Dumb question

[walkerd]

Have just purchased the rules, reading how to play and drooling over the ships.

The rule for AP. Now maybe I am a tad slow but does the rule play as

a) You roll all hits and add +1 to the total. In effect you gain an additional hit.

b) You roll all the hits and each dice has +1. You tend to penetrate the armour and hit more easy.

While it feels like it should be (b) it sort of reads more like (a)

Thanks

 

[Burger]

Welcome

It is b. "Add +1 to the results of all Attack Dice"

 

[H]

Welcome

It is b. "Add +1 to the results of all Attack Dice"

or conversely minus the 1 off the hull of the target

 

[Da Boss]

Must admit that's how we do it - and so my brian understands ie:

its hull 6 - so need 6's to hit
now its
Hull 6 with AP weapon so need 5's to hit it

etc

 

[DHarris]

Doesnt it seem like they got it backwards. Shouldn't AP be precise and precise be AP?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Doesnt it seem like they got it backwards. Shouldn't AP be precise and precise be AP?

Not really:

Armour-Piercing - punches through the hull armour more easily, thus produces more hits.

Precise - more accurate, causing more specific damage to vital ship systems when a hit is scored.

 

[Burger]

Doesnt it seem like they got it backwards. Shouldn't AP be precise and precise be AP?

No; the "to hit" roll is not just trying to hit the opponent; it is rolling to do a damage-dealing hit, ie. penetrate the enemy's armour. That is why you roll against "hull" score, not "size/velocity/manouvering"

 

[Lord David the Denied]

No; the "to hit" roll is not just trying to hit the opponent; it is rolling to do a damage-dealing hit, ie. penetrate the enemy's armour. That is why you roll against "hull" score, not "size/velocity/manouvering"

Again I say, we need seperate to-hit and to-damage rolls. It is appropriate to the setting and source material, we see shots miss all the time - and not just dodging White Stars - and it would allow more variety in weapon traits. AP, SAP etc could still be there, but you could have a set of traits that affect how easy it is to actually hit the target, and allow modifiers for ship traits like Agile and Stealth. Dodge could work as a save or a modifier to the to-hit roll.

 

[Voronesh]

Actually i consider precise to be a misnomer like scout. I mean weapons can produce crits be being brutal too. Or how can a boresighted lightning cannon be precise? Youve got to turn the whole ship to fire.......


Plus precise gives you extra crits, sure you can hit vital areas of the ship more often than others, so your guns are more precise...ugh wait a moment you still roll for the quality of the crit? So you can better hit something, you still cant hit the engine better or such ^^.

 

[Green_Knight]

I like it with no "to hit"-roll, cause the large lumbering
ships are very easy to hit (thus automatic) and the
small maneuvarable ships/fighter having dodge to
avoid being hit sounds good as is.

 

[Taran]

On the other hand, the Large/Lumbering ships have massive armour and you're less likely to damage them at all.

On the other hand, adding it to-hit rolls on top of everything else, you're talking about an additional 10-20 pages of rules.
Because now you need base rolls to hit, modifiers for range, speed of target, speed of attacker, anything in between the target and attacker.
Then STrength of weapon and how you check to see if the weapon is strong enough to pierce the armour in that location/arc...

Or, instead of the second half of the above, you could make like CBT and just add armour points on top of the damage points and no crits until you get through the armour (unless you have AP or SAP)...

 

[angelus2000]

Or, instead of the second half of the above, you could make like CBT and just add armour points on top of the damage points and no crits until you get through the armour (unless you have AP or SAP)...

AHHH, more hate for Nova's and Bimiths!

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Or, instead of the second half of the above, you could make like CBT and just add armour points on top of the damage points and no crits until you get through the armour (unless you have AP or SAP)...

And at that point you're playing B5Wars...

 

[Locutus9956]

Or, instead of the second half of the above, you could make like CBT and just add armour points on top of the damage points and no crits until you get through the armour (unless you have AP or SAP)...

And at that point you're playing B5Wars...

No your playing ACTA. Just with renamed shields trait. I'm all for keeping ACTA nice and simple but it is possible to add a teeny bit more complexity to a rule or two if it improves the game without turning it into B5Wars which is so much more complex its not even on the same PAGE..... Hell the entire ACTA fleet book and rulebook combined would make up maybe one chapter of B5Wars rules. Or maybe a paragraph in Starfleet Battles

(seriously I love both the previously mentioned games but in all honesty at times ACTA OVERsimplifies things and a LITTLE bit of extra complexity isnt necessarily a bad thing if well implemented)

EDIT: In fact looking back at whats described its baiscally how full thrust damage works. You have a single damage track that starts with armour. if a weapon is armour piercing it bypasses the armour boxes and marks damage on the main part of the track, if not you have to chip away the armour boxes first. Only hull hits can cause crits. And FT is if anything LESS compliated than ACTA except for having to write down movement orders.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

On the other hand, the Large/Lumbering ships have massive armour and you're less likely to damage them at all.

On the other hand, adding it to-hit rolls on top of everything else, you're talking about an additional 10-20 pages of rules.
Because now you need base rolls to hit, modifiers for range, speed of target, speed of attacker, anything in between the target and attacker.
Then STrength of weapon and how you check to see if the weapon is strong enough to pierce the armour in that location/arc...

Or, instead of the second half of the above, you could make like CBT and just add armour points on top of the damage points and no crits until you get through the armour (unless you have AP or SAP)...

Utter rubbish. Does Victory at Sea have twenty pages of rules covering the to-hit mechanic? I very much doubt it. MGP could lift the rules wholesale from VaS and tweak them to fit the setting, an hour's work for Matt or one of the other designers and a few weeks' playtesting and you're away.

 

[Spideredd]

and what happens to those of us with no interest in playing VAS?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

You don't play it. You simply reap the benefits of a more detailed, more accurate rules set for ACtA.

 

[Spideredd]

But we end up playing it because the rules slowly morph into VAS, or visa versa.
No originality and no challenge.

 

[Burger]

MGP could lift the rules wholesale from VaS and tweak them to fit the setting, an hour's work for Matt or one of the other designers and a few weeks' playtesting and you're away.

A few weeks playtesting? No way! It'd mean starting pretty mcuh all of the playtesting from scratch. I gather 1 year's worth went into 2e?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

It's not that big a change. Weapons get one extra stat and a few extra traits, ships get one extra stat each. A page of extra rules. Obviously it's a job for a new edition of the game, but it should have been done when 2nd ed was. VaS was there to prove the concept and no one with eyes can argue that every shot fired on screen hits its target.

The rules are in place in VaS, they just need adapting, it's not like VaS is a different system anyway, it was lifted almost wholesale from ACtA anyway.