To my understanding all they do is add a quick reference on the table for your opponent to see the status of your ships? is there any other reason to use these?

The reason I as is I am not sure I want to build them.

Yeah, but if damage state is open information, then you have the option to use the cubes and it's on the board or your opponent keeps asking the damage state of every ship of yours on the board while they decide what to fire at. And if they want to hide what their target is, they'll ask for a few more just to throw you off. (I would) I'm guessing that how many hits until it drops down to the next state is hidden information. I'm talking about the number of grey M octagons on the TOS until you hit another color.

BTW, how do you add the games to the bottom of your posts?

This link here http://wwg.dhorizon.org/ will give you the code you need. Then all you have to do is copy it into the signature section of your profile.

Clear?

I liked playing without the cubies. My thought was "fog of war", the enemy having to depend on his/her memory to remember who has taken lots of damage. At the same time, since the game is somewhat a view from a tactical display, enemy sensors may well be able to keep track, so imagine those cubies as a tactical readout below the image of the ship, showing the admirals of both sides accumulating damage on the screen.

Tom

Already well answered, but to sum it all up:

The data cubbies and cubes are optional. If you don't want to build them, and don't want to take the time to update them, you don't need to to play the game.

However, it does add to the game to be able to tell, at a glance, the damage levels of the vessels on the board.

Best of all, you don't *have* to decide now. The cubbies can be added later on easily enough. If you change your mind, just print up a page or two of 'em, build 'em assembly-style, and stick them on the bases.

The cubbies are all identical (save for color, of course), and the cubes are, as I recall, also identical with the exception of the ADP free download.

Yup, got it. Thanks.

This is an important point. What the cubes don't show is the number of armor points lost until the next reduction in general status. That keeps things a little more foggy.

Thanks for the answers, I think for now I'm just going to leave them off, everyone in my gaming group are hardcore wargamers, I don't think they would like the Idea of easily seeing what status your opponents ships are in.

I'm building two fleets to run a game for them to see how they like it.

To each his own. Personally I like the data cubes. Seems like an easy way to clearly see an enemy status but without giving away to much info. Of course I will see how I feel about them after I get to play a few games but that will have to wait till I am done building.

My poor printer is going non-stop printing up all the initial parts right now.

Can you convince them that it represents the amount of sparks and damage that you can get a visual of? If one ship has a wing falling off and another one looks like it just rolled off the assembly line, I would fire at the one with the wing falling off until it blew up. Same thing with a Green versus Yellow status cube. If it looked like it would explode at any moment (Red status) then I would move my ships away from the impending explosion.

This is what I see them representing, so I'm planning on using them.

We use the status cubes with this reasoning:

Fleet ships have to have a method of sensing where they are in space. They would also have a method of scanning vessels during blockades and such to see if they are carrying illegal goods. They would also have sensors for exploration purposes - checking the chemical and element composition of foreign objects. You'd also want tactical information when fighting Sathrican pirate vessels and the like.

So it would make sense that the same sensors can be used to some degree to measure the power and systems levels in nearby vessels. You would be able to detect when a ship started venting atmosphere and if the power was suddenly disrupted on another ship. You'd definitely detect when another vessel is about to explode if the reactor is overloading.

Thus while the status cubes give you an idea of how badly damaged another ship is, it still doesn't give you the exact micrometer of the armored plating left, or the exact details of what is still holding the ship together.

this leads to a good question. Data cubes are open knowledge but what about your TOS's. Can a player ask at anytime exactly how much damage a enemy ship has? Can a player look at another players TOS's.

That's something you need to decide with your opponent. You can play it covert or you can have a "show and tell" policy. Really depends on how much you trust the other player I suppose

Trust is for the weak and the foolish. I intend to keep my TOS units in a biometrically locking box so no one can peek if i have to, let's say, see a man about a horse. Or go poop.