Firestorm Armada – Movement

All ships have a movement value in inches and smaller ships have faster speeds and a better turn radius than larger ones. Ships have to move at least half their movement and a ship in a squadron must finish all of their movement before the next ship in the squadron moves. Ships can move different distances and can make a belly up action and have port face starboard and vice versa (very handy if your weapons systems on one side is taken out). The only way a ship can move less is if they declared a “cut engines” action in the previous turn, but this is not recommended. If a critical takes out the weapon systems in the arc towards the enemy , while your engines are cut, then you are in a world of hurt.

In order to turn, a ship has to move a distance ahead, determined by the size of ship, before it can turn up to 45 degrees and is moved an inch ahead.

Ship bases cannot be on top of one another after movement and, if this occurs, the ship that was moving must be placed so that they are not on top of one another (but not in a way that gives them an advantage nor changes their direction).

Ships can declare a shunt movement after moving the minimum distance. After the next time it activates, during the command segment of the following squadron activation, it is removed from the game board.

In the first edition of the game you could ram other ships but the procedures were complicated so they have removed it in the hardbound revised edition. However, you can collide with terrain features like planetoids or asteroid fields. You never survive a collision with a planetoid but an asteroid field is more survivable with larger ships. With the exploding dice mechanic anything is possible.

 

That's the basics of movement in the Firestorm Armada game. These principles also apply to Spartan Game's Dystopian Wars and Uncharted Seas lines so if you know one system you know them all.

Next is weapons and combat!