Gorn vs Kzinti

[Captain Jonah]

Escorts are not "Carrier Escorts" they are Ship Escorts. SFB has them locked down to only being around if you have a carrier in your force which led to people (not just me) having to take carriers just so we were allowed escorts to protect against the Fed wall of Drones that certain players love.

Matt has said that ACTA-SF will not limit ships for any reason.

Escorts are going to be vital for the plasma races once fighters arrive. A squadron of 12 fighters puts out 12 or 24 Drones a turn on its own. Considering how many ship changes have been made to date and how much rules changing has been done because of matching every ship exactly to SFB/FC carriers are going to have lots of fighters and those fighters are going to have lots of drones. Even simplifying things or making the fighters a one shot type is going to put a lot of drones out in one go.

With BBs, Drone cruisers etc the 18 drone salvos are not far away. These are going to murder ships without needing fighters.

Saying you cannot take an escort to defend against the massed missile attacks because you have no carrier is a bit silly, not that I wouldn't put it past career jobs worth’s saying it, but in war most sane people (and even the Klingon’s) are going to see “Incoming” lots of Drones and grab an escort if one is close.

Big ship Gorn (and Romulan’s unless they cloak) are at a significant disadvantage against heavy Drone forces. This means greater use of small/agile units to hide more.

The bigger Gorn ships with turn mode 6 and limited Drone Defences lack the ability to manoeuvre round terrain fast enough to close the range before dying to incoming Drone fire. With Turn mode 6 even APE is less useful because of the need to have the attackers facing outside of the F arc of your ships (the final turn away bit), this means your first 6 “ of next turn involve moving away from the enemy and those sneaky Drone chuckers often take advantage of this by flying the other way.

Hence Fleet Escorts to protect the BC/CC/BCH/DN types while they charge forward to crush the cowardly Furballs under Gorn Plasma and claws as the Drone chuckers so richly deserve. :twisted:

Kzinti Pelt rugs for those cold floors, add a little luxury to your Gorn home :wink:

 

[Ben2]

For escorts I was going to suggest the following rules amendments

ADDs can fire to support another ship under IDF, with a range of 3".
Escorts automatically get IDF without it counting as a special action or having to roll for it.

I've statted up some escorts.

The E4A is sitting pretty with 4ADDs. Given that it isn't going to be breaking the 100 point mark (it's still an E4 that loses more than half it's offensive firepower) then even dirt cheap escort ships are really useful.

Bear in mind in SFB ADDs can be fired at fighters as well.

However the 'Western' races ie Fed, Klingon, Kzinti, Lyran and Hydran then get decent to good fighters and excellent drone defense (though Lyrans just get extra phasers and are reliant on the ESGs that Lyran ships have anyway to protect them from drones) whereas the plasma races get crappy fighters in comparison (in terms of armament) and while plasma D racks are useful, they aren't as useful as the huge piles of ADDs the Kzinti and Klingons get.

 

[Rambler]

Your E4A has to many AntiDrones it should only have 3 (Technically Drone "E" Racks I think) and shuttles increase to 2. The E4D on the otherhand has 4 drone racks.

 

[Captain Jonah]

For escorts I was going to suggest the following rules amendments

ADDs can fire to support another ship under IDF, with a range of 3".
Escorts automatically get IDF without it counting as a special action or having to roll for it.

4”, the ships have 2” bases. If its 3” from stem to stem then you can only escort something in base to base contact or very close. 4” is P3 range and allows a bit of wiggle room.

I've stated up some escorts.

The E4A is sitting pretty with 4ADDs. Given that it isn't going to be breaking the 100 point mark (it's still an E4 that loses more than half its offensive firepower) then even dirt cheap escort ships are really useful.

Bear in mind in SFB ADDs can be fired at fighters as well.

However the 'Western' races i.e. Fed, Klingon, Kzinti, Lyran and Hydran then get decent to good fighters and excellent drone defence (though Lyrans just get extra Phasers and are reliant on the ESGs that Lyran ships have anyway to protect them from drones) whereas the plasma races get crappy fighters in comparison (in terms of armament) and while plasma D racks are useful, they aren't as useful as the huge piles of ADDs the Kzinti and Klingon’s get.

ADD escorts are murder against Drone swarms and fighter heavy fleets till they run out of ammo, which will take a while for most of them.

The plasma races win against ADDs because the D racks work just like ADDs but can be reloaded, and works against Drones, Fighters and Ships.

The Hydran and Lyran escorts gain extra Phasers, very useful in this game plus the Hydrans become sudden death at very short range. Do not get into the kill zone of something with 3 or 4 Phaser Gs in arc (from memory one of the Hydran escorts has two Phaser Gs in the nose and one each L/S and R/S). Plus the every funny LDR, Phaser Gs AND ESGs, at 1" they are just horrible (till you explode and take them out as well :lol: )

I suspect that ADD escorts will be around but not a lot of them, just to guard something expensive and vulnerable or to cover the cruisers in case one runs out of ADDs early. Phaser boat escorts will be very popular. Take away heavy weapons and add Phasers, how many people here have said they would love to do just that.

The place where I see them becoming almost mandatory is the Plasma side. They are just too needed against Drone Chuckers to not be used in a Plasma fleet. They retain reduced anti shipping firepower with the Plasma Ds plus the extra Phasers. They are a defence against Drones that the Plasma side lacks (The Gorn have poor Phaser layouts and numbers, Romulan’s are very slow under cloak and give up tactical initiative allowing the enemy to move and attack at will).

 

[Ben2]

Your E4A has to many AntiDrones it should only have 3 (Technically Drone "E" Racks I think) and shuttles increase to 2. The E4D on the otherhand has 4 drone racks.

I'm looking at the E4A SSD from module J and it has 4 ADDs. Does this change for Federation Commander?

I've got a giant pile of SFB stuff but no FC stuff, do they change it between products?

 

[Ben2]

I've statted up some basic escorts (frigate/destroyer ones) and carriers (Kzinti CV, Fed CVS, Klingon D6V). I'll stat up fighters, escorts and carriers for all the basic rulebook races.

However if there isn't a way for fighters to be included in ACTA without it turning into Star Carrier Fleet battles then I'd be fine leaving them out.

Fighters haven't been included in FC, and while ACTA can easily handle large numbers of fighters, as the B5 and Noble Armada versions demonstrate, Star Fleet is a fun and quick to play game, and fighters aren't a feature of the Original Series or the Animated Series or the original pocket edition of SFB but something added later.

I can certainly understand the desire of Gorn/Romulan players to have BDAs/BHEs available as they come up against drone fleets.

 

[McKinstry]

Kzinti Pelt rugs for those cold floors, add a little luxury to your Gorn home :wink:

You do know those guys are your allies? :wink:

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Kzinti Pelt rugs for those cold floors, add a little luxury to your Gorn home :wink:

You do know those guys are your allies? :wink:

Maybe he meant Lyran? They are so easy to get mixed up. Almost as if the 2 species were related in fact

 

[billclo]

However if there isn't a way for fighters to be included in ACTA without it turning into Star Carrier Fleet battles then I'd be fine leaving them out.

Shouldn't be very hard to do up fighters. Say a unit that has X number of fighters. Have a checkbox system that allows you to check off fighter casualties, combined with a current phaser and drone/plasma strength based upon how many fighters are left. Fighters take Y amount of damage each...

Example:
A F-14 unit of 6 fighters takes Y damage per fighter. Each fighter gives a P-G (4xP-3) and say 2 drones/turn. So a full strength unit of 6 F14s would have 6 P-G and 12 drones per turn. So you can see that you don't want that unit to get to P-G range or it'll eat you up.

I'd suggest squadrons of 3 or 6 fighters for ease of play.

 

[Ben2]

Kzinti Pelt rugs for those cold floors, add a little luxury to your Gorn home :wink:

You do know those guys are your allies? :wink:

They claw your sofa, you make polite small talk.

They get hairs on your ottoman, you offer a glass of wine.

They spill red wine on your white rug?

The line has to be drawn somewhere. It's time to make them pay.

 

[Ben2]

Hi guys

I've now created a file of 20 escorts for the races in the basic book, and I'm looking for somewhere to host it. It's a bog standard word document.

Can anyone lend me a hand?

 

[Nerroth]

One of the handy things about adding in other eras (such as the Middle or Early Years) would be that, even if carriers and gunboats risk taking over Main Era combat, there would be the option of playing in time periods where true carriers and PF tenders didn't exist...

Not that I'd be happy to see the Main Era go that way, but still.


Oh, and there is a list of Aegis escorts which have already been published for Federation Commander in the latest Master Ship Chart; the upcoming Reinforcements Attack module will add a few more.

 

[billclo]

Hi guys

I've now created a file of 20 escorts for the races in the basic book, and I'm looking for somewhere to host it. It's a bog standard word document.

Can anyone lend me a hand?

You can get a blog area over at Wordpress that'll host files for you. All free.

https://wordpress.com/

 

[Ben2]

Hi guys

I've now created a file of 20 escorts for the races in the basic book, and I'm looking for somewhere to host it. It's a bog standard word document.

Can anyone lend me a hand?

You can get a blog area over at Wordpress that'll host files for you. All free.

https://wordpress.com/

Cheers, I've now done so and the escorts file is up for people to enjoy.

 

[Captain Jonah]

A link may be useful :lol:

 

[Ben2]

A link may be useful :lol:

I've started a new thread on it, with the aegis rules I've written in the opening post.