ACTA: Battlestar Galactica - Some input please...

[Alexb83]

As it was, the Basestar was up in the war bracket, not in Battle - but with the changes made, I think it sits closer to the Acropolis. I haven't really had the chance to sit down with the revised rules (4 hits per wave, lower dodge on raiders) but will give it a go asap.

Playing pegasus vs. a basestar, I never once got the chance to line up the boresights - the initiative bonus to the cylons really helps them out. It might be prudent to allow command bonuses to stack for the colonials, in order to balance things out (just look at what happens in resurrection ship when they actually plan an operation and execute it in tandem).

Nukes may need some special effects - TD simply doesn't cut it. It may be good to count all hits with a nuke salvo as criticals. Yes, it could cripple a battlestar/basestar in one salvo - but look what happened when Galactica took a nuke in the miniseries?

 

[Gregster]

Yes, both battlestars have enormous firepower they can throw in a variety if arcs.

Although the Pegasus should be able to kick arse, in series three she does take on 4 Basestars, destroying at least three of them
(admitadly she rammed one and exploded all over another). So In theory she should be able to go toe to toe with two of them in a less reckless and fatal fight.

Ooh you spoil-sport, I haven't seen that one yet

 

[Shadow Queen]

Yes, both battlestars have enormous firepower they can throw in a variety if arcs.

Although the Pegasus should be able to kick arse, in series three she does take on 4 Basestars, destroying at least three of them
(admitadly she rammed one and exploded all over another). So In theory she should be able to go toe to toe with two of them in a less reckless and fatal fight.

Dont tell me what happens

 

[Gregster]

No new information on the Pegasus, haven't found too many views of her yet. As far as i can tell she has 30 big gun turrets, 16 under the lip of the nose and 7 on each flight pod (2 either end, 3 down the side). However, interestingly as she has no frames like the Galactica she has nowhere to put the point defense guns, nor can i see any on her... :?


Nick

I had always been lead to believe that the reason Galactica has the "frames" appearance is that she had a lot of her armour plating taken off for her decommisioning. I may be wrong though :?

 

[Court Jester]

Yes, both battlestars have enormous firepower they can throw in a variety if arcs.

Although the Pegasus should be able to kick arse, in series three she does take on 4 Basestars, destroying at least three of them
(admitadly she rammed one and exploded all over another). So In theory she should be able to go toe to toe with two of them in a less reckless and fatal fight.

Dont tell me what happens

Don't worry if you havent't seen it yet what I wrote just doesn't do the series justice. It will still rock!

 

[Court Jester]

I had always been lead to believe that the reason Galactica has the "frames" appearance is that she had a lot of her armour plating taken off for her decommisioning. I may be wrong though :?

Yup, the frames are in fact what is meant to be under the armour plates.

 

[Court Jester]

After more digging i have managed to find some views of the Galactica that i hadn't seen before. From these i can work out that she has 24 big gun turrets. 8 of these are under the lip of the nose, four at the front and two at either side. The others are in four groups of 4, two dorsal and two ventral. She is then covered in the little point defense guns hidden in the spaces between the frames which make up the hull.

I had not spotted the 4 Turrets to the side although looking at the official ZOIC ship reference picture they are quite visible...

No new information on the Pegasus, haven't found too many views of her yet. As far as i can tell she has 30 big gun turrets, 16 under the lip of the nose and 7 on each flight pod (2 either end, 3 down the side).

You I have all of these in.

8 turrets F/P - Under the nose
8 turrets F/S - Under the nose
2 turrets F/P - Front tip of the flightpod
2 turrets F/S - Front tip of the flightpod
3 Turrets P - Side of the flightpod
3 Turrets S - Side of the flightpod
2 Turrets A/P - Rear of the flightpod
2 Turrets A/S - Rear of the flightpod

However, interestingly as she has no frames like the Galactica she has nowhere to put the point defense guns, nor can i see any on her... :?

Scratch that i can see her firing some in one scene, but can't really make out where they are. Oh well, not that important as their represented by the PD anyway...

Where as Galactica has her point defense turrets along the flight pods, Pegasus is specifically referenced as having her point defence turrets scattered all over her hull.

 

[Court Jester]

As it was, the Basestar was up in the war bracket, not in Battle - but with the changes made, I think it sits closer to the Acropolis. I haven't really had the chance to sit down with the revised rules (4 hits per wave, lower dodge on raiders) but will give it a go asap.

Thats cool, thanks. We will be playing tonight with Raiders at 6 hits but a 4+ dodge.

We will be playing 2 Battlestars Vs 2 Basestars (with a 3rd ready to jump in if things go wrong). So that should give a good idea of strengths.

Playing pegasus vs. a basestar, I never once got the chance to line up the boresights - the initiative bonus to the cylons really helps them out. It might be prudent to allow command bonuses to stack for the colonials, in order to balance things out (just look at what happens in resurrection ship when they actually plan an operation and execute it in tandem).

I was thinking of taking the racial initiative bonuses away and making the scenario specific. As you said the initiative does seem to favour those who plan and execute the attack.

Nukes may need some special effects - TD simply doesn't cut it. It may be good to count all hits with a nuke salvo as criticals. Yes, it could cripple a battlestar/basestar in one salvo - but look what happened when Galactica took a nuke in the miniseries?

I'll take a look at this. Maybe making them precise as well?

 

[Court Jester]

While keeping the number of counters to a minimum is a reasonable goal, the Moroshin carrier holds 8 nail flights and 1 flyer flight (9 counters) and the Posidon holds 16 Starfury or T-bolt flights (16 counters), so i'd say that doubling the Viper complement (but leaving the raptor complement alone or even reducing it) wouldn't overwhelm the table, especially since the Colonials are a fighter heavy fleet with no small to mid sized combat ships.

the main reason i think an Acropolise should have more that 4 counters worth of fighters is more for flexability than anything else. With 8 counters the battlestar has enough vipers to maintaine a full close support complement (the "reserve vipers") and still deploy half it's vipers as an attack force. I don't really think the mercury needs more vipers but if the Acropolise gets 8 then it should have more than 8 (at least 12).

Additionally, assuming one counter is roughly 6 vipers: in the episode where Galactica attacks the Cylon refinery they field roughly 24 vipers, 12 in the initial attack force and 12 in the civi transport (I counted once to try and see if the writers were keeping track of the rate vipers were destroied over the coarse of the series) . and since Galactica is supposed to be roughly "half strength" i figured a fully loaded Acropolis schould have around 48 vipers (8 counters).

As for the BSG ships comparing with B5 ships, it's hard to say. the battlestars are probably inferior to main line warships of what would be aproxamitly equal PL, but the Vipers are IMO even better than Whitestar Fighters, and present in as large numbers with Raptor support.

I'll take a look at this tonight and see how the game plays. If I increase the number of flights I will consider lowering the dogfight of indevidual flights.

As it is a Viper is at df 3, +1 for fleet carrier and essntially +1 because of the Cylon -1 crew Quality. If the Raptor is about then that is another +1... :shock:

 

[Locutus9956]

Its not so much the dogifhts tbh, dogfighting in ACTA in general tends to be fine but the problem with fighters, even with the updated shootfirstyness is they tend to be pretty inefectual against capital ships, especially the larger ones and in a mod like this where most of the ships are basically carriers (alebeit heavily armed ones ) fighters should really be able to pose a serious threat.

 

[Alexb83]

Nukes being precise - could work. I would like to see nukes moved to a token/counter system with a set move value like fighters - again, we see that fighters can intercept them in intervening space (miniseries) between ships, when the Galactica has no point defence or flak due to being out of ammo.

Perhaps make them: hull 3, speed 15, dodge 4+, SAP, Nuke*
Where nuke means that each successful hit does 1d6 critical hits (rolled as per the BSG crit rules)

Making them easier to shoot down means you're going to have to make them that much more savage when they do get through, so that when they do get through, they get through and do naasty damage (you could equate Galactica's nuke hit to any combination of the higher roll crew criticals, fires, decompression etc.).

 

[captainsmirk]

Its not so much the dogifhts tbh, dogfighting in ACTA in general tends to be fine but the problem with fighters, even with the updated shootfirstyness is they tend to be pretty inefectual against capital ships, especially the larger ones and in a mod like this where most of the ships are basically carriers (alebeit heavily armed ones ) fighters should really be able to pose a serious threat.

I always saw the Battlestars as being more Battleships with a fighter carrying capacity tacked on for their defense. Admittedly they have only limited resources in the series but most attempts to destroy basestars are reserved for the Battlestars (Other than the Resurrection Ship, but that can apparently be taken out with fighter cannon...).

Cylons however rely on Basestars as big fighter/missile carriers which destroy the enemy with saturation attacks from range. The Cylons seem to use Raiders in an anti-shipping role much more than the Colonials use Vipers.

Just the impression i got is suppose...

Nick

 

[Alexb83]

They're definately a mix of carrier/dreadnought!

Whenever we see either a Basestar or a Battlestar without fighter cover, it gets wasted - look at Resurrection ship, and again at the battle of Exodus - in one case the Cylons are tricked into moving their fighters away, and the two battlestars wipe them out, in the other at first it seems that Galactica can take on two fighter-less basestars, but then gets into trouble - and in the end Pegasus goes down because she has no vipers for support (in the occasion where Pegasus was ambushed she still managed to hold her own againts 3 basestars, IIRC).

Vipers/Raiders definately play a massive role in the BSG universe, rather than merely a supporting one - they're there to intercept nukes, and each other, whilst the big guns on the respective capital ships do the tough work - we haven't really seen Vipers used in the anti-capital ship role, although the missiles we see them fire could probably quite easily do the job.

 

[Court Jester]

Hopefully the way it works in the game is the same. A basetar with no fighters will be quite ineffective as it will have nothing to reduce the point defnses and nothing to take out the Raptors. However a Battlestar with no Vipers will have nothing to stop the vipers stripping it of point defnses and then being smashed by the Basestar.

At least thats the plan.

 

[Alexb83]

Any thoughts on the nukes front? I don't think in the ACTA mechanic you can really make them nasty enough, but give them the weaknesses we see they have in the show (interceptability by fighters, specifically).

Making it a movable counter means that it can be stopped by fighters if it is fired from beyond a certain range (they can see it coming, and hop in to try and shoot it down). Within certain ranges, it's just too quick for fighters to catch, and the ship needs to rely on any point defenses it has, or on any raiders hopping on top of it to stop it hitting the basestar.

Because of the way crits now work, it really needs to count as multiple crit hits in order to pretty much guarantee to do something nasty when it hits (and it could still only do a -2 crit, if you roll 1 each on the d3 and bonus d6) though of course, it is relatively easy to stop it getting through the defences - Galactica only took one because she had no PDS, and Kara failed to shoot the second missile down, and pegasus took them because she was surprised (and they only disabled the FTL).

 

[Commador Q]

I think the best way to handle a nuke would be to make it a fighter unit with a single weapon with stats like:

range 0, 10 AD, Super AP, E-mine, Triple damage, Beam

That way the number on nukes on a ship can be finite (but grater than 1), they can be intercepted by fighters (a dogfighing fighter can't attack, and if a fighter attacks a ship the ship's supporting flights can dogfight it instead), and the actual detonation is devestating, has a blast dadius and isn't interceptable, or dodgable.

 

[Poi]

Tried out a game tonight. 2 Basestars (me) vs Galactica and Pegasus.

Pegasus ran adrift after losing her crew. Basestar then finished off by Raptor (It was down to one point of damage). Had to quit then as we ran out of time.

Felt about right, apart from Raptors and Heavy Raiders having two damage. They hang around what seems like forever. Cutting them back to one damage each would speed up the game.

Are you going to add anything which would allow additional squadrons of auxilliary craft, representing craft from off-board ships, or ground stations?

 

[captainsmirk]

Are you going to add anything which would allow additional squadrons of auxilliary craft, representing craft from off-board ships, or ground stations?

Would make especial sense for the Cylons, with FTL capable fighters there were several occasions where the Galactica had to protect the fleet from Raider attacks with no Basestar present.

 

[Commador Q]

Tried out a game tonight. 2 Basestars (me) vs Galactica and Pegasus.

Pegasus ran adrift after losing her crew. Basestar then finished off by Raptor (It was down to one point of damage). Had to quit then as we ran out of time.

Felt about right, apart from Raptors and Heavy Raiders having two damage. They hang around what seems like forever. Cutting them back to one damage each would speed up the game.

Are you going to add anything which would allow additional squadrons of auxilliary craft, representing craft from off-board ships, or ground stations?

i think the raptors and heavy raiders should probably be heavy fighters (like the sky serpent and WS fighter)

 

[Court Jester]

Righty-O

Hammer of Ulric has already posted a brief rundown of the game but here are some pictures and my commentry... Hopefully some of it makes sense.

We used a slightly updated version of the rules, mainly the turret configuration on the battlestars as well as boosting the Raide Waves hits back to 6.

Also we completely forgot to fire back with the Point Defence Weapons when attacked by fighters. That may have made a difference especially with the Pegasus. Although I am wondering the rule is needed as we didn't miss it.

Another important difference was the way criticals are worked out... no one seems to have picked up on the change I made in the 4th Draft. Simply roll for location and then instead of rolling any dice the result is determined by counting the number of critical hits. Generally this resulted in plenty of 1-3 results, a couple of 4's and one 7...


The Colonial Plan...
Was to force the Basestars to engage at least one Battlestar face on. If the Galactica moved on the flank and the Pegasus crossed in front of them they would have to engage someone...

Sadly the initiative for deployment went to the Cylons so I deployed in a fairly generic fasion confident I could come about fast enough.

The first few turns saw an escilating fighter conflict in the center of the table. The colonial fighteres were slowly being outnumbered. During a couple of turns both battlestars were able to concentrait their fire power doing telling damage to the Basestar they targeted. However the combined firepower of the two basestars was also starting to really hurt the Pegasus, especially as she was having her PDW's exhausted by fighters each turn. 24 dice of SAP DD missiles hurt after a while.

Turn 4
This was a very important turn. The overwhelming Cylon fighter numbers were evident as I was unable to lock down all the heavy raiders that were zipping about. And 5 of them converged on the Pegasus and she took fire from all angles. A lucky critical also sped up crew casualties which was not cool as it put her perilously close to loosing them all. The Missiles from the Heavy Raiders combined with the Basestars was an impressive display of firepower, especially after the masses of AD the Batlestars recieved.

In onc especially grand round of firing I was able to score 7 critical hits from one attack. However I rolled a 5 and killed all the non existent crew abord the basestar. That was certainly annoying.

We soon decided that 2 damage was silly on the Heavy Raiders and Raptors when we realised a pair of them had been dogfighting since the first turn and were still going this turn into the next turn...

The beginning of the end...
I had been able to destroy a number of Cylon Fighters in the previous turn so I had more fighter to stop the assault on the Pegasus. However there were still enough of them to again exhaust the PDW's and do some damage on top of that. Having lost the initiative this turn I then had to sit with 9 crew and not much damage left on the Pegasus and hope the first basestar to open fire rolled badly. 11 Damage Later and it was not to be.

The Pegasus drifted off into the night a burning wreck.

This turn the Galactica was all set to regain some honour and opened fire with a full broadside using all Dorsal, Ventral and side batteries. After Galactica "Unleashed Hell" the Basestar limped away with 1 point of damage left ... :x

The endgame
The last turn of the game saw the Basestars launching the last of their Heavy Raiders and marking the point at which 12 waves of raiders had been launched.

The Heavy Raiders responsible for the Pegasus downfall moved straight into contact with the Galactica ready to do the same again and the fighters continued to tie each other up with dog fights across the table.

One single Raptor was able to navigate through the carnage of fighting spacecraft and fly straight at the crippled basestar. Both missle racks were emptied and the Basestar was destroyed. By a Raptor... :roll:

Meanwhile the over eager Heavy Raiders were silenced by the 36 dice from Galactica's Weapons Batteries.

As we realised we were out of time the battlefield looked something like this. I have highlighted the specific auxilliary craft left on the table. At this point I thin the balance shifted in favour of the Colonial fleet. With only one Basestar on the table the number of Raider Waves was limited to 6 (instead of 12) and the majority of the 24 Heavy Raiders ahd been dealt with.

Admittadly the Basestar had only taken 10 damage and could probably have just jumped out taking a minor victory.