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If I play this card to downloaded Rescue Personnel, the ship I play it on has to be docked at my facility, per the requirements of Rescue Personnel, correct?

If my ship isn't docked at a facility (I just forgot...)... what happens to the cards? I think the VV:CT is invalid and returns to my hand, and RP gets shuffled back into my deck?

Side note: I really like both the Farragut and versatile vessel: crew transport. Silly fun:. deck that uses ds9 and reshape -here by invitation with Defend homeworld to get colonel kira or ben sisko and do a double rescue personnel for 10 points and X draws With celestial temple you can do this entirely in the bajor region.

Bumping this up as I realized this never got answered

Takket wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 2:45 pm If I play this card to downloaded Rescue Personnel, the ship I play it on has to be docked at my facility, per the requirements of Rescue Personnel, correct?

Yes.

If my ship isn't docked at a facility (I just forgot...)... what happens to the cards? I think the VV:CT is invalid and returns to my hand, and RP gets shuffled back into my deck?

6.5.3.0.2 Invalid Downloads says:

A download is invalid if the target card cannot be found in the available cards, or if, once found, the target card is required to be played but cannot be.

So, yes, this is an invalid download. Rescue Personnel is returned to its source (the draw deck), which is then shuffled. That resolves the invalid download.

Having resolved the invalid download, now you must resolve the attempted play of Versatile Vessel: Crew Transport. Since the download failed, and completing the download is one of the conditions for playing the card, the card play fails at the legality-check step (I'm starting to think we really should just copy-paste Franklin's treatise directly into the Glossary instead of trying to do some larger more impressive change to action rules). The card play is illegal and Versatile Vessel returns to your hand.

Interestingly, if you spent your card play or a to get Versatile Vessel into play, that resource is not spent. Resources are spent if you pass the legality-check step and then lose the card. For example, if opponent responds to your normal card play of Versatile Vessel by playing Kevin Uxbridge, your normal card play is still spent.

Resources are also spent if you spend a resource to initiate an invalid download. For example, if you try to Going to the Top but then realize you don't have two guys on a facility, GTTT returns to the deck, but the is spent.

But you didn't spend a resource to initiate an invalid download here; you spent a resource to play a card, and that card initiated a download. Your attempted card play never got past the legality-check step, either. So the net result of all this is that you go "oopsie" and suffer no consequences from your screwup, even though many players in very similar circumstances would lose a card play from an oopsie like this.

BCSWowbagger wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 4:04 amInterestingly, if you spent your card play or a to get Versatile Vessel into play, that resource is not spent. Resources are spent if you pass the legality-check step and then lose the card. For example, if opponent responds to your normal card play of Versatile Vessel by playing Kevin Uxbridge, your normal card play is still spent.

Resources are also spent if you spend a resource to initiate an invalid download. For example, if you try to Going to the Top but then realize you don't have two guys on a facility, GTTT returns to the deck, but the is spent.

Oh, man, I don't understand the GTTT part at all. It goes back to the deck, but the is spent? Like, I get if the interrupt fizzles without effect and is discarded, then yeah the is spent. But if it somehow goes back in... I just don't get it.

I'm not sure whether you're saying, "I don't think this ruling (about GTTT) is obvious from the rules," or whether you're saying, "This ruling tracks with the rules, but I don't understand the logic of the rules."

To the first, I think the ruling does follow fairly straightforwardly from the invalid download rules:

Clarifications: Invalid Downloads (6.5.3.0.2)
A download is invalid if the target card cannot be found in the available cards, or if, once found, the target card is required to be played but cannot be.

An invalid download is cancelled, and any target cards are returned to their sources, which are then shuffled. If a single download action requires multiple target cards (such as the download on Activate Subcommands), and any of the targets cannot be found, the entire download is invalid.

If any resources were spent to initiate an invalidated download (such as a card draw for Officer Exchange Program, a card play for Spacedoor, or a special download icon), those resources remain spent.

So this GTTT thing is just following what the book says.

But, if (as I suspect) your real question is the second one, the "...but why does it work this way?" question, then I can only speculate, but I suspect the answer is probably simply this: Decipher rolled this rule out in 1998, with the first draft of the download rules, without a full understanding of how downloading was going to work or how important it would be, years before timing was nailed down enough to really understand how an illegal card play would resolve. When illegal card plays were hammered out, and it was decided that there would be no cost to an illegal card play, nobody went back to change the invalid download rules to match. Invalid downloads continued to carry a cost that invalid card plays did not. Perhaps D didn't want to change something that it thought the players had figured out pretty well. Perhaps it just didn't come up that often.

Still, I mean, I was kinda surprised by the answer to this, too, which makes me think, hey, maybe worth looking at again here in A.D. 2023.

Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway.

- Elizabeth Swann

Fek'lhr's advocate for a moment. We complain sometimes that there's *too* much downloading and the like in the game, so having a higher cost for failed downloads vs just a failed play could be a good thing for balance.

On the flip side, I've always been minorly annoyed by the way the decipher games all seemed to treat failed searches different then most other games.


In most other games I've played, your deck is your hidden info. If you search for a card, you can always fail to find with no harsh penalty like showing the deck to the opponent to verify.

boromirofborg wrote: ↑Mon Dec 18, 2023 10:32 pm In most other games I've played, your deck is your hidden info. If you search for a card, you can always fail to find with no harsh penalty like showing the deck to the opponent to verify.

The problem is that there's a lot of cards where there'd be an advantage to skipping the inconvenient download - someone will have a better example, but 1st coffee Me is thinking that Borg players would love to "fail to find" Phoenix when dropping Montana Missile Complex.

That said, I think D's bigger issue was that it made all a free shuffle. These days, I'm not we care quite so much anymore?

AllenGould wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 11:23 am The problem is that there's a lot of cards where there'd be an advantage to skipping the inconvenient download - someone will have a better example, but 1st coffee Me is thinking that Borg players would love to "fail to find" Phoenix when dropping Montana Missile Complex.

True. That's one of those design choices that's probably a bit late to unwind now, even if we actually wanted to. (Although first thought would be 'outside-the-game' downloads could not be allowed to fail, since there's no reason outside the game is hidden info. And make anything that's a negative download come from that zone.)

boromirofborg wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 11:43 am

AllenGould wrote: ↑Tue Dec 19, 2023 11:23 am The problem is that there's a lot of cards where there'd be an advantage to skipping the inconvenient download - someone will have a better example, but 1st coffee Me is thinking that Borg players would love to "fail to find" Phoenix when dropping Montana Missile Complex.

True. That's one of those design choices that's probably a bit late to unwind now, even if we actually wanted to. (Although first thought would be 'outside-the-game' downloads could not be allowed to fail, since there's no reason outside the game is hidden info. And make anything that's a negative download come from that zone.)

Trick is, what happens if I (to continue the example) just don't bring a Phoenix? (In the old days, maybe I just don't own a copy.) Download will still fail if I physically don't have the card.

"Fail to find" isn't necessarily *better*, just a different response - if you goofed (or just decide you don't want that card after all), you can simply just burn the fetch for no benefit and go about your day. Because our fetches are "free" (and sometimes repeatable!), the cost/benefit skews a bit differently. (Mainly in that if you can fail to find for free, then some cards are now "get a free shuffle every turn").