ACTA - I want, I hate, lets adjust

[Da Boss]

Sooo 3rd Ed is in the works 8)

I thought about a thread for people to say

1 thing they want to keep (and why)
1 thing they hate (and why)
1 thing they want to keep but adjusted (and why)

so my initial thoughts for what they are worth

I'd like to keep crew scores as I feel it requires little book keeping, adds to the feel of the game, gives more options to make ships individual and possibility of options for weapons/crits that effect ships.

I'd prefer to move to a points based system - whilst the Priority Level system is interesting and can be fun - I feel it is difficult to balance individual ships within a PL which can be done a bit more effectively (i think) with points..........also allows for minor add ons and modules etc for variants and similar.

I'd like to see the critical table adjusted somewhat so that its more porportional as others have suggested in the past.

 

[Burger]

Keep: little amount of bookkeeping.
Hate: one lucky crit can ruin the game.
Adjust: stealth, get rid of the "all or nothing" effect

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Edited for OT'ness:

I like not having to fool around with To-hit numbers. I enjoyed Battletech quite a bit, but having to deal with range modifiers, movement modifiers, and everything else just meant that it was the only game I'd be playing that evening unless 8 or less mechs were involved. I'm good with just Hull and Damage rolls on ships that don't have Dodge Scores.



I don't like the way in which stealth seems to ruin either one player's day, or the other (in that it seems that either the stealth player comes out completely unscathed, or as so many floating hulks). Some kind of middle ground would be cool, like stealth reducing the number of available attack dice, or somesuch.



I like priority levels, because it takes some of the "gotta squeeze every last point in" angst that comes with list building in point-based systems, but if you're going to go that route, every ship in a priority level needs to be basically just as valuable (in one way or another) as any other ship on that level in that fleet list. Either way, make it so that taking a given ship because you like it better than another doesn't equate to placing a handicap on yourself.

 

[treknogeek]

1 thing I want to keep: Movement. The relative free flowing nature of measuring out distance vs. spaces on a board allows for a much more realistic space combat feel.

1 thing I hate: Priority Level. At first I thought it was cool and innovative, but the more I play the more I see the shortcomings. The abilities of each ship deserve more accountability than a simple 5 or 6 level classification. I believe that a point system would be much more accurate.

1 thing I want to keep but adjusted: Scoring Damage. While I like the two rolls each weapon makes before damage is done, there is some thing that never quite made sense to me. Take, for example, a Primus. A Primus is a big ship with good armor. Therefore, it should be easy to hit but hard to score damage on. As it is without weapon features, it take a roll of 6 to hit a Primus. I submit that to hit a Primus would take a roll of 3 or higher and then the second roll for damage would require a 5 or higher. In the same way, a Darkner would need a 5 or higher to hit but only a 3 or higher to score damage.

 

[jimmor]

1 thing I want to keep: FAPs - simple and effective system which makes BaB5 different from BFG or FT

1 thing I hate: seperate weapon systems in each arc. Ships act like some wooden ships of the line with tens of guns pointing in one direction. Reduces strategy to avoiding getting your fleet into more then one opponents arc.

1 thing I want to keep but adjusted: initiative and initiative sinks

 

[Clanger]

1 thing I want to keep: Crew Score

1 thing I hate: so called "Balanced"Fleets

1 thing I want to keep but adjusted: Campaign Rules

 

[Ben2]

I agree, ditch priority level in favour of a points system. It deals with an awful lot of the balance complaints.

 

[Smegish]

Well, I did think of one idea for solving initiative and init sinks (well stolen from another game at least). Use the Battletech init system for movement, where the player that won init will always get to move something last, no matter how badly outnumbered.

Say for example Player A had 4 ships, Player B had 6 ships, and player A wins init. The move order would be B, A, B, A, B+B, A, B+B, A. The extra units are loaded towards the back so that you still gain some advantage from superior numbers, but nowhere near as much as it is now.

Tried it for the shooting phase as well, but that only works if damage is applied at the end of a phase (like Battletech), instead of immediately. In the game we tried it, thanks to some nasty squadrons a large chunk of the enemy fleet was wiped out before he got to use much of his.

 

[AdrianH]

Thing to keep: simplicity. I've had complete newcomers up and playing at least a basic game inside half an hour, and I don't regard myself as much of a teacher.

Thing I hate: not really much here, most of it goes better under "thing to adjust". I suppose I'm a "B5 fanboy" alluded to by someone in another thread, so what I hated in B5:ACTA were things that never appeared in B5. For example, not the extra ships to bulk out fleets, but carriers, a whole type of ship which never existed in B5 and have about as much place in a B5 game as nuclear missile submarines have in a naval game about WW2. Obviously ACTA 3 doesn't need to worry about B5 but the same basic principle applies - if it's based on a TV series, film or computer game, don't add a whole new ship type or weapon type which doesn't exist in the original.

Thing to adjust: Close Blast Doors. They shouldn't open again every few minutes requiring you to keep closing them, nor should the spring open because the people who closed were killed. Put a check box on the ship record sheet (which is easy if there are pre-printed cleanable sheets). If you declare "Close Blast Doors", tick the box. It stays ticked until you declare "Open Blast Doors". If you get a "No Special Actions" critical, tough, you can't fire more than one weapon until you've repaired the critical.

FAP versus points: counting this under "Simplicity", I agree with BraveSirRobin. FAP may not be as good for designing or tweaking ships but it speeds up fleet selection so you can get on with playing the game.

However, if you do want to go for points, I can think of a couple of ways to deal with the last few points left over after you've bought your ships. One is to make the fighter the basic unit of currency - 1 flight = 1 point. So you can spend any left over points on fighters. The problems are fleets whose fighters are more expensive (e.g. Shadows vs. Drazi) or fleets who don't have fighters (e.g. Drakh). Another possibility is upgrades. You could buy the same sort of refits in a one-off battle as you can buy for RR points in campaigns - in fact, RR points could be the same as ship points. Going the other way, suppose you've picked your ideal fleet and it turns out to be a few points over budget, one solution might be downgrades, the opposite of upgrades. For example, one upgrade is an extra fighter flight, so the downgrade is the ship loses a flight. One upgrade turns a boresight weapon into forward arc, the downgrade is a jammed mount which turns a random forward weapon into boresight.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

What's wrong with carriers in B5? Fighters are a major force in space combat, why wouldn't anyone have ships dedicated to their transport and support? Just because some capital warships seemed to have fighters aboard is no reason to assume there'd be no carriers.

 

[AdrianH]

Ask JMS. The point is, there were no carriers in B5. (Except the Raiders' ship seen in "Signs and Portents", and the existence of such a design seemed to come as a surprise to the B5 command staff.)

Besides, the only reason I mentioned it was to have something to put under "Thing I hate". The real point is that apart from little things like that, there isn't anything I hate about B5:ACTA. I'm not going to throw a tantrum if someone plays a fleet against me which includes carriers!

 

[No. 1 Bear]

Thing to keep movement its really simple dont have to keep track of orders etc.

Thing to get rid of and burn prioroty level.

Thing to change CBD. i really dont want to roll all those dice every time i get hit by a big beam it just slows down the game.

 

[Da Boss]

Ask JMS. The point is, there were no carriers in B5. (Except the Raiders' ship seen in "Signs and Portents", and the existence of such a design seemed to come as a surprise to the B5 command staff.)

well the Balvarin Carrier is in Lost Tales 8)

Some interesting posts here guys - thanks

 

[No. 1 Bear]

what about the carrier of shadow fighters or something similar in an early season 4 episode i think it is.

 

[Lifegiver]

I'd prefer to move to a points based system - whilst the Priority Level system is interesting and can be fun - I feel it is difficult to balance individual ships within a PL which can be done a bit more effectively (i think) with points..........also allows for minor add ons and modules etc for variants and similar.

Well, I think that the FAP system is something that made ACTA special. It´s harder to balance, indeed. But I think it possible after all. Warmachine/Hordes MK2 proves that a system including many different units of the same point cost can be balanced. P&P adjusted many things of the 2nd edition, but I think that it lacked consistence. Once I wrote some adjustments to make worse ships on par with the better ones of the same or similar FAP level. If anyone is interested in this, I can translate it into English and put it to this forum.
After all, a points based system all but ensures the balance of a game. Warhammer is a good example of buggering a points based system.

 

[katadder]

true, warmachine/hordes effectively has effectively 13 priority levels as thats all its points go upto. so you dont need massive points values to create difference/balance but sometimes it helps

 

[Da Boss]

I'd prefer to move to a points based system - whilst the Priority Level system is interesting and can be fun - I feel it is difficult to balance individual ships within a PL which can be done a bit more effectively (i think) with points..........also allows for minor add ons and modules etc for variants and similar.

Well, I think that the FAP system is something that made ACTA special. It´s harder to balance, indeed. But I think it possible after all. Warmachine/Hordes MK2 proves that a system including many different units of the same point cost can be balanced. P&P adjusted many things of the 2nd edition, but I think that it lacked consistence. Once I wrote some adjustments to make worse ships on par with the better ones of the same or similar FAP level. If anyone is interested in this, I can translate it into English and put it to this forum.
After all, a points based system all but ensures the balance of a game. Warhammer is a good example of buggering a points based system.

Always interested in seeing other peoples stuff - stick it up on the forum if you heve the time 8)

 

[Greg Smith]

How do people feel about boresight?

 

[treknogeek]

I like how the concept of boresight adds another dimension to strategy in moving, but attention to the lore of a setting needs to be properly taken into account. Personally, the only weapon in B5 that I can see having boresight in the show in the massdriver (and arguably the Vorlon planet killer), which of course is not boresight in the game.

If dealing with a setting which has no boresight weapons, I could see a Special Order that allows for say F, P, and S arcs targeting the same target.

In short, boresight is valuable but it needs to be believable.

 

[AdrianH]

A boresight weapon is presumably one which is so large that it can't be mounted in a turret but must be built into the hull of the ship, e.g. the spinal mount weapons in Traveller. Thus it should be more powerful than forward arc weapons in other ships of similar priority level.

The other reason for boresight is if there's a mount on each side of the ship, e.g. the laser weapons on Earth ships. One way to model this in a game might be to allow the ship to fire the weapon at 1/2AD anywhere in the forward arc or full AD on the boresight. No SA is needed - boresight is the only place which both mounts can see, so if you've achieved it, you get to use full AD, otherwise only the mount which can see the target gets to fire for 1/2AD.

One nice thing about boresight is the pleasure of putting an Earth ship on a direct line between two enemies, turning and attacking them both with front and aft boresight weapons. A Sharlin can do the same, but full fore and aft arc weapons just make this too easy, and a Sharoos is no challenge at all.