Victory Points, and winning a game?

[jae4x4]

So can someone explain to me what happens at the end of a game if your the only player left with ships on the table? I find the rules (original blue book and 1.6) are extremely vague. If i have 4 ships left of the table and my enemy disengaged all his for a point win what happens?

[Seahawk]

It's still determined by VP to decide the winner. Check page 66. You get:

- Each enemy ship destroyed: Full value
- Each enemy capital ship crippled: 25% value
- Each enemy ship disengaged: 10% value, or 25% if it was crippled
- Hulks (friend or foe): 50% value, but only if all enemy ships have disengaged or been destroyed, and you still have at least one operational ship on the table.

In all cases, round up. If you finished with more VP, you win. If your opponent finishes with more VP, he wins (even if he disengaged everything). It's not like other games; here, sometimes saving yourself to fight another day is more worthwhile.

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

We made some house rules around this after an Eldar friend hid behind a planet, moved, shot, and moved back behind (before using MMS). He crippled 2 ships and destroyed a few escorts and then disengaged as my IN was finally in range, knowing I was about to wreck him. Basically, the best way around what sometimes feels like a cheap victory is to design scenarios, because sometimes withdraws will seem tactical, but sometimes they do seem cheap...

[carlisimo]

The point is to encourage players to disengage when real ships would - I think BFG is notable as a rare game that tries to do that. 

That said, there should be scenarios in which holding on to that area of space is more important.

[FistusMaximus]

another way to solve this is a homemade rule that a friend and me are using: set a turn number until which it is not allowed to disengage the whole fleet (e.g. no disengaging till turn 3 or 4, single ships are allowed).

this still allows for a retreat of damaged or crippled ships, but prevents cheesy tactics where they wreck one ship and then disengage turn 2.

[Xca|iber]

I just logged on for the first time in a few weeks to ask this very question (I am a big newbie). Funny how the world works.

In my first few games, I won by points after disengaging my whole fleet, but since we were just setting up our ships and shooting at each other it made sense to us. (e.g. fleet warps in, kills as much as possible, warps out).

In our last game though we played a Planetary Assault where I lost badly in the actual battle, but I managed to disengage before my opponent's capital ships/transports could reach the planet. So in the end, I scored ~400 VPs (rounded up gives -1 Assault pt) and my opponent only had ~750 VPs (rounded down gives +1 Assault pt, +1 for the one he scored during the game). So despite abandoning the planet, I technically achieved a complete victory (0-1 Assault pts) which didn't seem to make any sense, considering most of his troop ships were still alive.

I conceded of course, and we discussed the possibility of house-ruling the scenario such that if the defending fleet disengages, the opponent "scores" (counts as having landed troops) once for each transport (+2) and non-crippled capital ship (+1) on the board.