karllagov wrote:
Actually, you could get rid of grappling of no-hull-floaters at all. What's the point of grappling them anyway?
It's useful when you don't want to drift: grap an hull which doesn't drift on your turn and you won't drift too.
First turn of drifting - Rule V.B.1 [...] This applies also to ships which are fouled or grappled together, if both ships are on at least their second consecutive movement execution phase without moving into another hex. [...]
The rule basically says that you can't start to drift if the other ship isn't "starting to drift" too.
This can also be generalized to the following turns as a "you can't drift if the other ship grappled with you isn't drifting this turn".
The rules actually don't say anything about the following turns, but it obviously wouldn't make sense to have a frigate drifting every turn grappled to SOL which drifts once every two turns: after some turns you would have two ships grappled many hexes apart or you would need to declare that the grapples are broken.
The rules don't say anything about breaking grapples by drifting and as they say that you need to wait the other ship to start drifting, it makes sense that you keep waiting the slower ship even on the following drift turns.
all that drift aside, I still would enjoy the option to hang on to an empty hulk or not. Usually, I grapple to enter an opponent's ship not to stop drifting. If my crew is so silly to grap the struck ship so the other can sail away and rake me, that makes no sense, don't you think?
