Battle report with substantial house rules

B

Burger

Cosmic Mongoose
Hash and I played EA vs Drazi last night, with substantial house rules. We decided to play a hybrid of ACTA and Full Thrust, each one in varying proportions. The proportions we eventually decided on were ACTA 0%, Full Thrust 100% ;)

The EA fleet, ready to attack... 2 cruiser things (Omegas) and 3 frigattey things (Hyperions).
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Same fleet for Drazi, different models.
DSC02247.jpg


We needed to get used to the movement system... our first moves turned out very similar!
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First blood goes to the Drazi. 2 Hyperions are destroyed. But, one of their Strikehawks is hurting bad!
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Next turn an Omega is destroyed, along with a Strikehawk and Sunhawk.
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Crazy manouvering by EA, gets the Omega out of the Sunhawk's arc. The remaining Hypeion goes boom, though.
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Omega destroys the Strikehawk, but the Sunhawks draw in for the kill. The Omega has lost its screens... will it be able to survive long enough?
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No.
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A narrow win for the Drazi. Well done Hash!
 
I don't know anything about Full Thrust.
So did it make for a quicker game?
Whats the main difference with Full Thrust?
:)
 
I've heard full thrust was complex, but I didn't know that you need a computer to play it. :wink:

Seriously though, how did it go? Did the ships cross over well.
 
If you're gonna go for full thrust, why not just go the whole hog and use the FT mod from the back of the Babylon Project Earthforce sourcebook? it's actually pretty good.
 
Alternately... if you want to keep it simple and bog standard FT with Mongoose/AoG minis:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/B5/index.html

I was creating a bunch of ships myself but mine came out a tad heavier (fine for general play against each other but a little potent possibly for most FT games).

All that said I would say (though Im a tad biased ;)) that mine are better representations of the B5 ships and I've done more OF them (though not in PDF or anything remotely downloadable yet but if your interested PM me and I'll see what I can sort out)
 
As noted, the Babylon Project: Earthforce Sourcebook.
Sadly it's rather out of print, so Ebay is the only suggestion I can make.


Essentially, if you know full thrust rules (or have downloaded them from GZG's website), then the things to mention are:

1) Pulse batteries = FT beams
2) Beam weapons = unique ruleset with a power capacitor
3) Energy mines = something strongly resembling salvo missiles - place after orders written but before moving.
4) Interceptors = Screens (with exceptions!) or antifighter batteries
5) Reaction Drives = newtonian movement rules
6) Gravimetric Drives = cinematic movement rules (a BIG advantage!)
7) Centauri Light Cruiser = Vorchan
8) Minbari Warcruiser = All your fleet are belong to us

if you look around on the web you can find quite a few extra rules (although sadly Aaron Newman's single condensed document form has since vanished). Vorlons, Shadows and ISA, for starters, along with a points system.

Alternatively you can get the Full Thrust ruleset and just design yourself something that you think 'feels' right for B5 warships - which is probably what the Hash & Burger Show did.


Personally I really, really like the damage model and rules of Full Thrust. My only hesitation with the game is the pre-written orders, which I tend not to like as it alway feels to me like it's slowing the game down. It feels better than Aeronautica Imperialis, since at least it's a capital ship engagement not a furious dogfight, but even so I find the game stopping whilst you take a break to scribble down orders seems odd.
 
Da Boss said:
Full Thrust has pre written movement orders - confuses me a bit with one ship never mind several :lol:
Click to expand...

It's actually really simple...and makes for amusing bits when you get Starboard and Port confused!

It was the introductory scenario with no special rules (of which there are a lot of optional ones admittedly!) and it played *MUCH* faster than ACTA even through we were unfamiliar with the rules (well Burger read through them and gave me a summary). The laptop had the rules on PDF in case we had to refer to them...we didn't!

I prefer ACTA overall but the FT movement system is significantly more fun (and incidentally addresses a lot of concerns about initiative sinks etc).

I'd like to try a hybrid with a written order movement system with ACTA (replacing current move system) but it would require a bit of thought to get it to work well...
 
Were you guys using Full Thrust as per the Main 'Full Thrust 2nd Editon' rulebook or the rules from the fleet books (which is basically 2.5 (it's all still a free download, you just get more toys in the fleet books and theres 6 arcs rather than 4 (theres a bit more to it than that but trust me it's still the same game, just better (and as noted has a truly superb design system to let you build your own ships (and all B5 ones can be easily modelled :D)
 
We used the main rulebook (2nd Edition) downloaded from GZG

http://www.groundzerogames.net/downloads/FullThrust.pdf

We played the introductory scenario as it was our first game, we didn't make up any additional rules or ships. (We used the basic Lt Cruiser and Frigates).

Other than the fact we had 5 ships each I don't think we could have been lighter on the rules :)
 
It's worth noting that the EFSB ship combat rules contain quite a bit of material from the FT Fleet books - the vector based movement from the Fleet books is used for the EA and Narn ships (I once used them to make an Omega slide sideways into a double boresight on a primus and a vorchan :D), while the Minbari ships use the original FT move system and IIRC the Centauri use a hybrid of the two. Fans of Beamless Centauri will like their pulse cannon heavy ship sheets :D
 
Were you just using the basic rules-set from book one, then?
If you think you've got the hang of it, might I recommend having a try at the Newtonian movement rules in the More Thrust expansion.

Newtonian movement is the one thing that's tricky to get into any game, and I think it's done well.



Putting pre-written orders into ACTA isn't really necessary, I wouldn't have thought. If wanting to do something to jiggle the initiative system, I've always quite liked the B5Wars system - ships have their own initiative bonus added to your roll, plus global bonuses for Command ships, and that defines the move order of ships in the two fleets. The only problem with that as a system is (surprise, surprise!) Boresighted weapons.

I'm tempted to just give boresight weapons a houserule promotion to forward arc and have done with it.
 
Well in B5 Wars, the boresight arc was the hexline the ship was facing ut of, right? That's a lot more forgiving than the thin line from stem/centre dot in ActA. If you standarsided base/counter sizes and expanded the boresight art to be the width of the appropriate base it'd be a lot more forgiving. IIRC Mongoose were toying with such an idea way back when, hence the old standard base sized PDF that used to be on the site.
 
"Boresight" was just a really tight arc out of wherever. Most of them were on the front or rear of the ship and turning the whole ship ment you aimed it. However, the slight arc did mean that they was very usable at long range.

I think only the Vorlon Planet Killer had the fixed front arc.
 
Hash said:
Da Boss said:
Full Thrust has pre written movement orders - confuses me a bit with one ship never mind several :lol:
Click to expand...

It's actually really simple...and makes for amusing bits when you get Starboard and Port confused!

It was the introductory scenario with no special rules (of which there are a lot of optional ones admittedly!) and it played *MUCH* faster than ACTA even through we were unfamiliar with the rules (well Burger read through them and gave me a summary). The laptop had the rules on PDF in case we had to refer to them...we didn't!

I prefer ACTA overall but the FT movement system is significantly more fun (and incidentally addresses a lot of concerns about initiative sinks etc).

I'd like to try a hybrid with a written order movement system with ACTA (replacing current move system) but it would require a bit of thought to get it to work well...
Click to expand...

Ah I have tried full thrust a good few times - quite liked it - except for the movement - hurts my poor head :lol:
 
I have a copy of the rulebook and EA sourcebook with the Full Thrust rules in it if anyone is interested. They are for sale just PM me.
 
I've read this a few times and I see no need to have written orders
if you use the same initiative merry go round as per ACTA

All it needs is a Burger webpage for creating ships :wink:
 
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