Lets talk Gorn

[Keeper Nilbog]

Fully agree about giving a go to the Gorn as is, not really totally sure they will live up to expectation, but i've been suprised before.

 

[andypalmer]

Given that plasmas in ACTA can fire every other turn, I would think that a strategy of firing half their plasma every turn would be a better approach in "dancing" games than waiting for the bore sight shot. Even waddling around, I would hope they could turn sufficiently to get the "off-side" shot off each turn.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Given that plasmas in ACTA can fire every other turn, I would think that a strategy of firing half their plasma every turn would be a better approach in "dancing" games than waiting for the bore sight shot. Even waddling around, I would hope they could turn sufficiently to get the "off-side" shot off each turn.

Sadly you would need to use the reload action to reload used plasmas which has a power drain downside and if you are firing half your plasmas every turn you would need to be on constant reload. Since you cannot opt to not fire your plasmas and giving up phasers is a lot of fire power you end up on 6" move for the whole game.

As it stands Feds, Rom and Gorns need to be on Reload actions roughly every other turn which. Not such a hardship for the Gorn as we can take only fire phasers as the power drain option but it still means every other turn you cannot do any other special action.

 

[starbreaker]

Sadly you would need to use the reload action to reload used plasmas which has a power drain downside and if you are firing half your plasmas every turn you would need to be on constant reload. Since you cannot opt to not fire your plasmas and giving up phasers is a lot of fire power you end up on 6" move for the whole game.

Surely you only need to Reload weapons that have been fired? That would allow a cycle of:

Turn 1: Fire (say) port plasmas while performing whatever special action desired (Boost Shields?)
Turn 2: Turn, fire starboard plasmas, again with choice of SA
Turn 3: Reload everything, slowing to 6" and maintaining the phaser barrage

Your clumsy bricks are rarely going to be able to fire every plasma anyway, so you're not losing out much by ignoring the chance for a boresight shot, and it leaves you on Reload one third of the time rather than one half.

ACTA's restrictive turn sequence is a large part of the problem here. In the real SFU games you have many firing opportunities in a turn, allowing even a graceless Gorn to fire the plasmas off one side, then turn to unmask the other launchers and fire those. No boresighting required, or the ships would have been built differently from word one.

Could be worse, of course. Watching a Klingon casually sail past a Kzinti at point-blank range without being gutted by massed phaser-3 fire is far more jarring than Gorns having problems firing all their plasma at once.

 

[Nomad]

Turn 3: Reload everything, slowing to 6" and maintaining the phaser barrage

Why are you slowing to 6"? Move 12, fire phasers, don't fire any other weapons (you don't have any available anyway).

 

[starbreaker]

Turn 3: Reload everything, slowing to 6" and maintaining the phaser barrage

Why are you slowing to 6"? Move 12, fire phasers, don't fire any other weapons (you don't have any available anyway).

Oh right, might as well choose the phasers option. My bad. Makes it even better for the Gorn, anyway, since you can maybe control the range a little better on the Reload turns.

 

[Rambler]

Okay something I am pounding my head into the wall over. Lumbering this thing just really breaks my illusion every time I play with it. Okay maybe it is being used to balance out DNs firepower but why are the Gorn Battle cruiser and Medium Cruiser saddled with it and not the Firehawk or Novahawk? They all mount the same torpedoes. If it is balancing one shouldn't it be balancing the other? If you want Gorns to be slow turners fine but slow turning and lumbering?

 

[Captain Jonah]

With Lumbering if you fire off your port arc plasmas and then try to fire off your starboard arc stuff the next turn you are giving the enemy several turns where not only your rear arc but also one side is plasma free. Since you can make a single 45degree turn and you are up against, at worst ships that can make 2 or 3 90degree turns you will find it very hard to bring the forward and starboard arcs to bear.

We will need to see how it plays out but lumbering cruisers are going to be dog food against agile stuff and when the Klinks have agile cruisers against lumbering Gorn cruisers its just not fun.

I have been running through a bunch of senarios and I'm coming to the conclusion that aside from attacking a fixed location lumbering ships are going to be a death trap. 1000 points of Gorn with CM, CC and smaller stuff against a kzinti fleet of a CC, and frigates is not fun. Against just about everyone I am ending up with a horde of BDDs and a single comand ship for the +1. A gorn DN will probably never see the light of day unless there will be a base or enemy lumbering DN to fight.

Using a lumbering cruiser means you are going to have a lot of the battle take place as a furball in its aft arc.

It also depends on the level of terrain density, a nicely clutered map cuts down on the long range stuff forcing everyone closer but again getting around that terrain with lumbering ships is going to be slow and painfull.

 

[billclo]

One thing to take note of, not that it matters for ACTASF particularly, is that the Gorns were not designed to nor did ever fight Klingons. They fought Roms, and ISC mainly.

I think that with even the BC being lumbering, that having enough smaller ships to discourage the enemy from closing to knife-fighting range is going to be a must. Keeping the enemy at 8"+ will be a real necessity. That would also mean that in many cases the plasmas will be less effective due to range and energy bleed.

I think that the Gorn, being saddled with more Lumbering ship than any other race are going to be hard to play. DN=Lumbering, sure. BC/CM? Give them a turn score of 8" or so and be done with it (8 so if they choose All Power to Engines they can make a second turn).

 

[Captain Jonah]

One thing to take note of, not that it matters for ACTASF particularly, is that the Gorns were not designed to nor did ever fight Klingons. They fought Roms, and ISC mainly.).

True. And yet SFB games or FC games for that matter allow Gorn ships and fleets to fight the klingons without it rapidly turning into "a sit on the lumbering fools rear and chip him to death" fight. If the Gorn fail 75% of the time against Klinks or Kzinti because the game timeline says they never fought those races that isn't good for gameplay or balance. Or for sales of the Gorn for that matter. In a few months all those nice chunky Gorn ships and boxes will be for sale and if the general opinion is that they are crap sales will take a dive apart from hard core people like me who will buy a fleet box to add to my collection of all the races anyway.

I think that with even the BC being lumbering, that having enough smaller ships to discourage the enemy from closing to knife-fighting range is going to be a must. Keeping the enemy at 8"+ will be a real necessity. That would also mean that in many cases the plasmas will be less effective due to range and energy bleed.

I think that the Gorn, being saddled with more Lumbering ship than any other race are going to be hard to play. DN=Lumbering, sure. BC/CM? Give them a turn score of 8" or so and be done with it (8 so if they choose All Power to Engines they can make a second turn).

In SFB a Gorn ship even up to DN size could generaly make 2 60 degree turns every turn. being able to swing about by 120degrees gave you a good chance of getting those wide plasma arcs to bear even when your enemy was moving to stop that happening. Even one 60degree turn was often enough to get plasmas in arc.

With lumbering cruisers you need to make 2 45degree turns to bring one 90degree arc of weapons to bear, that is two entire turns of movement against an enemy who can and will move away.

As a matter of interest who did play test the Gorn cruisers to decide they were Lumbering. Scoutdad said earlier none of his testers play Gorn. Can we hear from some of the people who play tested the Gorn about how they worked out?

 

[Sgt_G]

It appears that Lumbering was added to any ship with a SFB / FedCmdr turn-mode of "D" or worse. It had nothing to do with the empire, number of weapons, or number of damage points. As far as I can tell, it was simply a straight up transfer from one game engine to the other, no adjustments done.

Personally, I find it quite odd and more than a little disconcerting that one of the major playtest groups played dozens if not hundreds of games and not once put one of the major empires on the table.

 

[Iron Domokun]

I think Battlegroup Murfreesboro played something like sixty games? And with so many empires to deal with, it's hard to give everything a thorough workout. Especially with the rules changing constantly as well. So it's easy to spot really gross errors, but a lot of things are going to slip under the radar.

 

[starbreaker]

Personally, I find it quite odd and more than a little disconcerting that one of the major playtest groups played dozens if not hundreds of games and not once put one of the major empires on the table.

Apparently no one in any group actually used a freighter either. Those initial damage scores would never have made it past a single playtest. They're fixed now, but should never have made it to print in the first place.

 

[Spence]

Thinking about it I don't beleive that the Gorns should have anything changed stat or trait wise (ie adding more damage points or traits like armor). Instead I would lean toward a racial trait for all Gorn ships along the line of the Klingon Forward Shield. Maybe a lighter version of the Armor Trait. I don't have my book with me and don't know the rules enough to propose a specific value, but you get the idea.

 

[Da Boss]

I think its too early to tell - we need lots of games played and then results and then decide if we think there is an issue - which there may well be - and lastly if the powers that be agree it is an issue - which is not a given. But there does need to be collection of evidence I feel.

If it does need fixing - there have been good ideas already:

Reduce the cripple threshold and /or increase damage points is my favourite of those proposed.

You could also go down the route of fleet specific special rules - more like B5 - redundancy versus criticals would also seem to represent the apparent Gorn ability to absorb damage more readily compared to other empires.

Armour is likely a step a bit too far.......IMO

 

[deadshane]

Gorn CM and BCH each have starting 30 sheilds. An impressive and important threshold for Cruiser hulls. Two of the destroyers also have starting 20. The Shield/Hull/Firepower/cost of the BDD, HDD, CM, and BCH are fairly impressive when matched up against the other races.

Plasma firepower for the BCH is pretty darned heavy if you look at it. Romulans don't really have anything that compares at the 240pt range. It's a scary ship.

CM combines the 30 shields with an R-Torp. Reinforce your sheilds 3d6 and drop an R on someone? Ouch. OR, for a surprise maybe catch someone offguard and go all power to engines and do the same at close range. BLAT!

Like the mighty Shatner Said, "You need to know WHY things work on a Starship." The way I see it, with the correct ship selection, you've got some really good ships sheild/hull wise for taking it on the chin before you yourself fire.

Personally, I don't think there is a point to bringing the regular BC. Gorn probably need to come to terms with the FACT that they're going to be losing initiative. Rather than bring the BC+ I'd pony up another 15 pts for another S-Torp and 30 sheilds. Or save 30 and have super heavily reinforced sheilds and butter someone's biscuit with an R for your one weapon system you get to fire.

Lumbering or not, you cannot look at just the ships and compare them. This is a fleet based game and if your Gorn fleet cannot cover each other with fabulous fire arcs, strong reinforced sheilds and arguably MORE plasma firepower point for point than the romulans....then stick to the easier to maneuver and initiative-crutch races.

Gorn will not be Starfleet on easy-mode. For that you'll need to play Klingon's or Feds. I'm totally unconvinced that they suck as a race. Like a lot of people have stated, we need to wait till LOTS of games have been played out...and "lots" isn't 1 or 2 games.

Since the Gorn fleet seems to not be attracting people straight out of the gate, this might take a while.

When I figure out a way for Gorn Fleet's to effectively circumvent Kzinti Drone bombardments, I'll let you know. Obviously, that is a crappy matchup, I'm betting better admiralship will come out ahead most of the time though....and that's who's going to have the most success with this fleet, obviously....the better fleet captains.

 

[Finlos]

This almost sounds like a challenge.... I think if my group does set up a campaign I'll take Gorn and just see if I can't make them work. I have been reminded on several points now that this is a fleet game and that not only where you move your ships but also the order in which you move your ships can be critically important.

edit: Initiative sinks become even more important with Gorn, I would think.

As far as Gorn defenses vs. drone bombardments goes, "Use your tractors, dammit!" (I think I quoted that properly)

 

[deadshane]

This almost sounds like a challenge.... I think if my group does set up a campaign I'll take Gorn and just see if I can't make them work. I have been reminded on several points now that this is a fleet game and that not only where you move your ships but also the order in which you move your ships can be critically important.

edit: Initiative sinks become even more important with Gorn, I would think.

As far as Gorn defenses vs. drone bombardments goes, "Use your tractors, dammit!" (I think I quoted that properly)

Purchasing initiative is sort of a waste. All you can do is bring some command +1 ships just to negate your auto -1.

All the while everyone else STILL gets a +2 on you or at least a +!.

I figure "why bother?" Give 'em the +3! Who needs initiative anyway!

Instead embrace your low initiative and lead with a ship that has 30 sheilds reinforced. It's doubtful that it will get destroyed before it has a chance to respond. (with an R-Torp)

Seems to me that initiative is nice, but if you play the game planning on losing it every time, you've just begun to play Starfleet the 'Gorn' way.

 

[scoutdad]

In defense of the playtesters here:
It's not always possible to catch everything, especially when working on a fast track project.

Battlegroup Murfreesboro came to the party late. We started playtesting mid August and had to have the final reports in by mid November to meet the publishing deadline.
During the ~90 days we had to playtest, we went through 5 different versions of the rules.
that was roughly a new set every two weeks. Some changes were more far ranging than others, but every single revison eradicated much of the previous data and required playing everything all over again.
We played multiple games each Saturday for nearly the whole 12 weeks, but I guess we should have played more.
For what it's worth, we're already working on the ACTA: SF2 ships and rules so hopefully there won't be as many issues when that is released.

Playtesting: A thinkless job... almost as thankless as Game Design! :wink:

 

[Finlos]

Purchasing initiative is sort of a waste. All you can do is bring some command +1 ships just to negate your auto -1.

All the while everyone else STILL gets a +2 on you or at least a +!.

I figure "why bother?"

You're misreading me. What I plan to do is have multiple smaller (and non-lumbering!) ships so that eventually you'll have to move a ship that can end up in good arcs for my BC. Losing initiative isn't so bad when you outnumber your opponent.

In defense of the playtesters here:
It's not always possible to catch everything, especially when working on a fast track project.

Battlegroup Murfreesboro came to the party late. We started playtesting mid August and had to have the final reports in by mid November to meet the publishing deadline.
During the ~90 days we had to playtest, we went through 5 different versions of the rules.
that was roughly a new set every two weeks. Some changes were more far ranging than others, but every single revison eradicated much of the previous data and required playing everything all over again.
We played multiple games each Saturday for nearly the whole 12 weeks, but I guess we should have played more.
For what it's worth, we're already working on the ACTA: SF2 ships and rules so hopefully there won't be as many issues when that is released.

Playtesting: A thinkless job... almost as thankless as Game Design! :wink:

Almost as thankless again as miniature casters.

For a fast-track project this went remarkably well, I think. Some things are bound to slip through and some things could have been worded a little clearer, but that's what FAQs are for.

When do we get to read SF2 playtest reports??