Is there any need for a crew score?

[emperorpenguin]

I've been wondering about this one for a long time now and wanted to see what most people's opinions are.

I'll nail my colours to the mast and say that I also play Full Thrust and Battle Fleet Gothic, neither of which have crew scores to keep track of.

Now you can say that the crew value sets ACTA apart but personally I find it time consuming. It is essentially a second damage score after all. It gets very irritating playing against my brother and calling out a damage result on the critical chart and waiting for him to get his a*** in gear to write down the damage only for the inevitable "and what was the crew damage again?" Now of course I have to make allowances for having a tortoise-slow regular opponent and you guys probably don't!

Back to FT and BFG, both games handle boarding actions without need for a crew score so when voting don't say that we'd lose boarding if crew scores went!

For me the crew score represents a major drawback to using close blast doors and the most common way of defeating white stars, but this isn't how I want my games to play.

So do you find the crew score just an unecessary add-on or a vital part of the game?

 

[Malarion]

Absolutely necessary ^^.

Ships can explode, which is really cool. Now on the other hand consider Centauri ships like the Prefect or any ships which has crew scores barely bigger than the damage value. Wont really explode because crits mostly deal crew damage, so itll be de-crewed and less collateral damage will hapen. On the same account going close all blast doors doesnt prevent crew damage. No need to use it as well.

OTOH Narn and EA have a huge excess of crew scores, so theyre more liable to explode when they do go down. And using Close blast doors really makes sense.

This makes for a cool difference in fleets and i really wouldnt wanna miss it.
Plus a ship simply has 2 scores that you keep counting down instead of one. The little extra mathematics arent really that hard to keep track of, plus scrap paper isnt really expensive ^^.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Ships can explode, which is really cool.


The little extra mathematics arent really that hard to keep track of, plus scrap paper isnt really expensive ^^.

Ships exploding has nothing to do with crew score...

I didn't say the maths was hard but time-consuming :roll:
paper may not be expensive but all games should aim to keep the number crunching to a minimum, that was B5 Wars failure...

 

[Malarion]

Basically i meant ships explode when they run out of damage points ofc ^^. then i went droning on rather non-splodey Centauri ships, and then the rather splodey Narn ships.


Yes less numbers is good. But the time i need to record crew might be 5 minutes from the total game...... Now i prefer to spend 5 extra minutes per 5 point battle game than lose this feauture.

Less is not always good. (But concerning girlfriends and clothes it certainly holds true ^^.)

 

[Greg Smith]

I think crew score adds an interesting extra factor for the game that isn't that difficult to keep track of.

Crew score creates interest with boarding, decrewed ships for campaigns, skeleton crewed ships.

Simplifying a game isn't always the way to go. Crew is one of the things that make ACTA different from BFG, and it isn't that difficult to call out '2 damage, 3 crew' and for your opponent to mark it off.

You could also simplify beams so they work like lances and change ACTA to IGOUGO. Crew is one of the things that make ACTA unique, don't dump it.

 

[prelude_to_war]

Keep crew scores. I'm partial to it because I've wiped out the crews of a G'Quan and a Primus in one shot from a Vorlon Light Cruiser. Besides, that'd leave big voids on the critical table if they were gone.

I like how crew scores work with the WS. If not for crew they'd be that much harder to kill. And it represents the limited number of elite Ranger available so a low crew score works well.

 

[JayRaider]

i like the damage/crew scores. I think the crew score makes the game exciting

 

[Chernobyl]

some ships are much more vulnerable to crew loss - white stars, chronos, just to name a couple.

Chern

 

[lastbesthope]

I'm definitely for crew and damage scores.

LBH

 

[Commador Q]

a game called starmada has an interesting aproach to crew scores. they only have one hull value, but crew damage is overlapped with that. so every point of hull damage is also a point of crew damage, but a point of crew damage does not destroy a hull point. additionally if a hull point is repaired the crew does not come back.

in theory it sounds a litle complicated but in practice it's actualy very simple.

anyway,l on the whole i don't mind the crew damage system, and i think it adds some depth to campaignes where you can (using houce rules) capture enemy ships.

 

[katadder]

crew scores are good bcos it makes things differant and also allows for a differance between skeleton crews and crippled ships otherwise when would u end up with skeleton crews?

 

[SylvrDragon]

I didn't read all the posts, so I don't know if this has been said or not, but I'm going to say it anyway. WTF do you call dealing with batteries in BFG? It makes less sense than a crew score and takes longer to deal with. Seriously, I like not having to figure out exactly which part of the ship I'm attacking is facing me, only to figure out what arc of mine he's in, so that I can look on a fucking chart to see how many dice I get! All that trouble and no dice have been rolled yet!! Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a BFG fan. I have a 2k point Imperial Fleet, a Chaos fleet that's just over 1k and around 500 points of Dark Eldar; oh, and for those of you that think your fleet is underpowered, try playing Dark Eldar in BFG, they'r "light raiders" that don't move any faster than their prey! Anyway, I got a bit off topic for a sec. No, I don't think crew scores are necesary, but I don't see them as being that difficult to deal with, and I think they add a touch of flare to the game; and it only makes sense that you can kill off the crew with out disabling the ship.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I always disliked the fact that BFG didn't track damage and crew seperately. It's fine for Imperial ships that have more men aboard than the populations of whole cities, but what about the Eldar? A handful of living Eldar and a bunch of spirit stones control their ships...

Crew damage can be significant, as has been said, so why scrap it?

 

[Reaverman]

I've played quite a few scraps recently where the enemy ship has lost crew and not blown up!

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

Having just voted, there seams to be a consensus already on this so little more to add.

Just to say that ACTA is the simplest ship to ship damage system I've played, you think this is to complicated, take a look at aerotech or Starfleet battles some time. Two damage ratings is nothing. Besides, if you go down to one, your just talking hit points, and lets not go there.

 

[Reaverman]

Anyway, it works better in the campaign rules.

 

[emperorpenguin]

I am shocked at how litle support there is for dropping crew! All I can say is you guys obviously like the time-consuming aspects of gaming!

So how do deal with another ACTA bugbear of mine?

Keeping track of which starfury flights have/haven't used "afterburners"?

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Markers. Or number them. Or just remember it. All depends on how you want to do things.

 

[tneva82]

I am shocked at how litle support there is for dropping crew! All I can say is you guys obviously like the time-consuming aspects of gaming!

Well the crew tracking isn't much of time-consuming. Goes fastly while tracking hull damage so doesn't really slow down the game...

Some time consuming is required for game to be interesting. Otherwise might just as well roll a dice and see who won with that dice roll :lol:

Crew values add nice characterfull system that helps differenting different fleets and ships while being very quick system to boot.

 

[Reaverman]

I am shocked at how litle support there is for dropping crew! All I can say is you guys obviously like the time-consuming aspects of gaming!

So how do deal with another ACTA bugbear of mine?

Keeping track of which starfury flights have/haven't used "afterburners"?

Hey just becuase you are bad at admin. does not mean the rest of are EP