At what PL does ACTA "break"?

[Foxmeister]

Ok, so this topic is a fairly leading question, but one of the things I've noticed here is that many players (and specifically playtesters) seem to like to play at Raid PL, and overall it seems to me that the game is most balanced at that level - i.e. a 5pt Raid is probably the most likely to produce a fun, balanced, game, with the least amount of "problem artifacts" (e.g. swarm, initiative, boresight, critical tables, etc) rearing their ugly heads.

So, the question here is, at what point does ACTA "break" for you?

At this point, I should try to define what I mean by "break" - which is not an easy task, since for me it is more of a feeling than something that can be easily quantified. Essentially, I'm talking about the point where the system fails to produce realistic results for a battle (as far as a fantasy game can produce them!) at a rate which begins to reduce your enjoyment of the game - essentially, the system starts to get in the way of the game itself, rather than supporting it.

I'll stick my head above the parapet first and say that I believe the system starts to "break" at 5 Battle, and gets progressively worse as you move up the priority levels. Of course, two reasonable players with two reasonable fleets can make it work at any PL, but if you don't get that this is where the problems start.

Regards,

Dave

 

[skavendan]

It all depends on the ships, fact is some are better at taking out others that's ok. I just think they need more game testing ship wise and it should be on a 1v1 ship bases* Any ship that is not a scout should stand a decent chance of taking out another ship at the same level.

* obviously if we are talking ships that buy 2 for 1 PL then it should be a 2 on 1 event or 1 on 1 in the instance of early years EA fighting Narn

 

[Bostich]

Running every single ship against every other single ship at the same PL .. that's what computer programs are for.

Plus that wouldn't do anything since at the ship.vs.ship level you wouldn't want the game completely balanced. What would be the point of that?

If you're not trying to be "gamey" , the system works. The downside is that a broad system like PL allows for it too easily.

It's unfortunate that MP chose a PL system and not a points system. Less work for them, more work for us, but there's a good reason most other mini's games work that way.

I guess I'm lucky that as the only guy in my neck of the woods with ships, and I own all basically balanced fleets, I don't experience much of these problems. Nobody shows up to play with 20 of the best ship at a given PL to try and break the PL system.

 

[Burger]

The FAP system doesn't break at a certain level. It is open to abuse because of the FAP splitting allowed. For example taking 8 Twofers for 1 Raid point, or taking 12 Skirmish for 3 Battle, or 24 Skirmish for 3 War.

To "fix" it, go back to Armageddon FAP splits... am I sounding like a broken record yet?

 

[Triggy]

The FAP system doesn't break at a certain level. It is open to abuse because of the FAP splitting allowed. For example taking 8 Twofers for 1 Raid point, or taking 12 Skirmish for 3 Battle, or 24 Skirmish for 3 War.

To "fix" it, go back to Armageddon FAP splits... am I sounding like a broken record yet?

I'm all for going back to the Armageddon splits (with one or two minor tweaks to the numbers but they would be very small tweaks!)

 

[Enalut]

I just voted for something else because I agree with Burger--the problem isn't necessrily the level, but the expotential point break down.

I agree with Burger--bring back the Armageddon point breakdowns.

 

[l33tpenguin]

If higher level PL ships were less vulnerable to crits and made a bit 'beefier' this wouldn't be a problem as much. as it is large ships just don't stand up to their 'point equivalent' of smaller ships, making smaller ships unbalanced. In a 5 point War battle, 5 War level ships should be able to hold their own against a fleet of skirmish ships thrown against them.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Armageddon splits is the "fix" of breaking the FAP system some more and hoping that it cancels out the lack of ships being balanced. Maybe as a band-aid, but for the long term wouldn't it be better to directly fix the balance problem?

 

[lastbesthope]

The Arma splits did have the advantage of being able to 'skip' PLs in your fleet choice when breaking down points.

Tweaking the numbers might be needed but I liked the flexibility it gave.

LBH

 

[skavendan]

The Arma splits did have the advantage of being able to 'skip' PLs in your fleet choice when breaking down points.

Tweaking the numbers might be needed but I liked the flexibility it gave.

LBH

How did the old break down work? Am not a old player

 

[Burger]

How did the old break down work? Am not a old player

See clutter free resource sticky thread

 

[eldiablito]

I agree (in theory) that the higher level games get broken very quickly.

Meanwhile, I actually think it is more broken at the smaller games: 5 point Skirmish and what/not.

Some fleets have ZERO options at Patrol: Brakiri, Vorlons, Shadows, cannot think of any others off the top of my head...

If you are playing a scenario where you are supposed to hold quadrants with capital ships, then they get few (if any) options! Meanwhile, some ships are plain NASTY at their level... the 2-for-1 patrol ships come to mind...

 

[Greg Smith]

But fighters count as ships for holding quadrants.

 

[lastbesthope]

But fighters count as ships for holding quadrants.

Indeed they do, or at least they did at the last Mongoose tourney.

LBH

 

[Shadow Queen]

A battle is 2 raid points.

A war is 4 raid points should it not be 3 points

 

[Locutus9956]

Frankly it's still a mystery to me WHY they changed the breakdowns, nearly ALL the experience players on here seem to prefer the old system including as far as I can tell, at least a sizeable chunk of the official playtesters.

I dont think the game 'breaks' at a particular patrol level but the nature of the breakdown system and initiative system tends to exagerate the problems with the game the bigger the battle you try to play but again it varies wildly depending on what fleet your using what PL you will find fleets becoming very strong at.

Most tourneys of late (including I noticed, the official Mongoose run ones....) seem to have introduced a limit on the number of ships allowed in a fleet, whilst this does work it seems to me that if your having to impose adtional restrictions on peoples fleets outisde the standard fleet selection system that perhaps that system might have a few flaws that could do with a closer look?.....

 

[Burger]

Frankly it's still a mystery to me WHY they changed the breakdowns, nearly ALL the experience players on here seem to prefer the old system including as far as I can tell, at least a sizeable chunk of the official playtesters.

Indeed. When Matt sent out the rules for tier 2 playtesting, there were inconsistent FAP splitting rules.

The rule book had a table showing slightly modified Armageddon splits (same except buying 4 levels down got 9 instead of 12, 5 levels down got 12 instead of 18 ). Splitting across multiple levels was the same as Armageddon.

The fleet book had a table with the current 2e splits. The fleet book also had a listing of all the possible splits, however this listing used yet another breakdown splitting: 1 Armageddon got you 2 War, 3 Battle, 4 Raid, 6 Skirmish or 8 Patrol. And multi-level splits in the fleet book used a buying up method, whereby you could not re-split a point downwards, but you could split to 8 patrol then trade in 2 of them for a skirmish.

I sent an email asking which FAP splitting method was correct on the same day that I was sent the playtest rules, because in my view this is a massive problem and balance issue. Changing the FAP splitting rues and numbers, alters balance considerably. I also put it in my final list of typos/inconsistencies. I never received a reply or any feedback. It kind of makes all the playetesting and balancing of ships completely pointless if you can't tell how many of them you get for one point. Sure, a Warbird might be balanced against a Vorchan, but is a Bin'Tak balanced against 4 Vorchans or 6 or 8? Then when it went to press, it was still inconsistent and needed a FAP splitting PDF. Ho hum.

 

[Foxmeister]

Well, if most of the playtesters seem to agree that the Armageddon splits were better than what we currently have, here's to hoping that P&P revisits the table!

Regards,

Dave

 

[Burger]

Absolutely! *Cross fingers*

 

[CZuschlag]

Keep in mind that if you do re-examine the fleet breakdowns, you also have to take a good hard look at the Amu for sure, and need to rethink the Ma'cu. You might even want to rebalance the Ria'vash, but this is somewhat unlikely -- obviously, this is because the value of the fleet point breakdown chart is implicitly built in to the Huge Hangars trait.

Yes, if you do this, I am calling for a partial nerf of my own fleet, the Drakh. All I humbly ask for in return is a reasonably efficient method of dealing with Breaching Pods -- Escort and some Antifighter on the Patrol Cruiser would do it .