[ACTA:SF] Star Fleet Setting Question

[hdan]

In the Star Fleet setting, what relationship do Impulse engines have to Tactical Warp motion? I ask because why would warp-capable ships care if their Impulse engines took critical hits? I've read the FTL page in ACTA:SF, but it still doesn't quite match up with the critical hit table. I'm almost completely ignorant of ADB's version of 'trek, so I'm sure I'm just missing some key piece of intuition.

I also ask because my kid, who I'm going introduce to ACTA:SF this weekend, is an ST nut (TNG especially), and will be driven mad by the technical differences in the settings if I don't have some handwave-ium ready.

My personal attempt to explain things would involve the "tactical warp" being more of an impulse multiplier if you will, where the warp bubble essentially neutralizes the ship's inertia so that the impulse drives can push the ship around precisely by the impulse drives. Full warp involves actually using the warp bubble to travel, which takes a lot more energy, etc.

 

[Nerroth]

This might help.

In SFB, impulse allows for non-tactical warp movement; you can go about nine parsecs a day in transit, but you have to slow to sublight speeds to actually fight. Tactical warp drive makes you much faster strategically, allows you to fight at low warp speeds, and also provides the kind of energy you need to arm certain specific kinds of weapons, like photon torpedoes. (At the scale SFB is set at, impulse engines allow for only one hex of movement per turn, as opposed to the maximum of 30 you can get from warp engines.)

In FC, the issue of where you get your power from is less dramatic, but even there ships which have no Warp boxes are heavily restricted in terms of movement.

 

[Iain McGhee]

As I understand it, the ship's warp nacelles are only used to create the "bubble" that allows FTL speeds but the impulse engines are still required to provide thrust.

 

[Sgt_G]

Ths topic came up in another thread a few weeks ago:

http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=49516&p=699318#p699318

 

[starbreaker]

If your friend is a hardcore Star Trek fan, no matter what series he favors you're best off telling him up front that SFU isn't Trek, never will be Trek, and never really was Trek. Some of the ships and names are the same, and that's as close as it gets. Sell it as a bizarre fan-based alternate universe that makes Enterprise and the last movie look canonical by comparison.

Pretending SFU is more than tangentially related to the franchise just ticks off the more devout fans IME. Some of them get quite angry about it, even. The game was never very true to the series, and by the time the first movie hit the divergence was already pretty severe. The decades of Trek canon since then are so full of jumbled technobabble and inconsistencies that wargaming it all would be nearly impossible - even the more loosely structured RPGs have struggled to let players suspend disbelief - and none of them had to tackle the Bakula stuff or the franchise relaunch.

On the plus side, you can point out that at least ACTA isn't the Heroclix version - Batman will never single-handedly beat a D7 over here.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Are you saying Batman couldn't beat a bunch of Klingons? :lol:

 

[Totenkopf]

Are you saying Batman couldn't beat a bunch of Klingons? :lol:

Are we talking about Val Kilmer as Batman, or George Clooney as Batman? Because I don't think George Clooney could beat a Klingon *insert small furry animal* much less one Klingon.

 

[Iron Domokun]

Adam West's Batman could beat anybody, with a lot of "PAF! POW!" sound effects, to boot.

 

[Totenkopf]

Adam West's Batman could beat anybody, with a lot of "PAF! POW!" sound effects, to boot.

okay, one final off topic comment, how many ADs do you get per POW?

 

[Sgt_G]

Sell it as a bizarre fan-based alternate universe that makes Enterprise and the last movie look canonical by comparison. .... The game was never very true to the series, and by the time the first movie hit the divergence was already pretty severe.

Actually, I'd say SFB was truer to the TV show that the show was to itself. Remember that SFU is set in "classic Trek" using the 1960's show and 1970's cartoon version (aka ST:TOS & ST:TAS). Starting with the first movie and especially with ST:TNG, SFB history is totally different from Trek history. In fact, I wrote a short story on that very subject. I can't post it (my ISP stopped web-page service and I havn't found a good home for my on-line stuff yet), but if you PM me I'll e-mail you a copy.

 

[Iron Domokun]

"The game was never very true to the series..."

It was true to those parts of the series that it chose to model, and was able to model within its license restrictions. A lot of the technical data came from stuff that was canon at the time, e.g. The Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual, blueprints for the Klingon ship, etc.

A lot of ST fans hate the SFU because it emphasises the military, which it is fashionable to despise in certain parts of Western society, or pretend that in the future military force will not be necessary in their Utopian post-scarcity society. :roll:

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

There is also the fact that a wargame with no war isn't very interesting.

In the Dark Grimness of the suitably far millennium... there is only peace and quiet. :lol:

 

[Nerroth]

To be fair, the kind of "strange, new worlds" stories that don't always fit in too well in a tabletop wargame are far more at home in, say, Prime Directive.

So far as Star Fleet goes, the Federation sourcebook does note that there are many within the organisation, and the UFP as a whole, who see exploration as its true and highest calling; and that for those with such ideals, the Second Fleet (home of the various survey cruisers) is the most eagerly sought-after peacetime posting.


And in any case, if a company with a license from Paramount were to cover, say, the Dominion War, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to imagine they might split the space- and ground-combat elements of that conflict into dedicated wargame engines, and keep the diplomacy, intrigue, and skull-duggery to a pen-and-paper RPG. Would that make either side of the equation any less "Trek" for all that?

 

[hdan]

Thanks guys. In the end, the expected conversation happened , but the resolution was a surprisingly mature (for an 11yo) "I think I'll just imagine that when it says 'Impulse', it means 'Warp'. I suppose it's just a game mechanic at any rate."

We both agreed that the game makes for a very cinematic and "spiritually true" version of Trek, and that taking a face full of overloaded photon torpedoes in the face after being softened up by two banks of "Killzone" ranged phaser-1s isn't a good way to win a battle. He had no trouble grasping (or employing) the concept of weapon arcs or killszones, or depleting my drones for a turn by making me use them to neutralize his own drones.

Though next time I really must remember the Klingon's double-shields to the front.

 

[Totenkopf]

Thanks guys. In the end, the expected conversation happened , but the resolution was a surprisingly mature (for an 11yo) "I think I'll just imagine that when it says 'Impulse', it means 'Warp'. I suppose it's just a game mechanic at any rate."

We both agreed that the game makes for a very cinematic and "spiritually true" version of Trek, and that taking a face full of overloaded photon torpedoes in the face after being softened up by two banks of "Killzone" ranged phaser-1s isn't a good way to win a battle. He had no trouble grasping (or employing) the concept of weapon arcs or killszones, or depleting my drones for a turn by making me use them to neutralize his own drones.

Though next time I really must remember the Klingon's double-shields to the front.

congrats, so does that mean you've added another number to our merry band ? I can't wait to play with my Klingons (no homo).