Noble Armada Special Action tactical tips?

How often do Noble Armada players use special actions and when?

I find that All Power to the Engines, Prepare to Grapple, All Stop and Come About are the ones I use most often. The others I find maybe some circumstances for but usually when they seem most applicable things have gotten pretty furious that they seem pointless compared to just fighting it out full tilt.

Anybody have any good tactical tips or circumstances they have found are good for any specific special action or perhaps little tricks they have developed to exploit a particular action?
 
All Hands On Deck can be the only realistic way to recover from a series of crits before they start digging into the d6 "really bad now sir" damage zone, especially when you've got several tracks damaged at once.

All Power To Engines is a no-brainer against Al Malik and Kurgan - unless you're Vuldrok, and sometimes even then.

Bring Battle Shields Online is often less effective than Close Blast Doors as an emergency damage prevention measure, but not always. While the firepower penalties are high, relatively intact dreads gain a whopping 7 shields (9 on the newly restatted Kurgan) - unless you expect to take more than 21 (or 27) damage, BBSO can be a better choice if you can spare the speed.

Come About is pretty vital if you need to make tight turns with a Lumbering ship in a reasonable timeframe. It's unreliably difficult but has no direct penalties, succeed or fail.

Ramming Speed is an excellent way to kill a capital ship quickly, and even with lesser targets it can let you trade a smaller ship for a larger one quite often - especially if you're Vuldrok. Anything with Ram 5 or higher should at least consider ramming if they find themselves in a position to do so, especially if the enemy has been careless enough to position himself so that you have several potential targets available to ram.

Maximum Firepower is a very strong response to an enemy who aggressively moves within 12" of you. It's a particularly good way to deal with boarding attempts on other friendly vessels nearby - you don't want to plink away at a ship that just grappled, you want it dead, dead, dead before its troops can clear the airlocks. Works best on ships with large, even-numbered AD pools and no Precise weapons to make the lost crit chances more expensive (eg Hazat and Al Malik destroyers). It can also be very helpful to Vuldroks, who often struggle to get ships close enough to fire explosive shells and Burnout shields for later slug volleys to exploit, so they want to maximize the effect when they do.

Grapple is mandatory for boarding, one of the main routes to victory. 'Nuff said.

Run Silent is very situational, and works best against a fleet without Scouts and on tables with plenty of dust terrain. If you've got a ship that absolutely needs to stay alive for one more turn, it may be a better option than BBSO or CBD, but the CQ check makes it unreliable. Most likely to see use in an Assassination scenario, especially if the scenario target is an actual stealth ship.
 
Agreed.

Also note All Hands on Deck! and Run Silent! orders are essentially for withdrawing a ship from battle. Far more important in campaigns (where losing a dreadnought can bankrupt you) than in pickup games. If there's no long-term implications, then I'd probably just let the ship go down swinging; it'll take several turns to recover from major system damage, and during that time you're pretty much target practice.

Also note the universal restriction - no launching fighters. This means carriers are much more restricted (or at least, if they don't restrict themselves, they hamstring their primary function).
 
Using All Hands On Deck to improve the chance of repairing a key critical can be worth the loss of firepower even if you aren't withdrawing the ship. Shields 1 can be a death sentence against slug guns, and Weapons 1 is horrible anytime. Better to weaken your firepower for (hopefully) one turn than to be stuck with Inaccurate for three or more - although a Kurgan or Al Malik might disagree. :)
 
starbreaker said:
Using All Hands On Deck to improve the chance of repairing a key critical can be worth the loss of firepower even if you aren't withdrawing the ship. Shields 1 can be a death sentence against slug guns, and Weapons 1 is horrible anytime. Better to weaken your firepower for (hopefully) one turn than to be stuck with Inaccurate for three or more - although a Kurgan or Al Malik might disagree. :)

It is also good when your ship is riddled with lots of minor critical hits!
 
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