.. for example, the Enterprise could have a malfunctioning turbolift and a malfunctioning Hydroponics lab…
A: Yes, you could have a piece of equipment which has multiple Malfunctions, just as in the example you provided (nice!) And, since they would be different breakdowns, yes, as you have hypothesized, the Engineer could only fix one on your turn, and then you’d have to wait for your turn to come around again for them to fix the second one.
A: There are a handful of cards which are able to get rid of certain Attaching Creepers, and the language about how this happens varies.
In Star Fluxx, both the Doctor and the Engineer say they can “detach and discard” Brain Parasites and Malfunction respectively. The “detach and discard” language does mean that the Creeper must be attached in order for them to discard it. Let’s use Malfunction as our example, for reasons we’ll discuss in a sec.
If you have Malfunction, and it’s not attached to anything, there isn’t anything Malfunctioning. Nothing is broken, so the Engineer has nothing to fix. Thematically this works perfectly, though it’s a bit harder to justify why the “floating possibility of a Malfunction” could prevent you from winning, but that’s the way it goes. Maybe you just have bad luck hovering over you, waiting to happen, and that’s enough to do it.
Note that it’s actually impossible to have the Doctor available to cure unattached Brain Parasites. If the Doctor is there, then the Brain Parasites will attach to him, and he won’t be curing anyone (of Brain Parasites, the only known health issue in the universe… or, well, the deck)
Interestingly enough, in all four of the Trek Fluxxen (Original Series, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) the language on the Engineer’s card says simply. “If you have a Malfunction, you may discard it.” With this wording, there’s no question about whether Malfunction must be attached; clearly it doesn’t have to be.
Ironically, however, without the “detach” language, technically any afflicted Keeper should be discarded with its Malfunction. However, we all know that the Engineer is supposed to fix things, not just toss them when they break, so we hope that nobody has been doing that. (So wasteful!) Just in case, though, we have an FAQ specifically for that instance. Obviously, we should have used the same language on the Trek Engineers as we did in Star Fluxx… but we didn’t. Oh well.
Finally, in Cthulhu Fluxx, we have two Keepers which can remove attached Creepers. One is the Sanitarium, which says, “you can discard Nightmares and/or Madness if they are attached to one of your other cards.” Though it doesn’t mention detaching, like the Trek engineers, nobody seems to question that the Sanitarium isn’t going to kill its denizens (though this is Cthulhu Fluxx, so…).
Lastly, there’s The Dreamer, which says, “you can detach and discard Nightmares if they are in play.” It uses the “detach and discard” language, which we’ve clarified above. (You can only discard them if they’re attached.) What’s interesting about The Dreamer is that it’s the only card like this which would let you cure someone else’s Keepers if you wanted to. This would seem to be counter-productive, but there are, of course, Goals which call for certain Creepers, so it’s conceivable that you might want to get rid of an opponent’s Creeper.
A: This was clearly an oversight on our part. We hope that everyone considers Starfleet Engineers competent enough that they don’t simply toss a broken piece of equipment or machinery, they fix it. Yes, Scotty, Geordi, Lt. Torres, and Chief O’Brien can all detach a Malfunction in order to discard it, rendering the afflicted item intact again.
One benefit of the unintentionally simplified language used (“If you have a Malfunction, you may discard it.”) is that the Malfunction doesn’t have to be attached in order to be discarded, so that’s a plus.
A: If your Transporter is Malfunctioning, no, it will not get you all the Crew in play. You will get the same effect from Beam Us Up as if you had no Transporter.
(Note that in Star Fluxx, it’s called a Teleporter, and the Keepers which are Beamed Up are Beings, not Crew, but this question could still arise if Beam Us Up is played with a Malfunctioning Teleporter)
…It’s tricky: Malfunction negates Keeper abilities, but this “power” is not something on the Enterprise Keeper, it’s described on the Doomsday Machine Creeper, which is not the thing that’s Malfunctioning.
A: The Doomsday Machine is susceptible to starships such as the Enterprise. This is a quality of the Creeper, and not a power of the Enterprise, so whether the Enterprise is Malfunctioning or not is irrelevant, and actually, more thematically accurate if it were!
First of all, we must understand that in Star Trek Fluxx, the Enterprise “stands in for” similar ships like the Constellation (which is technically the ship which destroyed the Doomsday Machine). Any ship could be rigged to explode “in the belly of the beast” as it were, and the non-functionality of the starship sacrificed would not hinder this. In fact, the Constellation was just such a ship: so damaged they couldn’t even steer it from the bridge, it’s warp drive crippled, limping about with only impulse drive.
… – For example: The Spock’s Beard Goal requires Spock and the Mirror Universe. If I had Spock, but the Mirror Universe is attached to Uhura, do I still win? Or does it have to be attached to Spock in order to win with that goal?
A: No, the Creeper does not have to be attached to the Keeper it goes with for the Goal.
This is sort of the corollary to this question: If my Attaching Creepers are not attached to the Keepers I need to win…
…We had the Basic Rules in play, and I had the Computer, so I would be drawing 2 on my turn. If the first card I draw is the Creeper Malfunction, does it immediately attach to the Computer, thus eliminating my extra draw? What if it’s the second card I drew, do I NOT get to draw to replace the Creeper?
A: Not everyone draws their cards one… by… one… in fact, the draw phase should be considered one simultaneous acquisition of your Draw allotment at that time. So you should draw 2 cards. Then, seeing that you have Malfunction, you should put it down and, yes, redraw, as you need to complete the draw phase in its entirety as defined at the time you started it. Then and only then do you have to worry about exactly what your Malfunction is going to attach to.
In short:
According to the game-state when you started your draw phase, your Draw allotment (the Draw rule for you) is 2 cards.
So you draw 2 cards, and if there’s a Creeper among those, you put it down on the table and redraw until you have drawn 2 non-Creepers.
Then you attach the Creeper if applicable.
Now… later in your turn, if you increase the Draw rule, you’ll have to take a look at your current Draw allotment for your turn, which no longer includes a mathematical increase to your draw. So if you go from Basic Rules (Draw 1) to Draw 2, you’ll take a look at how many cards you drew for your turn, and conclude that you’ve already drawn 2, so you don’t get to draw for the increase.
The situation is similar to this: It’s just as though the Draw rule (for you) at the beginning of your turn is Draw 2, so you get to do that. Then Malfunction effectively reduces the Draw rule (for you) down to 1. Well, you’re not required to “undraw” that extra card you took, but if the Draw rule then increases back to 2… well, you’ve already drawn 2 on your turn, so you don’t get to draw extra. (Or if you increase to Draw 3, then you’d only get to draw 1 more, since you already drew 2 on your turn.)
A: While one of the most obvious ways to get rid of a Creeper attached to one of your Keepers is to destroy them both (or move them both), there ARE ways that you can destroy the Creeper while still retaining the Keeper. The key things here are 1) explicit wording, and 2) thematic appropriateness.
In Star Fluxx*, the exceptions are the Doctor, who can cure Brain Parasites, and the Engineer*, who can fix a Malfunction. In both cases they detach the Creeper, and the Keeper is left, good as new. Creeper Reassignment also specifically states that you detach the Creeper to move it. In Cthulhu Fluxx, the Dreamer states that he can detach Nightmares and discard it. Meanwhile the Sanitarium logically can cure an afflicted Keeper of Nightmares or Insanity. In Anatomy Fluxx, special actions allow you to “cure” yourself.
Some examples where the Creepers DO stay attached would be, in Star Fluxx, the weapons Laser Sword and Laser Pistol, which, again, quite logically, destroy the Keeper in order to destroy the attached Creeper. And while the Phaser in Star Trek or TNG Fluxx targets just the Creeper, it doesn’t say anything about detaching the Keeper either, so if you use it to get rid of an attached Creeper, the Keeper it’s attached to will also be destroyed. The Teleporter will move a Keeper… and its attached Creeper. If a Keeper or Creeper goes into the trash, then it’s attached card goes along.
In Cthulhu Fluxx, The Feds are pretty much the equivalent, though they also destroy themselves in the process. The Necronomicon lets you move any Creeper… and says nothing about detaching it, so you’d have to move any attendant Keeper (and extra Creepers if more than one is attached).
Trash Something is the generic Action version of what the weapons allow you to do. You could trash a Keeper, and it’s Creeper will go along, or you could trash a Creeper, and it’s attached Keeper would go along. There’s no logical reason or explicit wording that lets you detach connected Creeper-Keeper combos for this Action.
*In various Star Trek Fluxxen, there are specific Engineer analogues: Scotty, Geordi, O’Brien that work the same way with respect to Malfunction.
any of these?
Card text (paragraphs)
Card title or name
Card Type (special symbols)
Doom/anti-doom hourglasses
A: The special powers referred to on Creepers that can be canceled out are found in the paragraphs describing any special actions or abilities related to having a given Keeper in play. There’s nothing special about a card being a Keeper, or about the name (there are no “names” of cards that give you any abilities are there?) Doom/anti-doom counters are also a separate concept, unaffected by Creepers: Doom is a quality, not an ability.