I'm getting sick of "Lumbering"

[logical_proof]

Are drones supposed to be a major weapons system or simply an ancillary one with the capacity to be tactically annoying to the point of forcing adjustments but not a primary killer such as phasers, photons, plasmas or disrupters?

For all races except the Kzinti yes. Kzinti use them as their primary weapon (as you can probably see).

In the games we've had so far, they really haven't been a huge factor - although both sides have spent a lot of time worrying about them! They would be less of a worry if "Intensify Defensive Fire" wasn't a 50/50 kind of thing!

-Tim

Kzintis DO NOT USE DRONES AS THEIR PRIMARY WEAPON. The Kzintis have the same amount of disruptors on their ships as all other disruptor using races. If anything the Kzintis give up phaser 1's for more drones. So, no drones are not a primary weapon system in the SFU.

 

[gord314]

Logical_proof, drones may not be a primary weapon system in the SFU, I don't know, I'm not an expert. But drones can be a primary weapon system in THIS game. For example the DWD has drones as its primary weapon system, and Kzinti and Federation fleets can be built around drones as a primary weapon system.

 

[archon96]

well with range and numbers and no reload ill pound you with nothing but drones before you get to me. and when you do youll end up using phasers to kill my drones because ill have depleted youre add. 1d6 multi hit with an auto hit is a nasty thing to face off against. just the minimal drones from the feds drive my gorns crazy. against a true drone chucker in tournament is gonna be horrid.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Kzintis DO NOT USE DRONES AS THEIR PRIMARY WEAPON. The Kzintis have the same amount of disruptors on their ships as all other disruptor using races. If anything the Kzintis give up phaser 1's for more drones. So, no drones are not a primary weapon system in the SFU.

Cough splutter.

Good job I wasn't drinking when I read that.

Remember you are not playing SFB/FC

36" range, Auto hit, 1D6 damage, devastating and 24+ in a fleet, oh and turret mounted so 360 Degree fire so you can run away and still use them. The disruptors are secondary weapons used when someone gets within arc and 24" range.

The ONLY thing that stops the Kzinti from crushing everyone else is fixed maps. Terrain is nice but with fixed maps you can box them. On open maps you will never catch them and they just kill you.

A Kzinti ship can do APE and move 16" every turn and just fire its drones, if you try to catch up all you can fire is Phasers and the Fed must choose between Phasers and ADDs.

A pair of BCs can mix with your fleet while the 5 FFs shoot you from a long way off. 28 Auto hit drones a turn is most definitely not a secondary weapon. Kzinti disruptor arcs and mobility make the disruptors the secondary weapons since apart from the war type ships many Kzinti have F/P and F/S Disruptor arcs mean that they can fly past you and add half their Disruptors to those Drones through the Port or starboard side arcs.

The BCs can cross your T while firing 2 disruptors each, the 28 Drones reduces at least one of your ships to scrap and you have to rave to catch them before they wreck too many of your ships.

Nope, Drones are not a secondary weapon in any Kzinti fleet. Or a Fed Fleet with BCS and DWDs or a Klingon fleet with D6Ds.

 

[logical_proof]

And that was my point in THE STAR FLEET UNIVERSE drones are not the "primary weapon" of the Kzintis. In this game drones are overpowered super plasmas that are susceptible to add's for a couple of turns. You would have to be a bufoon to not see that bombarding with drones while running away is a viable tactic that will net you damage.

 

[Ben2]

Part of this is the difference in meta game. In SFB/FC you'd get one battlecruiser tops, in ACTA taking one (or two) is pretty much a no brainer.

The C7 is 210 points, with 4 disruptors, 4 drones and 10 phaser-1s. A Gorn Medium Cruiser is 210 points with 9 phaser-1s, 2 S tops, 2 F torps and is lumbering. It has more shields but the same hull and a worse turn stat.

Once you start coming up against battlecruiser heavy fleets where there are a lot of Fed or Klingon BCs with 4 dice of drones plus full complements of heavy weapons then you've got 8 or 12 drone dice to pile onto one ship and start taking down the shields. While drone damage can't pop through, you can still soften up a less maneuverable enemy for a turn or two.

I'd take a C7 over a Gorn CM anyday.

Can anyone post some batreps with the Gorn?

And if you want to worry about when drone ship variants get introduced, worry about the E4D. 4 drone racks on an agile turn 3 frigate that it would be hard to justify costing more than a 100 points. Or worry about the G2, a police ship with 2 drone racks that would be a great initiative sink.

 

[Ben2]

In SFB getting a massive drone swarm on target is pretty hard, particularly when if you clump them so they hit at the same time they are vulnerable to transporter bombs, and other ships can snipe drones aimed at you with special checks, and other anti drone counter measures.

In ACTA you pick a ship and hit it with every drone in your fleet (ideally on the edge of the enemy formation where it can only get limited Intensify Defensive Firepower help). Drones can pretty much cancel each other out in drone fleets, but with Gorn this doesn't apply.

Has anyone fought Gorn against Kzinti or drone heavy Fed/Klingons?

 

[gord314]

The C7 is 240 points and has command +1 according to the errata. I've run Gorn against federation, but not drone heavy federation. In open space the Gorn do pretty well, but their bad turning really hurts them around debris.

 

[archon96]

if im gorn in a tournament and my oppenent is kzintis.i reach over shake his hand and say "good Game". Then i pack my boys and go look for some rommies to pound. Having been playing against my son who loves drone heavy fed formations, Kzintis are more of a frustration i just dont need.

 

[dalek4890l]

Has anyone fought Gorn against Kzinti or drone heavy Fed/Klingons?

I have fought against Kzinti in a 1,000 point battle. It was an exercise in frustration. It starts off okay but eventually some of your ships start failing the roll for intesify defensive fire so the ship the kzinti's are concerntrating their fire on will get damaged. You can mitigate some of this with evasive action (always fun when you get lucky and the drones all go flying past because your nimble Gorn ships out-turned them). If the Gorns actually automatically passed the intesify defensive fire crew check it would probably be okay. I would suggest a new weapon system and acronym for acta which is the:-

Comprehensive
Hazardous
Enviroment
Advanced
Targetting
System

This enables Gorns to automatically pass any intensify defensive fire rolls against Kzinti ships.

On a more serious note perhaps a bonus to the intensify defensive fire or evasion rolls if the range is over 24" would help in that crucial being hammered by the drones zone. This should also only affect ships with too many drones for their opponents good.


In the actual batle I lost half the ships closing and then with plasmas ready to fire had to stop the game. This is the first time I've used Gorns and I will be going back to using them. I might insist on 'historical' scenarios when we're allies with the Kzintis though. Operation Cavalry anyone?

 

[storeylf]

In ACTA drone have been hugely boosted.

In SFU, drones have several limits.

Time to reach target.
Out manouverable.
Control limits (limits drone heavy ship launch rate) .
Endurance limits.
Limited ammo.

That all ensures that even if you do not have dedicated anti drone systems you can still deal with them, in FC it is quite normal to simply accelerate past them whilst still heading direct at the target, and largely ignore them. They either then run out of fuel, or the other guy drops them so he can luanch more.

In ACTA they hit straight away, no matter the range. They can't be outmanouvered, they require hoops to jump through to out run (speed grater than 12 special action, and facing away from enemy, and was there a crew check?). They have umlimted ammo, can fire every turn no matter how many they launched last turn. They do lots of damage, and are devastating.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that the system is very different and quick and easy, if in turn they have enough disadvantages/upgraded counters that they are still balanced in a smiliar way to SFU.

So what disadvantages do they have relative to SFU. None that I can think of.

Have the counters been upgraded? ADD has been boosted by being auto kill each volley whilst the ammo lasts, but the fact that the ammo runs out fast against better drone ships (Drone 4+) doesn't really help that much, but I'll assume they are overall balanced against drones for now. More importantly though, you need to look at the counters that everyone has access to. Not every one has ADD, so just looking at them doesn't help. Well, the only all round counter - the phasers - are actually weaker, in SFU a phaser 1 auto kills a drone or 2 phaser 3s auto kills a drone. In ACTA neither happens, as they now have a miss chance.

Intensify defensive fire? - in SFU you didn't need to passs some test to protect a ship, you just made sure it got shots in whilst the drone was still in transit, you didn't even need to move ahead of the drones target to do it, you just timed your last pre impact move right. So rather than a boost with that action, that tactic has been weakened as a counter in ACTA.

Out run the drone? not only does this have the issues noted above, Gorns are lumbering, pointing away from the enemy is not a good idea when it means you will find it harder to point back at them as they move the other way.

In SFU drones are annoying for Gorns who have limited counters to them, but the fact that drones themselves are just a nuisance weapon doesn't make them any more than annoying. They can still outmanouver them, they aren't going to wipe out ships before you even get in range.

In total contrast look at plasma. They get the same advantage of auto hit immediately, but it appears that someone considered that too powerful, so plasma did receive a big downgrade- defensive fire is hugely effective against them. In SFU it takes ~12 phaser 1s to knock out a close range plasma S, in ACTA it takes about ~5. In SFU the 4 plasma point blank impact from a Gorn BC was guaranteed to cripple an enemy cruiser even after all phasers defensive fire, in ACTA that only reduces the enemy shields somewhat.

I felt that plasma weakness last week, having lined up for a plasma strike against the klingon C8 I shot plasma and watch most of it get shot down, but given that I would have been behind the klingon the following turn with no way of getting back round I had to fire. Yet in SFU a plasma strike at point blank range like that is going hurt no matter what. Fortunately my ally was Feds.

Again, in isolation that may be fine, different game system and all that, but added to lumbering, huge drone boosts, and even a -1 intiative that does seem to be kick the Gorn for no clear reason.

In SFB/FC you'd get one battlecruiser tops,

I can't speak for SFB so much (haven't played it in many many years), but in FC I can say this is wrong. We regularly play with with 4-5 ships, 7-8 sometimes. Many of those will be battlecruiser size or above. Even the FC tourney is pointed to be 3 cruisers per side.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Again, in isolation that may be fine, different game system and all that, but added to lumbering, huge drone boosts, and even a -1 initiative that does seem to be kick the Gorn for no clear reason.

Welcome to the world of Gorn. :lol:

Call me cynical (people do) but either this is going to get, erm, reconsidered in about a months time or sales of the Gorn Fleet are going to be low as aside from us die hard Gornites people want to play fleets where they can actually have a change of winning against Drone users.

In terms of plasmas, its a fleet game, you need to focus a fleets firepower. Generally it takes two plasma ships to wreck an enemy of the same size in one go. Yes compared to SFB/FC its far easier to stop a single ships plasma salvo. Use your mobility to gang up on people. Oh wait.......

On the plasma side, wait for escorts that (Please please please Oh lizard kings) have some sort of escort trait that gives them no crew check for IDF. We have argued this for a while and watched the tumbleweed fly past but escorts need something or they are pointless. A 50% chance of doing the job each turn, a bit silly. :?

Anyway wait till escorts arrive, then give up a mass of plasma firepower (14 AD or more) by having two escorts with massed plasma-D racks. Use them to get you into range with less than crippling casualties and then see if you can brilliantly fight the enemy fleet with 75% of yours because the escorts are crap at fighting enemy ships.

Still the Kzinti and Feds are both allied to us and it’s not like the Klinks have Drone ships (well apart from the frigate one and the D6 one and the other one). Or that we can end up facing anyone in a tournament or open game or free campaigns where it’s every race for themselves. :roll:

Still if you cannot stand the anti Gorn bias you can always play some thing else, the Klingons seem to have many advantages, or become one of the enemy and play the Kzinti :lol:

 

[storeylf]

Anyway wait till escorts arrive, then give up a mass of plasma firepower (14 AD or more) by having two escorts with massed plasma-D racks.

I'm no expert on all SFB ships, being much more a FC person. But in FC the gorn aegis ship is not 'mass' plasma D. The CLE gives up its 2 plasma Fs (or was it the S?) for 2 Plasma Ds if I remember correct.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

Does surprise me that Drones/Photons/Plasma's all seem to have similiar damage abilities - talking about the devastating here, more than anything else. DON'T have a problem with this, just suprises me.

Agree that Photons in regard to effect are about right (still not sure on the Devastating, as an automatic 4 damage/hits (8 if overloaded) should really be enough). Drones have received a great increase in effect, and Plasma (which i think has been modelled well) a reduction. Someone discribed drones as plasma's without the drawbacks, don't think this is really true, but see where there coming from. I know it's NOT SFB/FC, but drones are currently more effective than plasma due to the range and numbers game. Yes you have more ways to stop them, but the game is set up for FLEET actions, so you get more. It's nice to say you can shut them down, but to be fair, how. A ship targetted by an entire fleet should die (no problem with that), but the killer damage weapons in the SFU (excluding maulers) were generally close range (under 5 hex - in ActA, under 8") Plasma as you couldn't stop some of it reaching you and doing something, even if it just stripped your shield. Not in ActA, the feared close range R type is possibly easier to defend against than drones of the same AD level (fair enough, 7AD of drone would be in 2 flights, but still, a ship with full defensive ability will counter both as well - so the plasma doesn't have the 'Fear' factor that it has in the other SFU core games (i've played a game where i've stopped 5AD of Plasma dead with 5 phasers - 4xPH-1 and 1xPH-3. Sorry, SFB/FC bit - G and F type Torp together have 50 damage pts, Phaser hits would remove around 28-30, which would be halved as it's a plasma, so you'd still get around 35 (about 20-25 if fired from between 5-10 hexes)pts on target. Now it's just dead torp)

The annoying thing on my part is i think they got the system about right, but treating drones like 'super-plasma' seems odd (drones need to have a heavy hit - there more powerful than an photon (but not if overloaded) in regard to damage caused), as it kind of makes drones a super weapon, not a tactical option.

And my beloved Gorn SHOULD have issues with them - i'd be shouting loudly if they could handle drones, as thats not how they were built.

(and as an aside, what has the above got to do with lumbering :lol: )

 

[Captain Jonah]

Anyway wait till escorts arrive, then give up a mass of plasma firepower (14 AD or more) by having two escorts with massed plasma-D racks.

I'm no expert on all SFB ships, being much more a FC person. But in FC the gorn aegis ship is not 'mass' plasma D. The CLE gives up its 2 plasma Fs (or was it the S?) for 2 Plasma Ds if I remember correct.

DD and BDD retain the plasma-G and replace the Fs with D racks, the CL replaces the Fs with D racks and keeps the two S torps. THe HDD escort replaces everything with 4 D racks.

 

[McKinstry]

The more I hear from the experienced SFB and FC players, the more it sounds as if drones are simply more powerful in ACTA than either of the other two SFU incarnations.

It would seem that something to tone them down a bit is needed. I would suggest the simple expediant of allowing phasers placed on defense or tractors assigned to defense, to shoot as many times as the ship is attacked. It wouldn't completely nerf drones as they would still have leakers get through (most ships don't have banks of phaser 3's, just one or two that will bear) but ADD's may last more than a turn verus drone chuckers and any phasers reserved for defense are still out of it for the turn as an offensive weapon. It would allow all the races to instantly have a decent defensive chance and makes the Kzinti look a lot less broken. Most space games sooner or later falter over excess ordnance when 90% of the target market wants good old fashioned Trafalgar in space, not Midway and certainly not Cold War Gone Hot 1985 (Harpoon is a really really boring game).

 

[Sgt_G]

I just know I'm going to get howls of "That's too much to keep track of", but what if .....

What if seeker weapons (both drones and plasma) had to declare launch and target at the beginning of combat phase but don't actually hit until the launching ship's turn to fire other weapons (phasers, etc). In the other games, you have time to see how big of a drone wave is coming at you and can even identify the targets and thus can plan the defenses. This would allow the same thing in this game. Plamsas are self-guiding and will still hit even if the launching ship blows up, but drones are guided by the ship and thus would lose direction (unless you have a scout that can take over the guidance).

 

[Iain McGhee]

I think that's more or less what the early version of the rule was (following Victory at Sea's torpedo rules), although they hit in the End Phase.

 

[Ben2]

You could do it like this.

Movement step includes a seeking weapons step where you fire drones at the beginning of movement. Counters are put down where the firing ship starts it's movement. You could even be a git and have secret targeting as an advanced rule, just having an arrow on the drone counter saying where it is headed.

Drone counters are moved to the target ship at the end of the movement phase. If they went more than 36" then they run out of fuel and are discarded.

The target fleet has the entire attack phase to pick off the drones.

Drones hit as the last step in the attack phase.



This does nerf drones a lot. At the moment you can watch each drone salvo hit and decide whether to fire another, with this you'll waste drones, and won't be able to use them to strip shields and then pound ships with phasers to score crits etc.

It makes drone races have to plan more, and it does make the game more like SFB. There are markers involved, but they are all discarded at the end of the turn.

 

[Ben2]

Also allow ADDs to be reloaded, though that doesn't benefit Gorn.