Captain Jonah
Mongoose
AndyPalmer
You don't disapoint me, I have played both with and against SFB Kzinti, I have had 30+ Drones a turn on the mat and had to work hard to get more than a few of them on target. With high end games involving CVAs and drone fighters its not uncommon to have 100+ in flight at once. Those 100 Drones don't automaticaly hit. With defending ships, fighters and excorts few of them will hit but they keep the whole fleet busy shooting them down.
Yes Drones in ACTA are A main weapon for the Kzinti. But they are not THE weapon, something that in any fleet becomes overpowering.
ACTA is a different set of rules to SFB/FC. Drones cannot be shot down by any ship on the hex mat as they race towards the target. The change in Drone rules in ACTA to make it simpler and to remove mat clutter made them significantly overpowered. A fleet cannot defend against Drones fired against a single ship without using the one and only special action and even then its 50%.
As it stands a Kzinti fleet can reach out 36” from turn one and slam 12AD into two or more enemy ships. As I have already mentioned this is going to put roughly six dice of damage onto the targets shields Assuming not Fed or ADDs empty), say 21 damage. In a small fleet of 6 ships that is the ability to do 21 damage to two enemy ships that are within three feet, each and every turn. No reloads, no running out of ammo. This is the toned down version.
The feds with Photons throwing 12 of them from a three ship group will most likely hit with 6 of them doing 24 damage within 7” or doing 16 with 4 hits out to 15”. Then they have to reload. Yes Photons can punch through the shields but in comparison Drones are more powerful even with the three ship limit.
Three plasma ships can dump vastly more Plasma within 8” and then wander off to reload. There is however a significant gap between three feet and 8”.
Kzinti are not suddenly powerless, the entire fleet has not been nerfed. They can no longer destroy an enemy ship of cruiser size or below at a silly range once a turn without needing to fire any Disruptors or Phasers. They can still kill enemy ships, it just takes several turns and some tactics and planning. Is that such a bad thing?
With regard to SFB/FC. Yes Drones work differently there, yes the Kzinti and Feds and Klingon’s use them there. The Kzinti have a lot of Drones, everyone else have a lot of Phasers, the actual number of Drones that get through is not that high but every Drone that doesn’t get though is soaking up Phasers, ADDs, Drones, ECM, Shuttles etc that are not being used against the Kzinti fleet. Try a game of SFB/FC where the Kzinti Drones teleport to the target ship preventing any other ship firing on them unless they give up reloading heavy weapons, putting extra power into shields etc to represent the IDF command.
We (well ADB and Matt mainly but us in home games) have to look at the game as a whole and any unintended consequences of any change. Yes the Fed BCH is a problem, so is the Fed DN but you rarely see a Flat Top DN, why is that, perhaps because the BCH is a hugely capable ship way too cheap of its capabilities.
A fleet of 4 BCHs is immune to Drones; it also cannot fire any of its own since they are all in ADD mode. This leaves your 6 Kzinti ships facing 16 Photons and a lot of Phasers on fairly tough ships. You have denied them 16AD of Drones while they are negating the effectiveness of 24AD of your Drones, not a good deal but it still makes for a winnable fight. It still leaves the Kzinti fleet with 21-24 Disruptors that have a longer range and better chance to hit along with the limited number of Phasers the Kzinti have. With two more ships to Init sink and better ranges can the Kzinti still win even this fight, yes they can. The Kzinti fleet is not suddenly worthless, it just takes some work to win now.
Changing to 4 ship data nets just because a single (well DWDs as well) ship is proof against Drones impacts every ship in the game. Putting 16AD of Drones onto a cruiser is going to hit with about 10 of them (not counting ADD) unless the enemy fleet is using IDF. Another 4 AD is adding another 14 damage, that’s 35 damage after defensive fire from the target cruiser. That is a full strength shield down in one go plus internal damage. A few cruisers can boost shields and not take internals but everyone else is going to be badly hurt. On the second turn the ship then gets hit for the same again and dies. We are back to needing to IDF to stop the Drone heavy fleets from chewing up our ships from far outside range of return fire.
A three ship limit allows the bigger cruisers to go defensive, use ALL Phasers, tractors etc and take moderate damage, the smaller ships are damaged or crippled in one go. All those Phasers used on the Drones are not being used against you which reduces the enemy’s firepower significantly as well.
Just because the Drones are not doing massive damage does not make them useless, the three ship groups are still capable of hurting anyone and so force tactical changes on the enemy fleet. Do they risk firing Phasers with the heavy weapons or do they hold them back for Drone defence.
Changing the limit will have a big negative impact on every single ship in the game in order to counter one overpowered ship. Perhaps the cost of the Fed BCH should be looked at instead.
You don't disapoint me, I have played both with and against SFB Kzinti, I have had 30+ Drones a turn on the mat and had to work hard to get more than a few of them on target. With high end games involving CVAs and drone fighters its not uncommon to have 100+ in flight at once. Those 100 Drones don't automaticaly hit. With defending ships, fighters and excorts few of them will hit but they keep the whole fleet busy shooting them down.
Yes Drones in ACTA are A main weapon for the Kzinti. But they are not THE weapon, something that in any fleet becomes overpowering.
ACTA is a different set of rules to SFB/FC. Drones cannot be shot down by any ship on the hex mat as they race towards the target. The change in Drone rules in ACTA to make it simpler and to remove mat clutter made them significantly overpowered. A fleet cannot defend against Drones fired against a single ship without using the one and only special action and even then its 50%.
As it stands a Kzinti fleet can reach out 36” from turn one and slam 12AD into two or more enemy ships. As I have already mentioned this is going to put roughly six dice of damage onto the targets shields Assuming not Fed or ADDs empty), say 21 damage. In a small fleet of 6 ships that is the ability to do 21 damage to two enemy ships that are within three feet, each and every turn. No reloads, no running out of ammo. This is the toned down version.
The feds with Photons throwing 12 of them from a three ship group will most likely hit with 6 of them doing 24 damage within 7” or doing 16 with 4 hits out to 15”. Then they have to reload. Yes Photons can punch through the shields but in comparison Drones are more powerful even with the three ship limit.
Three plasma ships can dump vastly more Plasma within 8” and then wander off to reload. There is however a significant gap between three feet and 8”.
Kzinti are not suddenly powerless, the entire fleet has not been nerfed. They can no longer destroy an enemy ship of cruiser size or below at a silly range once a turn without needing to fire any Disruptors or Phasers. They can still kill enemy ships, it just takes several turns and some tactics and planning. Is that such a bad thing?
With regard to SFB/FC. Yes Drones work differently there, yes the Kzinti and Feds and Klingon’s use them there. The Kzinti have a lot of Drones, everyone else have a lot of Phasers, the actual number of Drones that get through is not that high but every Drone that doesn’t get though is soaking up Phasers, ADDs, Drones, ECM, Shuttles etc that are not being used against the Kzinti fleet. Try a game of SFB/FC where the Kzinti Drones teleport to the target ship preventing any other ship firing on them unless they give up reloading heavy weapons, putting extra power into shields etc to represent the IDF command.
Sgt_G said:
We (well ADB and Matt mainly but us in home games) have to look at the game as a whole and any unintended consequences of any change. Yes the Fed BCH is a problem, so is the Fed DN but you rarely see a Flat Top DN, why is that, perhaps because the BCH is a hugely capable ship way too cheap of its capabilities.
A fleet of 4 BCHs is immune to Drones; it also cannot fire any of its own since they are all in ADD mode. This leaves your 6 Kzinti ships facing 16 Photons and a lot of Phasers on fairly tough ships. You have denied them 16AD of Drones while they are negating the effectiveness of 24AD of your Drones, not a good deal but it still makes for a winnable fight. It still leaves the Kzinti fleet with 21-24 Disruptors that have a longer range and better chance to hit along with the limited number of Phasers the Kzinti have. With two more ships to Init sink and better ranges can the Kzinti still win even this fight, yes they can. The Kzinti fleet is not suddenly worthless, it just takes some work to win now.
Changing to 4 ship data nets just because a single (well DWDs as well) ship is proof against Drones impacts every ship in the game. Putting 16AD of Drones onto a cruiser is going to hit with about 10 of them (not counting ADD) unless the enemy fleet is using IDF. Another 4 AD is adding another 14 damage, that’s 35 damage after defensive fire from the target cruiser. That is a full strength shield down in one go plus internal damage. A few cruisers can boost shields and not take internals but everyone else is going to be badly hurt. On the second turn the ship then gets hit for the same again and dies. We are back to needing to IDF to stop the Drone heavy fleets from chewing up our ships from far outside range of return fire.
A three ship limit allows the bigger cruisers to go defensive, use ALL Phasers, tractors etc and take moderate damage, the smaller ships are damaged or crippled in one go. All those Phasers used on the Drones are not being used against you which reduces the enemy’s firepower significantly as well.
Just because the Drones are not doing massive damage does not make them useless, the three ship groups are still capable of hurting anyone and so force tactical changes on the enemy fleet. Do they risk firing Phasers with the heavy weapons or do they hold them back for Drone defence.
Changing the limit will have a big negative impact on every single ship in the game in order to counter one overpowered ship. Perhaps the cost of the Fed BCH should be looked at instead.
