Capital ship squadron question

[unseelied]

Hi, this happened in a recent game.  Due to bad movement a player's capital ship moved out of squadron coherancy of its friends.  On my turn I shot the crap out of it and it was forced to brace.  (I believe that even though it is out of squadron it is always allowed to brace, correct me if I am wrong)  Anyway when it returned to its squadron range in the next movement phase is the rest of the squad considered to be braced for impact or are they not since it was the lone, out of squadron ship that did the BFI? 

[AndrewChristlieb]

Prickly subject. Assuming there are only two ships the one you braced would from what I gather now be the "squadron" which means the other ship would be unable to take special orders period (even bfi). Now I dont really like that as I believe that any ship should be able to BFI so I would say that both ship can BFI but only at their own leadership and it wouldn't affect the second ship in any way. Which is really the way it ought to be, capitol ship squadrons badly need separate squadron rules from escorts :/.   

[unseelied]

It is a little contradictory.  Ships can always BFI, Ships out of squadron cannot use special orders, Capital ships squadrons can only be on one special order at a time.  No way really to tell which rule would overide the others.

[horizon]

I agree with Andrew, the squadron rules for ships ain't that good.

Personally I would use BFI outside of squadron rules, so if one ship braces not all others do automatically as well.

So one might pick:
Use squadron Ld to Brace and all are affected
or use Ld of vessel to only brace the affected vessel.

[Sigoroth]

Ships out of formation cannot use special orders at all. If the rest of the squadron goes on orders (BFI for example) then ships out of formation don't benefit from it at all. The squadron leader is the ship with the highest leadership or which contains a character such as a lord or warmaster. If no character is present and there is a tie for leadership the squadron leader is nominated at the start of the game. This ship is considered the starting point as far as coherency is concerned. So if you have a 3 ship squadron and the squadron leader is more than 15cm away from the other two (but they are within 15cm of each other) it is the other two ships which are considered out of coherency.

[AndrewChristlieb]

Thats intersting. Is that a house rule or is there something to support that? It really doesnt make any sense for the "leader" to be unable to fall out of squadron cohesion with three or more ships, although it does for just two ships. Once again tho this comes back to how poor the current rules are.

[unseelied]

I believe these rules are from a previous FAQ before 2010.  They are not mentioned in the 2010 FAQ so that just confuses the issue more.  If something is addressed in a previous FAQ and then not addressed in a more recent one is that considered to be still a viable rule?  Not sure.  In this case it would leave us with no official way to determine which ship in a two ship capital ship squadron is the squadron when one breaks formation so it would be something to base an opinion on at the very least.    If not an offical rule it still has some bearing upon any discussion.

[horizon]

Can't remember old faq's but the way Sigoroth explains the rules is easy to understand and apply without loopholes regarding gameplay.