Fed DD

[Da Boss]

Is it a fluff thing or a game thing as the former is easiest to include. There seems to be some confusion about whole power thing as regards the Ship in other SFU games already and which version is used? It sounds like most of the ACTA ships are the "fixed" versions used in the war?

As I see it you can quickly and easily highlight the differences between ships in several ways:

Fluff - in the text box
Points - it either costs more or less than an equivalent ship

these two can cover most eventualities and if not then, if you really have to, look at special rules and / or traits?

 

[billclo]

Is it a fluff thing or a game thing as the former is easiest to include. There seems to be some confusion about whole power thing as regards the Ship in other SFU games already and which version is used? It sounds like most of the ACTA ships are the "fixed" versions used in the war?

As I see it you can quickly and easily highlight the differences between ships in several ways:

Fluff - in the text box
Points - it either costs more or less than an equivalent ship

these two can cover most eventualities and if not then, if you really have to, look at special rules and / or traits?

How about we keep it simple and say the ship cannot use overloaded torpedoes, and leave it at that. Problem solved.

No need for new traits or fancy new rules. You guys want simple, I'm okay with that.

 

[Greg Smith]

There are one or two ships in B5 ACTA that have special rules. There were also quite a few fleet special rules. ACTA SF is pretty special rules light. The trick is to make those special rules relatively simple.

"May not overload torpedoes" is pretty simple.

 

[starbreaker]

Running the Power figures there is no way around that the DD is underpowered. If you ran just standard Load Photons you could move 16 Hexes (Roughly 8" in ACTASF) but, the second you overload you are dead in the water.

With Standard Loaded Photons
+15 Warp
+ 4 Impulse
+ 4 Reactor
23 Total
- 8 Standard Load Photons
- 7 Phaser
8 points of power for movement so it would be 8" rounded down to 6"

With Overloaded Photons
+15 Warp
+ 4 Impulse
+ 4 Reactor
23 Total
-16 Overload Photons
- 7 Phaser
0 points of power for movement.

In SFB/FC, you won't always (or even often) need to charge all the phasers in a given turn, but you'll also have shield, fire control, and life support costs to pay, so that's close to a wash. Photon charging is also more versatile in SFB, where there are different levels of overload and the total cost can be split unevenly over the two-turn arming cycle. Torps (overloaded or not) can also be held for somewhat lower energy costs if they aren't fired right away. Normal tactics with a standard DD generally involved entering the battle with held torps (either standard or overloads or a mix, depending on how fast you wanted to move) and then only trying to reload two or three tubes after the intial volley.

None of that needs to be modelled in ACTA, but a special rule to the effect that the ship can't move more than 6" while Reloading and can't move at all (or just one free turn) when Overloading would do a decent job of showing the design's quirks without becoming overcomplex.

Always liked flying the lollipops, they were a real challenge to get the most out of - not very good, but a challenge.

 

[Nerroth]

In SFB/FC, you won't always (or even often) need to charge all the phasers in a given turn, but you'll also have shield, fire control, and life support costs to pay, so that's close to a wash.

Not exactly; in FC, there are no phaser capacitors (you pay for your phaser use at the instant of firing) and there are no "housekeeping" costs to pay during Energy Allocation the way there are in SFB. (Plus, FC has no distinction between warp power and non-warp power, so you can arm photons from any source.)

 

[starbreaker]

In SFB/FC, you won't always (or even often) need to charge all the phasers in a given turn, but you'll also have shield, fire control, and life support costs to pay, so that's close to a wash.

Not exactly; in FC, there are no phaser capacitors (you pay for your phaser use at the instant of firing) and there are no "housekeeping" costs to pay during Energy Allocation the way there are in SFB. (Plus, FC has no distinction between warp power and non-warp power, so you can arm photons from any source.)

That's why it says SFB/FC in my post. Even in FC, you won't always (or often) fire all your phasers in a turn, so the enery costs involved will still be lower than 7 each turn, often only 4 or 5. The housekeeping costs in SFB just about offset the advantage of having capacitors, making in-game performance similar for both rules sets. The FC version has a bonus G rack though, making it much better at drone defense.

 

[Nerroth]

The way the paragraph I replied to was phrased, it made it seem that FC had the likes of housekeeping to worry about; if that's not what you were aiming at, fair enough, but I wanted to be clear for others who might not be familiar with either game system.

(Though I might argue that the lack of a need to use warp power to arm photons in FC has a notable impact on how most Fed ships, not just the DD, fly in that game compared to SFB.)



Oh, and on a point raised earlier about why one would take a DW over a DD if the points were in the same ballpark; for the Federation, by the time the newer hulls were entering production, it wasn't an either/or. The slipways which had been used to build destroyers were, by the time of the General War, being used to field NCLs instead; the likes of the DW and FFB are attempts to get heavier hulls out of yards capable of building frigates, as a means of maintaining (or increasing) overall fleet strength in the face of the Coalition onslaught. While some of the "war" classes are more powerful combatants than their pre-war counterparts (though at the cost of a shorter service life), it was less to do with whether or not they were better in their own right, but how many of them the Federation industrial base could afford to send to the front lines.

 

[Iron Domokun]

why one would take a DW over a DD if the points were in the same ballpark

That could be as simple as "the DW is more maneuverable". DD has more guns but it doesn't matter as much if you can't bring them to bear.

 

[Da Boss]

There are many reasons to use a particular"weaker" ship:

Its in a specific scenario
It costs less than a more expensive version or it nicely fits into a list
You are doing a campaign or game set in a paticular year or period (why having in service dates like in B5 would have been good)
Your fleet set up / tactics call for specific ship type
you like the model

 

[billclo]

You are doing a campaign or game set in a paticular year or period (why having in service dates like in B5 would have been good)

This is a manageable task. There are in service dates available for the SFB ships. You can even download the Ship Information Tables for the strategic level game F&E and it has year in service data.

 

[Sgt_G]

Rather than do a Year-in-service date, I think I'd rather break it down by era:

Early Warp era
Age of Exploration (for lack of a better name)
Four Powers War era
Inter-War era (for lack of a better name)
Early General War era
Mid General War era
Late General War era
Enforced Peace / ISC Domination era
Andromedan Invasion era

In the case of the Fed DD, it would be in service starting pre- Four Powers War and built up until the Early General War. The DW started service in limited numbers Early General War and were generally available by Mid War. Of course, many DDs survived all the way into the Andro Invasion, but no new ones were being built.

The Four Powers War, by the way, was a two-on-two fight with Klingon/Lyran vs. Kzinti & Hydran.

 

[Iron Domokun]

I think Da Boss would like YIS data published in an ACTA product so that he doesn't have to go to the cost of purchasing SFB stuff that he won't use. And it's inconvenient to look something up in another system's books. Probably isn't going to happen unless a lot of ACTA players want it, since it's another thing to research and proofread when creating the ship data for ACTA.

 

[billclo]

I think Da Boss would like YIS data published in an ACTA product so that he doesn't have to go to the cost of purchasing SFB stuff that he won't use. And it's inconvenient to look something up in another system's books. Probably isn't going to happen unless a lot of ACTA players want it, since it's another thing to research and proofread when creating the ship data for ACTA.

Easy peasey. Go here and download the SITS for each race:

Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: MASTER SIT UPDATES: 2008 SITs in new format

Look up each ship you want year in service for, copy to your Mongoose book in pencil. Done.

I'll even do it for you:
Klingons:
E4 Y120
F5 Y134
F5W Y175
D5 Y166
D5W Y175
D6 Y121
D7 Y134
D7C Y142
C7 Y177
C8 Y167

Federation:
Police ship Y127
FFY126
FFG Y? not listed in F&E
FFB Y175
DD Y129
DW Y175
Old CL Y119
NCL Y169
NCA Y174
CA Y129
CC Y142
CS Y165
BC Y177
DNG Y175 (older, less capable DN hull available as early as Y148)

 

[adm]

Easy peasey. Go here and download the SITS for each race:

Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: MASTER SIT UPDATES: 2008 SITs in new format

Look up each ship you want year in service for, copy to your Mongoose book in pencil. Done.

I'll even do it for you:
Klingons:
E4 Y120
F5 Y134
F5W Y175
D5 Y166
D5W Y175
D6 Y121
D7 Y134
D7C Y142
C7 Y177
C8 Y167

Federation:
Police ship Y127
FFY126
FFG Y? not listed in F&E
FFB Y175
DD Y129
DW Y175
Old CL Y119
NCL Y169
NCA Y174
CA Y129
CC Y142
CS Y165
BC Y177
DNG Y175 (older, less capable DN hull available as early as Y148)

FFG is Y160

F&E generally does not list when the refits become available, the assumption being that the various ships (i.e. CA->CC->CB for the Feds and D7->D7L->D7W for the Klingons) advanced at a similar enough rate that it is not worth extra counters for a game that already has several thousand counters.

 

[Nerroth]

Bear in mind that the ships as you see them here (for the most part) do not look the same as they did when they first entered service; they mostly already incorporate the kind of refits which only started to appear by the dawn of the General War.

(In SFB, the various refits are listed on the relevant SSDs, and given introductory notes in that empire's background section; in FC, the "pre-refit" hulls are instead split off into separate Middle Years Ship Cards.)

But, while this is just me guessing here, if FC continues to be the primary basis for conversion, I would sooner imagine the various eras of ships to be grouped more into broader time periods (Main Era, Middle Years, and so forth) rather than seeing specific year in service dates be added in.

if we ever see the pre-refit ships show up in ACtA:SF at all, that is...

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Official Middle Years Products? Unlikely, not for a while at least, I'd suspect.

However, for personal group use, it wouldn't be too hard for someone with the right reference materials to "downgrade" most of the current ships. Rip out of a few phasers here, reduce a few shields there, multiply the SFB refit BPV cost by the CTA:SF magic number and reduce the CTA:SF point cost by about that much and you should be 90% good to go.