A Call to Action Star Fleet rules questions

[carbon_dragon]

I have a few questions about A Call to Action Star Fleet that I haven’t been able to answer with the FAQ and the Errata.

I’m unclear about how Detect Hidden Ships works for Scouts. It says the scout may target a ship with stealth (presumably also a cloak) but rolls 8+ and if he does indeed roll 8+ (on a 6 sider????) then the stealth of the target improves by 1 point (say 2+ to 3+)? This seems to make no sense. What am I missing?

When a ship is cloaking, it says he has a stealth of 4+, where when the ship is cloaked it’s 2+. This seems to say that it’s easier to see the cloaked ship while it is cloaking as when it is starting to cloak. That makes no sense.

What do the probes and labs give you for your info points?

I’m a little confused with how say a Plasma S might work. On the one hand, the plasmas have energy bleed which loses them a dice after half range. But all weapons do that, so do the plasmas lose 2 dice? Also plasmas and drones don’t roll to hit, but does that mean that you take the number of dice and roll that many D6s and that is the number of hits scored? And since they’re devastating, you double that for effect in critical hits?

Thanks.

 

[Iain McGhee]

It's A Call To Arms: Star Fleet :wink:

You add the crew quality value (4 if you're not using the random values) to the dice score for CQ checks, so you need to roll 4+. The stealth doesn't improve, although the value gets higher. The stealth value is the number the cloaked or stealthed ship rolls to ignore a hit, so higher values are worse.

See above, the ship's easier to see when cloaking.

Info from labs/probes is for some scenario victory conditions.

You don't lose an AD at over half range, it's a -1 to hit penalty (so 5+). Doesn't affect Plasma (or Drones under half range, Drone rules have been changed a bit so check out the errata) since it doesn't roll to hit. Your Plasma-S would lose 1AD at half range (and 3AD at three quarter range).

If your 4AD Plasma-S hits at full strength, you'd roll 4D6 for hits then if any get past the ship's shield you'd roll on the Attack Table on page 7 as normal for each one. Each critical hit scored would use the table on the next page to determine the system affected, but would raise the critical score by two levels due to the Devastating trait.

 

[carbon_dragon]

Wait. Plasma torpedos and drones are seeking weapons which don't roll attack dice and don't roll to penetrate shields either, so it wouldn't roll anything to get through shields, it never gets through shields does it?

Sorry if I'm being dense. I'm an old SFB player, then FASA and even a Call to Arms but this flavor of ACTA confuses me a bit.

 

[Iain McGhee]

"Get past" as in scores more hits than the shield has points remaining, sorry if I was confusing you there.

 

[carbon_dragon]

Thanks for the clarification. I notice that they go to the problem of showing how scouts work, but they don't show any scouts in the book (no ships with the scouts trait). That's odd because SFB comes from the Star Fleet Reference Manual which only has a few ships anyway, the Constitution, the Nelson, the Saladin, and the Tolemy. Surely it has access to these ships. Why would they not be defined, especially since the Nelson IS a purpose built scout which they really need. Also I have a million of them in my miniature collection.

Also Accurate helps you get hits, converting say a 3 when rolled in an attack dice to a 5 (if it's accurate +2) and thus makes it more likely to get hits as well as bleed through the shields (which presumably happens with a 4-6)?

And Precise on the other hand doesn't address getting hits, but just moves the dice upward to make critical hits more likely, right? Just trying to keep them straight in my mind.

Cloaking devices confuse me a bit. The rules imply that the opponent doesn't know where they are, but that seems unlikely as the ship is right there on the table, right? It may have a stealth score that makes it hard to hit, but that's all right? Also, can it fire on the turn it disengages the cloak?

Just for fun, I had a look at the SF ships vs. the B5 ships in my ACTA B5 book. It's the same system, but there are curious disconnections in the meaning of various traits and restructuring of tables. I guess that is legit if we're going to end up with a game that feels like Star Trek, and it seems like this one will (or at least like SFB).

 

[Iain McGhee]

There's playtest scouts/expanded rules in the first A Call To Arms journal (but not for the Nelson/Hermes. ACTA:SF covers the later period that Federation Commander does, the Reference Manual ships would be in what they call "The Middle Years" over in SFU-land), the final version will probably be in the second rulebook whenever it appears. BTW, both stations in the rulebook got the scout trait added in the errata.

Correct on Accurate, but only natural sixes bleed through the shields.

Correct on Precise.

You can see on the table where a cloaked ship is, but the free move and turn when you decloak simulates not being sure of it's exact position (beats plotting movement for a dozen ships ). And yes, the ship is free to fire when it decloaks.