First EFSB game was great! A few questions

I really enjoyed my first game using the EFSB rules.  It played very
quickly, the rules were clean and elegant, and the results felt right
for B5.  As background, I have experience in most major tactical SF
ship combat games, including SFB and B5 Wars.

I had a Narn Battle Dreadnought and my opponent took two Centauri
Light Cruisers.  In retrospect I think I had an advantage.  He split
his ships, escorting each ship with its single fighter squadron.  I
kept my four fighter groups together and engaged each of his ships in
turn; my primary beam weapons never fired.  We learned that unengaged
fighters are extremely dangerous; they almost blew away one CL with
their first volley before starting to tear apart the second CL.  The
outcome?  Both CL's attempted to flee through jump points generated by
damaged jump drives.  They had a 1/3 chance each of making it, and
both succeeded in getting away.  Rats.

We did encounter a few questions, nothing major.  It is my gaming
style to keep things moving along during play and avoid drawn-out
rules discussions (I hate rules lawyers), so we made some quick
mutually agreeable decisions and kept on playing.

1.  Can anti-fighter weapons shoot at fighter groups that aren't
engaging your ship?  We ruled that they could, but this approach
encourages the "gamey" tactic of stacking all ships in one place.
(This is a result of the geometry of having the fighter and
anti-fighter weapons have the same range.  If the ships aren't in the
same spot the fighters can always find a place from which they can
engage a ship without counterfire from other ships).

2.  Fighter engagements are resolved when the target ship becomes
active.  Is damage by fighter weapons resolved before the target ship
has a chance to shoot at its targets?  (This happened in our battle
when a Centauri CL was attacked by 21 fighters, and lost all fire
control.  We ruled the damage was not simultaneous, so it couldn't
fire on my Battle Dreadnought).

3.  We couldn't find any rules describing the effects of energy mines
on fighters.  We ruled there was no effect.

4.  This question is about catastrophic damage.  First, the rules
contradict the example (the example's die rolls shouldn't be causing
catastrophic damage).  We followed the rules, as we felt the example
made chain reactions too likely.  Next, in our game the first Centauri
CL almost lost three whole rows of damage boxes to fighters in a
single attack, requiring two Threshold checks.	If it had required
three Treshold checks from a single attack, should I have rolled once
or twice for catastrophic damage?  If in the same gameturn it lost yet
another row to weapons fire (not catastrophic damage) requiring a new
Threshold check, would I roll again for catastrophic damage?  I guess
I'm asking if you should roll for catastrophic damage just prior to
every Threshold check after the first in a gameturn.

We observed that the Centauri liked moving really fast, partly to
avoid energy mines, and partly to take advantage of its better
pivoting.  It moved faster than fighters can normally move (speed 10).
They could take their fighters along, however, by using escort mode.
It did mean my fighters couldn't chase their ships down.  I didn't
feel this was a real problem; it was inevitable that our ships would
get close together to exchange fire, and when they did my fighters got
close enough to paste him.
Felix Hack	    felixh@netcom.com
PGP Fingerprint:    F5C3 733E BEE2 CC74 7D99  D463 FB03 4084 B1DD 6DA6
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