Initiative vs Chess-Move

[Sulfurdown]

:!: <warning: concepts involve more intensive book-keeping> :!:

Has anyone used a ship-by-ship initiative instead of the chess-moves style of play? Something along the lines of rolling one or two d6 and adding the racial bonus plus a variable for the ship's priority level or the original speed of the ship?
i.e. Armageddon -2, War -1, Battle +0, Raid +1, Skirmish +2, Patrol +3, -or- Spd divided by four (rnd down)
Low score moves first. Since I'm already keeping tabs of damage on ship sheets and tracking interceptors and their like, I'd just be noting the turn's initiative on the corner of the ship card (hopefully will also make me check the card before I move that zero speed Battlewagon into firing range..)

I'm not sure how detrimentally this will effect fleets an I'm hoping for general insight.

 

[Taran]

I think that if you added a modifier based on the ship itself, you'd have to base it off speed.

However, you could very well end up with situations where every single EA ship moves before a single Centauri or ISA vessel...

 

[DrSeltsam]

Personally i find the current system ok - not breath-robbing but ok :roll:

IMHO the initiative winning side should be allowed to make the last move.
Currently the side with more ships will have the opportunity to "save" ships until the opponent has moved everthing - even if he/she lost the initiative. With this boresight weapons could be used more effectively.

The player loosing could start moving ships until the point is reached when alternating moves will end with the winning player moving his last ship. Just a idea ...

 

[Captain_Nemo]

DrSeltsam wrote:

Currently the side with more ships will have the opportunity to "save" ships until the opponent has moved everthing - even if he/she lost the initiative. With this boresight weapons could be used more effectively.

This is one of the big hang ups in this game for me, "You win Initiative but the other guy still can take advantage of the situation.

I've been considering a blind pre-plotted movement like the Full Thrust rules use; write down what each ship is doing then move when everyone has written down place boresights as they come available. Firing in Initiative order.

What do you think?

 

[Triggy]

I'd actually make the higher PL ships have the initiative bonuses for sensor suites and command staff, with low PL ships having initiative penalties for having to wait for orders to be relayed, etc. This would have the side effect of encouraging the use of larger ships

 

[No. 1 Bear]

Personally i feel the battletech initiative system would work well.

 

[Ripple]

The issue with initiative is the Drazi, and to a lesser extent the other boresighted races. If you go to any kind of 'clustered' system where their are even numbers of activations the Drazi might as well not play as most of their ships will have nothing to shoot at.

If you want to limit the number of activations you need to change or add a rule to make bores ighting after movement possible. As bore sighted ships got extra AD in some cases this edition that may throw the balance off a bit. My suggestion for some time has been a Follow That Target SA that allows bore sighted ships to reserve a turn to line up on a ship designated during the ships activation. Doesn't mean you'll always get a shot, but at least if you go early, or first, that doesn't mean you can't shoot at all.

Ripple

 

[Taran]

Personally i feel the battletech initiative system would work well.

I was about to say that. Especially since it seems to be what Dr Seltsam seems to be agitating for.

 

[DrSeltsam]

I've been considering a blind pre-plotted movement like the Full Thrust rules use; write down what each ship is doing then move when everyone has written down place boresights as they come available. Firing in Initiative order.

What do you think?

If always liked the idea of "hidden movement". You make a plan and than you see what your opponent was planning and what you both get ... very interesting :

But I think with the current rules for boresight something like "hidden movement" would make it very hard to get a clear target. Except for boresight it might work for ACtA.

 

[DrSeltsam]

Personally i feel the battletech initiative system would work well.

I was about to say that. Especially since it seems to be what Dr Seltsam seems to be agitating for.

Listen to the No. 1 BEAR !
He will tell you the Truth (TM) !
<oops ... hope this will not end in a copyright issue>

Now I'm agitating ! :roll:

 

[No. 1 Bear]

Haha yes lsiten to me i know the (gulp) truth.

I will abuse this power mhuhahaha.

 

[katadder]

problem with CBT system is CBT doesnt have init mods. also some races like the Shadows would pretty much always move last so could take a one ship fleet that can never be hit by boresights. if ACTA didnt have boresights then yes the CBT system would work.

 

[madpax]

I've already said it somewhere, but there could be a slight modification to the current initiative system: That the winner can keep a ship till the end of the move phase, thus, the loser can have how many ships he wants, he will always move before at least one enemy ship.

Marc

 

[DrSeltsam]

problem with CBT system is CBT doesnt have init mods. also some races like the Shadows would pretty much always move last so could take a one ship fleet that can never be hit by boresights. if ACTA didnt have boresights then yes the CBT system would work.

Yes but in the other extreme a race like Shadows will have a problem to use the high initiative. At the moment a one ship Shadow fleet can not escape boresight swarm fleet. Against any kind of swarm fleet or even a player who knows enough about the Shadow fleet the initiative modifier will be irrelevant.

Just think about a Pak'Ma'Ra player:
Initiative modifier -3. Against 1 Shadow Ship ( a young one ) this will be 9pt difference regarding intiative. The Pak'Ma'Ra player can field more than enough ships to compensate that he will never win the initiative for the movement phase.

And there are even races that will get a higher damage output than the Pak'Ma'Ra :roll:

Regarding boresight : do you want to say because of boresight the system can not be changed ?

 

[Taran]

That rather suggests to me that it is Boresight that needs to be changed...

 

[mollari_uk]

I'd like a different initiative system even if it's a house rule. I want to reduce the effect of swarm fleets and favour larger ships (smaller fleets). I want to field a Sharlin or Shadow ship if I can, not a fleet full of shadow scouts just because of the initiative system favours that. There's already enough against smaller fleets.

I think someone else posted this on another post but what about dividing the ships up so the person with more ships move a portion of them together.

Eg.

1 Shadow ship vs 4 Narn ships.

Narn moves 2 ships, Shadow moves, then remaining 2 Narn move

It won't completely remove initiative sinks but it will reduce it.

 

[Burger]

mollari, that suggestion kills of Drazi o other boresight-dependent fleets. They need initiative sinks, to allow their boresights to be lined up. Modifying you example, 4 Firehawks against a Shadow Ship, the Drazi would be at 50% firepower because only 2 of their ships could line up.

 

[mollari_uk]

Ah ok. I'm not clued up on all the fleets yet. So I guess Drazi only have boresight then?

Mmm...

 

[Da Boss]

nope Earth and Narn are that backward :wink: too

 

[Sulfurdown]

mollari, that suggestion kills of Drazi o other boresight-dependent fleets. They need initiative sinks, to allow their boresights to be lined up. Modifying you example, 4 Firehawks against a Shadow Ship, the Drazi would be at 50% firepower because only 2 of their ships could line up.

Something else to think about with the big ships. In a 4-1 game that Large Ship Risks being taken out of the game completely with lucky shots, where even if one of the Four Small Ships is obliterated the player is just down 25% of total, potentially with no fire power impact in the immediate.
And "50%" of the Firehawk fleet is still 8AD Beam and 8AD Beam, Trip, Slow-Load (which if only firing every other turn because of boresight means SL doesn't impact) versus the Ship's 6AD Beam, Prec, Trip. [Ship - 18dmg/2crit vs Firehawk @ 50% - 32dmg/2.7crit]

Even in the Drazi case, the CBT initiative is simply a mirror of the current in terms of flaws. Only if the other person takes ONE ship and you lose the initiative would you generally lose any firepower (I've oft heard that that would just require one to know your enemy and adjust accordingly - like the Drazi taking fighters against the Shadow instead of stock fleet). Standard Init means the Shadow Ship will never benefit from high initiative, CBT would mean the Drazi don't benefit from swarm and total boresight fleets.
I know, boresight is one of the defining features of the Drazi but they aren't completely bereft of any other options (Fighters, Darkhawk, etc) and again so far the major drawback of CBTI is the one ship versus one hundred inability of the one hundred to win if they play exactly as they are used to.

*EDIT: and don't forget the potential of that Firehawk vs Young Shadow Ship game that if that 50% that get's the boresight gets a beam-pin, the next turn the Shadow player has a very good chance to lose the game anyway when the entire fleet gains beam boresight.