A New Edition of ACTA is coming...

[Da Boss]

Hmm, "Cloak 5+"?
Within 8" grants +1...
Klingons are the new Minbari? Does that mean we need to spell it "Klongin" or "Klangon" or something now?

loose cloak when ship fires ....................

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I thought most of them could cloak in game - it was huge fun and felt ST enough for me but then each to their own..........

Only about half the Klingon ships could cloak. All the Romulan ships could, except the building ship and freighter.

 

[katadder]

I was writing a ST:acta mod myself and used these cloaking rules:

Cloaking Device:
Split the battlefield into 12”x12” squares, choose one for a cloaked ship to be in. May be revealed at any time within that square facing any direction, on turn of reveal the cloaked ship has to go through phase in.
Phase in means the ship cannot fire but counts as having stealth 6+/5+? for the turn and all AD directed against it are halved, however it has no shields for this turn.
Cloaking goes through a phase out turn the same as the phase in one. Declare cloaking during movement phase and have stealth for a turn with no offensive firing and half AD against you and having no shields. Count as cloaked in the end phase.
Once a ship has revealed its presence even if recloaked leave it on the battlefield as modern sensors have ways of tracking the general position of the cloaked ship once they know its there, even if they don’t allow a lock on or firing on it.


kind of based off the VaS sub rules to start with. ok your opponent will know where you are if you recloak (only way I could think of short of drawing a board map every game) but klingons tend to be more manouvrable than most other ships so could probably get behind people anyway before decloaking.

also had rules for transporters and tractor beams written up. wasnt sure how to use warp engines yet.

 

[McKickaha]

Burger wrote;

Does that mean we need to spell it "Klongin" or "Klangon" or something now?

What about "Klangers".........................


Hope thats not the new licence.

 

[Da Boss]

I was writing a ST:acta mod myself and used these cloaking rules:

Cloaking Device:
Split the battlefield into 12”x12” squares, choose one for a cloaked ship to be in. May be revealed at any time within that square facing any direction, on turn of reveal the cloaked ship has to go through phase in.
Phase in means the ship cannot fire but counts as having stealth 6+/5+? for the turn and all AD directed against it are halved, however it has no shields for this turn.
Cloaking goes through a phase out turn the same as the phase in one. Declare cloaking during movement phase and have stealth for a turn with no offensive firing and half AD against you and having no shields. Count as cloaked in the end phase.
Once a ship has revealed its presence even if recloaked leave it on the battlefield as modern sensors have ways of tracking the general position of the cloaked ship once they know its there, even if they don’t allow a lock on or firing on it.


kind of based off the VaS sub rules to start with. ok your opponent will know where you are if you recloak (only way I could think of short of drawing a board map every game) but klingons tend to be more manouvrable than most other ships so could probably get behind people anyway before decloaking.

also had rules for transporters and tractor beams written up. wasnt sure how to use warp engines yet.

Very good / appropriate for OS and first films 8) but I think later shows it all seems quicker with ships cloaking and declaoking and firing very rapidly - thinking esp of the Defiant and the the Klingon ships in Sacrifce of Angels.

I'd just go with high stealth or perhaps a sensors vs cloak roll and have the ship loose staelth when fires but gains shields unless it s that dodgy Romulan ship from Nemisis with its secondary shielding etc. Cool ship battle - rubbish film

 

[Lord David the Denied]

No. No, no, no. You cannot detect and fire on a cloaked ship unless it's malfunctioning or you're the Enterprise. Cloaking should work as Katadder describes (pretty much spot on for a turn-based game) but I'd change recloaking to simply removing the ship from the table as a disengage. Like the Shadows' hyperspace mastery, you can enter and exit the game via cloaking but once you're there and in the fight that's it. You're there.

 

[Jim?]

I really hope it's not Trek... I dislike pretty much all of the ship designs, and those that I don't I actually loathe instead.

Star Wars would be cool, I suppose... fighters would have to get a serious reworking compared to the B5 ones, especially for the Rebel Alliance, most of their anti-capitol ship firepower cones from them.

BSG would be OK, but only two fleets would be a bit limited.

I'd like to see a table top game based on a computer game, personally. Mass Effect, perhaps... the ship designs in that game are awesome.
EVE would be pretty good, as well.

 

[Burger]

I don't like revealing cloaked ships anywhere you like (even within a 12" square) facing any direction. Surely even a cloaked ship has to obey rules such as movement and turning. It might seem that a cloaked vessel can appear in your rear arc but it still had to fly and manouver to get there... letting it just get there for free seems cheesy. Unless it is SM, of course.

Mass Effect and EVE would both be cool but CCP are already involved with White Wolf so I think anything they do would go through them.

 

[katadder]

No. No, no, no. You [i[]cannot[/i] detect and fire on a cloaked ship unless it's malfunctioning or you're the Enterprise. Cloaking should work as Katadder describes (pretty much spot on for a turn-based game) but I'd change recloaking to simply removing the ship from the table as a disengage. Like the Shadows' hyperspace mastery, you can enter and exit the game via cloaking but once you're there and in the fight that's it. You're there.

problem with that is it removes the whole decloak attack, cloak, decloak, attack tactic of klinks and roms. which is why I tried to come up with something for cloaking again but without the whole secret movement thing.
it could be that once cloaked you disengage but did try to take it a little further.

 

[katadder]

I don't like revealing cloaked ships anywhere you like (even within a 12" square) facing any direction. Surely even a cloaked ship has to obey rules such as movement and turning. It might seem that a cloaked vessel can appear in your rear arc but it still had to fly and manouver to get there... letting it just get there for free seems cheesy. Unless it is SM, of course.

tried to base it off VaS submarine rules though, and you do have to pick the square it appears in before the game starts so isnt the perfect ambush. its only like a ship coming in from warp anyway TBH. and they cannot attack the turn they decloak either

 

[McKickaha]

Factors in id'ing the new licence;

1.Has to have scope for a lot different fleets & tactics.

2.If indeed a licence, (with a licence fee), then has to have higher sales potential than B5, so either makes it one of the "classics" or "up to date", although not necessarily on screen now;

3.Probably optimum to be a licence not already well covered by existing a fleet based minature game(s);

For the above reaasons, in my opinion;

not BSG
not Star Trek
not Farscape
not HH series (novels by David Weber)

Leaves Stargate and can't think of any others, if its TV/film based.

Any other contenders from books or comics?

[On the computer game note :The X series of games have some fantastic ship designsand many of them, not the least of which, the latest in the series, "Terran Conflict" which came out in late Oct 08 and for which I have just downloaded the latest patch targetting a very busy PC based gaming weekend].

 

[Burger]

tried to base it off VaS submarine rules though, and you do have to pick the square it appears in before the game starts so isnt the perfect ambush. its only like a ship coming in from warp anyway TBH. and they cannot attack the turn they decloak either

Yes, but IMO it requires too much suspension of disbelief. "Oh my ship just happens to be directly behind you, facing up your exhaust pipe"... it might be fair and balanced and just like a jump point, but it isn't believable - to me, at least.

 

[katadder]

Factors in id'ing the new licence;

1.Has to have scope for a lot different fleets & tactics.

2.If indeed a licence, (with a licence fee), then has to have higher sales potential than B5, so either makes it one of the "classics" or "up to date", although not necessarily on screen now;

3.Probably optimum to be a licence not already well covered by existing a fleet based minature game(s);

For the above reaasons, in my opinion;

not BSG
not Star Trek
not Farscape
not HH series (novels by David Weber)

Leaves Stargate and can't think of any others, if its TV/film based.

Any other contenders from books or comics?

[On the computer game note :The X series of games have some fantastic ship designsand many of them, not the least of which, the latest in the series, "Terran Conflict" which came out in late Oct 08 and for which I have just downloaded the latest patch targetting a very busy PC based gaming weekend].

does star trek have a fleet based game in TNG, DS9 or Voyager era? and theres a film coming out next year.

guess it could be a book based game but dont know of many sci-fi series outside of those listed.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

problem with that is it removes the whole decloak attack, cloak, decloak, attack tactic of klinks and roms. which is why I tried to come up with something for cloaking again but without the whole secret movement thing.
it could be that once cloaked you disengage but did try to take it a little further.

Does keep it simple, though. Granted you'd want to cloak and move to get good shots at the enemy and they could guess where you were, but once you're cloaked you vanish from sensors completely. All anyone has is your last known position and heading, which you can easily change once cloaked.

 

[Paladin]

I hope the new system will allow to design new ships based on a point system.

Can't wait to design new ships 8)

Ditto. A fixed point system allows for better playtesting/accuracy as well.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Yes, but IMO it requires too much suspension of disbelief. "Oh my ship just happens to be directly behind you, facing up your exhaust pipe"... it might be fair and balanced and just like a jump point, but it isn't believable - to me, at least.

It's totally believable in the source material though. The cloaked Romulan Warbird just follows you until they get into a good firing position or joined by friendlies, etc, then decloaks to spring the trap - right at your weakest point where your lateral phaser array won't reach, photon torpedoes have to make a radical course change to reach and you can't react before you've had a volley or two of phase disruptor fire into your unshielded hull...

There's a reason the Klingons and Romulans jealousy guard cloaking technology... :wink:

 

[Burger]

Ditto. A fixed point system allows for better playtesting/accuracy as well.

I never really followed that logic. Why is it easier to say "The Demos is overpowered, make it 3 more points" than saying "The Demos is overpowered, knock 4ADs off the main weapon"?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I never really followed that logic. Why is it easier to say "The Demos is overpowered, make it 3 more points" than saying "The Demos is overpowered, knock 4ADs off the main weapon"?

Because changing the points value is faster and easier to playtest? Because changing the points value doesn't change performance which may be based on canonical/on-screen evidence?

 

[Burger]

Because changing the points value is faster and easier to playtest? Because changing the points value doesn't change performance which may be based on canonical/on-screen evidence?

Disagree on the first reason, you still need to play a game, modify, play a game etc. In fact changing the points value is a much bigger change, because it may open up entirely different fleet options!
Second point, you're having a laugh, right?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

As much as you are, Burger.