Idea for enhancing shield usage/strategy in the game

[smg13]

Hello everybody.... my first post.

I want to share an idea I have been trying in my game group. I am sure someone has already tested ideas for shields (I bet the playesters did). And maybe someone has used this very same idea... I just wanted to share, since it has worked very well for my group.

Instead of having one single shield rating, we have diveded shields into four sides. So now each ship has port, starboard, foward, and aft shields. At first we diveded the shield total power between all four sides equally, with any remaining points going to the foward shields. But this made ships very weak. For example, we where having a Fed CA against a Klingon D-7 blow up in 3-5 turns.

So we use the total shield power on each side... if a Fed CA has 22 total, each side has 22. This has been working very well... ships now take a bit more pounding before they are killed. But it has the affect of forcing players to maneuver to better use the shields. Games feel really cool with everyone trying to get the best out of their shields. Many times you have to decide to either risk getting hits on a weak side, but keep your weapons' arc on target. Or turn around to expose a stronger side to enemy fire. Little guys like the Police Cutter are a bit more survivable (in "play time", not in endurance). And with their agility trait, they zoom about, weaving and snaking thru the battlefield... like you would expect them to do. Makes it more fun to use them. The Texas Light Cruiser now is my favorite... it has become a fun challenge to use it.

There is a bit of extra book-keeping, but it is not that bad. Games now go a bit longer; but not because of the book-keping or the fact ships take a bit longer to get destroyed. But because players take a bit longer to think how to maneuver their ships. A small game for us went from an average of 45-60 minutes to 90 minutes, so it is not to bad.

For shield reinforcing, once the Special is activated, the reinforcement power can only be applied to one side... extra power above the original (max) rating is lost in the end phase of that turn. Many times you have to think if it is worth to activate this Special vs another one, or risk going on with a weak side. The whole thing becomes more tense... plenty of "Kirk-gambles" going on at the table thanks to this experimental rule.

So, I am interested in hearing what anyone has to say.

 

[Da Boss]

For example, we where having a Fed CA against a Klingon D-7 blow up in 3-5 turns./quote]

Is that a bad thing? ACTA is really designed to have this sort of thing happen as its a fleet scale game so cruisers should being blasted into wreckage by groups of others. Its supposed to simulate battles like say: The clash of fleets at Endor in Return of the Jedi, Sacrifice of Angels in DS9 or the Babylon 5 battles - stuff the Original series (and to a large extent Next Gen) did not have the budget to show.

There's nothing wrong with your ideas, esepcially for a couple of ships as side which is not ACTA's strong point, and also if you are using it for RPGing but I just don't think that they are suited for larger scale games due to bookeeping for 8-12 ships a side - especially when the SFU has already got systems for small scale engagements - but if they work for you and your group - all good

 

[billclo]

I like the idea. One of the chief complaints I've heard about ACTA:SF is the unified shield, which takes away much of the need to carefully maneuver in favor of sheer concentration of fire. It becomes more a matter of how much fire can you concentrate on one target vs more careful positioning of units getting the job done.

I've been helping playtest a game that has 4 shield facings, with the ability to regenerate some shields, and interestingly enough, transfer shield boxes to a damaged shield, albiet in a limited way. It does recreate the way you'd think that shields work, in that it forces you to decide if you want to a) spend your very limited "energy" regenerating shield boxes, b) do you want to spend even more "energy" reallocating some to a damaged shield from the 2 adjacent shields (thereby weakening those adjacent shields).

It does have the effect of lengthening the game slightly, but I thought the tradeoff was worth it. You still have to concentrate fire on a ship lest it run off and rebuild it's shields, but that can still happen now.

Now I have only playtested small games; 1 vs 2 ships, etc. I have not been involved in larger battles due to lack of time to do so. But I think it would make for a VERY interesting optional rule. Sure you can houserule something like this easily enough, but I'd like to see it be more official but optional and requiring all player's agreement.

 

[Nerroth]

There is, or rather will be, a precedent for 4-sided faceted shields once Star Fleet Squadron Strike shows up. In that game, FC shield facings 1, 2, 4, and 6 are mapped to the front, starboard, aft, and port facings respectively. In that game, shields 3 and 5 are mapped to the top and bottom (since SFSS is designed for 3D space combat, in which "up" and "down" are factors to consider); but there would probably be no need to worry about those facings here.


Incidentally, such a conversion process would help to highlight the weaker aft shields of many Middle Years ships, and highlight the advantage of maneuver in that particular time period.

 

[smg13]

We where having one D-7 destroy one Fed CA in three turns. it happend twice in a row when we first tried the first iteration of the shield rules. With the first iteration of the rules the CA had 5 points in the AFT,Port,Starboard sides and 7 points Foward. 7 points Foward for a CA against a D-7 is like having a veneer of toilet paper for protection. So... the idea did not work and we switched to the second iteration , with the whole score of shield points on each side.

Now with this second version, a battle is interesting, because a D-7 vs a CA dance around each other and it's really 50/50 who wins, as long as players have similar "tactical skills". But, if you make a Kobayashi Maru-type of scenario with three D-7 against a CA, then chances are the CA will die in 3-5 turns. There is a (very) small chance for the CA captain to destroy one or two of the D-7, but he needs a lot of luck and skill. This is thanks to the fact he can maneuver his shields around. We tried 3 games with htis scenario, and only in one of them the CA was able to kill two of the D-7s thanks to a bunch of bad rolls by the Klingon captain and a few really good rolls by the CA captain. But eventually the third D-7 was able to kill him... the CA was down to 3 or 4 points of shield power in two sides, no power in two other sides, and the hull down to cripple. The D-7 maneuver to get clear shots from the exposed sides and that was it for the CA.

We tried to use the idea of being able to transfer points of shield power between the four sides... OMG, the whole game slowed down to a crawl! We would do the transfer at the End Phase. Players would spend forever agonizing about moving points back and forth. And not only the game slowed down over this, it suddenly became almost impossible to kill anything.

Right now, just having the four sides have their power supply independently works great. We where able to cut down bookkeeping by cuting small, round, clear templates a bit bigger than the bases of the ships. We stick these under the bases so the ships have a sort of "halo" for their bases. We write on these templates with a marker the energy state of the shield. So it is just a matter of whiping the number and putting the new number as damage happens... takes 2 seconds. And it looks nice, like a HUD displaying the status of all four shield sides. Of course, if your tabletop background is dark, the marker needs to be bright. We use red.

The games we play are about 2-5 ships per side. We'll try next weekend a big battle with two fleets and see how the shield rules hold up. We like how "fast" ACTA plays, and we don't want to mess with this. The issue with shields that made us come up with new rules is that we have a player that tends to use Fed CAs like a floating fortress. He just sits there shooting his almighty phasers. It did not feel right... so now he has to move with this new shields rule. And for the first time small ships become a danger even to dreadnoughts. They can fly in close, use their agility to spread damage around the shields, get a few points of damage on target, and fly out of range. It feels like this would be the way you would use small ships with fleet tactics. Before, they where just there to screen bigger ships and soak up damage.

 

[Da Boss]

I think if you are looking at only a few ships each - it will probably work well - post some pics up

However suprised the Constitution class was that powerful sitting still - if he does not centreline his phasers he is not especially powerful and the D7's should be able to keep their front shields towards him and out of range of his photons.

Do you play with terrain? If not, try it - makes the games much interesting and tactical

 

[Nerroth]

If you decided to ditch the Klingon front shield rule and go by FC's 1-2-4-6 shield facings, the Constitution-class CA would have 30/24/24/24 shields (if going F/S/A/P), while the Klingon D7 would have 30/22/22/22.

Alternatively, one could use the Fleet Scale facets, and get 15/12/12/12 and 15/11/11/11 instead.


However, how would either change affect the Boost Energy to Shields! Special Action? Would you roll the same number of dice and be obliged to choose carefully where each point of shield regeneration goes, or would you get more points to go around?

 

[Reynard]

I cringed not just a bit hearing someone wants to go back to the complexity and bookeeping nightmare of multishields. I assume we next see critical systems as large groups of boxes.

 

[smg13]

Yeah, I cringe too of thinking about SFB or Fed Comm... I love both games dearly, but if some of my players get even a whiff of them, they run away screaming. That is why I am keeping it simple. The only stat to use is the existing shield power number. Just use it in all four sides. And only use four sides/facets that also correspond to the four firing arcs.

And the only way to put energy back into the shields is with the Special order of Boost Energy to Shields. Roll a d6 for every ten points of original shield power. The player decides which side gets the result. Any extra power over the original number is lost after the End Phase.

We experimented with freedom to put shield power of Boost Energy to Shields anyway the player wants, adding it all to a side, or splitting it.... but players would spend to much time "optimizing" their numbers, and slowing down play. The whole idea for this rule is to make the game more "tactical" by forcing players to maneuver, but trying to keep any slowdown in play at the bare minimum.

The rule for Klingons about reinforced shields stays the same, but only applies to the foward arc. As long as you have shield power in the foward arc you get the reinforced shields.

We haven't tried large (12+ ships) battles yet, so I don't know how it will work, but with small numbers it works well. Tonight we played one battle, a fed CA and a Dreadnought vs. three D-7 and we played the whole thing in two hours. Klingons won (barely). I had a situation in the game where the CA had a planet on the left side, protecting the port shield that had collapsed. Full shield aft. And barely any shields foward and starboard. And the hull was a point or two before cripple. One of the D-7s was coming right at me, with no shields port or starboard, barely any foward, and a good quantity aft. And his hull was a mess too. The other D-7s where half a map away tangled with the Dreadnought. The planet protected me from them. The D-7 had to come at me straight because his flanks had no shields. He turns and I shoot him full of holes. And my exposed port side was protected by the planet. So I had a choice: Move foward and gamble I could shoot away whatever foward shields he had, and crack his hull open. But I risked not doing enought damage. The other choice was to turn towards the planet and use the gravity well to slingshot around and escape, using my aft shields to protect me. Even if he followed, my aft shields had power. But he would probably also turn around and run away to recharge his shields... still, I could maybe get a shot at one of his flanks.

I decide to push foward! But the gamble did not pay off... he won the initiative, made me move first; I still risked going foward. I got his shields down, but did not get any criticals on him. He got my shields down, and got criticals on me, and sent me adrift with a damaged impulse engine.

With the official shields rules, a lot of this "tactical thinking" would have been a non-issue. It would not have mattered which way the D-7 maneuvered. I did not need to consider gambling an attack or escaping... my usage of the planet to protect my CA would have been a bit moot. I like the way that this shield rules I am writing about add an extra "layer" of tactics to the game. The Klingon player, right before we rolled dice to go ahead and make our moves asked me -"so, what kind of captain are you? A Kirk or a Picard?"- That was a great moment.

Next weekend I'll play a large scenario... maybe I'll take pictures to post of the shield templates we are using on the bases. We came up tonight with a new template... a clear disk of laminate that has a slot cut as a radius line, so it slots right into the peg over the base. We write shield states over it with a red marker.

I am interested in hearing from someone who tries my shield rules, just to see how they work out, specially with other races. So far we have only played Feds vs. Klingons. We ordered a few Romulans, so once we get them we will see how this all works with plasma flying around. And we are also thinking of adapting a Space Amoeba to use it in ACTA... maybe later I'll post the rules we have come up with

 

[gunner41c]

Finlos and I are playing Federation and Empire the Gorn/Romulan war sub scenario. We are using ACTA-SFB to resolve the combat in the game. We ignored carriers/fighters/PF's and so on to make the battles work. It works surprisingly well and we now incorporated the 4 shield idea. The 2500 point (13ships max) battles went in around 4 hours. This is a pretty average time for a fleet of that size with a unified shield set up, and good for a 4 shield idea. I really like the 4 shields and the book keeping is very minimal. It added maneuver back into the game. Instead of worrying about which weapons are facing, now you try to get into a weak shield also. The crits to the shield score now work where before by the time you took crits that affected shields you usually didn't have much if any left. The crit damage repair is now very important to restore shields. I found ACTA a good system and this should have been in the game from the start. Now Klingon shields don't have to have a special rule about front shields, just double the shield strength. Our F&E game is working fairly well since yours truly is eating Romulans for breakfast. 8) I put 3 dreadnoughts in a strike fleet and am eating my way into Romulan space. We are using the command rule to govern how big a fleet can be ie: DN + command of 10 + scout + admiral adding 1 ship for a total of 13. It is a decent way to run a campaign and is fairly easy to do. You do need to leave it set up and we play about once a week to resolve 1 battle out of the 3 a turn is generating on average.

 

[McKinstry]

We never play games with less than 12 ships per side lately and that number is getting bigger thus any extra record keeping, even minor, is anathema.

One of the things I like best about ACTA is things die fast. One turn in the wrong place at the wrong time and boom, your CA is plasma. If I wanted individual ship tactics at the level of shield facings, I'd play FC.

 

[Rambler]

To be fair we tried this out a couple of weeks ago. At 3 Ships per side the slowing of the game wasn't noticible but left us ask at this scale why play ACTA just play Fleet Scale FC and move on. We kicked it up to 6 per side and yes we noticed the system started dragging a bit. At 12 it was differently become a time sink. By the time we hit 15 ships a side it was no doubt a issue and seemed to be contrary to the spirt of the ruleset. Just for giggles we bumped up to 20 a side and called it DOA.

ACTA is a fleet game what makes it sing is things going pop real fast. 4 Shields per ship is not something I want to track in a Fleet Game nor did the guys I played with think it added anything when you have 12 or more ships per side. One of the guys suggested if we were seriously going to do this just do 2 shield FH and AH and call it a day.

 

[Lincolnlog]

We tried this last year, but applied 6 shields, used a hex teplate for drawing LOS. It really slowed the game. We took it a step further, and used full power weapons. Because really if you have multiple shields then the ATCA weapons damage is too light.

We also went to damage distribution. Personally, I think the ship damage totals in ACTA are flawed. I compared ships of equal types and classes, and when you threw in all the damage a ship could absorb compared to Federation Commander or SFB, some of these ships are too sturdy and some are too weak. For instance compare the Fed POL to the FFG and FFB. The FFG can absorb about 11% more damage than the POL in FEDCOM/SFB, and the FFB could absorb about 8% more than the FFG. The FFB and FFG are equal in ACTA, and the POL can acually take more. Yes, I know the POL has les shields but not alot les and it's the penetrating hits that kill you anyway.

Instead of Hull x2 = Damage, I would have done Hull + Frame + Systems including Weapons / a set number = Damage. And the of course the 1/3 = Crippled is fine.

Just my thoughts. I realize the game will not be re-written, so it is how it is, and it is fun the way it is, just not entirely consistent.

Bob

 

[scoutdad]

We've tried 4 shields...
We've tried 2 shields...

And using the 12 to 15 ships we tend to use (anything less than that and we just play Fed Comm or SFB), the game is slowed to the point where we could have just played Fed Comm anyway.
And we consider ourselves fairly rapid players to begin with. [less than 90 minutes for 5 on 5 battles]

Robert: re damage levels:
I'd like to have seen total boxes of SFB ship divided by "X". Whether "X" ended up being 3, 4, or even 5 is irrelevant. At least the ships would have retained SFU proportional increases in survivability... but that ship has sailed, and the game is what it is. Its still fun - as long as you don't think too much into the game...

 

[JohnDW]

Cheer up, there can always be a second edition of the game, errata's out the yingyang, house rules you and your friends agree to play by instead of the official rules. I think its still worthwhile to go on about how we think we can improve the game. I don't much think having one box for 360 degrees of shields needs to change, but I think klingons could probably have a second shield box for the front arc only instead of always taking half damage to the front, so instead of effectively doubling their shields with their high agility, its a smaller boost, and no rounding needs to happen when you deal odd points of damage.

 

[Lincolnlog]

John,

I agree with the Klingon front shield, thought it would have been better to add special seperate front shield that has to take damage when fire at from the front, before damaging the primary shield. Easist way to show that on the ship card would be Shields: 18/9.

I would like to see the damage scores adjusted. But without house rulling I don't believe that will happen.

Tony, I agree still a great game without changing anything. I am satisfied, just would have liked the consistency.

Bob