Missing Weapons and traits on certain ships

[kyrolon]

So I've had opportunities to get in a few more games of late, and have noticed something. In most cases the ships for ACTA:SF are ported over directly from SFB and/or Fed Com. In the case of a few Federation ships (I use them because I know them best) there seem to have been some weapons/traits that have been ignored.

So the question is why? When the game has added things to the Klingons that don't exist in the other games (double strength forward shields, wildly improved turn modes) why have they left things off of the fed ships?

Here are the three examples I have encountered so far.

Fed DNG. It is supposed to have 6 Drone racks. In ACTA it has 4
Fed CLE: It is supposed to have 2 Ph-G on each side. They give it 1 (4 AD instead of 8 AD)
Fed OCL: It should have the armored trait. It doesn't get any more shields than most frigates so it needs more survivability.

Has anyone else noticed this, or can it be explained? Between this and taking away 50% of the range of Photon torps I feel sometimes like Mongoose or ADB has it in for the Feds.

 

[Greg Smith]

Fed DNG. It is supposed to have 6 Drone racks. In ACTA it has 4

The ship data on the FC Commander's circle page shows only 4.

Fed OCL: It should have the armored trait. It doesn't get any more shields than most frigates so it needs more survivability.

That is explained in the ACTA FAQ - armour is folded into its damage score.

Between this and taking away 50% of the range of Photon torps ...

Every weapon had it's range changed. ACTA works differently to SFB/FC, so ranges had to take into account probability of hits and damage drop-off of weapons in SFB/FC.

 

[SneakyPete]

It is a different game...... :roll:

 

[Myrm]

Fed CLE: It is supposed to have 2 Ph-G on each side. They give it 1 (4 AD instead of 8 AD).

My SFB SSD has only one gatling each side of the CLE (ECL) and thats the base for both FC and thence to ACTA. I'll be stuned if they doubled the gatling power on a Fed escort between SFB and FC. The CLE weapon loadout matches the SFB SSD so far as I see

 

[TheBeerPope]

Mind you the escorts are still technically in a play test phase, they wont be official till the next book. Beyond that, there are certainly a few things that are still different from SFB/FC and ACTA:SF that i suspect may be corrected once we get a digital rule book out, after the last of the ship cards. I make this claim as i noticed on the preview pic for the klingons, that the C8 has gained to more drones, in line with the SFB/FC stats.

 

[kyrolon]

I don't have all the Fed Com stuff, so they may have dropped the number of drones on the DNG in Fed Comm, but I am reasonably sure (without dragging out my old SSD books) the in SFB it had 6.

As for the ranges, there was no reason for this change, and they did not make the changes equally. The balance between photons and disruptors has always been that the photon does in 1 turn what the disruptors did in 2. This works out in SFB because the photon trades in some hit probability for greater punch against a given shield.

With only a single shield score in ACTA the punch isn't needed. So what we are left with is a weapon that (at typical engagement range between 8-12" (since the Klingons can set the distance) the photon hits half as often (3 to hit vs 5 to hit) and fires half as often (if you can afford to waste an action reloading). The end result is that the feds have to pray for sixes. There's no strategy here. You can set up the best run possible, and still only have a 1/6 chance of achieving anything.

In porting over the stats of the ships from the previous games, the designers have completely ignored the proximity photon. Now before I hear the cries of "it's a simpler game" I have to call BS. There are already a raft of special rules for things. The Klingon forward shield rule was not needed and is a complication. It would not have been hard to give the photon a rule like this:

Proximity fuse: When firing at long range the Multihit score of this wepon is reduced to 2 and it gains the Accurate +1 trait.

Then change the range of the photon to at least 18". The difference in range between photons and disruptors is NOT the >50% bonus that it is in ACTA.

Now for the final thing that people always say: this is a different game.

Yes. It is a different game, but when you willingly seek out a property which has an existing background you need to remain faithful to that background. The needless changes to some races with no comnsurate changes in others is not a good practice.

And, the Fed CL having the armor in its damage score is just wrong. Armor would indicate that it's damge score was increased by about 17%. Somehow I doubt that. Otherwise the original damage rating was around 18-20. That's not enough for a CL. It should have been 22-24 before armor.

 

[Nerroth]

If it helps, most (if not all) of the ships in the first book are in the FC Commander's Circle in low-toner Ship Card form.

(Some of the larger ships also have large-format cards on there, too; here's the one for the Fed DNG.)

 

[phoenixhawk]

Yes. It is a different game, but when you willingly seek out a property which has an existing background you need to remain faithful to that background. The needless changes to some races with no comnsurate changes in others is not a good practice.

This is amusing to me since SFB itself doesn't remain faithful to the source material and only exists as the result of a legal technicality in the license. The original source material, a certain TV show, is a far cry from the "technical manual" that was published and formed the basis for SFB.

 

[Iain McGhee]

Also remember that ACTA:SF is based on Federation Commander rather than SFB, and in the case of Photon Torpedoes proximity warheads don't exist in that game either (among many other changes).

 

[Myrm]

In porting over the stats of the ships from the previous games, the designers have completely ignored the proximity photon.

No, they didnt. Federation Commander is the primary source for ACTA conversion, not SFB. Where the two conflict, FC wins. Im much more conversant with SFB, so I have to be very careful on precisely this sort of thing.

FC has no proximity photons, there's a number of forms of the plasma torpedo which are not included in that game and shuttles lost their phaser 3. These differences from SFB will port over into ACTA therefore by basic design criteria no proximity photons in ACTA - its been removed sure, but the designers did not ignore it.

 

[Nerroth]

It should also be noted that disruptors thesmelves have options in SFB (the UIM and DERFACS systems) which do not exist in FC either, and thus are not to be found in ACtA:SF or Starmada. (I'm not sure if the upcoming Squadron Strike adaptation will include them or not.)

 

[kyrolon]

No, the disruptors don't get UIM and Derfacs, but they do get Accurate +1. This combined with what amounts to almost their full range makes them superior in every way to the photon. If they didn't import the proximity head to fed Com then that was a mistake made then as well. I would wager (without checking) that the photon retains its improved chances to hit inside of range 3 or 4. Shouldn't THAT at least have made it into ACTA as a bonus to hit at 4" or less. They actually get up to a 1-5 to hit at range 2. In ACTA though, never better than 4+.

 

[Rambler]

Okay where to start. First of SFB and by default Fed Com along with the Star Fleet Technical Manual stay very true to the source material. It was Roddenberry that started redacting The Original Series when he thought he was going to get Phase II which was then preemptive by The Motion Picture. This started a endless cycle of redactings every time he started a new project. Something ADB has avoid for over 30 years.

So the question is why? When the game has added things to the Klingons that don't exist in the other games (double strength forward shields, wildly improved turn modes) why have they left things off of the fed ships?

Actually this is a nod to Klingon Saber Dancing. I do not know a single proficient SFU Klingon that has not used up almost his entire #1, #2, and # 6 shields. Plus the damn things nearly turn on a dime in SFB anyway. Since ACTA only has one movement phase and one Fire Opportunity Mongoose gave them a special Shield rule. Love it or Hate it it is a ACTA mechanism trying to imitate the source material.

Here are the three examples I have encountered so far.

Fed DNG. It is supposed to have 6 Drone racks. In ACTA it has 4.

The DNG has always had only 4 Type-G Drone Racks since Commander SSD Book#9. The DNH is the one that has 6 Drones Racks and the DN+ only had a ADD that was refitted as a Type G Rack at some point.

Fed CLE: It is supposed to have 2 Ph-G on each side. They give it 1 (4 AD instead of 8 AD).

Actually no the ECL/ACL always has only had 2 Phaser Gs, one per side. The second Side Phaser-1 was replaced with a ADD rack that was then upgraded to a Type-G Drone Rack. Both Photons were replaced original with Type-A Drone Racks that were upgraded to Type-G Drone Rack at the same time the ADDs were.

Fed OCL: It should have the armored trait. It doesn't get any more shields than most frigates so it needs more survivability.

This one was reviewed by Mongoose in great detail and it is their opinion that the OCL does not need the Armored trait since it had such a high Hull Rating already. Wither or not we agree with it this one has been hashed over many times in the past.

Has anyone else noticed this, or can it be explained? Between this and taking away 50% of the range of Photon torps I feel sometimes like Mongoose or ADB has it in for the Feds.

Weapon Ranges in ACTA seem to be tied to the point at which a Hit Chance drops below 50%. Standard out of the box Disruptors still have a 50/50 hit chance at range 22. The problem is they probably should have been given a Hit of One and a Kill zone of 12 but that is water long under the bridge. Also never forget Photons are Devastating Disruptors are not. That makes a huge difference.

Now while on the subject of Photons yes they have a range of 30 in SFB the chance of an actual hit at a range of 13 to 30 is only 1 in 6. Are you really going to fire a multi turn arming weapon with those odds? Even at a Range 8 to 12 the hit chance is only 1 in 3 which means your probably going to sit on them until you close the range anyway.

As far as adding Proximity Photons then what? Add in UIMs and DERFACS as well. What about speed 32 Drones or Plasma Sabots? if Feds get Proximity Fuses you start a arms race that honestly ACTA just doesn't need.

 

[locarno24]

For what it's worth, in A Call To Arms, I get the feel that the Fed's primary weapons are phasers, not photons.

Yes, I can reload them, but once things are being mixed up in a fight, power to shields (especially since you tend to get an extra D6 on it compared to an equivalent Klingon ship) is a better choice - result: Photons tend to be a one-use weapon - not least because if you don't use them when a klingon ship is in your forward arc, you generally don't get a second chance.
Generally, the big ships tend to fire them as soon as possible, whilst agile frigates retain them in order to discourage klingons closing to overload range - overloaded disruptors are nasty but overloaded torpedoes are nastier, and a battle frigate with its tubes armed and the ability to hit you in the weakly-shielded flanks as you close to shoot at another target makes closing for overloaded shots suicidal.


Equally, with the roll of a '6' to hit being so lethal, it doesn't tend to matter what the rest of the possible results are - meaning that the effect of firing at long range isn't actually that much...long range shots still do exactly the same damage to the hull.

As to the 8-12", though, That tends to have happened less in the games we've played. Yes, in theory the Klingons can set the engagement range, but phaser-1's lose most of their bite at that range and it takes very concentrated disruptor fire to do much to a capital ship. It only tends to work for a turn or so before they end up needing to close anyway.

Note that we play ~1,000 point games on a 4' x 4' board. You may get a different result on a bigger board with more room to run away.



The klingons have generally won our fed/klink games but that, with all due fairness, is not entirely the fault of the rules. General Klang, our local Space Mongol commander, has a disconcerting tendancy to roll more '6's for the Atrocity's forward disruptors than is entirely healthy, whilst Admiral Powers managed in our last game to fire 18 torpedoes and not get a single hit.

 

[billclo]

For what it's worth, in A Call To Arms, I get the feel that the Fed's primary weapons are phasers, not photons.

I find this to be the case as well. Once I started flying my ships as if I didn't have Photons, stopped trying to maneuver for that perfect Photon shot, and simply fired the Photons at whatever presented itself, I started to win more.

Yes, I can reload them, but once things are being mixed up in a fight, power to shields (especially since you tend to get an extra D6 on it compared to an equivalent Klingon ship) is a better choice - result: Photons tend to be a one-use weapon - not least because if you don't use them when a klingon ship is in your forward arc, you generally don't get a second chance.

Same here. I find that I have an about 50-75% reload rate. Some ships are simply too heavily engaged or have too much shield damage to do anything but boost shields constantly. Whereas ships on the fringe of the battle seem to have an easier time reloading. Ideally one should rotate the ships out to the fringe and repair their shields, but rarely seems to work this way in practice.

Note that we play ~1,000 point games on a 4' x 4' board. You may get a different result on a bigger board with more room to run away.

If you try a 3x3' map, you may find the Klingons don't do as well since they have less room in which to perform their Sable Dance. It's much easier to get on their flanks on the smaller maps I find. When I was learning the game, I kept making the mistake of using a 4x4' map, and the Klingons won nearly every time. Once we switched to the recommendations in the rulebook, the win ratio started to shift to 50:50%.

 

[Ben2]

Yup, with 6 forward ph-1s on everything bigger than the War Destroyer, the Feds main weapon is definitely phasers.

And larger maps also benefit fast ships and agile ships a lot.

 

[kyrolon]

So maybe the playing surface is the problem for me. We play on a 4x6. That gives everyone plenty of room for maneuver.

I have adopted the idea that the phaser is the primary weapon. However, this is a problem against plasma users. Unless you take a very specific list, you end up using up all of your phasers, still eating a little bit of plasma, and having the photons (needing 5+ to hit) miss.

While all of this is happening, you are taking the occasional phasers through the shield critical meaning your fire is degraded by the time you get to decent engagement range.

I finally won a game vs gorns yesterday, but it was mostly through luck and fleet selection. The fleet selection part was taking two BCFs and a DNF so I had plasma to thrown back at him, and the luck part was getting three phasers hitting on a 6 and landing all three criticals on the dilithium chamber to drop his DN from full shields to 0 shields.

This was followed up bay him vaporizing one of the BCFs and having the explosion cause criticals on his CM which allowed my DN to kill it when (for a change) 4 out of 6 overloaded photons hit.

The previous two games were all about me trying to stay between 12 and 18 and using phasers. Eventually I ran out of map even on a 4x6 and got plasmaed to death when he had more plasma than I did phasers. (that was a different fleet makeup - which led to the phaser boat fleet).

So how do other people handle this disparity when phasers get "taken away" and your primary heavy weapon sucks?

 

[billclo]

I've played some Fed vs Gorns, and the games tend to be quite interesting. Take 3 Fed BCH vs 3 Gorn BCH for example. The Gorns can toss 3 x 16 dice of plasma at you, which eats up pretty much all your phasers and then some if you defend against it. This leaves Photons and your drone racks. If you can isolate one of his ships or he fails some of his IDF rolls, 12 drones start to whittle his shields away fairly well, even if you only get 2-3 drone hits/turn. He will have a hard time defending against 12 drones/turn, especially if you kept your ships together and all 12 drones are impacting in the same firing arc - this minimizes weapons bearing on other arcs getting a chance to engage the drones.

I found that if you can keep the range open and drone him until a ship is weakened, it gives you better odds during the up close fight. You WILL lose at least a ship, or 2 damaged once you close to 8" so you really do want to weaken him up some first.

Anyways, in answer to your question, I probably would try to shoot down all his plasma, drone the heck out of one ship, close and use Photons next turn when I could get closer (short range preferable). Accept that you will lose a ship, get in close and let him have it with everything including Photons (even just standard loads will do), run away and repair your shields. Up to you whether or not you bother to reload Photons or not. Very situational-dependent.

 

[McKinstry]

Neither the Gorns nor the Romulans have ADD and their phasers are limited both in arc and numbers. Drones are the Achilles heel of the plasma fleets.

A couple of Fed drone war destroyers on IDF trailing a BCH will wreck a Gorns day and that is without adding a couple of escorts. Absent awful IDF rolls a Fed drone enhanced fleet using the heck out of IDF is highly troublesome for any Gorn fleet.

 

[Zarathustra Suicune]

I think the main problem is that in addition to their extreme agility, powerful weapons, special rule that makes there shields way more effective then anyone else, plus anti drone trait...