A New Universe for ACTA's

[firekite]

all the time i have spent creating my bsg rules/playing b5acta/sw:acta, not once did i think of converting my sfb/fedcom stuff to this ruleset. i can't wait to see what you come up with msprange ! 8) :shock:

 

[Da Boss]

I agree big capitol ships like Fed-CA or a D-7 should be able to take a pounding. Or the game would be very pointless.

It should also be remembered that a squadron firing is extremely powerful - especially in B5 - so I can imagine that a couple of D7s both pouring fire into a Enterprise will hurt?

It does remove your In sinks but good Squadron usage is extremely important in ACTA. Also knowing when to drop your Squadron down into indivudal ships..........

 

[godsgopher]

The tactical flexibility of ACTA's is whats kept me coming back time and time again to this system. Its simple, fun, fast, yet dramatic. None the less the big ships feel powerful and solid, the small ships are fast and agile, darting between the heavy hitters. So naturally I can't wait to see how the game develops this new setting and runs with it.

 

[Iron Domokun]

CAs and D7s can take a hit all right, but they aren't the biggest things out there.

In the Star Fleet Universe, the big gun capital ships are the dreadnoughts and heavy battlecruisers, which are 150% and 125% the size of a cruiser, respectively. The biggest ship which was really built was the Klingon B10 battleship, twice as big as a heavy cruiser and intended to lead fleets in the biggest battles. It's huuuuge. Other empires have battleship designs that they could have built, but did not. (These designs are considered "real" in the FC version, with some differences to the SFB versions of the ships).

A fairly typical "full size fleet" for a major battle in the SFU would be a dozen or more ships, probably consisting of a dreadnought to lead the fleet, a BCH, the 'battle line' of CAs or war cruisers, and the battle group of up to six destroyers/frigates. Some of these may be organised into squadrons of leader variant + 2xcombat variant, e.g. F5L + 2xF5, or D7C + 2xD7.

 

[godsgopher]

Ah, good information to have. From what I have seen ACTA's should be able to handle fleets of 12-15 fairly easily so long as your not in a huge rush. I wouldn't want to tackle such a fleet during my lunch break, but if I had an afternoon it could be enjoyable. I remember about the B-10 from my SFB days. And while I keep hearing that ACTA's: Star Fleet is going to be based on Federation Commander I still think that at least some of SFB is relevant. For example: Carriers I heard that FC did away with them due to how much it lagged (Is that the appropriate term for a board-game?) gameplay. However ACTA's has repeatedly proven its self to not only be able to handle dozens of fighters and bombers with ease (Noble Armada) but hundreds of fighters (Babylon 5) depending on how the system was configured. So I'm looking forward to eventually seeing them in the new game.

Something I hope gets translated into ACTA's: Star Fleet is the role-based warfare seen in STB's. Fleets while often comprised of flexible general combatants fleets often had scout support, Survey vessels, Dedicated escorts, Drone bombardment ships, Heavy Maulers, and other uniquely capable vessels that enhanced a fleets abilities.

 

[Ben2]

Playing Federation and Empire the smallest ship that generally got used by some races was the war destroyer. In freeplay the smallest ship the Lyrans had after 6 turns was the war destroyer.

This is only if people want to use ACTA:SFB to play games exactly like in SFB/F&E, given how much less time it takes to play ACTA 15-25 ships a side isn't impossible.

 

[Ben2]

Going back to discussing ships...

Romulans - will we be seeing the War Eagle, Battlehawk, King Eagle and Snipe in the initial release?

If yes, please could we have the Vulture Dreadnought as well?

I realise the Romulan eagle ships aren't particularly competitive in SFB, but they are classic designs and Matt could always go down the path of just making them pretty cheap in points.

What Romulan ship series is being looked at for the initial release? Eagle, KR or Hawk?

 

[Whitehaven]

I believe that the inital release for the Romulans is squdron box 9,
in witch case you will get...
1x Condor(DN)
1x KR cruiser(Rom`d D6)
1x War Eagle
1x BattleHawk(old Destroyer)
1x Skyhawk (new Destroyer)

 

[Da Boss]

Something I hope gets translated into ACTA's: Star Fleet is the role-based warfare seen in STB's. Fleets while often comprised of flexible general combatants fleets often had scout support, Survey vessels, Dedicated escorts, Drone bombardment ships, Heavy Maulers, and other uniquely capable vessels that enhanced a fleets abilities.

Should not be a problem - ACTA (esp B5) uses sepcial triats and variants of speific ships to provide the sort of vessels you are describing. So for instance my beloved Centauri have:

the Primus Battlecruiser has a speclaised Planteary assault variant and can swap out guns for asteroid flinging massdrivers for dealing with rebellious Narn
it has the stealthy Corvan scout - designed to enhance missile ships capabilities
the Maximus fleet defence ship - similar to SFB Ageis ships
Missile variants of destroyers (Demos and Elutarin)

and it was simple enough to make up fleet auxilary vessels, race specific civilian ships, and explorers

8)

 

[BFalcon]

Speaking for myself, I'll miss the plotted cloaking - it let you sneak into a CA's rear arc where they don't have any weapons (until the refits, anyhow) and let rip with a few choice weapons (nothing like a Type-R to make a Fed player run for it when it's only a few hexes behind it...).

I think I'd like the (numbered) fake counters for cloaked ships method myself - not to mention every Rom player would be buying 3x as many ships per fleet.

I missed out on ACTA B5 - I was (ironically enough) concentrating on my SFB fleet for a good part of its life, but eventually gave up waiting for the master SSD book to make an appearance. It'll be annoying to have to replace all those minis, but I'm looking forward to some of them not looking like lumps of metal (thinking the Vulture here in particular), which the larger scale will help avoid.

Some questions:

Plasma weapons: One shot wonders in the new version?

Cloaks: any hints on how they WILL work?

Boom/Saucer separation: Still in the rules or no?

(Related) Klingon mutinies: Still possible?

Kzinti Fighters: Will they make it in too, since one of my favourite boxed-set ships was the carrier...

What size hexes? I never got to ACTA, so this should be an easy one for someone to help me with.

Drones: Will we still see the Drones and Anti-Drones in-game?

I'm glad to see a British company involved in this - trying to source the ADB parts used to be murder without having the charges at customs slapped on (£8 as soon as you cross £18 value) and not so many people carried the range before FC came out.

I, for one, am really glad to see SFB coming back in a new form.

 

[Ben2]

I believe that the inital release for the Romulans is squdron box 9,
in witch case you will get...
1x Condor(DN)
1x KR cruiser(Rom`d D6)
1x War Eagle
1x BattleHawk(old Destroyer)
1x Skyhawk (new Destroyer)

I was hoping for something a little more like Romulan Fleet box 2.

ADB have a number of fleet boxes.

Will the ship selection be the same as Federation Commander? I was an SFB player so don't know what was in there. Is it equivalent to the Core Set, Advanced edition and additional hulls from R1-R4?

Also most of the Eagle ships should be doable as 1 piece resin.

Has Mongoose thought of doing squadron blisters of single ship hulls? I know I'd buy a bag of 3 War Eagles, D6s or Texas Class CLs.

 

[BFalcon]

Ben: I pretty much skipped FC too - although I do have a boxed set somewhere (probably still packed from the move).

I think Mongoose will be missing a trick if they don't do like they have with the JD minis and sell them individually and in a box - even if they keep the individual minis as direct sales only, it'll help to build a fleet. I know that, if it's a choice between buying new minis as part of a box or using my old ones, I'll just use my old ones. If I can spend a bit more and get a new one on its own, I'd sooner do that - if only to keep the fleet consistant, but also to allow me to strip the old ones and keep them as collectables.

 

[godsgopher]

As far as how the new rules will be handled there has been absolutely no official word. Many people have been guessing, suggesting, and making suppositions. The one thing I can defiantly tell you is that its played on a table and not a hex map as ACTA's has never done a hex map.

 

[BFalcon]

OK, thanks Gopher... appreciate that. I did see that Matthew said that there'd be no hidden movement, but that's all I've seen so far, 'tis true.

 

[Ben2]

I was always a counter player. It was only when B5 fleet scale came out I got a lot of ships.

From the sounds of it these ships will be smaller than B5 model scale, bigger than current SFB scale by a good chunk, but cheaper and resin.

If Matt puts out squadron boxes of the smaller ships (FFs, DDs and CLs) or has them in cheaper bags or blisters that would be great. The issue would be them getting knocked around in transit, as resin will chip a good deal easier than metal.

I imagine issues like this are one reason this will be out in time for Christmas, as with CAD design the time from design finalisation to having a mini in your hand is actually quite low. However putting together a coherent product line that will get from the factory to the customers sweaty palms will take longer.

However a Star Trek combat game with mass distribution, decent sized and priced minis is getting close to a licence to print money.

 

[BFalcon]

I never played with the minis, just the counters - but I do have a few of them - including some of the Hawk Rom ships (but didn't know which was which for ages - picked them up 2nd hand).

A whole load of the counters got mislaid from the Commander's boxed set - I still keep finding Kzinti shuttles and drones in weird places (like in with my minis, for example).

 

[MikeB]

I do not speak for ADB in any way, shape, or fashion, but I would like to point out that the new game will be called A Call To Arms: Star Fleet (ACTA:SF).

It will not be a fleet-action version of Star Fleet Battles (i.e. it will not be called ACTA:SFB).

From what has been written by those "in the know," it seems as if it will probably be based on Federation Commander like the Starmada version was, but I don't believe that has been completely settled yet. It may very well have a subset of rules for things from SFB that FC does not have.

I am content to wait and see what the developers and playtesters come up with. But I will have to admit that it is fun to speculate...

 

[MongooseMatt]

The issue would be them getting knocked around in transit, as resin will chip a good deal easier than metal.

Actually, no. We are prepping a video of this, but we have conducted 'hammer' tests (they are what they sound like) and the resin we are using is amazingly durable...

 

[godsgopher]

For those of you not familiar with the ACTA's System I can tell you this about it. Its a strangely simple little system, almost overly so. Yet somehow it managed to convey a level of excitement and drama that I just have not encountered with any other game I have ever played involving spaceships. Not only this, but its simplicity manages to handle normally complex operations with great speed while retaining a sense of their importance.

I highly suspect that this is going to be the most anticipated and successful expansion to the system to date. However this will also be the greatest challenge to the ACTA's system ever undertaken. SFB and FC are very complicated games with many facets. Starships are not merely tools of war, but huge Swiss army knives, capably of bringing a staggering array abilities to any given situation. That very flexibility is going to require a different approach to the traditional move, shoot, take damage formula most games play through. Which in turn will require time to playtest, balance, try out rules, discard rules, re-test, re-imagine, and re-intemperate until they have produced a smooth product that plays well, retains the spirit of is original, and yet fully takes advantage of the new system.

Then after that herculean labor it will be released to us, who will naturally nit pick, complain, lament, and generally be ungrateful of the labors involved when its not done how we would have done it . You just have to love game development.

 

[Rambler]

I believe that the inital release for the Romulans is squdron box 9,
in witch case you will get...
1x Condor(DN)
1x KR cruiser(Rom`d D6)
1x War Eagle
1x BattleHawk(old Destroyer)
1x Skyhawk (new Destroyer)

I was hoping for something a little more like Romulan Fleet box 2.

ADB have a number of fleet boxes.

Will the ship selection be the same as Federation Commander? I was an SFB player so don't know what was in there. Is it equivalent to the Core Set, Advanced edition and additional hulls from R1-R4?

Also most of the Eagle ships should be doable as 1 piece resin.

Has Mongoose thought of doing squadron blisters of single ship hulls? I know I'd buy a bag of 3 War Eagles, D6s or Texas Class CLs.

Like Mike I can repeat what has been mentioned on the ADB Boards and Forums but I do not have any more knowledge than what was put out.

That said SVC has said that the Small Boxes (the 5 Ship Ones) will match the Fed Com Squadron Packs not the Empire Numbered Fleet Boxes like, the above mentioned Romulan Fleet Box 2. SVC has also mentioned that the new Joint Miniature Line will be the only Miniature Line that will be marketed to Stores once the new line comes along. The ADB side is referring to the new miniature line with the Placeholder name of 2500 but that will change to a Name later that ADB and Mongoose both agree to.

I do know that right now the Larger New Resin Fleet Boxes with 16 Ships include the Snipe in its list of proposed ships so that ship should be around sooner rather than later. The Vulture is a mini in the 2400 line so sooner or later it will be out in the new line as a separate ship at least. As far as the 3 Ship Packs ADB does have some these already available in the 2400 Line. So I am sure we will see similar packs in the new line as well. I just would like to see them done as 2 Base Hulls and the Leader Variant whenever it is possible but that is just me.

Going back to discussing ships...

Romulans - will we be seeing the War Eagle, Battlehawk, King Eagle and Snipe in the initial release?

If yes, please could we have the Vulture Dreadnought as well?

I realise the Romulan eagle ships aren't particularly competitive in SFB, but they are classic designs and Matt could always go down the path of just making them pretty cheap in points.

What Romulan ship series is being looked at for the initial release? Eagle, KR or Hawk?

As was pointed out the First Small Box will most likely be a mirror of the FedCom Squadron Box #9. As far as the Big Box goes right now it is listed at having 4 Classes of Eagle Ships, 3 Classes of Kestrals, and 3 Classes of Hawks.