Paladins & Pirates part 1 posted on ACTA Fleet Command

[Kadorak]

For file go to:

http://www.b5acta.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Projects

and look under attachments.

Comments: Since other things have been taking all my time & energy of late, I decided to release the large first part of my custom "Paladins & Pirates" supplement. All the ships are done and at least slightly playtested, although I would appreciate comments - I was originally planning to do more playtests (in conjunction with testing the scenarios, in part 2) but I haven't been playing enough to do so. As this may not change for several weeks, I offer what is done to anyone who is interested and wishes to look at or use it.

Paladins & Pirates contains a much expanded Raider fleet list, a whole new set of ISA ships based on the Victory and multi-racial cooperation as opposed to the White Star (which, in my view, should not be able to be further developed without the Vorlons, nor even further produced) and a variety of 'flavor' merchant ships for the various races as targets for Raiders. As an extra, there is also a B5W style Dargan Strike Cruiser. Part 2, if I go back and finish it, includes scenarios for these ships and rules for piracy.

Enjoy!

 

[Kadorak]

Anyone look at it? I don't care if you hated it, I'd like some comments so I can do better next time =p

 

[Methos5000]

Maybe I missing something but I cant find any attachment to look at.

 

[Hash]

You need to log in (or register first, then log in) to see the attached file.

 

[Morgoth]

some interesting ideas, lost of ships though.
Here are the three ideas I had for additional raider ships for you to take a look at:
Attack Gunboat Priority Level: Patrol
Speed: 10 In Service: 2238+
Turns: 2/45 Craft: None
Hull: 4 Special Rules: Troops: 1
Damage: 15/4 Crew: 14/4
Weapon Range Arc AD Special
Medium Pulse Cannon 8 F 5
Medium Pulse Cannon 8 P 4
Medium Pulse Cannon 8 S 4


Intruder Class Corvette Priority Level: Skirmish
Speed: 9 In Service: 2235+
Turns: 2/45 Craft: 1 Delta Wing Flight, 1 Double Delta Wing Flight
Troops: 3
Hull: 5 Special Rules: Jump Point, Interceptors 1
Damage: 20/5 Crew: 24/5
Weapon Range Arc AD Special
Heavy Pulse Cannon 12 F 8
Twin-Particle Array 8 P 4 Twin – Linked, Weak
Twin-Particle Array 8 S 4 Twin – Linked, Weak
Particle Beam 4 T 4 Anti-Fighter, Weak


Interloper Class Corvette- Intruder Variant Priority Level: Skirmish
Speed: 8 In Service: 2235+
Turns: 2/45 Craft: 1 Delta Wing Flight,
Troops: 3
Hull: 5 Special Rules: Jump Point, Interceptors 1
Damage: 20/5 Crew: 24/5
Weapon Range Arc AD Special
Heavy Pulse Cannon 12 F 4 AP, Double Damage
Twin-Particle Array 8 P 4 Twin – Linked, Weak
Twin-Particle Array 8 S 4 Twin – Linked, Weak
Medium Pulse Cannon 12 A 4
Particle Beam 4 T 2 Anti-Fighter, Weak

views?

 

[Kadorak]

Oh hell, I didn't realize you had to be logged in to see the attachments. I'll try to put it up on another filehosting site soon (if anyone has any suggestions, mention them), and get back to you Morgoth - I'd love to look at your ideas, but right now I need to head to a doctor's appointment in about 10 minutes and I'd be pretty rushed.

All the ships included in my document are based on official and thus 'semi-canon' ships from Babylon 5 Wars though - so yours would be something new & different (which is both good and bad). Just FYI.

 

[WickedE]

Very interesting. The Valen is WEIRD.

 

[Morgoth]

From the supplement my views on ships present:
Dragon ship - interesting idea, however the weapons load out seems a little odd - beams on the side and not front mounted? and not DD on a battle level ship?Rear weapons a bit shocking too!!

Galleon- again novel idea, I would of upped the hull to 5 though and reduced dam & crew levels . I would also remove one of the plasma cannons.

Bigantine - I quite like but would up damage score a bit.

Barques - I quite like also but would consdier tweaking the weaponary slighlty,reducing AD of front weapons and changng rear weapon to twin array also.

Wolf Raider - I just can't see this being used except outside scenarios
Sloop - little undergunned and poor survivability
Xebec - very poor survability and poor weapons loadout
Schooner - another ship that wouldn't be used ecept in scenarios
Felucca - also a scenario only ship
Gunboats - quite like idea of these

Cotten Tender - solid design
Arcismus - I like this ship, pretty tough transport ship!!
Lias - I would prefer to the arrays not have weak, so it followed standard Centauri weapon loadout
Vymeosh - quit elike this also but would like to see it have a low level of stealthm say 3+
Retlata - solid design
Brakiri transoprt - I would raise hull to 3 and reduce dam and crew
Abbai Freighter - this is a tough ship!!
Transbird - I would prefer this to have turreted weapons if its supopsed to flee from engagements, the guardhawk has turreted weapons so it is possible.

Ore Barge - standard layout
bulk frieghter - nasty weaons for a no PL ship!!
Q-Ship - again nasty! but would like to see front and aft weapons!! for a commerical ship this is very tough!!

Nolo'Tar - quite like this ship, but would put the laser on a F mount instead
Enfalli - quite like this also - however would up stealth to 4+
Valen - not to keen on this design, poor weapons distribution - it wouldn't see production with such obvious flaws
Legacy - not too bad a design, unsure about weapons loadout though
Consensus - quit elike this, hwoever I would actually up AD of side twin particle arrays
Zenith - reasonable but would change fusion cannon to front mount
Solon - another solid design


well thats my views.

 

[Morgoth]

Here is the other Raider vessel I had designed previously:

Violator Class PirateWagon Priority Level: Raid
Speed: 8 In Service: 2242+
Turns: 1/45 Craft: 1 Delta V-2 Wing Flight,1 Double Delta Wing Flight
Troops: 4
Hull: 5 Special Rules: Jump Point, Interceptors 2
Damage: 33/5 Crew: 35/6 Weapon Range Arc AD Special
Combat Laser 12 F 4 AP, Beam, Precise
Medium Pulse Cannon 10 F 8
Particle Beam 4 F 4 Anti-Fighter, Weak
Twin-Particle Array 8 P 5 Twin – Linked, Weak
Particle Beam 4 P 4 Anti-Fighter, Weak
Twin-Particle Array 8 S 5 Twin – Linked, Weak
Particle Beam 4 S 4 Anti-Fighter, Weak
Medium Pulse Cannon 8 A 6
Particle Beam 4 A 4 Anti-Fighter, Weak

The ship carries a varied weapon loadout to match the fact that is non-standard. It mounts an abbai combat laser, Narn twin particle arrays and EA particle beams.The Ship is designed to overcome any convoy and can protect itself from escort fighters and smaller capital ships. Its combat laser means that it can go toe to toe with larger ships and can cut through hulls to either destroy vessels or cut cargo pods straight off their freighters. It also has a good compliment of pirates on the vessel ready to board any ship plus the fighters it carries means that it is a self reliant vessel.

 

[Kadorak]

Sorry for the delay - the past few days have been evenly split between, if you'll pardon my masked french, doing s*** and feeling like s***.

For those not registered on ACTA Fleet Command (even though you should be!) the file is up at:

http://www.filecrunch.com/file/~0qmwj9

for anyone to download after only a few seconds wait.

Quick replies on the ships:

The two general things to note are 1. all the pirate ships are based off the B5Wars "Raiders & Privateers" supplement, using roughly their weapon loadouts and arcs (I like the ACTA game system's mechanics for friendly, quick play but I think B5Wars' portrayal of the universe and ship design was much better). The Valen, Nalo'tar, and Enfalli are based off of the "Legend of the Rangers" ships and Signs & Portents' portrayal of them. 2. The pirate ships (with the '-' qualifier) are not intended to be the equals of 'normal' ships of their PL. I make no secret of the fact I think such a strict PL system is stupid, especially as applied to old, cobbled together ships and advanced, new technology ships - the Raiders and ISA respectively. So no, I wouldn't expect anyone to take the pirate ships in a competitive game, but I also wouldn't realistically imagine 'in-universe' anyone trying to engage a front-line fleet force with a pirate raiding fleet either.

Dragonship is based on the B5W armament, reflecting Raiders using the low tech weapons they can get their hands on through indirect channels. It makes even more sense in ACTA, where beams are such nasty weapons, that they can't get DD beams IMO. Who would possibly sell them to even a legitimate-seeming corporation? And even building a mercenary, privateer ship like the Dragonship, I can't imagine any race being stupid enough to hand them powerful beam weaponry that might be turned back on the provider. If you think about it though, 4 AD single damage is roughly equal to 2 AD double damage, with a slight difference on bulkhead hits - so the Dragonship has a total equivilant of 4 DD SAP beam AD, equal to most Battle PL ships, split across the sides but with a nasty non-beam frontal armament.

Galleon is just a converted freighter, idea is that it's incredibly resilient out of pure redundant space but doesn't have any ability to mount armor.

Rest of the Raider ships basically the same, armament based on B5W and intentionally weak, that's what they can get. I may consider boosting damage scores up a bit again though, on the basis of the same theory behind the Galleon.

The transport ships I'm open to changing a bit, they're based on the B5W source a bit more loosely as, for the sake of increasing variety, I exaggerated the differences. In fact, I did go back and do a modified Brakiri freighter based on your suggestion as I agree hull 2 may have been going a bit far. I'm going to wait for a few more comments before finalizing that and doing a v1.1, along with hopefully uploading at least a few of the scenarios (although I'm still mostly occupied with other things).

Q-ship's arcs derive from one of the big problems in B5W -> ACTA conversions: hemisphere weapons arcs. You end up with a situation where a ship with, say, 5 AD of weapons in P and S hemisphere arcs could fire 5 AD into F/P/S/A arcs and 10 AD into boresight/boresight(A) arcs. BUT, it only really has 10 AD/turn. Without introducing a whole new mechanic, the way I solved this was to 'split' the AD on the stronger ships with some increase in total for it being split, and to narrow the arcs on weaker ships. Especially on the Q-ship, this narrowing seems to make sense: the weapons are mounted on the cargo pods, relatively fixed locations not meant for weapons mounts and blocked by other pods & the freighter's bulk.

[Edit: Oh yeah, there's a rule I would love to use but I think people would hate since it's introducing a new rule into the system. That would be ships having an AD 'pool' for each type of weapon system, so the aforementioned ship would have 10 AD for that particular weapon system to split between any of the arcs it wants. That's still not quite in line with the B5W arcs but is much closer, more realistic, and in line with the actual firepower. I don't think it would be very complicated either, as you're declaring and resolving all weapons fire from a single ship at once anyways.

Example: Ship A has a pool of 10 AD for all weapons called "Medium Pulse Cannons". It can fire 10 AD in its forward arc, 5 AD in its port arc, 5 AD in its starboard arc, and 5 AD in its rear arc. It can fire any combination of 10 AD of Medium Pulse Cannons across the arcs, up to the maximum weapon mounts in that arc. So you could do 5 AD in the P arc, 3 in the F arc, and 2 in the S arc, or 3 in the F arc, 3 in the P arc, 3 in the S arc, and 1 in the A arc, or 10 in the F arc etc. You could NOT fire all 10 AD out of the P arc, or fire 10 AD in the F arc AND 5 AD from the P and S arcs.]

The first 3 ISA ships are based on the LotR (no, not Lord of the Rings! Legend of the Rangers!) movie and S&P's interpretation of the ships in it for the RPG. Thus I had pre-existing material but pretty vague stuff. I'm fairly happy with the Nolo'Tar and the Enfalli, improving them would make them too powerful I think (notice they aren't PL+). The Valen is very intentionally utterly flawed. In the movie it was unable to fire anything in its aft quarter, and Mongoose's interpretation and almost every B5Wars fan version I saw had weak or non-existant rear weaponry.

Rest of the ships are 100% my design, remember a lot of the choices for these ships (as all others) was based on the B5Wars/SFB type idea of ship design/engineering, that there are just certain limits for different hulls, weapons, mounts etc. and you can't just optimize the ship's 'stats'. So for instance the Heavy Fusion Cannon simply cannot be put in a turret that can swivel and track targets - it is too recent a development and has not yet been optimized or 'miniaturized'. Right now it takes huge amounts of power right into the barrel, and the power conduits are inflexible and cannot be turned safely.

Meh, I rambled for a while - but that was the thoughts behind them.