Are beam weapons measured in salvos, like missiles? For example, lets say that the Sample-class dreadnought fires its port grazers through the opposing ship's sidewalls at range 2. Does this mean that you would resolve 21 depth 10, span 3 hits on the target ship?

With the understanding with Beam damage, unless a wedge is present, that there is no defense against it other than the penetration modifiers and such, I would say yes. You roll penetration modifiers for each grazer, roll location for those that penetrate, mark off damage. It is this way for all beam weapons. I do not have the rulebook in front of me but when I get home I can reference some rules for you if you'd like. If I've misspoken, someone please correct me!!!

Reuben, you've got the essence of it correct.

I don't even have to look at the book for this one. A few months ago, I was playing in a session at a con where I was flying one of a pair of King Williams vs. a trio of Duquesnes. Towards the end of the session (about turn 4), one of the Duquesne made the mistake of crossing his own T on me at range 3 at the end of the turn. I could sorta tell it was going to happen most of the turn, and got the rare privilege of getting off a full broadside of lasers and grasers down the throat.

Rolling the penetration/hit location roles rolls for 19 lasers and 21 grasers takes a while.

And yes, the Duquesne blew up. Took most of the salvo to do it, but it did. Though, even if it hadn't, it wouldn't have mattered. There was enough damage sustained that it would have still been a mission kill. IIRC, the forward hammerhead was fairly well trashed, the forward impeller ring was down along with pivot and roll functionality, most of his other systems had taken a beating, and he'd soaked up a lot of hull and SI hits. About the only things that hadn't taken a beating were the broadsides and sidewalls, and that was only because I was blowing through the hammerhead on those rows and couldn't touch them.

Thanks, guys. The example on pg 40 only covers the damage from a single weapon mount, then. That's where the confusion came from.

Not a problem bud!

Luke, it's nice to see some stuff myself and our group of guys play tested working out well for you! We went round and round for a bit to get the laser and grazers tuned up properly. Ken and Tom have put together a great product, very awesome stuff!

When you have a 6-9 battle, it took us 3 hours to roll laser and grazer damage when the a handful of the D's made a late turn pivot and thrust to get within striking distance of two of Kings. two of the three D's exploded but they managed to completely eviscerate it's broadside, bridge, and maneuvering (essentially removing it from the fight) one King and knocking off the nose of another. On the next turn the third D rolled to wedge as it drifted near lifelessly past and survived amazingly another turn before being blown to pieces.

We called it a night at that but, tons of fun. A few of us are attempting to make some play aids to help speed up situations like that (number crunchers). It's slow going, lots of stuff to work out and debug.