A New Universe for ACTA's

[BFalcon]

Adrian: don't sweat the Federation ships problem - it's just the one you need to worry about and even that one would probably end up being accepted if it was in among a load of other historically-named ships - the Fed CA namelist reads pretty much as a list of WWII carriers and cruisers of note, after all. There's LOADS of Fed ship names to choose from and, just because one is noted as being in a different class, there's no reason why your ship should not be named the same if it was built later - navies are always reusing names.

I know I intend to do the Constitution class in all it's glory, eventually, so I'd not worry.

 

[Jean]

AdrianH, there's only one ship that I know of that we cannot use in our fiction, scenarios, RPGs, or publications. That leaves a zillion open for people to use. What you do at your own table is your business. What you put up on your own page is your business. What you put up on Mongoose's board is Mongoose's business. It only becomes my business if you put it up on ADB's board.

One of our Forum members has an avatar that is very close to Paramount's IP. As SVC said, he won't tell him he cannot use it. However, if Paramount says it is a Bad Thing, the avatar goes as fast as we can get to it.

So if you include the ship in a group of ships, then all is good. We wouldn't include it in anything official, but you would know that from the get-go, so all should be well.

Honestly, I never meant to worry anyone. I just come at things from a Marketing/ADB moderator viewpoint.

 

[MarkDawg]

Okay so this joint venture between Mongoose and SFB who is making the Minis?

So you for lack of a better word Mongoose is porting it's Rules set for ACTA to fit the SFB game/universe.

My next question is the rule set for ACTA is new correct?

 

[Jean]

MarkDawg, Mongoose is making the minis, subject to ADB's review and approval.

I know that Matthew and his test players are working on making ACTA's rules work with the SFU technology.

 

[Da Boss]

AdrianH, there's only one ship that I know of that we cannot use in our fiction, scenarios, RPGs, or publications. That leaves a zillion open for people to use. What you do at your own table is your business. What you put up on your own page is your business. What you put up on Mongoose's board is Mongoose's business. It only becomes my business if you put it up on ADB's board.

Aha very useful info

As SVC said,

Who is SVC?

Whats your view on the ship class naming discussion we were having?

@Adrian H - re the worries for ST over B5 - I think its fair to say Paramount don't really care about B5 ? Star Trek on the other hand is money.

 

[Greg Smith]

My next question is the rule set for ACTA is new correct?

No. It has been around as the rules to a Babylon 5 ship combat game for several years. It is currently, in a slightly different version, used for Noble Armada. It is new to the SFB universe.

 

[MarkDawg]

Sorry for all the questions but as someone that is new here it's difficult to get up to speed.

 

[BFalcon]

Who is SVC?

He is the night... he is... Steve Cole - the guy who wrote SFB and Prime Directive and otherwise good guy (I spoke to him some years back I think when I phoned ADB).

 

[Jean]

SVC= Stephen V. Cole, the President and CEO of ADB, Inc. You may find this (slightly dated) chart useful: http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/Chain_Of_Command.pdf

 

[Da Boss]

thanks - slightly scary looking but helpful

 

[Jean]

Do note that the chart is out of date. Mike West is working on PD for Mongoose Traveller and there have been staff changes. What is notable is how many hats are worn by so few people -- typical of a small business, I'm afraid. It also shows how much value we place on our fans on the BBS -- how many companies would show them on their organizational chart?

 

[BFalcon]

Hehe if nothing else, we can play "See how many jobs each person did at the time..."

Explains why I spoke to Leanna and Steve (I think Cole, but might have been Petrick) those times I phoned... not often you get to speak to the top dogs in an organisation (speaking to Matthew Sprange here is another example).

Thanks for all the information, Jean... (BTW I spy you, outlined in red on the right hand side...)

 

[Jean]

<grin> And I've added the hat of Marketing Director since then. Ohhh.. nearly forgot that I'm the sysadmin for the BBS (the software is ancient enough that most of our computer interns boggle at it ).

 

[The Legend]

I've got to sy that I was very tempted by ACTA:NA but after seeing the news of this venture! I've played SFB a fair few times and love it. I wanted to get into FC for a while but finding a decent UK stockest that has the full range is nigh on impossible so it always kinda fell by the wayside. So this is the best news I've heard this year! No this millenium, ha ha. I play ACTA: B5 regularly and love the system. Quick, easy to play, and challenging. I'm gonna buy into this in a big way not least of all because I'm a massive Trek fan and The Original Series is by far my favorite show.

Great idea on using the Torp rules from VaS for Plasma Torps. Inspired that like.

Oh and response to an earlier post, can't remember who posted it as I've just read all 27 pages in one go but.......

In Balance of Terror it was phasers they detonated to "Depth Charge" the Romulan bird of prey, not Photon Torpedoes.

 

[godsgopher]

Don't count Noble Armada out its still the ACTA's System, and the miniatures are some of the cheapest on the market. Its a nice little game...

That said, ACTA's: Star Fleet is going to blow it out of the water! The new miniatures look very exciting, and if you need counters just buy them off ADB as they have some great full color one inch cardboard counters.

 

[The Legend]

Don't count Noble Armada out its still the ACTA's System, and the miniatures are some of the cheapest on the market. Its a nice little game...

One of my mates bought the core rules for it and I've had a quick look through. I like what I've seen and to be honest I have always liked Fading Suns. It's Dune without being Dune.

I've been Tempted by the Hawkwood fleet and because a number of my mates are buying into this game I probably will too. But........ Original Series Trek, Oh my!

This probably means I'll be a hell of a lot more active on the mongoose forums again as I haven't really been since SST and the first wave of BFEvo.

 

[godsgopher]

Oh yes. The Star Fleet Universe fixes the biggest issue with all previous Trek Games, and that is that you just can't do interpersonal drama as a game. SFU fixes this by actually throwing out the characters and making it a game about starships. Yet strangely enough it gets away with it! It managed to bring a deep military history to the game so that its more like reliving a time of high adventure than just pushing Klingons closer and closer to the enemy.

 

[Nerroth]

I would have thought there was plenty of scope for inter-personal drama in games of Prime Directive, and that's no less a part of the Star Fleet Universe than any other.


But to be fair to the Franchise, I would expect a similar divide between the character-development aspect of a Trek-themed RPG and the blow-ships-up side of a Trek-licensed starship combat game.

 

[MarkDawg]

For people that know nothing about SFB & ACTA. Tell us noobs what the game is like (IE) turn sequence Board set up terrain stuff like that. What I am getting at is this. What type of game do you guys in know expect to see from Mongoose?

Are there standard game types? Is there a campaign structure?

Also we need Star Trek emoticons for the boards don't you guys think?

 

[ctchapel]

the Legend

The scene in Balance of Terror was a case of the writing staff and special effects department not being on the same page, as it were. The weapon effects were not finalized and even though the actors said phasers, it was photons that were on the screen.

This transfered to SFB directly as proximity loaded photons. Combat versus a cloaked ship , without weapons lock, doubles the range and the adds five more hexes to resolve the "to hit" on a d6. Photons are netoriously inaccurate beyond range eight, (33% to r12 and 16.5% to r30). Proximity loads are 67% and 50% for the same brackets but have half the warhead yield.

Not that you care, but just to clarify