Call to Arms: Noble Armada--Clarifications?

[MWojcik]

Hello, First time forum member here with an aching need for answers.

First of all, i play both CTA games, but it's Noble Armada of which i have questions. After all, the guys i play with are nigh unto lawyers...

1: how exactly do shields work?: i understand the end phase regeneration, but the way it's written in the book, it seems like each individual weapon system has to face off against all those shields, banning burn out, so that the only weapons that get through your average 3 pt. shields are ones that follow a burn out. not having burn out is an outright liability, making small ships only useful for burnout effects, unless ships could stack like-with-like weapons systems and turret arcs to increase firepower...

----does burn-out stack with multi-hit? that is, does the initial hit have to 'get through' to cause the multi-hit damage? this is not clear, though i think it stacks.

2: is a dog-fighter's success influenced by the weapon their ships are built with, or is a dog-fight considered to use the 'co-ax MG' as opposed to the main gun? example: the Church Support Fighter has Disable, which means it should deal no damage to enemy fighters unless the dogfight roll caused destruction is separate from weapon abilities. because fighter's don't take crit effects...

3: Why are the Kurgan so insanely powerful? most of their weapons don't care about shields, and even though they are inaccurate, the sheer volume will allow plentiful hits. Their hit points also make them difficult for equally point valued House vessels to take them down. though, to be honest, this is statistical conjecture: no one i know has played Kurgan yet. Unless, i choose to... (PS: i despise their fluff. ewww!!!!)

but with all those missiles, i'm definitely getting Escorts for my Hazat....

4: So, the Vau are supposed to be powerful? i have proxied my Klingon and tried them out: it seems random and flighty is a closer bid. if you get max hits with the meson Blast, with boost, they do a ton of damage, if the attack dice hit higher than average. this gets worse if you take in account the clarification above. Best thing about the Vau is their high Hull
the Vau have exceptionally light hull-damage, and though the shields when boosted are nice, burnout and Multi-hit is common and those Al-Malik have no complaints against me. I'm always using 'Close Blast Doors' instead, and praying...because we don't have the hull to go up against House Vessels, let alone shield-ignoring Al-Malik and likely Kurgan
...i tried a set of Duels between a Heracles and two of my Strider-clones...i lost 10/10, and i was being elusive as possible in a debris dense area...

I really want to like Vau...however...

a clarification on my part: i love the game, but i need precise clarification on order of action and abilities, like i said.

Thank You all, and Cheers!

 

[Nerroth]

Out of curiousity, what is it about the Caliphate's background data that provokes such a reaction?

 

[Greg Smith]

Burn out does stack with multi-hit.

Non burn-out weapons do struggle to get through shields, but burnout is pretty common.

 

[Dagretto]

3: Why are the Kurgan so insanely powerful? most of their weapons don't care about shields, and even though they are inaccurate, the sheer volume will allow plentiful hits. Their hit points also make them difficult for equally point valued House vessels to take them down. though, to be honest, this is statistical conjecture: no one i know has played Kurgan yet. Unless, i choose to... (PS: i despise their fluff. ewww!!!!)

We have someone in our group that plays Kurgans, and feels they are a bit underpowered, especially compared to the Decados (we have 2 of those in our group, and I have them too, though I regularly play Hawkwood). Right now the Decados seem to dominate with us...

Damon.

 

[locarno24]

1: how exactly do shields work?: i understand the end phase regeneration, but the way it's written in the book, it seems like each individual weapon system has to face off against all those shields, banning burn out, so that the only weapons that get through your average 3 pt. shields are ones that follow a burn out. not having burn out is an outright liability, making small ships only useful for burnout effects, unless ships could stack like-with-like weapons systems and turret arcs to increase firepower...

Quite correct. However......

....Look through the house rulebook (don't have Fleets of the Fading Suns, I admit) and identify any warship (i.e. other than fighters) which doesn't have either Slow or Burnout on its weapons (or the option of such in the case of Vuldrok). The only one I can think of is the dreadnought-calibre meson guns, which really, really don't care about the two or three points of damage your shields will stop.

Essentially, yes, to do damage to a target, you will need to fire one ship of similar size to burn out a target's shields then hit it with a second ship to hurt the hull.

This makes concentration of fire a big deal unless you are Al-Malik or Kurgan - who could also spread their shield-piercing firepower out liberally and hope for critical hits on multiple targets.

2: is a dog-fighter's success influenced by the weapon their ships are built with, or is a dog-fight considered to use the 'co-ax MG' as opposed to the main gun? example: the Church Support Fighter has Disable, which means it should deal no damage to enemy fighters unless the dogfight roll caused destruction is separate from weapon abilities. because fighter's don't take crit effects...

Your weaponry, or lack thereof, is included in your dogfight stat. Losing always kills the enemy fighter.

3: Why are the Kurgan so insanely powerful? most of their weapons don't care about shields, and even though they are inaccurate, the sheer volume will allow plentiful hits. Their hit points also make them difficult for equally point valued House vessels to take them down. though, to be honest, this is statistical conjecture: no one i know has played Kurgan yet. Unless, i choose to... (PS: i despise their fluff. ewww!!!!)

but with all those missiles, i'm definitely getting Escorts for my Hazat....

They're not as bad as they look. Against an enemy destroyer, with the rockets AND heat blasters both having innaccurate, you're looking at only getting one hit per 6 attack dice - and, unlike Al-Malik (the other rocket-heavy fleet), there's no explorer with scout to give you redirects. Inaccurate makes you worth approximately half your number of 'normal' attack dice - and compared to multihit blasters, that's halved again - meaning the 20 rockets pouring of the flanks of a Yildugh-class are worth about 5 blasters. With the heat blaster turrets suffering from this as well, Kurgan aren't as scary in a broadside duel as raw numbers suggest.

Decados, as noted, are generally the best armed. The Kurgan secret weapon is generally boarding actions - you get free marauders on your galliots.

Escorts are still a bloody good idea, though. Everything that matters in a Kurgan fleet - capital ship torpedoes and missiles, light warship rockets, martyr fighters and grimson troops - can be shot to bits with gatling lasers.

What do you dislike about their fluff?

 

[MWojcik]

This makes my Hazat fleet much more powerful, since burnout paired with multi-hit seems to be our gunnery specialty. very Cool!!

no adding together weapons systems though?
no clarification there...since two identical weapon systems, say, with 3 dice apiece facing off against shields 2, don't roll 6 attack dice against shields rating 2 with 4 getting to the hull, but 3 vs. 2 twice, for 2 separate incidences of 1 hit apiece. or am i wrong?

The Kurgan?
so rockets aren't so bad...hmm. well, it's those rockets with semi-guided doing the close rush with ALL THAT HULL DAMAGE to chop through.
Fleets of the Fading Suns did 2 things: 1) the game now really feels Fading Suns-esque and 2) it made some big changes to the balance of power. no more destroyer centric fleets.
But, putting Semi-Roc on the Kurgan in a rush seems very hard to beat...

As far as my dislike...I'm allowed to have taste preferences! other than that, well, besides they being the fundamentalist progeny of a self-appointed capitalistic god with a shtick for extreme wealth imbalance and gender discrimination in the extreme....?
Personal taste?
....also, Decadence and gender separation are not my things.


BTW: ignore the little section on the bottom about the Vau. Because i still think they are over-hyped and unrepresented.
...in other words...

prove to me that Vau have power.
(esp. since Vau can't do sphere effects AND special orders...doing Shield Boost and Close Blast Doors simultaneously would solve a lot of problems... )
that Heracles still haunts my dreams of actually being a Vau fleet commander...

 

[Greg Smith]

no adding together weapons systems though?
no clarification there...since two identical weapon systems, say, with 3 dice apiece facing off against shields 2, don't roll 6 attack dice against shields rating 2 with 4 getting to the hull, but 3 vs. 2 twice, for 2 separate incidences of 1 hit apiece. or am i wrong?

By all means roll burn out or slow weapons together. Don't roll non-burnout ones together.

 

[MWojcik]

no adding together weapons systems though?
no clarification there...since two identical weapon systems, say, with 3 dice apiece facing off against shields 2, don't roll 6 attack dice against shields rating 2 with 4 getting to the hull, but 3 vs. 2 twice, for 2 separate incidences of 1 hit apiece. or am i wrong?

By all means roll burn out or slow weapons together. Don't roll non-burnout ones together.

so, you can't stack non-burn of similar capacity (aka, matching weapon types completely) in overlapping arcs (T and a fixed arc) to get a bigger boom? makes sense rules-wise, dunno why not according to how such weapons would work.

call me dense. :lol:

 

[steelbrok]

By all means roll burn out or slow weapons together. Don't roll non-burnout ones together.

Now this leads me to ask a question:

Slow weapons ignore shields, no problem there

I've taken it that a burn-out weapon that hits an active shield takes down the shield but doesn't cause a hit to the ship itself (so if it get 4 burn out hits and three shields are active the first three are absorbed but take down the shields and the 4th causes damage)

 

[Greg Smith]

Target has 3 shields.

I roll a 4AD burnout, get 3 hits, so shields are down.
I follow with a 2AD burnout, both hit and so get 2 rolls on the damage table.

If I rolled all 6AD together and got 5 hits, the first 3 hits would take the shields down, the next two would roll on the damage table.

Either way, the shields are down, so now you fire those slug guns.

 

[steelbrok]

Good, I am doing it right!

 

[katadder]

just good to see so much activity in an NA thread
sometimes feel we need to remind mongoose NA still lives

 

[MWojcik]

just good to see so much activity in an NA thread
sometimes feel we need to remind mongoose NA still lives

Now remind Mongoose that B5 is still a part of sci-fi, and that a bit of prestige comes from at least offering back stock / recast upon request fro the line....

 

[McKinstry]

just good to see so much activity in an NA thread
sometimes feel we need to remind mongoose NA still lives

Now remind Mongoose that B5 is still a part of sci-fi, and that a bit of prestige comes from at least offering back stock / recast upon request fro the line....

They no longer have a license. No ability to sell/use/do anything B5-ish without a visit from nasty lawyer types.

 

[steelbrok]

When you send your fighters in do you roll each fighter's attack separately or can you roll them together?

I have two Decados heavy fighters, their meson tubes have 2 attack dice each and do NOT burn out shields.

The target has two shields

If I roll each fighter's attack separately then both will be blocked by the target's shields. If I can roll all four attack dice together then I can achieve up to two hits (presuming that I actually hit the target of course!).

 

[MongooseMatt]

I am afraid you cannot roll the dice together like that

 

[Greg Smith]

Separately. You will need to strip the shields in order to use meson tubes.

 

[steelbrok]

Have rolled separately so far, will just keep doing it!