Our gaming groups observations (Long)

[l33tpenguin]

You don't need to pick the one and only ship you want to shoot at, he might be able to protect (move last) one or two of his ships but you still get good shots at the first ships he moves. If he's hiding behind terrain or keeping half his fleet at the other end of the field, then send some of your ships there as well. If he moves ships on the left side first then hit em with the half of your force on the left, if he moves right first, then hit them with your ships on the right. You might not be able to get your favourite target but you will get something, maybe not the first or second ship you move, but the 3rd or 4th should be able to find something, and once you start whittling away his small ships he'll run out of initiative sinks and then you can take out his big guns.

Not if he has enough sinks. Lets say I take a majority of patrol ships to a match and you have a good mix, skirmish through battle. My force outnumbers yours 8 ships to 5. Lets even say you win initiative and I move first. I move my first ship behind a piece of terrain where you are unable to hit it. You move a ship. I move my next ship along the back side of the map, totally out of range. You move another ship. I move my third ship off along an edge, again, out of your range. You move and I park another ship behind terrain. You move and again, one of my ships moves outside the range of your weapons. Now, You're out of ships to move and don't have a single shot. At this point I line up my three big bore sighted beams on whatever I want and fire away.

Next round, rinse and repeat. Provided I can keep my sinks out of range and out of sight I will continue to get plenty of good solid bore sight shots.

 

[mrambassador1]

Yeah, but just how big is the battlefield you're playing on, how many edges does it have. I play on 6ft x 4ft maps. If I have my fleet in a reasonable spread you will soon run out of places to hide.

Say I have 6 ships you have 12. 4ft x 6 ft map. 6' start zone each on long end of table. So I start 36' away from your deployment zone, 42' from your end of table.
I place 2 ships on left edge, 2 center, 2 right. An Omega can move 7' without APTE, so now I am 35' from your end of the table. Your small fast ships still prob can't get within range on first turn, neither can I. 2nd turn I move another 7', your end of the table is now 28' away, my laser range is 30', with ships spread out along the battle line there is no part of map I can't hit, whichever ship you move, wherever you move it, one of my ships will be able to hit it, my Omega will get a target on the second turn.

 

[Ripple]

Um... no... you missed the whole idea of terrain, lots of shadows your omegas can't hit.

you missed the whole idea of set up... you set up first in that scenario in your wide spread.. he piles on one edge and storms the couple of ships you have there, which can't target because he has ships hiding on the table edge you have to kill. You kill a patrol or two (as that's all you can line up on) and he kills a battle ship. Rinse repeat.

More often than not, with any terrain, it will take four or five turns to hunt down sinks (and then you have to hunt down another)... during which your main hulls are likely getting blown out from under you.

Ripple

 

[Ripple]

On the who are these people bringing 5 Omegas to battles anyway... I don't know, folks who want to recreate the show?

7 G'Quans as a fleet against the shadows.

2 Omegas and 2 Hyperions vs B5 and 2 Omegas

With the exception of the AoL and the Centauri, we rarely see any ships below raid at a major fight. What we never see is the swarm of Hermes acting as a strike force or single Omega accompanied by a half dozen skirmish or lower ships.

Ripple

 

[mrambassador1]

I don't think 2 omegas & 2 hyperions vs 2 omegas and B5 would have much of a sink problem. As for him piling up in 1 corner, wouldn't that just make it that much easier to hunt down his sinks. I thought you said that he would send sinks all over the place and you wouldn't be able to track them down. How can he simultaneously spread out all over the place and cluster all his ships against 1 of yours.

 

[l33tpenguin]

The Omegas/Hyperions vs Omegas and B5 is just a reference to Severed Dreams.

Basicly, I hide my sinks where I can and stick everything else together. Because none of my real ships move until after yours do, I can park them out infront of you if I want and you can't do anything about it. Better yet, when we are still at max range, typically the 30-40 where only bore sights reach, I'm ripping into your battle and war ships while you are chasing down my patrol sinks. Since I have those little sinks, you can't get bore sights on me while I can use all of my bores on you.

 

[mrambassador1]

I think the "Bring Weapons to Bear" Special action would bog the game down too much, everyone would want every ship to do it, so you'd have to make opposed CQ checks before every ship moved. I think the "I move you move" mechanic is much simpler and the closest simple approximator to simultaneous movement without writing down moves. I know you don't like the logic of why should a lumbering ship be more maneuverable than a white star just because it has tons of small support ships. But the "Bring Weapons to Bear" SA has the logic problem of why is your lumbering ship more maneuverable than a whitestar just because your crew is better. No matter how good the helmsman is an oil tanker is never going to be as maneuverable as a jet ski.

I know you want to improve an imperfect system but unless mongoose make a realtime flight sim computer game version, there is very little that can be done in a miniatures game to simulate real time reactions to movement. The more realistic you make it the slower and more cumbersome the game becomes. Look at my joking 32 movement impulses suggestion, it would solve the problem and be probably the most realistic solution for the game, but it would take too long to play a game. I find the current rules are the nicest balance of speed and realism. Even the common solution of some kind of reaction zones where I fire as you move when you enter my weapon arc and range is somewhat tedious to implement some times.

I'm afraid we're just going to have to live with the current system as it seems better than any of the solutions I've seen posted. The best fix is the one thats coming making smaller ships more expensive so the swarms can't get quite as big and initiative sinks aren't that much of a problem. It keeps the game fast and simple, if I wanted to play a more realistic (but less fun) battles I'd just play B5 wars.

 

[mrambassador1]

The Omegas/Hyperions vs Omegas and B5 is just a reference to Severed Dreams.

Basicly, I hide my sinks where I can and stick everything else together. Because none of my real ships move until after yours do, I can park them out infront of you if I want and you can't do anything about it. Better yet, when we are still at max range, typically the 30-40 where only bore sights reach, I'm ripping into your battle and war ships while you are chasing down my patrol sinks. Since I have those little sinks, you can't get bore sights on me while I can use all of my bores on you.

If you're taking lots of initiative sinks, where are all these omegas coming from, wouldn't you only have like 1 or 2.

I know its a reference to severed dreams, my point was that if people want to play battles from the show then initiative sinks aren't generally a problem because as has been said, most ships on the show are raid and up. If people are using lots of sinks then they are not playing show scenarios. They are playing standard scenarios and using fleets they find more effective for the situation. From the fluff in the books I always got the impression that most races used numerous smaller ships helping a core of big 'uns most of the time rather than just lots of big 'uns. This seems more in keeping with militaries in history as most militaries seem to favour combined arms. Real militaries don't seem to send 5 aircraft carriers into battle. It seems to be 1 or 2 carriers with lots of cruisers, destroyers, frigates and attack subs in support. The current system (and especially the P&P FAP) seems to encourage this.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I think the "Bring Weapons to Bear" Special action would bog the game down too much, everyone would want every ship to do it, so you'd have to make opposed CQ checks before every ship moved. I think the "I move you move" mechanic is much simpler and the closest simple approximator to simultaneous movement without writing down moves. I know you don't like the logic of why should a lumbering ship be more maneuverable than a white star just because it has tons of small support ships. But the "Bring Weapons to Bear" SA has the logic problem of why is your lumbering ship more maneuverable than a whitestar just because your crew is better. No matter how good the helmsman is an oil tanker is never going to be as maneuverable as a jet ski.

Its not that the Omega is becoming MORE maneuverable. It can still only make the single turn it has. It doesn't get more. It is just using that single turn to keep its weapons trained on its target. It makes perfect logical sense. And at long range, an Omega doesn't need to do much maneuvering simply because small movements become large ones the further out you go. Point a laser pointer at a wall 2 feet from you and turn it 5 degrees and you will only move the dot a small amount. Point it at a wall 100 feet away and turn it 5 degrees and the dot has moved several feet.

The opposed CQ represents the ability of one crew to keep a weapon on target within the limitations of the ship against a second crews ability to out maneuver the ship targeting them.

Also, Omegas and G'Quans are hardly oil tankers. Even on screen they are seem coming about at a high rate. These ships CAN maneuver. They do get a whole 45 degree turn. This is only 1/4 the amount of turns the WS gets.

I know you want to improve an imperfect system but unless mongoose make a realtime flight sim computer game version, there is very little that can be done in a miniatures game to simulate real time reactions to movement. The more realistic you make it the slower and more cumbersome the game becomes. Look at my joking 32 movement impulses suggestion, it would solve the problem and be probably the most realistic solution for the game, but it would take too long to play a game. I find the current rules are the nicest balance of speed and realism. Even the common solution of some kind of reaction zones where I fire as you move when you enter my weapon arc and range is somewhat tedious to implement some times.

A save a turn for later SA is hardly adding much, as there are other SAs that can be just as appealing. Not every ship is going to be doing it. CBD is powerful and has its use, lumbering ships will NEED to use Come About.

I'm afraid we're just going to have to live with the current system as it seems better than any of the solutions I've seen posted. The best fix is the one thats coming making smaller ships more expensive so the swarms can't get quite as big and initiative sinks aren't that much of a problem. It keeps the game fast and simple, if I wanted to play a more realistic (but less fun) battles I'd just play B5 wars.

Again, Bring to Bear isn't going to make any more impact in the game than any of the other SAs do. Quite the oppisite, since CBD extends the game by a significate amount, Bring weapons to bear would speed it up since more ships would get chances to fire on their intended target.

 

[Foxmeister]

But the "Bring Weapons to Bear" SA has the logic problem of why is your lumbering ship more maneuverable than a whitestar just because your crew is better.

Given that WS are crewed by Rangers and therefore have +1 CQ anyway, I don't see a particular issue. However, all this talk of lumbering ships being effectively being more manoeuverable than a WS is rather a red herring anyway since much of the WS manoeuverability is factored into its Dodge score.

Should an Omega be able to draw a bead on a WS at long range? Damn right it should! Whether it hits or not is a completely different matter and that is where Dodge comes in.

Regards,

Dave

 

[katadder]

Look at my joking 32 movement impulses suggestion, it would solve the problem and be probably the most realistic solution for the game, but it would take too long to play a game.

better with the 8 from fed commander. however if you played this slow ships like the KBT would never get a boresight as slow ships always move before fast ships.

 

[mrambassador1]

l33tpenguin wrote:

The opposed CQ represents the ability of one crew to keep a weapon on target within the limitations of the ship against a second crews ability to out maneuver the ship targeting them

Foxmeister wrote:

mrambassador1 wrote:
But the "Bring Weapons to Bear" SA has the logic problem of why is your lumbering ship more maneuverable than a whitestar just because your crew is better.


Given that WS are crewed by Rangers and therefore have +1 CQ anyway, I don't see a particular issue. However, all this talk of lumbering ships being effectively being more manoeuverable than a WS is rather a red herring anyway since much of the WS manoeuverability is factored into its Dodge score.

Should an Omega be able to draw a bead on a WS at long range? Damn right it should! Whether it hits or not is a completely different matter and that is where Dodge comes in.

Regards,

Dave

Doesn't the to hit roll and dodge etc reflect the crews ability to target an enemy as foxmeister wrote. Are you suggesting removing the hit rolls and using opposed CQ checks to hit, loot. Doesn't your special action affect when a ship moves as well as shoots. How can you say it doesn't improve maneuverability when you are allowing an omega, or nova to "out jink" a whitestar. If the whitestar is at close range an omega using this special action could move out of a WS forward arc, effectively letting IT dodge the whitestars fire.

A save a turn for later SA is hardly adding much, as there are other SAs that can be just as appealing. Not every ship is going to be doing it. CBD is powerful and has its use, lumbering ships will NEED to use Come About.

Every ship will want to use this special action every turn, if I win the CQ's enough I could move my entire fleet after you. wouldn't that just excacerbate the init sink "problem". What if my ship A uses it on your ship 1, 1 uses it on my B, B uses it on your 2, 2 uses it on my A. Who moves first then, we are all waiting for the other to move first.

Again, Bring to Bear isn't going to make any more impact in the game than any of the other SAs do. Quite the oppisite, since CBD extends the game by a significate amount, Bring weapons to bear would speed it up since more ships would get chances to fire on their intended target.

It will add a huge amount of time to the game, you would have to make CQ checks before moving just about every ship every turn. It won't just benefit boresight ships, every ship would love to move last.

The new FAP will reduce the number of small ships that can be brought to battles. I think this is better than any solution I've seen on these forums. I'm afraid you're using a sledge hammer to fix something an ordinary hammer will fix quite nicely.

 

[l33tpenguin]

Doesn't the to hit roll and dodge etc reflect the crews ability to target an enemy as foxmeister wrote. Are you suggesting removing the hit rolls and using opposed CQ checks to hit, loot. Doesn't your special action affect when a ship moves as well as shoots. How can you say it doesn't improve maneuverability when you are allowing an omega, or nova to "out jink" a whitestar. If the whitestar is at close range an omega using this special action could move out of a WS forward arc, effectively letting IT dodge the whitestars fire.

This has nothing to do with actually hitting the target. It has to do with keeping your weapons pointed at the target. Instead of turning my ship where I think you will go, a totally retarded concept when you consider this is a representation of real time, the ship declares a target and follows it.

The SA only allows the ship to save a single turn until after the target has moved. Nothing else. The ship making the SA (if successful) moves and uses all but 1 turn. Movement continutes as normal until the target moves. Once the target moves the ship that did the SA uses its last movement to try and bring the target into arc.

Every ship will want to use this special action every turn, if I win the CQ's enough I could move my entire fleet after you. wouldn't that just excacerbate the init sink "problem". What if my ship A uses it on your ship 1, 1 uses it on my B, B uses it on your 2, 2 uses it on my A. Who moves first then, we are all waiting for the other to move first.

Again, it only lets you save a turn. Not a movement and it has no affect on the order of fire. Because it is only a turn, it doesn't matter when it happens, the target has already stopped moving. The direction they are facing has no affect on where it is in regards to other ships.

It will add a huge amount of time to the game, you would have to make CQ checks before moving just about every ship every turn. It won't just benefit boresight ships, every ship would love to move last.

The new FAP will reduce the number of small ships that can be brought to battles. I think this is better than any solution I've seen on these forums. I'm afraid you're using a sledge hammer to fix something an ordinary hammer will fix quite nicely.

You are thinking it is a lot more than what it is.

And you DON'T want to use it all the time. An opposing player can leverage the SA against you by forcing you to turn in an unwanted direction and if they are fast enough can slip out of the fire arc completely, wasting both your SA and your chance to fire.

As it is in my house rules:

Bring Weapons to Bear
CQ: Opposed
Requirements: Ship capable of making at least 1 turn.

This special action declares that the crew of one ship is following the course of a specific ship in order to bring their weapons to bear on their target.  When this special action is declared, the attacker designates the target ship and an opposed check is rolled.  If the attacking ship wins, the player declares the firing arc and the ship performing the special action is moved, using all but 1 if its turn.  The firing arc is which ever weapon arc the player wishes to bring to bear on the target ship and the target ship is any opposing ship that has not yet been moved.  The movement phase proceeds as normal until the target ship is moved.  At the end of the target ship’s movement, the ship that declared the Bring to Bear special action uses its last turn to attempt to bring the target ship into the designated fire arc.  The player must commit to the turn whether or not it is possible to bring the target ship into the designated arc.  If unable to bring the target into the designated arc, the ship must be turned its full turn in the direction of the target ship.

 

[Foxmeister]

If the whitestar is at close range an omega using this special action could move out of a WS forward arc, effectively letting IT dodge the whitestars fire.

No, because Bring to Bear only allows you to reserve a single turn until after the target ship has moved, so it can only change its facing not its position relative to any ships around it.

Regards,

Dave

EDIT: Should've read to the end of the thread before responding since this has already been answered above!

 

[mrambassador1]

Ah right, missunderstood. Thought you meant turn as in your turn my turn, not turn as in.....well turn. It might not be such a bad idea then. I still think we should see how P&P affects the number of ships brought to battles. I am hoping this will do much to fixing this and the swarm problem. But I have to admit I do like EA (and Narn not that I care about the stupid barbarians) having boresight, including its limitations. It gives them a great deal of character, and I do like having to take smaller ships (init sinks) to support.

I must admit I always saw the init sink as a sort of representation of fleet coordination. Not a perfect system, but I always thought it gave the feel of a commander giving orders to the smaller ships to flank and corale the enemy ships into prime firing positions for the big guns. Kind of like the Centauri fluff about Vorchans being used as hunting packs driving the enemy into the Primus's Battle Lasers. Sure it doesn't work exactly like that, but having smaller support ships does make it easier for large ships to get off their best shots. And large ships without support ships always felt suitably vulnerable to enemy fire, kind of like WWII carriers without their destroyers getting torpedoed to death.

 

[noobdelux]

well one way to make it realtime is to do it battle tech style

write up all the shots and then resolve it at end of turn instead...

 

[Hindsight]

I played a Battle 8 game last night with my co-worker that just started ACTA. He plays Psi Corps, and of course, I like cats.... er... White Stars.

I had a pair of War ships, and he had a Pair of Warships, but overall I outnumbered him by three or four ships. I had spent a point on some Patrol craft, and fighters, and not being thrilled with my Battle or Skirmish choices, I had the initiative sink on him, and with an equal Command roll, who moved first was mostly irrelevant.

The Blue stars would move, he'd usually shoot past them, but his big boresight weapons usually had to target a Dag'Kar or something as I moved my Carrier and my Tara'lin last, always.

He, as a new player, was very frustrated that because I had more ships, I had an advantage, and was able to shut down his heavy firepower and limit his choices. He took a Warlock and a Shadow Omega, a pair of Omegas, and a smattering of other ships he had from the Fleet Box. I told him he could run Hyperions and Hermes to lighten my initiative advantage, and at least the Skirmish Hyperion is canon, but he figured it was more fun playing big ship B5, and this game simply isn't that.

I won, and with his inability to target my big war ships with his boresight weapons, I was able to take out the Shadow Omega, which I had range on, so it came right to me, and was eaten. The Shadow Hunter thing, or whatever its called, was eaten by a quartet of White Stars, and the beam dice of the Carrier and Tara'lin gave a bloody nose to just about everything that came near, before it was in range. I had more attack dice on him sooner, and even though he had the big systems, they rarely got to fire at anything he wanted to fire at.

So here he is, two hundred plus invested into the game, and he felt like he never had a shot in hell because I had the initiative, and used it to spank him into tuesday.

If I was going to take any Patrol craft, I had to take a lot, especially because I don't like the Skirmish options in ACTA for ISA. I'd have to take a whole Battle point in Blue Stars and Auroras to take any at all, and so it goes from "sure lets take some blue stars" to "oh look I have a shit ton! I win!

Of course the Dag'Kars made for fighter sex, as he didn't want to move his fighters forward, as they'd die, and when they did make it to the fight, we'd called the game as the Shadow Omega had just finished being destroyed + 18 taking out all the White Star carriers craft in the blast.

All because of the initiative sink, he never had a chance. I'm not thrilled with this, at all. I play, to paint Babylon 5 ships, and because I love the White Star, and other canon ships. Initiative or not, the White Star will be strong, and I'd have fun even if it meant taking turns, and not this one for one initiative sinking crap. "Oh, you're out of stuff, neat, time to take six more moves and move my important stuff!"

Lame.

 

[Foxmeister]

The Blue stars would move, he'd usually shoot past them, but his big boresight weapons usually had to target a Dag'Kar or something as I moved my Carrier and my Tara'lin last, always.

Sounds like you didn't try the new TTT SA - that would've at least given him something to shoot at 50% of the time.

With the current version of the SA, the PsiCorp benefit more than most due to the +1 CQ, which should make the Mothership one mean "mother"!

He took a Warlock and a Shadow Omega, a pair of Omegas, and a smattering of other ships he had from the Fleet Box. I told him he could run Hyperions and Hermes to lighten my initiative advantage, and at least the Skirmish Hyperion is canon, but he figured it was more fun playing big ship B5, and this game simply isn't that.

At 8 Battle, that isn't going to be a legal PsiCorp fleet - you can only spend 2 FAPs on EA allies, and with a Warlock and a couple of Omegas you are at 4 already.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Fenrisnorth]

Call it war 4 then

 

[Target]

Has anyone tried. Moving but have the last phase of movement called orientation. Everyone moves there ships & then have a orientation phase where the ships can turn to there final heading. You can use your turns during movement so if you want to be able to boresight something that moved last you would have to save it for orientation.
Hope i didn't word it so it's too confusing.