My house rules..

[Stu--]

Just a few house rules for anyone else who might want to try them out.
Mostly very simple fixes to things we perceive to need a little tweaking within the current rules. We don't have much experience with plasma so far so held off with the idea of reducing phaser vs plasma capability until we have more experience.



Cripples
Roll 1d6 when a ship is crippled, on a 4+ the ship can still warp out.

Anti-Drones
Range 4” – only relevant for defending others with IDF action or if an escort ship.

Phaser-G
Remove killzone

Power Drain Actions
Drones and anti-drones are exempt from power drain restrictions – they can always be fired

Special actions
No QC to perform except for HET which remains as-is
Warp out special action takes effect immediately – remove the ship from the table

Boarding Actions
As per ACTA – each boarding party rolls 1d6. 5+ kills one enemy.

 

[Da Boss]

Intersting......

Cripples
Roll 1d6 when a ship is crippled, on a 4+ the ship can still warp out.
Why - it seems in the show that the warp engines often get trashed and its seems logical to be somehting that could be shut down by this sort of damage?

Anti-Drones
Range 4” – only relevant for defending others with IDF action or if an escort ship.
Seems oK

Phaser-G
Remove killzone
Not played with so not really able to comment if this is needed.

Power Drain Actions
Drones and anti-drones are exempt from power drain restrictions – they can always be fired
Droens really don't need a boost - IMO a bad idea,

Special actions
No QC to perform except for HET which remains as-is
Warp out special action takes effect immediately – remove the ship from the table
The first seems ok as a its risky SA anyway
Second one could be ok

Boarding Actions
As per ACTA – each boarding party rolls 1d6. 5+ kills one enemy.
NA/ B5 boarding actions could probably be brought accross compeletly and be better.

 

[Greg Smith]

Special actions
No QC to perform except for HET which remains as-is
Warp out special action takes effect immediately – remove the ship from the table

This affects two actions:

Intensify Defensive Fire and Take Evasive Action.

The first could cause big problems for plasma races. It also kind of makes escorts pointless.

The second is very powerful. Unless you want to move than 6, it is a no-brainer. Again it could cause big problems for plasma races.

In fact, either actions could be performed every single turn with no downside whatsoever. I can foresee plasma never getting through!

 

[bcantwell]

Definitely agree with Greg here. This would be way over the top.

However, if you wanted any of the QC special actions to occur more often, another fix would be to simply change the target numbers. If a 7 is required instead of 8, then a "standard crew completes the action on a 3+ instead of a 4+.

In campaigns especially, this could allow the common Green crews to do something. At a target of 8, it's definitely iffy to do anything.

Alternately, if you wanted all crew actions to be easier, just change the values associated with the crew skill levels (Green +4, Military +5, Veteran +6, etc)

Special actions
No QC to perform except for HET which remains as-is
Warp out special action takes effect immediately – remove the ship from the table

This affects two actions:

Intensify Defensive Fire and Take Evasive Action.

The first could cause big problems for plasma races. It also kind of makes escorts pointless.

The second is very powerful. Unless you want to move than 6, it is a no-brainer. Again it could cause big problems for plasma races.

In fact, either actions could be performed every single turn with no downside whatsoever. I can foresee plasma never getting through!

 

[Stu--]

Juts in case anyone cares...
we played with my modified rules today but we did change the evasive action back to requiring a CC, as suggested.

Main changes: No CC for IDF means lots of IDF (obviously) but not necessarily lots more defensive fire taking place - you still have to allocate d/f up front (ie: one phaser at each drone) before rolling the dice. So whilst it does give you more potential guns you /could/ shoot, it doesn't necessarily mean you will.

The anti-drone change when on IDF to 4" is a biggie. But people started using ships with anti-drones as escorts which is exactly what we wanted, and they do run out when over-used.

I should mention that in conjunction with the above two changes, and the change to allow drones & ADD to shoot when using a power drain action we allowed any number of ships to fire drones at a target in one turn.
Everyone who played thought that it 'felt' like playing SFB, in terms of how drones performed.

 

[Stu--]

Oh I probably should point out for completeness that we limited defensive fire to 8" range.

 

[archon96]

add shouldnt suffer from power drain anyways as it is an ability and not a weapon system. also i like the 4 range for ADD but it should only apply to ships with escort trait. everything else seems nice.

 

[Da Boss]

What fleets where you using.

I would be suprised if allowing the main drone using fleets - Klingons, Federation and Kziniti to use them as well as other weapons under power drain does not make them even more powerful against those fleets with only a few or none?

 

[McKinstry]

Cripples
Roll 1d6 when a ship is crippled, on a 4+ the ship can still warp out.

Anti-Drones
Range 4” – only relevant for defending others with IDF action or if an escort ship.

Phaser-G
Remove killzone

Power Drain Actions
Drones and anti-drones are exempt from power drain restrictions – they can always be fired

Special actions
No QC to perform except for HET which remains as-is
Warp out special action takes effect immediately – remove the ship from the table

Boarding Actions
As per ACTA – each boarding party rolls 1d6. 5+ kills one enemy.

Crippled - I'm OK with that. A ship should be able to 'go dark' and divert everything to just getting out of dodge. I think disallowing it with a Dilithium Crit level greater than 1 might be a bit more appropriate.

Anti-drone - Agreed on escorts BUT only on IDF if you still have to roll for it.

Phaser G - Let's wait for the Hydrans before messing with the Phaser-G. With any kind of normal fleet composition, it isn't a problem on the Feds.

Power drain - We've been playing it that way already.

Special Actions - I think auto for all but HET would be a problem. Maybe give the Enhanced Bridge trait a +1 for IDF but the others should still be a risk decision. I do agree that warping out could/should be immediate.

Boarding - Absent assaulting to capture, shouldn't the purpose of Marines be a hit and run on vital systems? We're leaning to simply allowing the attack as per the chart against any ships with downed shields within 4" and not sweating the parent ship dropping shields as this could be done in a flicker.

 

[Rambler]

... also i like the 4 range for ADD but it should only apply to ships with escort trait. everything else seems nice.

AntiDrone firing at range Defensively I am sure is coming some time. Like I said it was probably left out to see how normal Escorts with out the requirng IDF Special Action faired.

Consider if you do use them at Range, giving them a stat like like, Range 8" and Acurrate +1. This would give them a 60% chance at a kill under 4 inches and only a 50/50 chance over 4 inches. Also consider that if used at Range they loose the Burst Fire Capability making it each AntiDrone will remove one Attack Die of Drones with no chance of jamming.

 

[Rambler]

Cripples
Roll 1d6 when a ship is crippled, on a 4+ the ship can still warp out.

Just point out that the Maximum Warp already bends SFU consistance. Anyone that goes to Max Warp within Weapon Range of a Enemy ship just committed suicide as even a near miss at High Warp collapses the Warp Bubble causing the Ship to implode... :shock:

Now if you wanted to add a New Special Action like,

Sublight Evasion!
Crew Quality Check: Automatic
Power Drain: No
Effect: Faced with eminent destruction a ships captain can order the ships engineering section to "Blow" the Warp Engines causing the ship to fall to sub-light speeds and leave the field of battle. A ship attempting Sub-light Evasion is considered adrift it can not Attack or use Defensive Fire for the rest of the Turn. The ship also gains an immediate Stealth Score of 3+. The ship is removed from play during the End Phase. Because the Warp Engines are removed from the ship any Critical Hit Score against the Impulse Engines or Dilithium Chamber have no additional effects.

For Victory Point purposes the ship is considered destroyed by the enemy but in a campaign setting on a successful Crew Check of 10+ the ship manages to make it way back to base and is returned to the owning players fleet pool on the following round.

 

[Stu--]

We were playing with Kzinti, Federation and Klingons in a 2000 point fight.

The 'escaping cripple' rule is a mechanism to prevent ships from never escaping, I do quite like the idea of preventing it if there is significant 'dilithium' damage though.


In regards the drone/ADD changes, they did seem to work. Anti-drones did shoot down a /lot/ of drones, but that's dependant on rolling the dice so that's not a problem.
If you do want to put up a defensive shield around a fleet, you can choose IDF (automatically) and do it - but it stops you doing anything else.
Giving the ships on IDF a 4" anti-drone range did seem to work without breaking anything.

Perhaps escorts could have an 'aegis-like' rule to allow them to shoot normally, and then re-shoot at anything they missed the first time, weapons permitting.
That is after all how they work in the source material. And to be honest they should only be hanging about with carriers and there aren't any of those yet.

Rambler - you may well be correct that the ADD will be converted into a 'real' weapon soon.
We'll have to see.

The rules above are just what we are using for the time being since we consider that the base rules are not so hot.

 

[Lincolnlog]

We have not house ruled anything at this point, but everyone in our group that has played SFB (Yes I know this isn't SFB), thinks the first HET should be free.

The each additional HET is CC and/or -CC as you place more stress on the ships structure.

Also, we feel ADD should have been allowed for IDF. And of course some interpret that you can IDF with ADD and some interpret that you can't. If escort and IDF is limited to 8" I would have made that the ADD range also.

ADD should have been a weapon system instead of a trait, simply because, if you are Fed with the combined, you do lose your ADD capability in power drain situations (because it's a weapon system). This is not equal treatment of a like system.

I always felt that Drones should have been Accurate +2. All weapons should miss on a one. And as currently written drones go from auto hit at 17.9" to 4+ at 18.1. Drones in this game are obviously built by Chrysler! .1 inch and accuracy decreases by 3! If the were Acc+2 then they woult 3+ at over 18. Still a 1/3 chance to miss.

Just some thoughts, very interesting thread, thanks Stu.

Bob

 

[Da Boss]

We were playing with Kzinti, Federation and Klingons in a 2000 point fight.

Hmm so the heavy drone fleets - Given the plasma fleet often have to use phasers for offense and defense I still guess that this increase in drone effectiveness will cause them even more problems?

 

[Stu--]

The drone overall effectiveness hasn't been increased - because IDF is effectively a 'free' action.
So this should cancel one another out, dependant on tactics.

As for the plasma races - I don't think they get hurt too much by drones.
I think the killer they're suffering from right now is that phasers are too effective versus plasma weapons.