start taking damage See 4.7 Hip Points below.. The difference is that shields
are automatically restored to full levels at the start of your next turn, while internal damage must be repaired, or else
it remains on the ship-reducing its combat abilities and making it more likely to be destroyed in future battles.
Note: The precise combat abilities of ships are not shown in the Ship List, although you'll learn them as the game
progresses-in particular, when you buy a specific ship type for the first time. You shouldn't worry about the exact factors
of your ships, as you almost always get what you pay for.
4.7 Hit Points and Damage Levels
Hit Points (HP) indicate the amount of internal damage a ship can take before being destroyed. Hit Points are
separated from the DF as a statistic. DF has no any bearing on how much damage a ship can take.
When a generic ship changes missions to the “D” mission (or out of that mission), only the DF is changed, not the
hit points. For example, a monitor with 40 DF and 36 HP which changed to the “P” mission would have its DF reduced to
30, but its hit points would remain 36.
Upgrading a ship (with the UPGR order) increases its hit points by the same ratio as AF, DF and SF are improved
(that is, +10%). There is a random event which increases this ratio to 20%; this event will also provide the same benefit to
hit points, even though it won’t specifically say so in the event description.
Whenever a starship takes damage (be it in combat or elsewhere), its shields (SF) will absorb as much damage
as possible before they are blown down and the hull itself starts taking hits. Once its shields are gone and the ship has
taken more internal damage than it has original hit points, it is destroyed!
There are also various levels of damage. When a ship has taken internals of up to 25% of its hit points, it is
considered to have light damage. From 26% to 50% is medium, 51-75% is heavy, and from 76-100% a ship is
considered crippled. The more damage a ship has, the more costly it will be to repair it (see Chapter Six). Heavily
damaged and crippled ships can also lose speed, and crippled vessels cannot carry any of the various types of optional
items (fighters, drones, etc.).
Damage also has a detrimental effect on a ship's combat abilities. Light damage reduces its AF and DF by 33%,
medium by 40%, heavy 50%, and crippling damage 67%. Hit points do not use this scale, but are tracked individually. For
more information on combat, see Chapter Eight. Whenever a damaged ship is listed in a battle report, the level of damage
(L, M, H, or C) Will be shown in parenthesis after the designation, but only if the damage was already present at the start
of the battle. So, for example, if you attack another player's ship and see it reported as the F-BCF (L) "Bismarck", it is a
lightly damaged ship.
Revised 30 June 2010 Page 18