New Errata

[deadshane]

I fnd this 'errata' highly frustrating, and the reason I abandoned SFB so many years ago. They've had the source material fixed for how long now? Simply take the time to do it right, a straightfowrad copy of data. But here we go again, no sooner is the book released then here comes the errata. Then more errata, then revisions, then 'tweaks', 'clarifications', what have you. I just bought the book, thank you, not two days ago, and now you tell me 'Oops, sorry, we screwed up not once, twice, but oh, maybe 2 dozen changes' ? Planning on replacing my book anytime soon, for free? Bah!


Why the 'heck' should I buy into a game where they cannot even create the ships correct the first time? This is to you, Mongoose.

Welcome to wargaming.

It's not 'just' Mongoose that does this. It's something you've got to get used to AS a gamer. There are always constant 'tweaking' of rules and unit entries.

To be honest...the phaser hit on the Gorn is probably a minor inconvenience.

They didnt change the plasma, and in order to win with the Gorn you have to maneuver for plasma shots. If you cannot do that, you probably werent going to win anyway. A couple of phasers isnt going to make that big of a difference.

I think it's much more important that they gave the DD 'Agile'. I was wondering about that, I'm quite happy to see the DD emerge as a possible choice to take now rather than something that you'd just pass over in favor of the BDD or HDD.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

While were at it the Federation New Fast Cruiser would like its two Ph-3's... I think someone accidently stuck them on the Kzinti Frigate (which should have 2-ph3's not 4).

-Tim

 

[MongooseMatt]

Why the 'heck' should I buy into a game where they cannot even create the ships correct the first time? This is to you, Mongoose.

From our point of view, you can ignore most of the errata and will find the game balanced. It is not us that is insisting on these additional changes.

 

[Captain Jonah]

/Rant On. Long post, apologies I’m letting off steam

SVC is aware of this issue and is in communication with Matthew regarding it.

Jean

My thanks.

"Fellow citizens of the Concordium, surely you see this as firm evidence that despite their 'democratic' pretensions, the Confederation of the Gorn is far from being the peaceable realm their envoys claim it to be during their shameless attempts to curry favour within the ISC. Alas, when the time comes for the Pacification Campaign to commence in earnest, our brave and selfless peace-keepers shall have to shoulder the burden of watching both sides of the Gorn-Romulan Neutral Zone. Maybe then might they realize it will all be for their own good..."

Riiiight. So its Ok for the ISC to kill people who violate my Borders, that’s a police action. But if I kill people who violate MY borders its warmongering. That’s so clear now. :roll:

Less drone defense for the Gorn....

...sounds fair.

To everyone that uses Drones, yes. :roll:

They didnt change the plasma, and in order to win with the Gorn you have to maneuver for plasma shots. If you cannot do that, you probably werent going to win anyway. A couple of phasers isn’t going to make that big of a difference.

I think it's much more important that they gave the DD 'Agile'. I was wondering about that, I'm quite happy to see the DD emerge as a possible choice to take now rather than something that you'd just pass over in favor of the BDD or HDD.

Sadly reality interrupts. The CL has 18 shields, yes it retains 2 plasma S and two plasma F torpedoes. However in order to use them it needs to survive. Being blown up before you can even get off your first shot or dying before you can fire a second means all those plasmas are useless.

A comparison between the CL and its war era replacement the HDD, the HDD has the same phaser suit plus a T phaser-1 that the CL doesn’t have. It drops one plasma S losing 4AD of torpedo but has 24 shields putting it above that important 20 point barrier and it costs 30 points less.

Making the Destroyer agile, well thanks guys. But for difference in points there is the BDD which has 20 shields giving it higher survivability with the extra shield boxes AND the 2D shield boost.

Lets face facts, the Gorn CM had to many phasers. The reason the CM has a 360 Phaser was so it could reduce the Wing Phasers to one and still have functionally the same fire power side to side as a Battlecruiser. There is no reason to ask for a point change when a ship is corrected to what it has been for 30 years.

As far as Gorn Anti Drone if I am reading this right the Gorns and Romulans just got the first truly reload able Anti Drone System fair enough because it uses the Reload Trait they can only use it every other turn but I can see this working out in their favour. In longer games.

The Gorn CM is the double saucer version of the HDD which has that 360 phaser-1.

Yes matching the phasers to the FC/SFB ships is fine, my point was why was the CL being stripped of the LS/RS phasers-1s which every Gorn ship has, those wings have 180 degree phasers on every Gorn design.

In terms of the D rack. Yes it’s a truly reloadable ADD, the feds have never ending unless it runs out of ammo but once empty they are without Drones or ADD. The D rack can be reloaded for ever.

It’s a truly unique item for the plasma races.

Remind me though, which Gorn ships carry it?

Codex creep has already been mentioned. With many of the Gorn ships all but helpless against heavy Drone attacks do they all vanish when the next set of ships arrive. IDF is a bit crap since it works 50% of the time, you cannot plan around randomly having defences. When (if) ships with D racks arrive do I find I need to take most of my fleet from them just to have a chance of surviving to get those all important plasmas into range.

Msprange said the ADB people are insisting on these changes. Why then did they say drop the LS/RS phasers. It makes no sense.

And none of this looks at the underlying problem that EVERY Gorn ship above light cruiser size is lumbering and stuck with ONE 45 degree turn every turn. The face off with the Romulans (you know those guys we are historically built to fight) shows that every modern Hawk class cruiser has a turn mode of 4 allowing them three times the manoeuvrability.

I have asked several times who play tested the Gorn fleet, Scoutdad said no one in his group did any Gorn play testing, no one else has replied. Now we have people taking away what little all round phaser coverage the Gorn ships have. Is it really the intention to have the Gorn CL have only one or two Phaser-3s defending its rear arc?

/Rantoff Appologies again. Steam mostly let off, for the present.

You want a laugh.

Since the Gorn heavies are lumbering anyway and have crap movement why not go all the way. Go for cheaper HDDs instead of CLs or lumbering cruisers and save the points for something really lumbering. From memory this is 1000 points I think

Squadron 1
DN Crushing jaws of Impending victory
BDD Ankle bitter
BDD Toe chewer

Squadron 2
HDD Gouger
HDD Ripper
HDD Slasher

 

[deadshane]

I don't see why you're concentrating on the CL anyway....who cares...the ship is one of the worst Gorn Selections to begin with.

They can scavenge weapons from that ship all they like. The only 'hit' the Gorn really took was the two Phasers from the CM which is actually a useful ship.

...but again, two phasers don't make much of a difference there, it's the plasma which wins battles, and that it retains.

There really isnt much to "rant" about when talking about the Gorn. You're ranting about minutia.

For the record...I have been playing Gorn. Their lumbering is difficult to get around, but not impossible...my fleet for example....

BCH
CM
BDD
3xHDD

....and I'm disappointed, but not exactly "up in arms" about the loss of two phasers from my fleet.

 

[billclo]

Jonah,

Try to keep in mind that the Gorn ships were developed in an environment where they didn't face drones. Until the late days of the General War, they only faced the Romulans as an enemy, and the Romulans didn't use drones. There was one occasion where the the Gorns might have faced drones (a detachment was sent to help defend the Tholians and fought alongside the Tholians and Kzinti), but other than that it's got to be very rare.

Some of the fleets in ACTASF may not be optimized to face a particular Empire, especially in a tournament setting. I'm okay with that; it helps retain the flavor of a Empire. Trying to make each Empire exactly balanced so it has a 50/50 chance of winning versus any and all comers is going to be just about impossible. Witness how long ADB has been tweaking the various tournament cruisers to make them fair with respect to each other. Now try that with an entire Empire ship selection. :shock:

 

[deadshane]

Better Admirals come out on top anyway 90% of the time.

Someone Ultra-proficient with Gorn is going to beat someone who just picked up Klingons b/c they "win the maneuvering game" or somebody who thinks they can win with Kzinti b/c they spit out so many drones.

Skill over tools. "Tool" being either the players units, or the players themselves. :wink:

 

[Captain Jonah]

I'm having a rant to let off steam, I have the patience of a tech support guy who deals with the public but even I need a rant every so often. :lol:

Yes its two phaser-1s on the CL and the CL is a very poor Gorn ship that I wouldn't take unless forced to. But it’s the WRONG phaser-1s. This is the Errata of the Errata that was correcting the First Errata and these corrections came from people who should know better. :evil:

It's not Msprange who decided on those phasers, has he even seen an SSD.

Also lumbering isn’t exactly a minor detail. :roll:

Hey Billco, I’m having a rant here, enough with the logical explanations. :lol:

Anyway I have fought any number of drone chuckers with Gorn and ISC ships. Even speed 32 drones don’t teleport across the board, any ship in range and arc can take a pop at them as they fly, wild weasels, mines, T-bombs. All sorts of ways the plasma races can negate drones. But not in ACTA-SFB. The Gorn never faced Drones in battle so were not designed to, not a problem in terms of the back ground because it was always fairly easy to beat drones in SFB. We didn’t have ADDs but we had a lot of other things to do. Now we don’t

I get that.

But ranting and letting off steam isn’t about being logical, it’s about letting off steam and ranting :wink: :lol:

 

[Iron Domokun]

From our point of view, you can ignore most of the errata and will find the game balanced. It is not us that is insisting on these additional changes.

And that's an excuse for doing a sloppy job? Adding the wrong phasers in, then deleting the wrong phasers in an attempt to correct the error? Getting the proofreader's surname wrong?! Twice!! It'd be funny if this hadn't gotten beyond a joke. This just keeps happening over and over again.

Matt, you're clearly brilliant at putting deals together. Seeing the JV deals you've done with major IP holders makes that thunderingly obvious: Babylon 5, Judge Dredd, Lone Wolf, Traveller, and too many others to mention. Mongoose's follow through once the deal is done is very poor. In fact, so poor that I'm tempted to use language that would get my post deleted. This is obvious, not just in regards to the ACTASF deal, but your other properties as well. I've read complaints about the Lone Wolf pre-order stuff, Paranoia ("Materials Treasonously Deleted"), stuff-ups and inconsistencies in sundry Traveller books (including mostly Robots and the equipment catalogues, but also others).

This is why I have lost interest in ACTASF and have been (trying) to cancel the pre-order I made with the Australian distributor months ago. I no longer have any confidence that Mongoose will deliver a product that I want to own, play, or (most importantly) convince my friends to spend money on. I feel very angry about this, because this could have been an SFU game that I'd be able to get a lot of people interested in. But the execution has been screwed up so badly that I don't have any confidence in it. I feel angry and disappointed about this lost opportunity. I don't think I'm alone here either.

In short, this is DAMAGING YOUR BUSINESS and YOU MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE AND THAT OF YOUR BUSINESS, even if not for your customers.

In short, since you seem to lose interest once the deal is done, you need to focus on where your strength lies and hire people to do the execution once you've landed the deal. People who will stick with it and make sure it gets done on time and done right. Right now, you're hurting your customers, your business partners, your employees, and yourself. I think you may be inclined to dismiss this, looking at the sales figures and deciding that since demand is so high, I must be wrong. That I'm just in an angry minority, that my standards are unrealistic. If you think that, you're wrong. A brilliant salesman with a poor product can do very well - for a while. And with your talent at landing JV deals you can use the brand name to bring in customers. But as you do that, by teaching your customers that your products aren't up the the standards that they expect, you're damaging Mongoose's brand. And that's going to destroy Mongoose in the long run.

 

[billclo]

From our point of view, you can ignore most of the errata and will find the game balanced. It is not us that is insisting on these additional changes.

And that's an excuse for doing a sloppy job? Adding the wrong phasers in, then deleting the wrong phasers in an attempt to correct the error? Getting the proofreader's surname wrong?! Twice!! It'd be funny if this hadn't gotten beyond a joke. This just keeps happening over and over again.

Matt, you're clearly brilliant at putting deals together. Seeing the JV deals you've done with major IP holders makes that thunderingly obvious: Babylon 5, Judge Dredd, Lone Wolf, Traveller, and too many others to mention. Mongoose's follow through once the deal is done is very poor. In fact, so poor that I'm tempted to use language that would get my post deleted. This is obvious, not just in regards to the ACTASF deal, but your other properties as well. I've read complaints about the Lone Wolf pre-order stuff, Paranoia ("Materials Treasonously Deleted"), stuff-ups and inconsistencies in sundry Traveller books (including mostly Robots and the equipment catalogues, but also others).

This is why I have lost interest in ACTASF and have been (trying) to cancel the pre-order I made with the Australian distributor months ago. I no longer have any confidence that Mongoose will deliver a product that I want to own, play, or (most importantly) convince my friends to spend money on. I feel very angry about this, because this could have been an SFU game that I'd be able to get a lot of people interested in. But the execution has been screwed up so badly that I don't have any confidence in it. I feel angry and disappointed about this lost opportunity. I don't think I'm alone here either.

In short, this is DAMAGING YOUR BUSINESS and YOU MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE AND THAT OF YOUR BUSINESS, even if not for your customers.

In short, since you seem to lose interest once the deal is done, you need to focus on where your strength lies and hire people to do the execution once you've landed the deal. People who will stick with it and make sure it gets done on time and done right. Right now, you're hurting your customers, your business partners, your employees, and yourself. I think you may be inclined to dismiss this, looking at the sales figures and deciding that since demand is so high, I must be wrong. That I'm just in an angry minority, that my standards are unrealistic. If you think that, you're wrong. A brilliant salesman with a poor product can do very well - for a while. And with your talent at landing JV deals you can use the brand name to bring in customers. But as you do that, by teaching your customers that your products aren't up the the standards that they expect, you're damaging Mongoose's brand. And that's going to destroy Mongoose in the long run.

Here Here. Great post. Copied for posterity.

 

[deadshane]

People get so angry over an errata here and/or there.

There's nothing here to get angry about. (shouting?) If this game isn't your style and you cannot handle periodical tweaking of the rules of this new game...you might want to step away for a while.

Personally, I've got no problem jotting down notes in my rulebook. Doesn't hurt my enjoyment of the game a single bit.

....and that's what this is all about, enjoyment. It's not about anyone's opinion about what's going to bring around the demise of Mongoose/ACTA/Matt or whatever.

Take a Valium.

 

[Da Boss]

Lets face facts, the Gorn CM had to many phasers. The reason the CM has a 360 Phaser was so it could reduce the Wing Phasers to one and still have functionally the same fire power side to side as a Battlecruiser. There is no reason to ask for a point changge when a ship is corrected to what it has been for 30 years.

Same thing for the Sparrowhawk and Firehawk. Those phasers 3 were suppose to be ther in fact they were they on the Novahawk. Once again there is no reason to scream it needs a point increase. .

I don't recall screaming.

If the ship was uspposed to have been different it should have been picked up way earlier and changed so it could be playtested that way - same as just slapping on Command on ships - if you suddently make them better in a game it should cost......

They have been tested for one system for 30 years they have not for ACTA - its a different game!

Its simple really - the ACTA game says a ship is worth X - if you take or add guns/systems how can it be worth the same points cost in ACTA?

Oh and the Gorn don't get too use the new Plasma Defence (except on stations) only the Romulans do...........

 

[Digger]

Just one very quick thing Matt, when you are making changes to the points values of the ships, please can you quote the new points value for the ship at the end.

I note on the Klingon D7C variant, you state +30 points, but not a value; is this from the last errata, or to be added in the new errata.

Many thanks

 

[Poi]

I don't have an issue with errata, all games systems have them (apart from Flames of War, not that it doesn't need it!), but if Matt is going to make statements like

It is not us that is insisting on these additional changes.

ADB will get very pissed off very quickly.

 

[McKickaha]

They have been tested for one system for 30 years they have not for ACTA - its a different game!

Excellent reminder point............................well said Da Boss.

 

[Da Boss]

I don't have an issue with errata, all games systems have them (apart from Flames of War, not that it doesn't need it!), but if Matt is going to make statements like

It is not us that is insisting on these additional changes.

ADB will get very pissed off very quickly.

Why if it is only the truth? Most of the flack regarding changes tends to land over here............

One assumes from other postings on other forums that there were ADB people checking the stats as well prior to publication to make sure it was all correct for their own universe ??

As I read it the present changes have nothing to do with gameplay (and in fact arguably are counter productive in that regard) which is more MGPs province - and has caused issues in the past :wink: S+P Trolligan anyone :twisted: .

As I see it the problem is that if you issue a army/fleet whatever list and say its balanced and then change the stats for non game balance reasons then its going to seem odd and in some cases unfair - especially in this case to the poor Gorn?

 

[H]

because too many people still want to make it a "them" and "us" scenario.

 

[MongooseMatt]

And that's an excuse for doing a sloppy job? Adding the wrong phasers in, then deleting the wrong phasers in an attempt to correct the error? Getting the proofreader's surname wrong?! Twice!! It'd be funny if this hadn't gotten beyond a joke. This just keeps happening over and over again.

I'll say this just once, seeing as you raised the issue. I have never met the person in question, so when we were supplied with a list of names to include in the credits, we included them as they were submitted to us.

 

[MongooseMatt]

I note on the Klingon D7C variant, you state +30 points, but not a value; is this from the last errata, or to be added in the new errata.

The D7C doesn't have a points value in the core book, and the errata replaces the entire entry.

 

[MongooseMatt]

As I read it the present changes have nothing to do with gameplay

Such changes are extremely minor - in light of this, we have re-uploaded the file, dividing changes between 'critical' and the rest. If you play with just the critical updates, you won't find any balance issues in the game (and to be _absolutely_ fair, you won't find a spectacular number if you play the rulebook as written).