Romulans vs Klingons. Oh my...

Sounds good, ACTA is really at its best at fleet games, its not great at duels.

Type it up, post it up - you might need to check with MGP / ADB about it - if only in principle. As long as it does not make drones better !!!! It may even help the companies if they do go for a relaunch - which is not really a bad thing - I have several editions of the Uncarted Seas rules for instance, all produced in a shortish period of time and happier with the current one.

Long tradition of fan adaptions and iterations on this board...............
 
Okay I've typed it up (yeah this week has been mostly free :) )

first bit attached as an image
 

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2. Special actions
Remove ‘all hands on deck’ ‘Close blast doors’ and ‘Intensify defensive fire’

Evasive Action change to:
‘can be chosen as desired, no checks required, ship can move 6”, -2 to fire from and at the evading ship. Evading ships cannot launch seeking weapons. Seeking weapons miss on a 4+’ (no basis in FC, but this is a whole turn maneuver so it fits in OK)

3. Fairer Initiative
Immediately before the initiative loser moves a ship, if one player has double or triple the number of selectable units, he must move two or three ships instead of one when it is his turn to move.


4. Klingon Shields
Remove the special Klingon shields rule and replace with a separate stat ‘front shield’ which is equal to half the points of the basic shield statistic for that ship (eg: Klingon D6 has 18 shields – it’s front shield is 9)
Any damage scored to the front hits the front shield first before damaging the regular shield.
The front shield is affected by critical hits as well as the normal shield. It can be fixed with ‘all power to shields’


5. Hull scores
The hull value for all ships is doubled. (eg: Klingon D6 written hull 20/7 becomes 40/14)


6. Power Drain
Drones and anti-drones are ignored for purposes of the power drain rule – they may always be fired.

When selecting a power drain negative effect of 6” movement, fast ships may move 7” and it may be selected if the impulse engines are damaged – but the amount of movement is reduced by the damage
(impulse 1 = 4”, impulse 2 = 2”)

7. Drones, Anti-Drones, etc
Each non-federation drone rack on a ship has 4 ammo after which it is empty. The feds have two per rack.
Each anti-drone rack has 12 ammo, and Federation drone racks also have 4 anti-drones.
(so a ship with anti-drone 2 has two anti-drone racks each with 12 anti-drones, for a total of 24 anti-drones)

Drone range is 24”. There are no range bands and they will hit automatically unless evaded or shot down

At the start of the turn after initiative there is a new phase: ‘Fire Drones’.
Each player in initiative order may fire the drones of one ship, choose to pass or choose ‘counter fire’
To fire drones, place the correct # drones against a target within 24” at the correct aspect from the firing ship (ideally on the base so they move with the ship more easily) or if counter-firing, remove enemy drones equal to your ships drone score from any target within 24” as long as the original firing ship is not closer to the target than the counter-firing ship.
At the end of the phase all drones will be allocated to targets or will have destroyed enemy drones. Mark off ammo.

During the movement phase, if a ship takes evasive action roll for each drone and remove on 4+
If a ship moves >12” in the turn, roll for all seeking weapons not placed against its front arc and remove on 4+

When a ship fires in the shooting phase it may engage enemy drones normally with any direct-fire weapon.
A ship can shoot at drones attacking itself or attacking friendly ships – shoot at the position of the friendly ship.
A phaser firing at a drone over 4” away is penalised by -2 to-hit (FC note: this accounts for damage drop-off of phasers over range)
Heavy weapons firing at a drone over 4” away are penalised by -1.

At the end of the turn, resolve all remaining drones as follows:
(1) Ships being hit can use anti-drones [and escorts can use them to defend others]
(2) Then remaining phasers [and escorts can defend others within 4” – the escort always fires after all others have fired]
(3) Then tractor beams
(4) any remaining drones hit, doing 1d6 + 3 hits

Anti-Drones
Anti drones can only be fired at the end of the turn by ships with enemy drones attacking them.
Each anti drone and federation drone rack can roll three dice per turn at most.
They can be rolled one at a time, allocating as you roll and if you miss you can allocate and shoot again but only to a maximum of three times per anti-drone mount. A hit destroys an incoming drone. They hit on a 3+
Remember that ammunition is limited so you’ll need to record what is being used.

Escorts
Ships with the escort trait can fire anti-drones in the end (drone resolution) phase at enemy drones which are targeting other friendly ships within 4”. Use the anti-drone rules above but each anti-drone only hits on a 4+

Escorts can also use their phasers in the end (drone resolution) phase to defend other ships within 4” (only) and they can resolve their firing last – shooting at drones already missed by other ships

Phaser-G
A phaser-G when used against drones may roll the dice, and then declare targets for each valid die.

8. Crew Quality
Veteran crews get a +1 to evasion dice for both outrunning and evading seeking weapons through evasive action, whilst green crews get a -1.
They also still make HETs easier, repair damage and tractor drones.



9. THE REMAINDER IS SO FAR UNTESTED

Plasma torpedoes
Damage increased to R=10, S=6, G=4, S=3. (Thanks to ‘StoryElf’)
Each 6 causes 1 hit to be an internal (with 5 going to shields)
Plasmas are fired in the shooting phase as normal but are then placed like drones against the target ship – optionally you could have them launch in the drone launch phase too.
Phaser hits reduce the warhead by half a die each (half die left over is -2 to the total rolled)

Cloaking Device
No fade-out/in period. When activated in the movement phase you are cloaked (2+ stealth)
But any weapons already heading toward you will continue to track. If they are not shot-down at the end of the turn by other friendly ships, each will hit on a 4+

Plasma-D recalibration for new anti-drone rules - I do not know how capable this system is.
 
I really don't want to see ammo counting. Any rule that adds record keeping or extra steps concerns me greatly.

The strength of ACTA is simplicity. I'm all for tweaking but not if it adds 1 ounce of record keeping or .02 nanoseconds of game slowing extra steps.
 
I don't really see the need for the Klingon's special rule, they already have agile and anti drone, did they really need it? Admitably it does encourage tactical play.
 
I wasn't that keen on ammo counting either, but it is only 12 marks on a sheet.
Right next to where you'd usually record anti-drone #.
Otherwise, with the original rule your first one can be an 'out of ammo' result - makes no sense when they should have a full bin.
The other option is not to bother - ROF 3 is probably severe enough and without escorts only the ship being fired at will shoot anyway. So.. maybe only have an ammo rule for escorts.

The klink special rule? hmm there's not a great basis for it in FC no.
But it does add a bit of something different for the klinks and yeah, they then want to maneuver more.
 
Stu-- said:
Otherwise, with the original rule your first one can be an 'out of ammo' result - makes no sense when they should have a full bin.

Only if you presume each ship is fresh from spacedock and has not had any encounters prior to the battle you are fighting...
 
Sure yeah but the ships are supposed to be carrying significant reloads.
You can certainly reload in FC without limitations.

Personally, I'd have a special rule if you wanted to simulate pre-battle damage / ammo expenditure but just my 2p obviously
 
Thanks very much - my thoughts in case of interest :)

1. "Stuff"
I quite like this - as I read it the first number is the minimum move before you can turn and the second your maximum turn?

2. Special actions
Remove ‘all hands on deck’ ‘Close blast doors’ and ‘Intensify defensive fire’
Any reason why?

Evasive Action change to:
‘can be chosen as desired, no checks required, ship can move 6”, -2 to fire from and at the evading ship. Evading ships cannot launch seeking weapons. Seeking weapons miss on a 4+’ (no basis in FC, but this is a whole turn maneuver so it fits in OK)

Questions - is it still a Special Action, are you retaining the restrictions due to critical hits? Is the Seeking weapons miss a 4+ per ship or per weapon/AD?

3. Fairer Initiative
Immediately before the initiative loser moves a ship, if one player has double or triple the number of selectable units, he must move two or three ships instead of one when it is his turn to move.

Often a suggestion in ACTA - not used it myself but its often put forward.

4. Klingon Shields
Remove the special Klingon shields rule and replace with a separate stat ‘front shield’ which is equal to half the points of the basic shield statistic for that ship (eg: Klingon D6 has 18 shields – it’s front shield is 9)
Any damage scored to the front hits the front shield first before damaging the regular shield.
The front shield is affected by critical hits as well as the normal shield. It can be fixed with ‘all power to shields’
Hmm bit of a pain to track when added to everything else plus can it be reinforced - I'd be against this completely and leave it as is.

5. Hull scores
The hull value for all ships is doubled. (eg: Klingon D6 written hull 20/7 becomes 40/14)

Will make all games considerably longer and Romulan ships in particular more powerful as being hit whilst cloaked is less of an issue. Gives the Battleships around 200pts of damage - do we really want this and why?

6. Power Drain
Drones and anti-drones are ignored for purposes of the power drain rule – they may always be fired.When selecting a power drain negative effect of 6” movement, fast ships may move 7” and it may be selected if the impulse engines are damaged – but the amount of movement is reduced by the damage (impulse 1 = 4”, impulse 2 = 2”)
This may work with your other rules below (which I don't like at all sadly) but otherwise is way way to good a boost for the drone fleets - which they absolutely don't need.

7. Drones, Anti-Drones, etc
Each non-federation drone rack on a ship has 4 ammo after which it is empty. The feds have two per rack. Each anti-drone rack has 12 ammo, and Federation drone racks also have 4 anti-drones. (so a ship with anti-drone 2 has two anti-drone racks each with 12 anti-drones, for a total of 24 anti-drones) Drone range is 24”. There are no range bands and they will hit automatically unless evaded or shot down.
At the start of the turn after initiative there is a new phase: ‘Fire Drones’. Each player in initiative order may fire the drones of one ship, choose to pass or choose ‘counter fire’
To fire drones, place the correct # drones against a target within 24” at the correct aspect from the firing ship (ideally on the base so they move with the ship more easily) or if counter-firing, remove enemy drones equal to your ships drone score from any target within 24” as long as the original firing ship is not closer to the target than the counter-firing ship.
At the end of the phase all drones will be allocated to targets or will have destroyed enemy drones. Mark off ammo.
During the movement phase, if a ship takes evasive action roll for each drone and remove on 4+
If a ship moves >12” in the turn, roll for all seeking weapons not placed against its front arc and remove on 4+ When a ship fires in the shooting phase it may engage enemy drones normally with any direct-fire weapon. A ship can shoot at drones attacking itself or attacking friendly ships – shoot at the position of the friendly ship. A phaser firing at a drone over 4” away is penalised by -2 to-hit (FC note: this accounts for damage drop-off of phasers over range)
Heavy weapons firing at a drone over 4” away are penalised by -1.

At the end of the turn, resolve all remaining drones as follows:
(1) Ships being hit can use anti-drones [and escorts can use them to defend others]
(2) Then remaining phasers [and escorts can defend others within 4” – the escort always fires after all others have fired]
(3) Then tractor beams
(4) any remaining drones hit, doing 1d6 + 3 hits

This was tried in playtesting - it did not work without adding massively to the time taken to play the game once you had a reasonable number of ships on the board.

Anti-Drones
Anti drones can only be fired at the end of the turn by ships with enemy drones attacking them.
Each anti drone and federation drone rack can roll three dice per turn at most.
They can be rolled one at a time, allocating as you roll and if you miss you can allocate and shoot again but only to a maximum of three times per anti-drone mount. A hit destroys an incoming drone. They hit on a 3+
Remember that ammunition is limited so you’ll need to record what is being used.

Escorts
Ships with the escort trait can fire anti-drones in the end (drone resolution) phase at enemy drones which are targeting other friendly ships within 4”. Use the anti-drone rules above but each anti-drone only hits on a 4+

Escorts can also use their phasers in the end (drone resolution) phase to defend other ships within 4” (only) and they can resolve their firing last – shooting at drones already missed by other ships

Phaser-G
A phaser-G when used against drones may roll the dice, and then declare targets for each valid die.

8. Crew Quality
Veteran crews get a +1 to evasion dice for both outrunning and evading seeking weapons through evasive action, whilst green crews get a -1.
They also still make HETs easier, repair damage and tractor drones.
If you kept it as a opposed Crew Qulaity Check they would get this anyway?

9. THE REMAINDER IS SO FAR UNTESTED

Plasma torpedoes
Damage increased to R=10, S=6, G=4, S=3. (Thanks to ‘StoryElf’)
Each 6 causes 1 hit to be an internal (with 5 going to shields)
Plasmas are fired in the shooting phase as normal but are then placed like drones against the target ship – optionally you could have them launch in the drone launch phase too.
Phaser hits reduce the warhead by half a die each (half die left over is -2 to the total rolled)

See my comments re drones - way too much to track and too comilicated we found, especialyl with halves being involved. It may be just about tolerable with one ship versus one but more - no thanks - we tried it, it was horrible.

Cloaking Device
No fade-out/in period. When activated in the movement phase you are cloaked (2+ stealth)
But any weapons already heading toward you will continue to track. If they are not shot-down at the end of the turn by other friendly ships, each will hit on a 4+ Plasma-D recalibration for new anti-drone rules - I do not know how capable this system is.
[/quote]

Huge boost to the Romulans (and more imprtantly the Orions, who get all the toys) who are extremely hard to kill already. Need to re look at points costs.
 
Well... all I can say is that we played as above yesterday with 900pts and it didn't take any longer than it usually does but.. we actually enjoyed the game rather than everyone being dissatisfied with it. For me, it works just fine so far so I will be using this until the rules are fixed officially.
As for the question of playtesting.. it's clear there wasn't close to enough of that.. so saying that something is invalid because it's already been tried is a bit moot - the current system doesn't work. (no offense meant BTW.. just saying..)

The drone sequence is actually very simple when you get used to it. I pick a ship and launch them, then you do. Repeat and resolve at the end of the turn.
But more importantly.. it works and you don't get a million drone hits all over the board - it works a lot more like they do in FC, which was the point - the current drones rules as written in the book don't work very well at all.

The point about hull scores - yes it does mean ships linger around longer but they get big holes blown in them and stop working very well.
As for battleships.. the biggest thing that will ever grace my table is a DN. And even then only in large fleet games with some 15 odd ships a side.
But.. if you did put it on the table, yes it would be hard to kill (isn't that the point?) though it would become ineffective much sooner - 20 points of phaser hits with ~4-6 crits and it will be unhappy.

Oh and yeah, clearly this would all impact point scores - but I don't believe that they are well calibrated right now anyway.
 
Stu-- said:
7. Drones, Anti-Drones, etc
At the start of the turn after initiative there is a new phase: ‘Fire Drones’.
Each player in initiative order may fire the drones of one ship, choose to pass or choose ‘counter fire’
To fire drones, place the correct # drones against a target within 24” at the correct aspect from the firing ship (ideally on the base so they move with the ship more easily) or if counter-firing, remove enemy drones equal to your ships drone score from any target within 24” as long as the original firing ship is not closer to the target than the counter-firing ship.
At the end of the phase all drones will be allocated to targets or will have destroyed enemy drones. Mark off ammo.

During the movement phase, if a ship takes evasive action roll for each drone and remove on 4+
If a ship moves >12” in the turn, roll for all seeking weapons not placed against its front arc and remove on 4+

When a ship fires in the shooting phase it may engage enemy drones normally with any direct-fire weapon.
A ship can shoot at drones attacking itself or attacking friendly ships – shoot at the position of the friendly ship.
A phaser firing at a drone over 4” away is penalised by -2 to-hit (FC note: this accounts for damage drop-off of phasers over range)
Heavy weapons firing at a drone over 4” away are penalised by -1.

At the end of the turn, resolve all remaining drones as follows:
(1) Ships being hit can use anti-drones [and escorts can use them to defend others]
(2) Then remaining phasers [and escorts can defend others within 4” – the escort always fires after all others have fired]
(3) Then tractor beams
(4) any remaining drones hit, doing 1d6 + 3 hits

Anti-Drones
Anti drones can only be fired at the end of the turn by ships with enemy drones attacking them.
Each anti drone and federation drone rack can roll three dice per turn at most.
They can be rolled one at a time, allocating as you roll and if you miss you can allocate and shoot again but only to a maximum of three times per anti-drone mount. A hit destroys an incoming drone. They hit on a 3+
Remember that ammunition is limited so you’ll need to record what is being used.
....

Plasma torpedoes

Plasmas are fired in the shooting phase as normal but are then placed like drones against the target ship – optionally you could have them launch in the drone launch phase too.
Phaser hits reduce the warhead by half a die each (half die left over is -2 to the total rolled)

Why are you having one seeking weapon in the drone phase and one in the firing phase?

Surely plasma is affected by evasive maneuvers/speed too.

Do you still use the 3 ship drone limit?

I concur with Da Boss, moving ships with counters/markers/dice on or near the base is a PITA. Especially if you have to remember which facing they are supposed to be on.

Why do the drones hit the facing before movement and not after?

Why are you increasing hull points and increasing damage weapons do? Surely the two cancel one another out?

You really are increasing the amount of things to track by quite a lot - ammo, half dice, counters on bases...

You may be right in saying that there was not enough playtesting, but what playtesting was done did eliminate things that were very cumbersome - such as counters for drones and plasma.

That said, you are free to play the game as you like, and tweaking rules to suit yourselves can be almost as much fun as playing.
 
Hi Greg.
Not sure what you mean by your first Q - drones are all fired before anything moves. They are resolved at the end of the turn. No intra-turn drone firing. But you can shoot at drones with direct fire weapons in the shooting phase.

Probably plasma should be affected (by evasives) yes but we've not played with any plasma in my rules mod so I have done no testing on that at all - it needs writing.

No drone limits no - fire at anything as many times as you like

Certainly moving ships with stuff on the base can be a pain yes.
There's not really a way around that with my system though.
We usually already have dice on the ships (shield boost #) and you used to have to put the # of drone counters on the ship too (for # shooting at one ship) so I don't see that it's an epic difference, though there will most likely be more counters like this and aspect matters too.
But hey, we've all got opposable thumbs.. moving a ship carefully is not beyond us :p

half hits - only matters for plasma anyway. Add a blue counter next to the plasma counter.
Or ignore if you prefer.

Good Q on the drones - don't know. Might be better if they don't move around the ship.
Certainly more logical.
I'll have a think on it.

Hull points - because if you translate the ships from FC they have too little hull in this game by a large factor (3-4 times). Doubling is just convenient because i already have sheets made with he right # boxes.
Again, this is a port from FC to make the game more FC-like.

Damage increase for plasma: Mostly because right now they dont hit near as hard as they should if you convert from FC. So it's a cludge to fix it.
Adding in some chance of burn-through is also fairer. Why does everyone else get a bonus on a 6 but the poor Romulans & Gorns do not?

Damage increase for drones: Again, makes it more in-line with FC.
Also, you'll hardly ever hit anyway - which is what always used to happen in FC/SFB unkless you are firing a LOT.


As for eliminating counters - our board with the rules as written always had a ton of counters on it - various ones for special actions, power drain, # drones fired at a ship, amount of shield boost etc etc. Loads of them.
 
Stu-- said:
Sure yeah but the ships are supposed to be carrying significant reloads.
You can certainly reload in FC without limitations.

Define significant - ships run low on ammo all the time in the real world.
 
I don't recall seeing anything that is defined as a Replenishment ship in the SFU, but it would make sense to me that there would be such a thing to supply replacement drones, mines, fighters, fuel, not easy to replicate parts, etc, etc. Perhaps we could ad-hoc assign a civilian ship to that task like an Armed Priority Transport, or when available a tug with cargo pod? :)

Would allow a special rule like ignore the first time a ship rolls a "1" when rolling ADDs, maybe allow limited repair of a ship between scenarios in a campaign game? Would also be something that you have to preserve, and keep the enemy away from. :)

Yes, I know, another complication, but it might be fun.
 
I'd like to see the AD of plasma increased, maybe +1 AD each, remove multihit d6 and make it multihit 4(or 5, or 6) , and maybe implement the 2-hit per AD when defending against plasma, but if the firing ship is in killzone, then killzone is taken into consideration.
 
Stu-- said:
Damage increase for drones: Again, makes it more in-line with FC.
Also, you'll hardly ever hit anyway - which is what always used to happen in FC/SFB unkless you are firing a LOT.

Why will they hardly ever hit - they auto hit now at extended range - up to 24", you have limited weapons to defend many of which will only shoot them down on 4+ or worse.

Drones are one the biggst problems in the game - I can't see how removing the limit on ships firing on single target AND at the same time making them more damaging helps this? In your recent 900 pt game - how many ships were involved and how many were drone heavy - usually Klingon and Federation variants, plus were they firing a mutiple targets as often happens in mid to later game when shields start falling?

I agree there are to many counters already - this makes it worse I am afraid and in the various games that were played using similar systems slowed it down - Especially for those not used to the counter heavy games of the SFU etc. They also get knocked or fall off in games as it is.

Boosting shields - not sure if you answered how this works with your version of the Klingon shields - which also requires seperate tracking.

Don't get me wrong - as I said I like some of the ideas - on the other hand - I hate some as well.
 
Stu-- said:
Hi Greg.
Not sure what you mean by your first Q - drones are all fired before anything moves. They are resolved at the end of the turn. No intra-turn drone firing. But you can shoot at drones with direct fire weapons in the shooting phase.

I meant you have different rules for plasma and drones.

No drone limits no - fire at anything as many times as you like
...
Damage increase for drones: Again, makes it more in-line with FC.
Also, you'll hardly ever hit anyway - which is what always used to happen in FC/SFB unkless you are firing a LOT.

Since ACTA is a fleet game, there will be a lot. At 900 points, you will have around 6 ships. 6 klingons will probably fire 12 drones, all stacked onto one ship. 6 Kzinti on the other hand...

One reason ACTA damage doesn't directly correlate to FC damage is that ACTA games are larger - there are always more drones and more plasma flying about, making defence harder.

Anyway, I look forward to hearing more about your rules.
 
I meant you have different rules for plasma and drones.
Do I ?
They work the same, at least in theory barring /when/ they're fired.
Like I said I haven't played with them yet but the basic idea is they should work the same barring amount of damage and phasers shooting at them.

One reason ACTA damage doesn't directly correlate to FC damage is that ACTA games are larger - there are always more drones and more plasma flying about, making defence harder.
Is that valid? Surely if there's more drones or plasma there's also more to shoot it down with?
Of course you've got the concentration factor - putting 30 drones in the same spot but that's only the same thing as putting 30 photons in the same spot - your opponent should know your capability and have a plan to deal with it.

Why will they hardly ever hit
Well you've got your drones to shoot their drones down, an entire fleets worth of phasers - often many ph3 with nothing else to do, especially in a formation that can all shoot at any drone in range whenever they want to.
You've got the ability to go evasive or run and then you've got your anti-drones and tractor beams too.

In your recent 900 pt game - how many ships were involved and how many were drone heavy
We did Kzinti vs Klingon. It was supposed to be a drone fest to test out the rules.
My Kzin were putting 32 drones down in a turn.
The Klingon was putting down something like 14, almost always in a counter-fire mode.
That left ~18, and to defeat them he used a mixture of formations (ships protecting one another) evasion and phaser-1's. There were a few hits but not many, but he did have to think about his defence and dedicate ph-1 to shooting down drones.
But.. that is why the Kzin have fewer weapons than everone else.
The drones are supposed to cause your emeny to have to shoot them down, reducing their available anti-ship capability.. and breaking formation is punishable by having no friends to help you out.

Boosting shields - not sure if you answered how this works with your version
Well, my 'front shield' value is just an extra feebee for the front only.
The only difference to how it works in the base game it that my version is a fixed value.
If you boost shields you get it all round so it's more efficient anyway.
But, you could repair the front if you wanted back to its original value

I don't recall seeing anything that is defined as a Replenishment ship
Nope me either. In F&E there was the idea of supply lines though from what I remember.
Effectively you were starting off at bases and heading out from there, and there were repair convoys to come strap nacelles onto broken ships.
In a campaign setting, UNREP makes definite sense though.

--
As an aside if nobody likes the idea of tracking ammo for anti-drones then make it if you roll two ones your out. Or something similar. Any one and any other one or two on any of the three dice you're allowed to roll.
The main limiter I was interested in was limiting drones to 4 attacks.
 
Stu-- said:
I meant you have different rules for plasma and drones.
Do I ?
They work the same, at least in theory barring /when/ they're fired.

That is the point. Players know exactly where drones are going to be before they move. They can chose to evade with ships that are the targets of drone swarms, move escorts closer and save phasers.

With plasma, the ball is in the attacker's court, he can select ships that haven't evaded, are not near escorts or have fired all their phasers already.
 
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