Campaign Questions (And Random Points)

[Madadh]

1) Can a player decide NOT to attack something? The rules do not specifically disallow it, but with many rules I've found in ACTA its rather fuzzy

2) Other Duties: New Strategic Target
Does this seem to be a real pain? Assuming the players are rolling any other duties you're going to see at least a few times per campaign. Should there be a limit on how many times this can be done? Because almost every single time I've seen it rolled it just sticks another completely useless world on the board (since the most common result is a Dead World)

3) Refit: HP bonus
Since HP bonuses seem to round down, can a ship with less than 10 dmg get this refit or do you simple reroll it? Or just always give 1 dmg?

 

[Da Boss]

1) Can a player decide NOT to attack something? The rules do not specifically disallow it, but with many rules I've found in ACTA its rather fuzzy

We have always played you must attack unless you have a ability etc that allows you not to.

2) Other Duties: New Strategic Target
Does this seem to be a real pain? Assuming the players are rolling any other duties you're going to see at least a few times per campaign. Should there be a limit on how many times this can be done? Because almost every single time I've seen it rolled it just sticks another completely useless world on the board (since the most common result is a Dead World)

Not been a pain to us thus far but if it is a limit seems fine

3) Refit: HP bonus
Since HP bonuses seem to round down, can a ship with less than 10 dmg get this refit or do you simple reroll it? Or just always give 1 dmg?

Just give it 1 damage

 

[Iain McGhee]

1: I thought there was something on this in the rules already, but AFB so I can't confirm. You could always pick a target but assign no ships to the mission (obviously you'd lose :wink: ).

 

[Burger]

We've also played that you must attack somewhere. You can just deploy all your ships on the edge of the board facing backwards, and make a tactical withdrawl immediately. Let your opponent know you're going to do this, to save setting up the game, travelling, etc. You would both still get XP for surviving a battle and any relevant RR's for winning/losing

 

[Democratus]

With some new Strategic Targets you don't really need to add any new planets to your map. For example, multiple new Gas Giant points can simply be different areas of a single massive Gas Giant (these things are huge) that have been discovered to have some strategic value. New Dead Worlds can be extremely large asteroids in your existing asteroid belt.

A little imagination and storytelling can go a long way to smooth out nearly any campaign system.

Good hunting!

 

[Burger]

Rolling an 11 has a 1 in 18 chance of coming up. If you have 6 players who each roll an other duty every turn, that will mean a new strategic target every 3 turns.

With a big group of players I would put a limit on it

 

[Democratus]

Wow. I only wish I could put together 6 whole players for a campaign.

I hadn't thought about the math. It would be quite annoying for the number of targets to grow that quickly. Might make it impossible for anyone to ever win.

 

[Iain McGhee]

The entry I was thinking of was actually for DEFENDING a strategic target, and it states that you can choose not to (the enemy get RRs as if they won the battle, but no XP). The rules do state that when attacking you do not need to assign the full FAP allowed, doesn't say you have to assign at least one. Think of it like a feint or misinformation from your intelligence department.

 

[Na-Po]

It also depends if you've got vorlon/shadow players.
Last time we were 4 with one shadow one vorlon and an "unlucky" pplayer
(understand he never rolls more than 7 with 2D6)
So only the 4th player was able to put some "new world" on the map ...

But that's true that in general you should have an upper limit to the number of ST available unless you want to fight an endless campaign ...

 

[Madadh]

We've got:

Psi Corp
Gaim
Earth Alliance (Crusade)
Vorlon
Centauri

So 4 people that can roll that result, gotten 2 thus far about 5 turns in.