[ACTA:SF] Smaller fleets versus larger ships and initiative

[billclo]

I've seen discussion about how ACTA:SF greatly rewards having more small ships to create initiative sinks. Now that I had the chance to play a larger game (9 vs 8 ships), I now believe that with the current system it's less desirable to have more cruisers/large ships and only a few small ships. It's way too easy for the small ships to swarm the larger ones, staying out of their heavy weapons arcs. If you don't have enough small ships to pounce upon the enemy's small ships you are in big trouble.

I encountered this in my last battle, 8 Gorns vs 9 Klingons. I lost one ship on the approach, making it 7 Gorn vs 9 Klingons. As predicted, the Klingons moved all their small ships first, easily getting on the rear of my cruisers. The cruisers had a hard time getting any worthwhile targets for their plasmas because of this. The only thing saving me from total defeat was leaving 2 BD behind the cruisers and jumping on the rear of the 3 F5 attacking my BCH. They only crippled one F5, leaving 2 vs 2 (with the Gorns having exhausted torpedo tubes).

Then the Klingon cruisers moved in after nearly all my ships had moved, and they easily got where they wanted to be with my having no real ability to flank them due to having moved nearly everything previously.

I saw that a squadron of 3 F5 conducting RX attacks to the rear of a heavy ship has a value seemingly far beyond simple point value. I think the difference in ship numbers seems to become increasingly unbalancing.

I'd like to propose a system similar to what is used in Battle Tech to handle uneven sized forces. It's not perfect, but it ought to provide a starting point to discuss this whole issue.

From Battletech:
A Force modifier is generated and applied to the larger force's Point value. For the purposes of this discussion assume a 1250 point force. I'll start with the game I did yesterday. 9 Klingons vs 8 Gorns.

The formula is: (S=smaller force), (L=larger force)
Force Modifier = (S/L) + (L/S) -1

So FM = (.888) + (1.125) -1
FM = 2.013 - 1
FM = 1.013. So the larger force's actual Point value goes up from 1250 to 1266.5. Seemingly a minor difference.

But let's look at a larger disparity.

9 vs 6, FM = 1.167, making the larger force now worth 1458.75 pts vs 1250.
9 vs 5, FM = 1.356, making the larger force now worth 1695 pts vs 1250.

9 vs 5 or 6 is easy to accomplish by purchasing lots of E4/F5 hulls. If the enemy doesn't follow suit and buy tons of small ships he's grossly disadvantaged.

To handle uneven numbers of ships with regard to initiative, again borrowing from Battletech which has a similar I move one unit, you move one unit, etc.

Example: 5 units vs 8 units. Normally under the current ACTA:SF system, the larger force would move 3 units after all the smaller force's units have moved. This gives a great advantage to the larger force.

With Battletech's system, you move the units thusly:
If prior to any pair of movements (one each side) one team has at least twice as many units as the other team, the team with twice as many units declares movement for 2 units not 1. If the larger force has 3 times as many units as the smaller force the larger force moves 3 units for every one the smaller force moves and so on.

Example:
Side A = 8 units, Side B = 5 units. Side B lost initiative.
Move 1: B moves 1, A moves 1
Move 2: B moves 1, A moves 1
Move 3: B moves 1, A moves 2 (6 units for side a vs 2 left for side B to move = 2x)
Move 4: B moves 1, A moves 2
Move 5: B moves 1, A moves 2.

All 5 units for side B and all 8 units for side B have moved. More even than B moves all 5, and A has 3 to move all at once after all side B's forces have moved.

I think utilizing both changes will significantly help even out the disadvantage given by having fewer ships than the enemy as the current system rewards having hordes of small ships.

 

[JohnDW]

I think it would be much simpler, if you wanted to remove the 'initiative sink' aspect of the game, to simply be to extend the squad rules to include games of less than 2,000 points by making it so that "if one fleet has more ships than their opponents fleet, then they must squadron ships together until both sides have the same number of activations per turn'


I haven't had much problem with initiative sinks though, in games or in theory. If a player wants to take weaker ships to gain more activations, let them. It won't stop my dreadnought from blowing up their biggest cruiser with a little support. Or maybe blow up two of his smaller ships. Klingons, and probably Kzin, are the two extreme examples of where more smaller ships is better.

 

[Da Boss]

Ah the In sinking issue :wink:

There are two schools of thought:

A Its a major problem and needs fixing
B Its a part of the build of the game (I tend to go with B).

There are very many threads about fixing the various iterations of ACTA and its In sinking - I don't think you will get an official change but as always whatever works for you in your games is cool

 

[MongooseMatt]

I haven't had much problem with initiative sinks though, in games or in theory. If a player wants to take weaker ships to gain more activations, let them. It won't stop my dreadnought from blowing up their biggest cruiser with a little support. Or maybe blow up two of his smaller ships. Klingons, and probably Kzin, are the two extreme examples of where more smaller ships is better.

Same here. There is also the fact that small ships have small shields and while a big ship can take a great deal of punishment and recover (by boosting shields and repairs), a small ship will go pop to the same punishment in a turn.

That is one reason the bosting shields rules work the way they do

We have found the best fleets to be centred around cruisers, with supporting dreads (battlecruisers kinda straddle the line between dreads and cruisers) and smaller craft (and light cruisers straddle the divide there).

To the OP, I played a very similar battle the other day with Gorn against Klingons. One Battlecruiser tied up his frigates while the rest of my fleet smashed his line. Yes, the Battlecruiser paid for that and had to be pulled out but, by that time, the frigates were having to go head to head with the rest of the fleet - and there is no way they can slip past all of them.

Keep plugging away at it, I don't think initiative was the reason you lost.

 

[Greg Smith]

In the Mongoose tourney, I found that I was out-sinked quite a bit. It isn't a terrible disadvantage when there are so many weapons with overlapping arcs, but it can be frustrating never getting to fire your big guns.

 

[The Big D]

I have yet to play any big battles but can see some plans forming for when I do.

Frigate screens at the front, with a V formation of cruisers behind. With this the enemy may get some small ships into good arcs but one or 2 bigger ships can probably still get heavy weapons on one or 2 enemies. You need to plan the tactics as a fleet, not as individual ships in a free for all. They have to support each other.

On the initaitive sink point I have also been pondering on mods for huge battles that I think Matt mentioned a while back. This is where sinks could have a huge impact.

My thought was to have 2 iniative steps. The first for lone ships. Anything not in a squadron must move in the first initative step. Once all of the lone ships have moved, then the Squadron initiative step begins. Squadrons can cover each other better and react as a group while individuals can be isolated and destroyed more eaisily. There would be extra stuff such as defensive fire for squadrons, and damage effects forcing ships out of formation.

Another thought was on squadron composition. Allowing any ships that are identical to be squadroned up, or a big ship to have smaller escorts, but only ships with the command trait could lead mixed squadrons of ships of the same size class. This would obviously mean classifying ships into size classes - Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Dreadnought and Battleship sort of thing. It could even mean bringing in a command 0 trait to lead a squadron without affecting iniative for things like Fed FFBs or Klingon F5C/F5L.

Personally I dont like the idea of forcing people into arbitrary squadrons because your opponent happened turned up with a couple of big ships.
'sir there is only a few of them! Lets squadron up to give them a better chance!' doesn't seem like a sensible plan of action!

Just my thoughts!

Geoff

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Personally I dont like the idea of forcing people into arbitrary squadrons because your opponent happened turned up with a couple of big ships.
'sir there is only a few of them! Lets squadron up to give them a better chance!' doesn't seem like a sensible plan of action!

Agreed, your fleet should not be forced in such a way by your opponent's fleet.

I can see what I think are good ways to put a limit on activation spamming, but they would at very least require a change to the fleet entries (and so wouldn't be doable until a new edition of ACTA).

If a fleet grows too large without the command structure to coordinate it, it's not going to be able to operate as well as it should. As such, I would propose that a limit is placed on the number of activations (either single ships or squadrons) within a fleet. Certain ships however would increase the activation limit (allowing for more ships to be used in larger games), but otherwise a penalty would be suffered for a fleet currently using more activations than it has the command structure to support. Off the top of my head, I would probably make the penalty that for each activation over the limit, the offending fleet must move a ship/squadron before the normal igo/ugo as determined by initiative is started.

Basically, if you have too many ships without the command structure to support them, they work against you for initiative, as you end up having to move them all before your opponent even starts moving

 

[billclo]

It doesn't appear we're going to get a change in the way the game works, so I guess I'm just going to have to game the system with superior numbers of small ships. Lame really.

 

[JohnDW]

Personally I see a small benefit in forcing people to squadron together, getting to fire multiple ships with a single activation! But I still don't think squadroning should be forced, just kept as up to the player when building their fleet or whenever the squads are declared.

 

[SneakyPete]

I love your ideas for large formation intiative Big D. Specifically that non squadroned ships must move first before squadrons move and Command ships anchoring mixed squadrons.

I did my first 2000pt battle, Fed vs Klink Saturday and we tried using squadron maneuvers. The Feds loaded up on with 7 mixed frigates, 3 BC's and 3 CA's while I chose a DN, 3 BC's, 3 D5's and 4 F5's for a 13/11 disparity. We agreed to at least 2 rounds of squadron maneuver before breaking up into ship tactics, but we still allowed singles. The Fed player was then able to use his two single ships to force the Klinks to move entire squadrons giving up most tactical advantage even though the Klinks won all initiative rolls. By mutual agreement we both decided that did not work and the Fed player grafted his extra ships to existing squadrons by round 2. If we had used the rule about all non squadron ships moving first before any squadron movement it would have worked fine. By round 4 we ended squadron play.

A quick AA of the battle is as follows:
The Feds lined up with 2 squadrons of Frigates in the center with 3 BC's on the Right and 3 CA's on the left.
The Klinks lined up with a DN anchoring a box formation of F5's in the center with BC's on the right and D5's on the left.

After the initial long range opening salvo's, the Fed's made a strong BC attack against my weaker left wing's D5's. Seeing an opening the C8/F5 Center squadron made a crossing attack through the front of the enemy line which was composed of 2 squadrons of frigates during Round 3. The DN took the lion's share of abuse from all the Fed ships while the F5 screen took only very light fire but were able to greatly increase the effective firepower of the DN. Only a string absolutely horrrible die rolls by the Klinks prevented the Fed middle from being eviscerated. (On a side note the rear firing Phaser's 2's of the F5's are quite effective in a furball)

By round 4 most of the Fed Frigates were on the ropes, while the DN was down to half hull and had recovered 2/3 of its shields after 3 turns of APS (turns 2-4) The Klink left had suffered seriously from the Fed BC assault and only one D5 remained at 50% capacity while the Feds 3 BC's had taken one loss thanks to help from the Klink BC's on the right flank while the Fed CA's on their right were content to sit back and lob photon barrages at targets of opportunity in the middle while the Klnk BC's conducted long range strikes against them.

On turn 5 the DN was adrift after the Fed CA's anchoring their left committed to an Alpha strike, and also a couple remaining Fed FF's managed to reload and shoot a last salvo of photon's before they were hunted down and destroyed by the F5's which had detached from squadroning to the DN on round three, but remained close.

We ran out of time to continue after 3 hours and hope to finish later, but at that point the ship count had become:
Fed's 2 BC, 2.5 CA, 1.5 FF's
Klingons 1 Crippled DN, 2 BC, .5 D5 and 4 F5's,

The battle was still up in the air, but now the Klinks had a +2 initiative bonus and more ships for init. sink. (.5 representing heavily damaged ships) against more capital ships of the Feds.


Some other issues we found were #1. Turning as a group and #2 Lining up directly at an enemy.
#1 We found that you have to either play by picking one ship as the pivot point by which others are placed after movement is determined or picking a center point between the ship as the point of rotation or the ships get knocked out of formation and overlap if each is rotated on its own base to turn in place.
#2 With the Fed's wanting to line up directly at an enemy to get PH/SH phaser overlap we found that if at the end of a movement if each ship turned to point at the same enemy they would be breaking formation. So then we had to decide whether to be strict in implementation on whether they were lined up on the axis, or just allow a player to say the entire squadron is turning to line up on a target even though not all the ships technically were lined up directly at the target. We elected to go with the looser squadron pointing at target choice.