[ACTA:SF] ADD clarification

[Iain McGhee]

1) Do you lose a point of ADD for each roll of 1 or do you only lose one point of ADD no matter how many ones are rolled when defending against a single attack ?

2) Can you elect to use only a single point of ADD against an attack or do you have to use your ship's full score every time ?

 

[Greg Smith]

1) Do you lose a point of ADD for each roll of 1 or do you only lose one point of ADD no matter how many ones are rolled when defending against a single attack ?

We find it is better to roll the dice one at a time. For example 4AD of drones vs 2 anti-drone.

Roll 2. I drone stopped.
Roll 1, CLUNK, drone stopped. Anti-drone drops to 1.
Roll 1. CLUNK, drone stopped. Anti-drone is now empty.
4th drone gets through.

If you had rolled 4 dice and got 4,2,1,1 all 4 would have been stopped.

2) Can you elect to use only a single point of ADD against an attack or do you have to use your ship's full score every time ?

It doesn't matter. Anti-drone 2 is the same as anti-drone 1 but with more ammo.

 

[Iain McGhee]

Thanks Greg, that's perhaps the best way to handle it, although I don't think rolling one die at a time fits with the wording of the rule (or it's effectiveness in the source material). IMO it should be impossible for the first attack on a ship to get past ADD, given that since it can't be reloaded in SF you're essentially firing up to the equivalent of a Federation Commander ADD rack's 8 rounds at a single ship's drone volley.

Hence the questions.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Thanks Greg, that's perhaps the best way to handle it, although I don't think rolling one die at a time fits with the wording of the rule (or it's effectiveness in the source material). IMO it should be impossible for the first attack on a ship to get past ADD, given that since it can't be reloaded in SF you're essentially firing up to the equivalent of a Federation Commander ADD rack's 8 rounds at a single ship's drone volley.

You are correct - roll all dice together. You will stop all drones coming with a sinle attack, whether or not you run low on ammo. That will affect the next drone attack...

 

[Greg Smith]

Okay, that is definitely quicker. It is maybe something that should be added to the FAQs if/when they get updated.

 

[Stumonster]

I am taking Matt's advice and re-reading rules to apply them just as they are, and not 'Read too much into them'. I find the Anti-Drone trait rules are actually quite clear as written, so I do not have any questions now about how that works. There are some ships statistics though that have raised a question in my mind regarding the trait: The Orion ships.

My son and I are going to have a play test this week involving the Orions and also adding terrain for the first time. My question revolves around the optional mounts and drones on Orion ships. Let's take a Salvage Cruiser as an example. It has a 4 drone weapon system, and two optional mounts. Lets say I choose a drone for each optional mount. If we use the simplest interpretation of the rules, when I nominate that ship to fire, I would nominate a target for all three separately (i.e. I could target all 3 at one ship or 1 each at 3 ships, etc.) It would also mean that each of those attacks would have to be dealt with separately by any ship with Ant-Drone traits. (Thus the post on this thread.) So, taking our Salvage Cruiser shooting at a Klingon D6, the Orion declares that he fires the drones in order 1 AD, 1AD, 4 AD.

First 1 AD attack: The Klingon would roll 1d6 and no matter what, the attack is stopped, however, if a 1 is rolled then the system is out of ammo and the Anti-Drone has no effect on the next two 'waves'.

Second 1 AD attack: If ammo still exists, then the Klingon player rolls 1d6 and and no matter what, the attack is stopped, however, if a 1 is rolled then the system is out of ammo and the Anti-Drone has no effect on the next 'wave'.

Last attack 4 AD: If ammo still exists, the Klingon player rolls 4d6 and no matter what all 4 dice are stopped, but if any of the 4 come up as '1' then the system is out of ammo.

In other words, having 3 drone systems on a single ship gives the Anti-Drone equipped ship 3 chances to run out of ammo and the possibility of getting later weapon systems drones through. This differs greatly from just grabbing 6 dice, all 6 AD are stopped, but there are 6 chances to roll a '1' and have the system run out of ammo.

(Come to think of it, since these are different 'weapons' then any ship trying to evade the drones would have to make 3 opposed rolls: Two for 1 AD each and one for 4 AD, correct? )

The example above (3 separate waves) is how I would apply the RAW. Is that correct in the view of the author/Rules Masters??

 

[Rick]

I think that is still not quite right. In your example, if the Orion was shooting the 3 drone racks at 3 separate ships, each target ship would have a chance of losing 1 AD of drones. If you fire all 3 drone racks at a single target, no matter how many 1's were rolled, only 1 AD of drones would be lost that turn.

 

[scoutdad]

That's a good question and I can see how one could reach that conclusion, but I believe the drones would all be rolled into one attack.
Consider:
If you took all phaser-1s in the option mounts and fired all of them at a single unit, you'd combine them all into a single attack and roll 5 dice at the same time.
And while it's true that drones are not phasers, I think the command would be given to fire them all at once nad they would arrive in a group of 5 drones, not 1 drone... followed by one drone... followed by 3 more drones.

At least that's my two Quatloos worth. YMMV.

 

[Stumonster]

Interesting, scoutdad, that you have gone to where I have been thinking toward since I posted the question originally. For my part, I was thinking that since the mounts for drones are changed to arc 'T' they would all get lumped in together: you really do not see any ships that have the same firing arc for the same weapon with multiple entries on the weapons list. (In other words you do not seem to see an entry for 3 AD phaser-1's with F, P, S and then another entry for 1 AD of phaser-1 with arc F, P, S. You would normally see just an increase to 4 AD on that line.

So, I was thinking that all of the weapons that are of the same type (Drone) in the same arc (T) would have to be combined on 1 line. That does make more sense to me and works better with the mechanics of the game and the desire to KISS as Matt mentioned.

That is how we will proceed. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Hope to have a battle report in the next few days . . . .

 

[Lord Hastings]

There was a more precise ruling on this with the arrival of the (playtest) Kzinti Drone Dreadnought which did have two lines of Drone weapon systems.
Each Drone weapon system is a separate attack as far as the ADD go, so the 'standard' 4AD of drones would be one attack and the any others would be a separate attack. You can't see it on the ACTA ship description, but the System Display for the Salvage Cruiser has the two option mounts together, so in your example I would count them as a single weapon system.
The other two ships (Light Raider and Matrix Destroyer) each have three separate systems, so that could be three 1AD attack of Drones if you wanted.