new FAP breakdown

[Tolwyn]

The Light Raider is indeed much better then the Heavy Raider. I would appreciate a fix here.

Corncerning the FAP chart and fleet composition.I think there is a two sided problem with it.

First it's the FAP chart, second its the individual ships themselves. There are few to no ships that have the same value as a ship one level above. Indeed one Skirmish level ship might actually have 66-80 % the same capabilities (ADs, Damage, Crew) as a Raid level ship

The swarm issue will only really be fixed if 2 ships from a lower level are actually exactly worth a ship of one level above. Not before.

 

[Hans Olo]

Tolwyn is 100% right here.
Anyway if we think about making bigger ships more resilient against critical hits smaller ships could be a bit stronger.

A idea i came up with last night was to have a look at te FAP Table and link that with criticals.
A example of what I'm talking about:
Take a Battleship against a skirmish for instance. Looking at the FAP table shows that we get 4 skirmish ships for one battle ship.
In this case a skirmish ship would need to score 4 crits in one round of fire with all its weapons in order to score one crit on a battleship.
A raid ship firing at a Battleship would need 2 crits in total, battle against battle would work just the way it is now.
Battle against skirmish the other way round would score a crit following the normal rules scoring a crit with every 6.
With this system i think the weapon load out of the smaller ships could stay the way it is.

 

[Tolwyn]

Thanks, but as you see nobody seems convinced of this issue :evil:

 

[Hindsight]

So... we're changing the FAP math... why not institute a Force Organizational Requirment? So you're playing a Battle 5 game... you're required to take at least one Battle or higher selection, before you can take 1 Battle point in raid craft, and before you can take a skirmish craft, you must take 1 Battle Points worth in Raid Craft (ie 2), and you must take half of a Battle Point from the Skirmish level, before you can take Patrol craft.

This means that all fleets will become one large ship (or more), and smaller ships on down the list. Now, at Raid 5, there is nothing to stop someone from taking five White Stars, as there is no penalty for staying on the same tier, or going higher, but you can't take 10 Skirmish craft at Raid 5, you'd have to take at least 1 point at the correct level, before you can trade down.

Keep the FAP the way it has been proposed, so you still can't turn a Raid point into four Patrol, but three as has been proposed, but in order to take Patrol Craft, you must also take Skirmish.

For ISA, this means we must spend ally points on Skirmish ships, or take our crummy option, in order to bring out Blue Stars at all.

I know this sounds complicated, but we need to do something that requires large ships to be used, as if everyone HAS TO use them, then the swarm fleets become less of a problem, or at the very least someone can't take 15 Patrol ships at Raid 5, dominating the initiative, and probably having an advantage in the game.

 

[Foxmeister]

I don't think that suggestion is ever going to fly with the powers that be. Again, it can invalidate some players current model selections and for some races there aren't enough choices at certain FAP levels.

You've mentioned ISA and their skirmish level ship, but they can fill the game more than adequately with allies - the Narn can't take anything at battle other than a crummy G'Quan or variant. Races like the Centauri however have good choices at everything other than War, so this will just have the effect of making the best better, and the worst worse.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Hindsight]

They could fix the G'Quan...

...or are you Centauri keeping the Narn down?

 

[Foxmeister]

They could fix the G'Quan...

...or are you Centauri keeping the Narn down?

That's just an example - there are plenty of others.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Hindsight]

Can they fix the G'Quan anyway? I want to start my Narn!

Whats the Narn without a G'Quan?!

 

[Da Boss]

they could - at present I don't feel the new Narn cbd helps this class of ship at all as it boosts all narn ships esp those yuo would take instead.

give it a 6 AD or even 8AD beam - leave the rest as is (take of the new damage increases) would be my prefered fix - it would make it the formidable beam ship it is in the show - you could reduce the range a bit if you go to 8 AD?

 

[Foxmeister]

give it a 6 AD or even 8AD beam - leave the rest as is (take of the new damage increases) would be my prefered fix - it would make it the formidable beam ship it is in the show - you could reduce the range a bit if you go to 8 AD?

Mine's still a 4AD F arc beam - so it can go toe to toe properly with a Primus. However, if TTT is going to be half AD, at least if it went to 6AD it doesn't lose out as it does with a 5AD beam. IMHO, it has clearly one of the strongest "sustained" beams of any of the ships actually shown on screen.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Da Boss]

how about (just for the G'Quon) 4 D F arc and 8 AD boresight - both at 18" then we can shoot hell out of each other........

Of course the present G'Quan is fine for us Centauri :wink: its usually a relief to see one on the table rather than more effective ships

 

[Tolwyn]

It comes to redesign every single ship in the game, that's why it will IMO never happen. Game balance seems to have become a secondline criteria for ACTA at best.

 

[mrambassador1]

I think ACTA is very balanced. There might be 1 or 2 exceptions but its much more balanced than most other games out there. Especially considering there are over 200 ships and 18 races.

 

[Hindsight]

I'm sorry, thats just not true. 90% of the forum posts involve something being out of balance. There are issues with large ships not being in balance with cheaper ships, in that they are too easy to take out given enough chances at crits. There are issues with the PL having holes for certain races, so at various PL ranges, you just don't have anything worth fielding, and are especially limited against races with a lot of low spectrum selections, who are then vulnerable to the high end selections.

Taking Warhammer 40,000 as the example, I play Tau. If I know I'm going to face something fast, something assaulty, I know I can take key units to increase my chances, and in a tournament setting (for which I win quite frequently) I take a balanced force, or lean my force entirely on one tactic, usually a firing line or pure mobile LOS ignoring Warfish army. With ACTA, there is not that versatility.

Certain races have an immediate advantage over others, without easy ways of overcoming these advantages. As has been stated in the White Star thread a million times, our speed gives us an advantage over any race with a 1/45 rotation, and means the person playing against the White Star is not having the fun that the White Star player is, hiding in the ideal firing arc. Narns pay a lot for E-Mines, pay a lot for front boresight weapons, and if they never get to fire, did that Narn player have fun? Did the Narn player say "this game gave me a fair shot"? No.

This game is out of balance, and certain fleets, people just don't want to play against because they have such an advantage. How is that one or two exceptions? The Vree can out maneuver anyone, and using turrets, can always see everything, ignoring arcs all together. I know very few people willing to play my local Vorlon fleets, and the Centauri are known for having a few cheese ships that can decimate, not to mention what an ISA player can do with Gaim allies.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, is not balance.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, is not balance.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, is not balance.

 

[eldiablito]

I think ACTA is very balanced.

...errr... I'll grant you that, compared to certain, other space-ship games, this one is fairly balanced. That said, the bitterness that people are venting is natural when there is such a fun and successful system that contains some pretty blatant balance issues: Drazi (or Abbai) vs. White Stars, Vree (or White Stars) versus lots of E-mines, Raiders vs. anyone (sorry :wink: ). This game would do very well with some serious tweaking of specific ships and/or fleets. The previous Gaim list was one example that is getting fixed and the G'Quan is an obvious ship to improve within the Narn (although I'm sure that there is plenty of ways to improve).

 

[Ripple]

Yup...

Some folks have said it before... you have to have an answer to all your likely opponents. Doesn't have to be the best answer, but it can't be a 'roll for a 50/50 shot'. This comes up with the races that are all one inflexible tactic...

There are a number of basic tactics...

Fighter Heavy
Maneuver Heavy
AD Heavy
Beam Heavy
AoE Heavy

You need an answer to all of them, and those answers have to be on multiple ships due to facing races that can combine a could of those themselves.

Ripple

 

[CZuschlag]

Rock, Paper, Scissors is balance! It just might not be very fun. I mean, we could have endless debates about how Rock should be more powerful than Paper, but isn't...

Back on topic --- the FAP breakdown.

The endless chaining of 1 War -> 2 Battle -> 1 Battle + 2 Raid -> 1 Battle + 1 Raid + 2 Skirmish (et. al.) is still far too powerful. It still breeds a lot of swarm fleets. We need an additional rejigger.

Suggestion: Add additional breakdown rule. A given FAP can only be broken down twice, maximum:

Fleet Allocation Points
Use the following table when purchasing ships of a different Priority Level to the scenario being played.

Difference in Priority Level Fleet Allocation Points Cost
Ship is same Priority Level as Scenario 1 per ship/wing
Ship is one Priority Level higher 2 per ship/wing
Ship is two Priority Level higher 4 per ship/wing
Ship is three Priority Level higher 8 per ship/wing
Ship is four Priority Level higher 16 per ship/wing
Ship is five Priority Level higher 32 per ship/wing
Ship is one Priority Level lower 1 point buys 2 ships/wings
Ship is two Priority Level lower 1 point buys 3 ships/wings
Ship is three Priority Level lower 1 point buys 5 ships/wings
Ship is four Priority Level lower 1 point buys 8 ships/wings
Ship is five Priority Level lower 1 point buys 12 ships/wings

Breaking Down Fleet Allocation Points
As well as using the Fleet Allocation table above, you can use a single Fleet Allocation Point to buy ships of multiple Priority Levels, as shown on the table below.

You can keep splitting a given Fleet Allocation Point twice. Once a point is split down, you can only ever split one of these smaller Fleet Allocation Points down further.

You cannot therefore split a War level point to get two Battle level points, and then split both of these into four Raid level points, in order to get more ships than would otherwise be allowed. You could, however, just split one of the new Battle level points. If you do split one of these Battle points to Raid points, you cannot break the Raid point down any further.

It won't help us at Raid-level fights (we're still hosed there), but at least we can help with Battle and War-level fights.

It's not a good solution, I grant. Best I can come up with at the time --- anyone want to take a further try at it?[/quote]

 

[Hindsight]

I kinda like that. At Battle, you can only break down to Skirmish. At Raid you can use everything, at War you can only break down to Raid, etc.

Armageddon games without Raid ships means no White Stars, and thats just not cool ;-)

 

[CZuschlag]

You can break down further --- you can do:

1 War --> 3 Raid --> 2 Whitestars + 3 Blue Stars

You just never had reason to before!

 

[l33tpenguin]

Making War and Battle level ships worth their salt compared to skirmish and raid would solve the issue. If a War level ship could go toe to toe against its equivilant of raid and skirmish ships, taking into account their advantage in init sinks, flanking, overkill, damage, damage output, crew, and crit survivability, then all the FAP issues would be solved. Init sinking and crits being the biggest two issues. Until those are 'fixed' (a good solid SA against init sinking, not TTT, and a way to mitigate crits on big ships, *cough* redundancy save *cough*) then all you can really do is totally butcher the FAP breakdown and reduce the number of small ships a point is worth (save, 1 war buys 4 skirmish).

Anyone ever tested a solid single war ship, Warlock, Sharlin, etc, against variable numbers of skirmish/raid ships to see where the balance is?