Well Juzza and I tested out the move and fire method of ship activation today. (By which I mean that you move a ship, fire with it, then your opponant does the same. Until everything on the table has done its thing)
In The first game he took his ISA,
1x Whitestar gunship
2x Whitestar
4x Bluestar
And I took my Centauri
1x Liati
1x Centurion
4x Demos
(In hindsight I realized that to make the test better I should have taken my EA, to see how this system worked with a boresight fleet. But never mind. Juzza's ISA, and my Centauri have history)
Most of the SA are unaffected by the change to activation style. But the three main defensive ones, CBD, Intensify defensive fire, and run silent, posed a problem. (cheers Foxmeister) In that a ship could potentially fire apon someone before they could have raised their defence. There are two possible ways (that we have thought of anyway) to play them.
A. We used the scout trait straight after finding initaitive, before fighters. We contemplated lumping these three SAs in with scout. so you had to decide whether or not to use it before any ships moved. The logic being that ships don't wait until it looks like they are going to be shot at before turning on their defences. This way needs a bit of foresight to be used I guess.
B. The "if your ship gets shot before you activate it then hard cheese" method. The logic being that the attacker got the jump on you before you could get your defenses up.
We ended up using the second method.
The game went quite well (apart from the fact I lost
,but never mind) It still felt like ACTAs. The gameplay seemed to move along faster, and we did notice that we were moving, and attacking with our big stuff at the begining of the turn. Instead of what seems to happen with the current system, were the big stuff tends to move last, so it can react to what is happening on the table. Although this might have been a bit due to the fact that Juzza and I are both relatively aggressive, go for the throat , players. And the fleets we were using lent themselves to this type of play.
The second game was quite small, due to time, but was perhaps more interesting.
I took
2x Vorchan
1x Centurion
My opponant (Juzza sat this one out) took
1x Omega
The main thing we found with this game was that Move & Fire just about totally eliminates sinking. The EA lost the initiative in all but 1 turn, but dispite the fact that in nearly every turn the omega moved first, and even in the turn it didn't, the first ship I moved was behind something, he was still able to use his boresight beam every turn. The game ended with victory to the Republic, but the last remaining vorchan was crippled, and not in good shape, and the omega had suffered a 6-5 crit, that may have mucked the test up a bit.
In both games we moved and fired flights in the normal fashion, but before the big ships moved. The change didn't cause much of a hiccup there. Except that it made it easier to target flights with ships, so their dodge score became a bit more important. But by playing it so that to target the flights your opponant would have to ignore something important, made us think more about both what we did with our flights, and what we used to attack them with. In truth, even playing against white and bluestars, I didn't feel like my flights were unfairly targeted.
We found that the Move & Fire activation system (apart from the aforementioned SAs) doesn't muck up many of the games systems at all. There is no need to change any of the ships stats to fit, and the crit and damage table are completely unaltered by the change. One thing we noticed was that instead of wanting to win init so you could make your opponant move first, you tended to want to win it so you could get that first move and shot in. Especially if you had a ship that had one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peal. (pauses to chase fly with flyswot) And didn't look like it would last another shot.
Also the second game hinted at the fact that move & fire might give big ships some of their bite back against small ships. Although I fully realise that this might be a big conclusion to make from one game.
One think that worries me using this system would be the potential of squadroned bombardment ships to get a nasty alpha strike in. Thats something we might have to try, just to see what effect it has on the game.
Time permiting we are going to try a Narn/Centauri battle later this week using this method of activation. So we can see on a bigger scale how it affects a boresight fleet. If anyone else wants to give Move & Fire a try, let us know how it went. I'd be interested to find out what other people make of it.
In The first game he took his ISA,
1x Whitestar gunship
2x Whitestar
4x Bluestar
And I took my Centauri
1x Liati
1x Centurion
4x Demos
(In hindsight I realized that to make the test better I should have taken my EA, to see how this system worked with a boresight fleet. But never mind. Juzza's ISA, and my Centauri have history)
Most of the SA are unaffected by the change to activation style. But the three main defensive ones, CBD, Intensify defensive fire, and run silent, posed a problem. (cheers Foxmeister) In that a ship could potentially fire apon someone before they could have raised their defence. There are two possible ways (that we have thought of anyway) to play them.
A. We used the scout trait straight after finding initaitive, before fighters. We contemplated lumping these three SAs in with scout. so you had to decide whether or not to use it before any ships moved. The logic being that ships don't wait until it looks like they are going to be shot at before turning on their defences. This way needs a bit of foresight to be used I guess.
B. The "if your ship gets shot before you activate it then hard cheese" method. The logic being that the attacker got the jump on you before you could get your defenses up.
We ended up using the second method.
The game went quite well (apart from the fact I lost
,but never mind) It still felt like ACTAs. The gameplay seemed to move along faster, and we did notice that we were moving, and attacking with our big stuff at the begining of the turn. Instead of what seems to happen with the current system, were the big stuff tends to move last, so it can react to what is happening on the table. Although this might have been a bit due to the fact that Juzza and I are both relatively aggressive, go for the throat , players. And the fleets we were using lent themselves to this type of play. The second game was quite small, due to time, but was perhaps more interesting.
I took
2x Vorchan
1x Centurion
My opponant (Juzza sat this one out) took
1x Omega
The main thing we found with this game was that Move & Fire just about totally eliminates sinking. The EA lost the initiative in all but 1 turn, but dispite the fact that in nearly every turn the omega moved first, and even in the turn it didn't, the first ship I moved was behind something, he was still able to use his boresight beam every turn. The game ended with victory to the Republic, but the last remaining vorchan was crippled, and not in good shape, and the omega had suffered a 6-5 crit, that may have mucked the test up a bit.
In both games we moved and fired flights in the normal fashion, but before the big ships moved. The change didn't cause much of a hiccup there. Except that it made it easier to target flights with ships, so their dodge score became a bit more important. But by playing it so that to target the flights your opponant would have to ignore something important, made us think more about both what we did with our flights, and what we used to attack them with. In truth, even playing against white and bluestars, I didn't feel like my flights were unfairly targeted.
We found that the Move & Fire activation system (apart from the aforementioned SAs) doesn't muck up many of the games systems at all. There is no need to change any of the ships stats to fit, and the crit and damage table are completely unaltered by the change. One thing we noticed was that instead of wanting to win init so you could make your opponant move first, you tended to want to win it so you could get that first move and shot in. Especially if you had a ship that had one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peal. (pauses to chase fly with flyswot) And didn't look like it would last another shot.
Also the second game hinted at the fact that move & fire might give big ships some of their bite back against small ships. Although I fully realise that this might be a big conclusion to make from one game.
One think that worries me using this system would be the potential of squadroned bombardment ships to get a nasty alpha strike in. Thats something we might have to try, just to see what effect it has on the game.
Time permiting we are going to try a Narn/Centauri battle later this week using this method of activation. So we can see on a bigger scale how it affects a boresight fleet. If anyone else wants to give Move & Fire a try, let us know how it went. I'd be interested to find out what other people make of it.
