new FAP breakdown

[Tolwyn]

Would be one good step forward

 

[l33tpenguin]

Take 1 Omega vs 2 Hyperions for example. 2 Hyperions have 56 damage, 64 Crew and more firepower and manouverability then an Omega. It's not that different with other races.

This is why I like crit protection based on the PL of the hulls concerned, so that an Omega is more likely to crit a Hyperion than the other way around so that some of that imbalance is reduced.

Regards,

Dav

I disagree with crit protection based on PL, the issues have been stated I wont reiterate them. A Crit protection/redundancy score, on the other hand, I think is a better solution (like a second hull score, only against crits). Its more scaleable, isn't a hard set number per PL and can be used to better balance ships. The best example for comparison would be the explorer vs. just about any other raid level ship. This thing is massive, larger than just about anything, if not everything, on the board and yet it is just as likely to suffer a crit as something else in its PL?

The redundancy score can also work like a PL based save but with more wiggle room. Start with the average raid ship having a save score of 2, battle 3, war 4 and Armageddon 5. You've just scaled the PLs, but if you want to give a specific raid ship a bit more, you can adjust its score. Like how hull indicates how hard the nut is to crack, redundancy indicates how many layers there are in the onion. A Ka'Bin'Tak could have a score of 6 where as a white star might not get a redundancy score at all.

 

[Tolwyn]

I would like a total rebalance of all ships, as this would solve the balancing issues entirely

 

[CZuschlag]

... and reintroduce new ones, because we have to start from scratch again, ad some things will likely slip through the cracks!

Why don't we try to fix and tweak what we have instead of binning it? I'm etting that if we "rebalanced" all the ships from scratch, we'd get a lot of new stuff wrong, too.

Iterative steps ---- iterative steps.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I'd argue against any move to rebalance from scratch if it's from scratch just for the sake of it. Some of the major problems (such as initiative) are caused by core parts of the ruleset however, and fixing them would pretty much require a rebalancing from scratch. In those situations I would say that you shouldn't avoid fixing the problems just to avoid having to rebalnce from scratch.

 

[mrambassador1]

I don't think the system encourages escorts or varied fleets it encourages players to take as many small ships as possible.
After adding the PL fix it will be better, however it still will be a bad idea to buy a War level ship in a battle scenario and a much better idea to buy a lot of raid level ships instead.

I meant historically. The old/new system encouraged this, I've stated the current system is indeed a bit swarmy. The old/new system encouraged a couple of ships at scenario PL, a few more 1 PL down, with some more 2 PL down. The current system encourages mainly patrol, with some skirmish and a few raid no matter the PL. At least that's what I've found. But the new system should fix this.

The last two games played were Battle level games were both players got one War level ship each. In both games in the first volley in the game we got the result "no repair ever crit" and immidiatly after the "adrift" result effectivly removing half of one players fleets in the first volley. Not very interesting game left after that. If instead the player just had bougt 10 raid level ships or lower the damage would have been insignicant to the affected player. And this is not the only crit that can take a big ship out of the game which make it very unfun to buy up when it should be the opposite.

There is only 1 way in 36 of getting the no repair crit, and only 2 in 36 of getting the adrift crit. Must have been very unlucky to get both in the first volley and it won't happen every game. Also you should have had plenty of other decent ships to fall back on, it sounds like 5 pt battle, you should have still had 3 battle points left, so its not your whole fleet.

Well if you add all the smaller ships traits together they should effectivly be more traits than on the big one.
Also for example having four ships with interceptor 2 for example is much much better than having one big ship with interceptor 4, right?

Yeah, but the small ships usually just die, not get critted. patrol and skirmish ships don't stand up to battle and war firepower for very long

If you loose an arc on the big ship you loose 20%-25% of your firepower on average while even if you loose all weapons on one of the smaller ships you also on avarage loose at the _most_ 25% of your four ships firepower.

Don't forget that 1/3 of the time you often only lose 1 weapon on the arc, another 1/3 of the time you lose all weapons in that arc which is usually fast tracked to be repaired. It's only that 1 crit that can't be repaired. With all crits taken together there is a 2/36 chance of losing all weapons on 1 arc, and 1 of those is usually high on the repair priorities.

With all the beam fleets and missile fleets possible with low PL ships I just don't see hull or range being a problem. Ok, a little bit but not much.

Not that many small ships have beams or missiles (including torps mines etc, anything with really long range really) the ones that do usually only have a couple of dice. The big ships often have interceptors or stealth (at long range stealth is really nasty) or some other active defence can mitigate this. Sure the small ships can get multiple ships with long range weapons and the dice do add up. But if they take a lot of long range small ships they are usually vulnerable up close. You can send in your fighters or your own skirmishers or raiders to "get up close and personal" .

Once again, I do think the current system is a bit swarmy, its the "bit" vs "a lot" swarmy that I'm trying to make a point about. And I do think that the new FAP system should pretty much fix it. Not perfect, but pretty damn good.

 

[mrambassador1]

Tolwyn said:

Nice said, but regretably ACTA is far from balanced, no new FAP will change it. As long as 3 Patrol or 2 Skirmish ships will have more AD, Damage and Crew as a Raid level choice fpr example there will be no real balance.

What about 2 patrol or 1.5 skirmish vs raid.

 

[Methos5000]

If you loose an arc on the big ship you loose 20%-25% of your firepower on average while even if you loose all weapons on one of the smaller ships you also on avarage loose at the _most_ 25% of your four ships firepower.

Don't forget that 1/3 of the time you often only lose 1 weapon on the arc, another 1/3 of the time you lose all weapons in that arc which is usually fast tracked to be repaired. It's only that 1 crit that can't be repaired. With all crits taken together there is a 2/36 chance of losing all weapons on 1 arc, and 1 of those is usually high on the repair priorities.

Unless of course you have received the permanent No DC crit. Which seems to happen more often then the odds would show.

I don't think there should be permanent No DC or permanent Random arc offline crits, at least not when they are just as likely as the temporary ones.

Personally I would like a 2D6 crit table, it shouldn't add more time since you are suppose to roll crits one at a time anyway and since you actually have variable percentages you can make make so Weapons and Engines are easier hit as they are external to the ship, then Reactors and Crew in the mid range percentages followed by Vitals being in the 2,12 slot greatly reducing their chances of showing up. This would change the Vital hits (including those damned permanent loss crit effects) from showing up to a 1 in 18 chance instead of 1 in 6.

 

[CZuschlag]

My rough calculations place the right breakdown at:

1 FAPlevel = 1 (FAPlevel-1) + 1 (FAPlevel-2)

so

1 Battle = 1 Raid + 1 Skirmish

This is very rough on breakdowns.

 

[mrambassador1]

That seems reasonable, and roughly in the ball park of what's coming in P&P. Although they rounded it out a bit to get whole numbers for each PL down. That way you can take 2 raid per battle instead of 1 raid and a skirmish (1.5 raid so to speak)
2 battle can be broken down in your version as
2 raid
2 skirmish
P&P can do it
2 raid
3 skirmish

Very close, though P&P you get to take 4 raid if you want due to rounding (not wanting to force you to take 1.67 raids)

Incidently the RR costs using your system would be
3 patrol
5 skirmish
8 raid
13 battle
21 war
34 armageddon
55 ancient

interestingly enough, a fibonacci progression. Also of interest is that the current RR costs for battle and up are close to this moving between 1.5 and 1.667 times the value of the PL below it (fibonacci numbers are 1.667 the value of the preceding number if I'm correct)

 

[CZuschlag]

Yup, my definition is exactly a Fibonacci Sequence. And --- boy, is my math lousy here --- I think the limit of the ratio of successive Fibonacci numbers approaches the Golden Ratio as you reach infinity.

---- One Google Later ----

Wow! I remembered that right!. Thank you, Professor Ramanujan!

 

[Tolwyn]

Tolwyn said:

Nice said, but regretably ACTA is far from balanced, no new FAP will change it. As long as 3 Patrol or 2 Skirmish ships will have more AD, Damage and Crew as a Raid level choice fpr example there will be no real balance.

What about 2 patrol or 1.5 skirmish vs raid.

Would be quite reasonable

... and reintroduce new ones, because we have to start from scratch again, ad some things will likely slip through the cracks!

Why don't we try to fix and tweak what we have instead of binning it? I'm etting that if we "rebalanced" all the ships from scratch, we'd get a lot of new stuff wrong, too.

Because there are many many wrong things IMO:

- Beams
- FAP Chart
- Critical hits
- many unbalanced ships