ACTASF vs. Klingon Armada

[arabuck]

Hello!
I've been trolling these boards for quite some time and I'm pretty psyched for the release of ACTA: Stra Fleet and the miniatures. Its been really cool to see it all develop on the boards.

I picked up Klingon and Romulan Armada last year and had a lot of fun with them. My only gripe was that smaller ships seemed to get destroyed a little too quickly to be of any value. When I finally decided to dive in and get some miniatures for KA I saw the early talk of the Starline 2500 minis online somewhere and thought, "Crap, now I'm gonna have to wait." I was wondering, what is the gameplay difference between ACTA: Star Fleet and Starfleet Armada by Majestic 12 Games? Besides one being hex based.

Has anyone here played both? Is one system more "fun"? Why? Or is it an apples and oranges comparison? From what I have read, they both seem to be around the same scale (squadron to fleet size battles) but I think I read somewhere that ACTA plays faster than Starmada. Does that mean the games are shorter or just the pace of the gameplay is faster?

Thanks for your help, everyone. Can't wait for the game to come out!

-Adam

 

[Iron Domokun]

Hey Adam,

I havent played an ACTA:SF yet, but I am familiar with Klingon Armada.

Similarities:
- Level of detail
- Scale (larger fleets of ships)

Differences:
- Pre-plotted simultaneous movement and fire (Starmada) vs I-go-you-go initiative system for both movement and fire (ACTA)
- Hex-based (Starmada) vs free movement (ACTA)
- 60-degree weapon arcs (Starmada) vs 90-degree arcs (ACTA)
- Ships blow up fairly fast (Starmada) vs ships can take a bit of a pounding (ACTA)
- Damage allocation radically different: Starmada similar to SFB/FC in that you can damage individual weapon mounts and the engines, ACTA relies on "critical hits" for a similar effect in game play
- Hidden cloak (Starmada) vs shooting at cloaked ship with much reduced effect (ACTA)

I'm sure ACTA is just as fun as Starmada, but the way you play each game is going to be different because of the differences in pre-plot vs IGOUGO.

 

[arabuck]

- Ships blow up fairly fast (Starmada) vs ships can take a bit of a pounding (ACTA)

I dig this.