Thank you SO MUCH once again for doing this, Ray! A couple more questions.
Exploding ships' Blast Markers: The placement of all those blast markers (8 or more) is almost entirely un-addressed. How are the BM's placed? As centrally as possible? What if there are ship bases there, and there are enough blast markers to hit the base? This comes up a lot. Are the BM's ever stacked?
Murder variant: The wording for the optional (firepower 4, strength 2 lances at 45 cm) Lance Murder, if not nonsensical, is almost entirely misleading to sound like 6 lances (!) to a side.
Defending "On the Line": forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere. What happens when a ship finds its target "on the line" between two target aspects? Defender chooses (reverse of attacker choosing for his weapons being "on the line")?
Firing torpedoes with Multiple Ships: This mainly comes up with Ravager class escorts. When do the torpedo salvoes "appear"? When the escorts are clustered together it is quite typical for one of the escorts to roll a high number of torps, producing a salvo wide enough to hit another of its fellow salvoes, or another escort in its squad, or even quite a few of its friends! Do the torps instantly attack?
Ordnance placement timing: Following the previous question, when are attack craft actually placed on the table, and when are torpedo salvoes angled? If angle chosen at firing, is that when the marker is placed? Should be immediately upon firing, but this can lead to several problems including the one above. Note that a strict interpretation of the rules, should the torps be placed and angled immediately upon firing, would result in the torps attacking the ship that launched them!
Splitting weapons fire against a single ship: This has to be illegal, but an official ruling explicitly stating as much is required. Against a foe with no shields, I can get FP=FP!
More to come, my good sir.
Moox