ACTA 3e - revised fleet list ideas

[darklord4]

well will MGP want to run tourneys in the future?
if not then the acta system will become fan based and so yep don't see why not

I hope that MGP stays as the official rule source.

I think there are only 2 relatively little holes, IMO, in the rules, horde initiative sinks and unlimited Gaim Queens.
MGP has already put forth a suggested solution for the Gaim queens in the latest US tourny pack by limiting them to 1 queen for every other 2 ships.

I think the initiative issue could be simply solved via the interspersed/Battletech method I mentioned elsewhere...

Not a hole really, but I have always felt that the critical-hit system was a bit wild.

 

[Ripple]

I would like to address two fleets if someone were approaching a 3ed list.

Abbai -

right now a swarm race... no sense building anything over a Milani, ever. All the other ships are two short ranged given their speed, maneuverability and survivability.

Tiraca - fine
Brisaria - fine
Shyarie - useless to the fleet, as no weapon can be supported by the scout function... up it's survivability at least (inteceptors back?).
Milani - give it carrier 2
Marata - give it rear guns and extra troops/shuttles...
Bimith - give back 1 ed guns, second turn and drop the lumbering
Aldrith - add the 'old' style bimith to the fleet with no escort/interceptors, but armed with combat lasers front and back (range 18 would be good 3/1 respectively)
Lakara - give her some fighters, first ed secondaries, bump the combat laser range to 18.
-bimith variant - give it the quad bolters and gravitic shifters front and back... 2 AD turreted combat laser (range 15 is fine) bump the shield slightly total and refresh... gives a drahk era choice at battle level...
Juyaca - fairly good... bump speed by 1, increase rear AD (this thing dies to Drahk raiders without fail as the rear guns just can't threaten them).
Brivioki - It's okay as is really...

Drazi

Given the boresight debate and the Drazi's central stance as the big problem fleet, I'd like to see more 'non boresight' ships...

Nightfalcon - more fighters and active defense, swap main laser for missile racks...
Raid choice with primary weapon being the big front arc guns off the Stormfalcon... with enough AD they become the 'sink' hunters...

Basically let the Drazi have combat effective choices at a variety of PLs that don't HAVE to boresight... other option would be drop the boresight off the secondary guns of most drazi ships. This means drazi can have enough choice of fleet that CAN fight if they lose initiative that the game isn't decided by a few initiative rolls if no solution for boresight can be found give how folks want to fix the horde issues.

Ripple

 

[Frankvas]

Abbai -

right now a swarm race... no sense building anything over a Milani, ever. All the other ships are two short ranged given their speed, maneuverability and survivability.

Tiraca - fine
Brisaria - fine
Shyarie - useless to the fleet, as no weapon can be supported by the scout function... up it's survivability at least (inteceptors back?).
Milani - give it carrier 2
Marata - give it rear guns and extra troops/shuttles...
Bimith - give back 1 ed guns, second turn and drop the lumbering
Aldrith - add the 'old' style bimith to the fleet with no escort/interceptors, but armed with combat lasers front and back (range 18 would be good 3/1 respectively)
Lakara - give her some fighters, first ed secondaries, bump the combat laser range to 18.
-bimith variant - give it the quad bolters and gravitic shifters front and back... 2 AD turreted combat laser (range 15 is fine) bump the shield slightly total and refresh... gives a drahk era choice at battle level...
Juyaca - fairly good... bump speed by 1, increase rear AD (this thing dies to Drahk raiders without fail as the rear guns just can't threaten them).
Brivioki - It's okay as is really...

Don't forget the Kotha, drop the Weak, give it 1AD and up its speed to 10, maybe drop their allowance from 8 to 6.

Frank V.

 

[silashand]

I would guess that this was an example of the worst dice rolling ever then.
4 Shuuka queens should cripple or eliminate the WS in 1 turn.

Wrong. 4 Shuuka queens = 8 AD each for a total of 32 dice. Hitting on 4's due to AP emines means 16 hits. Assume 2-3 bulkheads on average and that leaves you with 13 or so. Close blast doors will reduce that to 2/3, or a total of 8-9. Adaptive armour then reduces that to 4 which is not nearly enough to cripple or kill a WS in one turn. Even if you don't close blast doors it will still result in only 6 on average. Keep your WS at least 6.5" away from each other and you will only do that to one per turn, hardly enough to kill them before they get to you. Any ISA player who doesn't play aggressively vs the Gaim is asking to be slaughtered. Even considering the Gaim player deploying on the back edge of the table and the ISA at the forward edge of their deployment zone, this leaves roughly 36" between the WS and their prey. All power to Engines, WS moves 22.5" forward which leaves 13.5" between them and the queens when time to fire with an 18" range there should be no problem assuming the ISA player won initiative. If not, then a decent deployment will increase the chances that they will have targets at the end of the turn. Stellar terrain also helps by giving those without a target somewhere to hide for a turn. While the combined firepower of 4 queens isn't enough to kill a WS in one turn, it is entirely possible for two WSs to kill a queen in one shot and if the fighters do as you suggest then the accurate secondary weaponry will deal with the few that have been launched at the start of the game.

As for the fighters, remember that you can only start the game with 1 per ship on the board except for fleet carriers. You can then dump a few more in the end phase of turn 1 and most of the rest in the end phase of turn 2. If the WSs haven't closed with you and perhaps crippled or killed any of your queens by then you are doing something wrong. This results in roughly half your fighters not being on the board which reduces the odds considerably. If the ISA player wins initiative on the 1st turn then they can start damaging the queens right away. If they happen to win it on turn 2 as well you are screwed. Plus, you don't even have to take all WS (in fact I wouldn't recommend it). Just take 4 and some Blue Stars for the initiative sink.

As I said, theory just doesn't work as well in real life as people assume.

Cheers, Gary

 

[Da Boss]

Couple of points......

I was presuming you were APTE as your example so no CBD - hence 6 hits would really hurt a White star - crew being the important bit obviously.

Fighter deployment - IIRC - fleet carrier can start with half its payload on the table and Carrier adds its value to the amount you can unload at the start of the first turn/start with extra flight deployed. Gaim players usually Scramble Scramble- its 7a + CQ check and they have a Minimum CQ of 5 soo.............usually get it....lots of fighters/ pods!

Terrian can help but the scenario dictates this and can be a killer - esp if the deployment zones are 36" apart.

Anyway they are apparently being revised so hoepfully they will sort of the couple of ships that are dodgy, take of FC, etc

 

[silashand]

I was presuming you were APTE as your example so no CBD - hence 6 hits would really hurt a White star - crew being the important bit obviously.

Didn't say it wouldn't hurt them, just that it won't cripple them in one shot as was proposed by others. For the record I had pretty much average dice in that game.

Fighter deployment - IIRC - fleet carrier can start with half its payload on the table and Carrier adds its value to the amount you can unload at the start of the first turn/start with extra flight deployed. Gaim players usually Scramble Scramble- its 7a + CQ check and they have a Minimum CQ of 5 soo.............usually get it....lots of fighters/ pods!

Correct. However, except for the FCs the majority of the fighters don't come out until the end of turn which was my point. If the vessel is destroyed before then they never show up.

Terrian can help but the scenario dictates this and can be a killer - esp if the deployment zones are 36" apart.

Correct. But from what I've seen most people seem to just play ACTA as the default. This is no different than most other systems like Warhammer where most people play pitched battles even though there are a boatload of other scenarios to help add more variety to the game (which I like and support, but it is what it is I guess).

Anyway they are apparently being revised so hopefully they will sort of the couple of ships that are dodgy, take of FC, etc

True. One can hope. However, as I have found if they are played in a balanced manner they are hardly abusive. In fact they seem a bit underpowered really. It's unfortunate that the only really effective strategy for them is to build unbalanced lists, but as you say, hopefully they will fix that.

Cheers, Gary

 

[Methos5000]

I would guess that this was an example of the worst dice rolling ever then.
4 Shuuka queens should cripple or eliminate the WS in 1 turn.

Wrong. 4 Shuuka queens = 8 AD each for a total of 32 dice. Hitting on 4's due to AP emines means 16 hits. Assume 2-3 bulkheads on average and that leaves you with 13 or so. Close blast doors will reduce that to 2/3, or a total of 8-9. Adaptive armour then reduces that to 4 which is not nearly enough to cripple or kill a WS in one turn. Even if you don't close blast doors it will still result in only 6 on average. Keep your WS at least 6.5" away from each other and you will only do that to one per turn, hardly enough to kill them before they get to you. Any ISA player who doesn't play aggressively vs the Gaim is asking to be slaughtered. Even considering the Gaim player deploying on the back edge of the table and the ISA at the forward edge of their deployment zone, this leaves roughly 36" between the WS and their prey. All power to Engines, WS moves 22.5" forward which leaves 13.5" between them and the queens when time to fire with an 18" range there should be no problem assuming the ISA player won initiative. If not, then a decent deployment will increase the chances that they will have targets at the end of the turn. Stellar terrain also helps by giving those without a target somewhere to hide for a turn. While the combined firepower of 4 queens isn't enough to kill a WS in one turn, it is entirely possible for two WSs to kill a queen in one shot and if the fighters do as you suggest then the accurate secondary weaponry will deal with the few that have been launched at the start of the game.

As I said, theory just doesn't work as well in real life as people assume.

Cheers, Gary

It is actually 16 2AD emine volleys instead of 32AD of emines this is an important distinction because Adaptive armor reduces damage per weapon system not combined weapon systems.

2AD of AP emines will on average cause 1 point of damage to a Whitestar if you close blast doors you have a 33% chance of negating that 1 point of damage so the actual average damage to a Whitestar is 10-11 points damage from 32AD of emines, enough to kill it.

If they survived that long either AA was being used against the entire 32AD of emines as one volley or it was the worst dice rolling in the history of mankind.