How are your ACTA 2e games going?

[thehod]

Just wanted to know now that nearly a month has past how your games are going with 2e with both your fleets and rulesets.

Overall I am pretty happy with what they have done with ACTA and the 3 games I have played so far have been pretty damn good and I liked the revised special actions although I do miss maneuver to shield them. I played with the Centauri, Earth (3rd age), and Narn so far and liked how each has played. The great thing is to see the Vorlons become the monsters to dread as they were supposed to be like in the show. I havent played with my Shadows but the Quad Damage and the precise make for some scary SCARY damages.

 

[Kosh127]

this is the big weekend for my store to check it out. Its going to be very intresting. So far I like the changes.

 

[Zeru]

My first game was EA+ISA vs Centauri+Vree, was a pretty close game, till the Xaak-class Command Saucer 1 rounded a full health Hyperion.

Our second game was the ISA+Centauri vs Vree+Shadows, the game was once looked close at the start, until the Xaak made itself known again and 1 rounded one of my allies 2 Liati-class Advanced Cruisers, taking out one of our stronger offensive weapons early one, and my White Star Carrier bit the dust in round 5, after taking a few Vree ships down with him.

I played 2 games with my ISA vs the Vorlans, I kicked them around in the first game, but the second game was close, but the ISA emerged victorious.

I also got a game in with the Psi-core, and thanks to dice rolls, it was suprisingly one sided, with me knocking out his Explorer-class survey ship in the second turn, and my White Stars ripping a new hole in the Hunter- class Experimental Warship, and the two Motherships were looking pretty bad when my opponent decided to call the game. (He managed to Nail 1 Blue Star, and almost take out 2 White Stars)

Recently played again, this time with my ISA vs the Gaim, I lossed, badly :lol: So many E-mines, so many :shock: (I did a total of 3 damage that game.)

So far I have been having fun, despite my disturbing lack of wins.

 

[Tolwyn]

I had my first game Centauri VS. Shadows. I was choped to peaces by 8 FLights of Shadow fightes as they manouvered through my rear arc where I had no weapons at all. My opponent had some really lucky dice rolles as nearly every hit from him resulted in a critical hit.

The new Stealth rating on the scouts makes them much harder to hit with CapShips.

All in all I say that I should have taken 1 or 2 Maximus as escorts.

 

[H]

had my first post playtest game last night, 5 point rade crusade EA and 3rd age EA verus 5 point raid ISA and Brakiri.
alas I drew the short straw, and faced the isa fleet, on turn 3 with only one chronos left, the IS player having lost a whole two bluestars went and hit the 3rd age guy, we called it on turn 3, nothing could hurt the whitestars :-(
giving them scout, they may as well have just given em twin linked :-(
the EA lost marathon, 2 hyperions, nova, omega, chronos. the isa lost 3 bluestars, the brakiri lost nothing :-(

 

[katadder]

what were your fighters doing? if they have scout whitestars they are lacking fighter cover.

 

[H]

as the Whitestars are faster than the fighters, the fighters got in, did one round of firing, then were left for dead. Starfuries don't really offer the punch to kill off Whitestars

 

[katadder]

whitestars have one inch of move on starfurys but are not SM. its actually hard to circle a fleet and keep attacking with whitestars whilst also staying away from fighters.

 

[Locutus9956]

Hiff, it sounds like you were a bit unlucky there in all honesty and a little too reliant on now downgraded Chronos (I suspect Im gonna have that problem too, since they previously made up the bulk of my front line rather than the 'escort frigate' role theyre supposed to fill from the fluff (I actually really like the change to the Chronos but we shall see.

As for the whitestars, well I always felt they SHOULD have had twin linked anyway but scout adds a little interest to the mix and also gives them options vs stealth I guess (also Id suggest normally rather than chasing the whitestars just have your fighters follow your ships and when the WS go in for an attack, jump em. Starfuries have a effectively a 16" attack range (move + firing range) and even Thunderbolts can strike a target 16" away with their missiles!). Now a whitestar has an 18" range but really to deliver its full punch it needs to get within 10" so fighters should be able to at least do something. The problem with relying soley on Chronos though is that the Whitestars will hold out of 15" range and just fire their beams, you need other ships with better range weapons to force the to close in and use their full firepower....

 

[H]

let me see.. Marathon, destroyed nothing, it itself anhialated in turn 1. the hyperions amnaged to kill a blue star, both of them were anhilated in turn 2, the Chronos killed nothing, one was removed in turn 2... by a bluestar, very embarrasing. the Omega completely healthy to dead in turn 4..the Nova was killed in turn 3 after several rounds of Kabrokta fire. with one avenger, 2 assault hyperions and a chronos left against a Kabrokta, Brokados, ikorta, halik, wang, 4 whitestars and 1 bluestar, we gave up.

 

[Shadow Queen]

my demos have gone well... Intercepters still confuse me :roll:

 

[thatcash]

My first 2e game was Ambush, Vree being ambushed by Psi-corps. As luck would have it, random terrain put a density 6 asteroid field on the table and the Vree player (the ambushee) set up in it to take advantage of the free stealth. On turn 1, 2 hunters, 1 Nova, 1 Avenger (both ships with targets in 2 different arcs), 4 Thuds, 1 Aurora, and 2 Shadowfuries all proceeded to roll ones on their stealth checks. 13 failed stealth rolls. I conceeded the game and we reset.

Game 2 was the same, with the Psi-Corps destroying Every Vree ship on the field.

Game 3 was Dilgar vs Brakiri in Call to Arms. I lost, but, damn, the Dilgar are fun to play.

So far, I'm pretty happy with 2e...

 

[Davesaint]

If you look at the Brakiri fleet Locutus, you will see why the Starfuries had issues against the whitestars. With the Falkosi's now being +1 dogfighters, the brakiri can use their fighters as screens against the Starfuries. Especially with the Brokados now a raid level ship.



Dave

 

[Locutus9956]

Ah I didnt realise you were playing a big allied game (I thought you played 2 seperate fights). If the whitestars had fighter cover then thats a completely different story!

However it still sounds like you just had some very bad luck overall Hiff!

 

[Davesaint]

This is why complete fleets need to be listed with the scenario being fought in order to get the complete picture of the battle. That way the designers and playtesters can review these battles to see if further adustmets( :shock need to be made in future products.



Dave

 

[Wing Commander]

Hiff, I did apologise for my uncharacteristic dice rolling on the beams... I found that using the 4 Blue Stars as initiative sinks left me able to Squadron the 4 White Stars which were downright unpleasant firing as a group. On the first shot of 8 dice of beams (all 4 firing) I hit with 7, followed by 6, followed by 5, followed by 4, followed by 3, followed by 2, followed by 1 then a clean miss! - 28 hits against Hiffs poor Marathon which exited stage left. In the same turn (turn 1) they scout locked a Hyperion and double damaged it out of existence with an obscene bucket of hits (I think only a couple missed after rerolls - about 14 hits plus crits at double damage).
I also found that staggering the WS and BS meant that I could snipe off quite a few fighters regardless of which ship got bounced, those Accurate dakka's made short work of the Furies. On turn 2 Hiff placed his Furies in behind my WS squadron and managed to chew a few points off them, they proceeded to full burn straight down the board toward the next players Omega and he'd no chance of keeping up with them.
Also, those Blue Stars are nasty little beggars, 3+ dodge kept them in the game a lot longer than I thought and they can dish out some respectable damage as well.
My Beam rolls on Turn 2 were also strangely good as I managed to roll about a further 20 hits from the squadron against a Hyperion followed by a further 18 hits in Turn 3 against the Hyperion which included 4 crits! I don't normally do so well with beams but I guess sometimes you get lucky. As Hiff said, the White Stars did very well but against some other fleets they'd be dead by Turn 2 - I'm kinda looking forward to facing the Gaim to see if I can actually survive past a couple of turns.

 

[Ripple]

All depends on which whitestars you take. The ones with the flight of nials can often peck away the edges of the enemy fighter swarms without getting mugged themselves.

But yeah, it's often hard to judge what happened in a fight without a full battle report. Sometimes rules are done wrong or list interactions need to be looked at. The 'pure' whitestar fleet without covering fighters is vulnerable, but there is no reason to ever take such a fleet. You are better off with some sinks in any fleet. So if you make the white star a viable ship in a pure fleet, but then make having sinks and allies an option you've made a whole new set of balance issues.

So far I've only play a few post playtest games... the changes are okay, but I have issues with the fact that most ships seem to blow up nowdays rather than be worn down. IE firepower increased, defenses didn't. Crits effects are less important wihich is good, but part of that is because the ships did not survive the attack.

Ripple