Carriers

[Ben2]

I think they're more indicative of how SFB slowly got more and more bogged down and samey. They started out with irregular sized fighter wings (the Kzinti CVL with 9 and CVE with 6, the D6V with 10, Romulan Battlehawk with 5, Tholian Black Widow with 8 and Federation Strike carrier with 12), and slow fighters without huge drone loads, and then everyone had CWVs with 12 fighters (exception - Romulans with 16, but their fighters sucked).

If it was kept to the early fighters and the irregular sized fighter groups that would be great and interesting and fleets would be diverse, but that'll have to be something players decide to limit themselves to.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

I'm all for carriers - hopefully they are implemented in a non-broken fashion!

I'm all for wings if it makes things easier/more balanced. I also suspect each race will only have 1 or two different fighter types, and these will be tied to a particular carrier. Given that there are no drone types in ACTA they will be forced to make some changes to the existing SFB fighters. I think limiting the "range" of the fighter drones would help a lot with the drone spam.

 

[Greg Smith]

How all previous ACTA games did fighters: fighters are killed by a single hit, they are generally faster than ships, they dodge incoming weapons fire. Fighter vs Fighter fights are governed by the dogfight rules, which are really simple, even for big furballs.

How B5 did it: 6 fighters to a stand. Fighter weapons were relatively weak, 1-4AD for the whole flight, range 2". Some had 4" range, which out-ranged anti-fighter on ships. There were a few super-heavy fighters which had only one fighter per stand, but it made no difference in game play only miniatures. Non-carriers carried a few flights. Carriers carried 8-16 flights and had dedicated systems to improve dogfighting and recover and repair damaged flights. Ships had dedicated anti-fighter guns which fired before fighters attacked.

How NA did: one fighter per base. There are fighters with next to no anti-ship capability, and bombers with one-shot, nasty weapons with 4" range. Only carriers bring fighters. They can recover and repair fighters as well as rearm flights that have used their one-shot weapons. Fighters per carrier: 8, except a handful of big expensive carriers with 12-18. Only the biggest ships have dedicated anti-fighter guns.

The nastiest anti-ship weapon on NA fighters are 2" range, 2AD, multi-hit 2, devastating +1
or rockets with 4" range, multi-hit 2, guided, slow

----------
Star Fleet would probably be closer to the Noble Armada way of doing things. Smallish one-shot anti-ship weapons, with short range.

Clanger and I played a NA playtest game this week where one side had 6 carriers, 48 bombers. It was straight-forward to play. It took around 2 hours. (It broke the game, but that was what we were testing. :lol: )

 

[Captain Jonah]

SFB fighters are slower than the ships, they start out as armed shuttles after all.

Later in the war Fighter booster packs arrive and you have much faster (and more fragile) fighters

A 12 bird wing from a strike carrier could take down a cruiser if it was already damaged and take down fresh light cruisers and smaller. Late war fighters such as the Fed F14/15s could put out huge drone attacks and follow up with a lot of Phaser fire. Taking them down took other fighters or a lot of firepower.

Using Plasma-Fs and Ds against fighters was normal in late war fighter heavy games because you just had to kill the little sods. D-racks very useful here, shot gunning plasma S and R also if the fighters were more of a threat than distant war ships.

A stand of 3 or 4 SF fighters is not going to take a single Phaser hit and go away. Early war ones would take a decent Phaser hit or a Drone to cripple or destroy. Later ones and then the heavy and super heavy ones took multiple Phaser hits or heavy weapons.

For example an early war Kzinti attack shuttle stand of 3 fighters may have 3/1 damage. Speed 8, 3 x Phaser 3 and one use of Drone 3AD, all of which must be fired at the same time.
A flight of three late war birds is going to be something like 12/4 with 3x Phaser-G, or if heavies 3 x Phaser-2, Drone 3AD and Fast plus super manoeuvrable.

Also ADDs and D-racks engaged Drones AND fighters at short range not just those that were attacking the ship itself. This is something that they cannot currently do but should have a range of something like 4” to go with any ship being allowed to fire at any Drone fired from over 18” away (not so subtle repeat of suggested rule change)

With Drones less OP and with the anti fighter weapons actually able to fight fighters the threat is less. But at present, as the rules are written, accurate stats for SFB late war fighters will chase, catch up with and murder cruiser sized ships.

Oh and after Fighters and Carriers, escort carriers, strike carriers, CVAs etc we get gunboats and PFs with Tenders, then space control ships and those 1000 point battles can have three of four warships on the board along with 6 pfs and 8+ fighter wings dueling it out while the carriers, tenders and escorts hang back.

 

[tomrommel1]

Yeeees bring on the Mac Arthur!!!!!

 

[Captain Jonah]

Yeeees bring on the Mac Arthur!!!!!

Just try not to fly into any planets..... Oh wait :twisted:

 

[Myrm]

You could simulate that by letting fighters escorting a ship (on the base as per B5 ACtA) fire defensively against inbound drones. That alone would make Gorn captains cheer for the flyboys.

in early playtests you could do that with phaser equiped shuttles but that was taken out as not SFU

Well its not FC, but its definitely SFB - though we know that SVC thinks is was a mistake.

So the mechanism at least is familiar to the playtesters....holds out hope.

 

[Myrm]

I quite like the idea of 6 fighters to a base, the problem is they were singularly more robust than that in SFB. The Dodge trait might simulate that - and with the reduced weapon to one fighters worth you abstract down to delivering one fighter to target. OK it is not accurate for all circumstances but it does provide simplicity and manageable sizes of wings.

I do think 3 per base might be better as it lets you do the carriers that work in 4s or 5s more closely if not 100%, and covers casual carriers like the Hydrans, and the above abstraction using dodge to deliver oneto target becomes less abstract...plsu ACtA can handle fighters by the bucket - a three carrier per side nightmare in SFB (that one poster has alluded correctly to) becomes pretty simple in ACtA.

I think one is a bit too far, and will make them exceptionally potent.

 

[Nomad]

The difficulty is that SFU fighters don't fly or fight as flights, they do so as individuals.

When Agents of Gaming invented the stats for the Babylon 5 ships, they deliberately organised all normal fighters into six-ship flights. Looking back, that was a pretty sound idea.

Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, SFU carriers come with 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 et.c fighters.
The Hydrans - should anyone actually want to play them - have ships with two, three or four fighters aboard.

A suggestion - fighters are bought, are targeted and and die as individuals but manouver and fight as flights of upto six. To attack, each fighter rolls one to-hit die. A die on the flight's base keeps track of the surviving fighters in that flight - suitable bases were shown earlier.

 

[Pavlov Grenadier]

A suggestion - fighters are bought, are targeted and and die as individuals but manouver and fight as flights of upto six. To attack, each fighter rolls one to-hit die. A die on the flight's base keeps track of the surviving fighters in that flight - suitable bases were shown earlier.

Thats essentially what we do with our dice holders. For whatever game system we play, you purchase (or get from the carrier), "fighters" individiually (this could represent one figher, a flight of 3-6 fighters, whatever). Each "fighter stand" you buy, has stats, does damage, etc. We used the dice holder to represent 1-6 of these purchased "fighter stands". If you have a 5 in your holder, you can attack 5 times from that one stand. The only issue would be if there is a template weapon. If you have the fighters spread our, you wouldnt be able have more than 1-2 covered with a template, whereas with the dice holders, up to 6 fighters can be "covered' by just covering the one stand.

 

[Myrm]

The difficulty is that SFU fighters don't fly or fight as flights, they do so as individuals.

Yes they are individual manoeuvre units in SFU, however thats where the pain in the neck starts in SFB at least, but thats the level of detail SFB gives, everything down to the single drone is a unit on the board - and ACtA got rid of all those drones and works well enough remember.

That said, a single fighter on its own on and SFB board is dogmeat, it will (with a few exceptions in terms of fighter is question and situation) get ground up and splattered. As a Hydran my stingers operate together for mutual support or they die. To function they need to be moved in groups, as real world fighters. Big furballs in fleet actions of fighters jumping on each other boil down to concentration of forces and really separate out from the main game going on aroun

That does allow you to abstract down to a single manoeuvre units representing more than one fighter sensibly in ACtA - because that flight becomes the effective unit of function. The biggest issue becomes damage taken because they are tough enough to take more than a single solid hit with a phaser on average - something needs to be done to cover that - Dodge does it abstractly, damage points per flight does it more accurately. A second issue at that point becomes firepower - particularly with F14s etc floating about.

There are fixes to that - but they are all abstractions to the ACtA system, by definition imperfect like allt he changes, and the question becomes what level of abstraction is acceptable to achieve the same feel and effect for most (not all, just most) situations - and most importantly which ones work for larger fleet actions.

As I said I think going to 6 is possible but too much, three is workable, one is not enough - especially since this is general war and we have to consider such SFU units as PFs and Interceptors as a natural extension of using Carriers.

 

[Nomad]

Myrm - so what do you do with a Hydran Dragoon with three fighters, or a Cheyanne with two?

Operate as flights, yes, but flight sizes need to be variable, and that variability might as well include casualties.

Actually, the idea I posted is ripped off pretty much wholesale from Full Thrust, which can handle games just as large as ACtA.

Or you could simply exclude the Hydrans from the game, which is fast becoming my preferred option.

 

[Da Boss]

There is no reason to actually list the number of fighters per flight except in the fluff - you just need to say that X, Y and Z flight of fighters has the X, Y Z stats. It does not matter how many fighters make up the flight as respresented in the counter / model.

re dodge - they use the mechanic for stealth now........... :roll:

 

[Finlos]

Unfortunately excluding the Hydrans will make some folks quite unhappy (and, I suppose, a number of folks quite happy but that's not my point). Hydran fleets, with their volume of fighters, could be theory-crafted to be as obnoxious as drone-heavy fleets are right now. Fortunately there is a limited supply of fighters.

I don't suppose we'll see transporter bombs included with the Hydran expansion, will we? :twisted:

 

[Nerroth]

FC is not the only abstraction of the SFB fighter mechanics to look at: Distant Armada introduced the Hydrans into the Starmada engine*, and in that system each fighter is a single unit also (with an explicit note showing how the "standard" flight size minimum in that engine was down-sized to work with the setting).

*Admiralty Edition, at least; there is talk of there being a revised version of DSA for Nova Edition Starmada in the not too distant future. How Stingers will be covered there remains to be seen.


In case anyone missed it from an earlier attrition unit discussion, you can see some trial rules and Ship Cards in the FC Commander's Circle for how a sub-set of fighter/carrier operations may one day appear in Borders of Madness; a system intended to cover certain SFBisms which will likely never show up in "vanilla" FC, but which would be on offer for those looking to try them out on an optional basis (and in a manner which is still somewhat streamlined compared to SFB).

 

[Nomad]

Finlos - Please note that the Hydrans are by far my favorite fleet.

Watching what is currently being done to the Kzinti once it was realised they might win the occasional game, I have no desire for the same thing to happen to 'us'.

Better absent than nerfed, IMHO.

 

[Spence]

I really dislike carriers/fighters in a game. Unless the game is played as a pure fighter/bomber game. That is why I pretty much don't play WW2 and up. The advent of the fighter effectively eliminates the big ship and even the best case drags the game out with mind numbing and ungodly boring detail.

It also kills scifi and is one of the reasons I dumped SFB years ago.

If the ACTA:SF "carrier" book/module is a clearly defined separate optional book that tournaments, leagues and local clubs can use or not use, then I will be fine. If, however, it is like SFB and other various war-games were it is a supposed option but they have so many designs, vessels, rules and other 'stuff' that you really can't play the game with out it once released. Well, ACTA:SF will join the other unplayable games in on my garbage shelf.

I know that it is just my opinion, but there are a lot of people like me out there. Ship combat in Star Trek is about starSHIPs in battle. Not swarms of nats buzzing around. Sure, the carrier and it's strike wing happened in real life, but history confirms my opinion. How many heavy surface combatants do you see in the world today? None. You have the Carrier Groups and a lot of light escorts. Modern 'cruisers', 'frigates' and such may displace more, but the way they are designed to fight is not ship-to-ship as in the old days. It is to locate the enemy and engage from over the horizon or otherwise out of sight so the attack is a surprise.

Great in the real world, but very very very very very very boring on a game table :shock:

If I can go to a con and not only see ACTA:SF on the schedule but be able to find a nice sane fun game of it that doesn't have fighters, then I will be good to go. But if all the games suddenly are nothing but 'buzzing nats' I will be gone.

 

[Nerroth]

One thing that might be worth bearing in mind is that, if ACtA:SF eventually goes into different eras and settings, the issue of carrier (and gunboat tender) operations will be much more focused.

For example, while the Main Era (in SFB) has various fighter and PF operations in play, the Middle Years (in both SFB and FC) has no "true" carriers, and less powerful Stingers for the Hydrans. And in the Early Years (as well as in places like the Tholian Home Galaxy) there are no warp-capable fighters at all. (The Early Years Romulans have a few sublight fighters used to defend planets, but they were kind of an odd duck back then anyway.)

So, while I would personally prefer carriers and gunboat tenders to be strictly optional for Main Era play, it would at least be something if there would still be sub-settings in which neither would be a factor anyway.

 

[Finlos]

You misunderstand me Nomad, I'm quite looking forward to seeing Hydrans included in the game as they will add a new tactical element to ACTA.

Regarding that other thread, I don't think there have been enough games played to prove (not theory-craft) that mass drones are, in fact overwhelming. The theory-crafters may well be right, but I think that Kzinti, and to a lesser extend Klingon and Federation, fleets will do better with a mixed-arms fleet.

Something to keep in mind is that some scenarios have objectives other than 'smite thine opponent'.

edit: And you really do need them to play out the General War in ACTA, something which may actually be possible. :twisted:

 

[tneva82]

I really dislike carriers/fighters in a game. Unless the game is played as a pure fighter/bomber game. That is why I pretty much don't play WW2 and up. The advent of the fighter effectively eliminates the big ship and even the best case drags the game out with mind numbing and ungodly boring detail.

Neither which has happened in previous ACTA. They have been quick as hell and far from broken. Hell in noble armada fighters are voewfully inefficient to the point of "who would take them anyway?"