Hey everyone, I played my first game with the official: IO rules (yay!) this week and some questions came up during play.
First, can frames claim cover when attached to the enemy ship? I think I remember a rule on this in previous versions, but was unable to find any mention of it in the new rules. I think the old rule went something like this- Frame squadrons can choose to use a ship they are attached to as cover, if they have been spotted, the ship does not take damage.
The second question has to do with the

,

effect in :IO. If using the "Ball of Death" tactic you have one or more

,

ship (or the blue ace)in the center of a fleet and it provides cover for the ships around it. In this instance you could target the center ship 1 (providing cover) while shooting through ship 2 it is protecting (in cover) forcing ship 2 to act as cover for ship 1. This is a unique situation to :IO due to the "sphere of influence" from double blue, as opposed to :RA when the double blue frame has to actaully act as cover for another frame. How is damage resolved? We made no decisions while playing, but it occurs to me that a good solution might be that in this situation any damaging shots that get through the "cover" could be allocated to the targeted ship (providing cover and in it) or the one forced to provide cover(also in cover). This would allow you to cause the "shoot through" damage without messing with the double blue effect too much.
I took some pics of the battle, Ill try and post em soon.