First two games of ACTA:SF tonight

Finlos

Mongoose
I got my first two games in while demoing ACTA to a friend tonight, and the overall reaction was "great!" As 'so great you can pack your SFB books away in a box great'. Seriously, both of us loved the game and plan on demoing it to a couple mutual friends who wanted to play but were intimidated by the complexity of SFB.

We had both had the books for a while now but due to schedules tonight was the first night we both had free so we could sit down and run through the game. Most of the questions we had were answered but a couple still remain, posted after the battle reports.

The first game was extremely simple and straightforward, I had two Fed CAs and he had a pair of D7s. Our main goal for that game was to run through a couple turns and learn how it flowed. It took us two and a half to three hours to run through 6-7 turns but we did a LOT of page flipping during that time. There was a lot of maneuvering and the lesson "hang together or hang separately" (I know I'm misquoting it) certainly applies. The first few turns I had to wrap my mind around the change in movement switching from SFB to ACTA and that definitely cost me the game. He split up his ships and I thought it would be a good idea to do the same to keep both D7s engaged and he completely outmaneuvered me and turned my ships individually into so much debris.

A few points: 1) The agile trait is good, 2) big crunch weapons like photons really don't help you that much when your opponent can stay out of your F arc, 3) hit and run raids can be brutally devastating, and 4) the Klingon forward shield rule is very good as well.

For the second game we picked (and played!) our fleet of 750 points in about 90 minutes. We wanted to try dreadnoughts so he played a Kzinti fleet of DN, BCH, and BC and my fleet was Romulan condor, king eagle, and two skyhawks. It was a standard close and gun, no real tactics involved. Fortunately I was able to start the game cloaked or I just wouldn't have used the cloak option. Cloaking under threat of 15 AD worth of drones left me too vulnerable to risk it.

The game was won on turn two, really, when I uncloaked and dumped 38 AD worth of plasma plus whatever extra AD worth of phasers I didn't need to defend from drones into the port arcs of his two cruisers. He just didn't have enough phasers to stop all that plasma and the downward spiral of cascading critical hits just didn't last long enough to get ugly :shock:. He killed one of my skyhawks on turn three to extra some small amount of vengeance and then booked his DN out on turn four when all three surviving ships would have had plasmas recharged, even though they were out of arc. He had to go pick up his girlfriend so we just let it go after turn three.

Now for the questions:

A) When I score structure damage with a multihit weapon (say a disruptor) do I roll once on the attack table [one hit] or twice [two damage]?

B) When the critical hit table says 'random weapon system' does that mean one line of <weapon> or all <weapon> on the ship?

C) When a ship is stricken and a 9+ is rolled on the damage table, is the explosion AD equal to half of the starting ship structure and not the cumulative weapon AD as listed on the roster pages?
 
Forgot to post a couple comments about game 2:

Lumbering is a painful trait to play with. My opponent went from Klingons to Kzinti and the switch from agile D7s to lumbering DNs was difficult.

Seeking weapons are much more lethal in ACTA. Drones have greater range but your opponent has more options to deal with them. Being on the receiving end of a full salvo of plasma torpedoes tends to greatly shorten one's career.
 
A. A Multihit weapon turns one Hit into two or more Hits. For every Hit (what you called damage), you roll on the Attack table. So, in your example, you roll twice.

B. Each line is one weapon system (this is defined in the Attack Phase chapter, forgive me, I don't have a page reference at the moment), so the former.

C. Again, the former, base it on the ship's starting Damage score (big ships blow up better!).

On your other comments;

Lumbering is supposed to be painful :) Time your attacks carefully with Lumbering ships and remember they are part of a fleet, not an individual unit...

Got to love Seeking weapons :)
 
msprange said:
Lumbering is supposed to be painful; remember they are part of a fleet, not an individual unit...
That's the same answer I keep getting when I question anything about maneuverability of ships in this game. I tried a little bit of solo play (with couters) on the dinning table last night. It appears that the game is designed around and intended to be played with fleets, and it seems to me that it breaks down for small battles of less than, say, five-on-five. Three-on-three might be okay, depending on the class off ships, but forget about a one-on-one duel.

But, hey, that's okay ... I have a scenario in rough draft that can have, after all reinforcements arrive, as many as sixty (60!!) ships on the table. It's something I always wanted to write up for FedCmdr, but ADB said it was to big to play and thus rejected it.
 
Yeah, sixty ships on the table at once would simply be untenable in Federation Commander. As for SFB... :roll: Might be too big even for ACTASF, but I suppose it could be an all-day game if you wanted.
 
Sgt_G said:
msprange said:
Lumbering is supposed to be painful; remember they are part of a fleet, not an individual unit...
That's the same answer I keep getting when I question anything about maneuverability of ships in this game. I tried a little bit of solo play (with couters) on the dinning table last night. It appears that the game is designed around and intended to be played with fleets, and it seems to me that it breaks down for small battles of less than, say, five-on-five. Three-on-three might be okay, depending on the class off ships, but forget about a one-on-one duel.

But, hey, that's okay ... I have a scenario in rough draft that can have, after all reinforcements arrive, as many as sixty (60!!) ships on the table. It's something I always wanted to write up for FedCmdr, but ADB said it was to big to play and thus rejected it.

Are you writing up a Kzin capital assault by chance? :lol:

I don't have a problem with a scenario that takes all day to play. You young whippersnappers don't have the patience (or time) to play a really large game or heaven forbid, a campaign.

No wonder it's hard to find players for F&E :D
 
Iron Domokun said:
Yeah, sixty ships on the table at once would simply be untenable in Federation Commander. As for SFB... :roll: Might be too big even for ACTASF, but I suppose it could be an all-day game if you wanted.

@ Sgt - yeah ACTA has always been weak at one on one - its not set up for it. Small games can work but larger games best ;)

60 ships is certainly doable in ACTA - things WILL blow up ALOT epsecially if you (and I highly recomend it) have squadrons and a coupe of players each side
 
Iron Domokun said:
Yeah, sixty ships on the table at once would simply be untenable in Federation Commander. As for SFB... :roll: Might be too big even for ACTASF, but I suppose it could be an all-day game if you wanted.
To be fair, the FedCmdr version "only" had about 40-45 ships on the map -- two battle fleets of 10 or 11 ships on each side.

This version has a bunch of smaller ships, and because of the era it's set in it has special rules reducing seeking weapons. Let's see, once all ships are on the table, I have: 1xDN, 1xCC, 6xCA, 6xCL, 6xDD, 9xFF -vs- 1xBATS, 1xCC, 4xCA, 5xCL, 6xDD, 6xFF, plus 3xCA, 3xCL, 3xDD that have battle damage from previous combat are docked to BATS getting repairs. Object is to smash the BATS, thus depriving them of a forward base and breaking the back of the invasion, but must not lose more ships than the enemy or risk them being able to mount a counter attack to your now-undefended border bases.

So, who wants to playtest it for me??? :twisted:
 
Garth, sounds like a good'un.
If you need someone to play it out, let me know.

I think 60 ships on the table with ACTA could be played in a single session (4 hours or so). I'd have to do it with ST2400 minis right now, but the photos would be awesome.

and yes, ACTA is definitely a fleet game.
As I stated during playtesting:
We tried 1 on 1 games, and it came down to whoever won initiative usually won the game.
We tried 3 on 3 games. With smaller ships - it works, but if the ship mix is off the game breaks down.
We tried 5 on 5 and 6 on 6 games. Those almost always went well.
We tried 12 on 12 and larger games and never had a problem... even with lumbering units.
 
I obviously don't know as I haven't been able to play big games yet but I would think that the target rich environment of large games would considerably lessen the disadvantage of lumbering ships as there's going to be a very good chance that something will find itself parked in your plasma arc! :D
 
wait till you blow something up big time. we had a chain reaction tonight that made three ships disappear after only one of the had been shot. I moved to beaten destoyers next to my sons frigate. His Kirov unleashed on the one closest to him. result to destroyed destroyers one destroyed frigate and a CA at 50% health. And my Gorn Heavy battle cruiser sitting off prepping to move in for clean up duty.
 
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