Damage To Docked Ships

[Skystar]

Hi, I just had a game where I was playing against someone who was running Hera in the VCX-100 Light Freighter with a shield upgrade, and had Zeb docked in the Sheathipede-class Shuttle with a shield upgrade. My question is what is the official way that damage is applied to ships that have other ships docked. They were playing it so that they could assign the damage however they pleased. For example, I would attack the ship and do two normal damage and one critical. They would put the two damage into the Light Freighter, and the critical into the shields of the Sheathipede-class. I allowed it for that game, basically creating a 21 health ship that took some work to take down (They specifically applied it so that once the Light Freighter had one hull left, the rest of the damage went into the Sheathipede). The way damage was applied in that game felt wrong though, especially since rules for emergency deployment would imply that all damage should go into the main ship, and not into the docked ship. How exactly does damaging ships with other ships docked work?

[Kris M]

Some abilities allow a ship to be attached to or ride inside another friendly ship. If a card ability instructs a ship to dock with a carrier ship, the docked ship is placed in reserve. A ship that is placed in reserve is placed on its ship card. While a ship is in reserve, it is not assigned a dial, it cannot perform actions, and it cannot attack.

It can also not be the target of an attack, unless specified by a ship or upgrade such as the Lando’s Millennium Falcon (Title) upgrade, which allows you to treat a docked Escape Shuttle's shields as though they were on the YT-1300's ship card.

In your example, the Sheathipede-class shuttle would not have been able to suffer the damage in the manner described.