S&P47 ACTA Review

[thePirv]

I'm gonna take a stab and say that we're still going to have to rely on the enemy to conveniently park his fighters in front of my Light Raiders and let me blast him out of the sky.

The talk I hear of ships traits going offline with crits BETTER not apply to my GEG! Otherwise Drakh will get eaten alive by any fleet that can bring decent numbers of fighters :evil:

have you considered a different fleet :-(

No, I like the Drakh as a race, even though they barely appeared in the show, and the money I've poured into the minis too

Ah well, I guess it's a little early to be bitching so much. I'll wait until the game releases and then see how good or bad things are for the much maligned Drakh.

 

[H]

would have been nice to give them an escort :-(

 

[Right Hand of God]

:shock:
They don't have an escort? Don't they want to sell any more Drakh?

 

[Burger]

The talk I hear of ships traits going offline with crits BETTER not apply to my GEG!

Some traits cannot be lost, such as "Immobile", "Space Station", "Lumbering". Unfortunately GEG is not one of them. Minbari, ISA and Drakh all suffer greatly whereas other races are barely affected.

No, I like the Drakh as a race, even though they barely appeared in the show

They appeared a lot in the show! One of the best battles (Delenn's White Stars taking down the mothership), manipulation at the Centauri palace including saving Londo from assassination attempts, putting keepers on the Regent, Cartagia, and Londo... the main plotline of ACTA... and frequent appearances in Crusade. They're one of the most often seen races outside the big 4!

 

[Da Boss]

Losing Interceptors could be quite nasty for EA, Centauri, Abai (or shields), losing self repair, shields, armour (even for one turn) is not good for Vorlons and Shadows.

The only fleets likely to be immune are those without them - Probably Narn, Dilgar and other primatives.............

 

[Alexb83]

Critical hits on ancients really don't make much sense... they simply dont have crew in the sense that they could be killed (so half of the damage from half the crits is pretty much redundant anyways).

And the change to letting them take crits throws out the notion that they don't have things like reactors, targeting computers, bridges etc. that can be damaged.

 

[Da Boss]

Hmm maybe - the Shadows have living CPUs and I guess the idea is that they both have bio reactors or dicharge generators or such like that act as a ship but organic.

They are living beings = so guess they might have weak points etc?

I notice that in Darknes and Light - Shadow Scouts have crew - usually Drakh..............anyone want to add that to the Drakh fleet list? it is "Mongoose" canon! Or have two versions!?

 

[thePirv]

Losing Interceptors could be quite nasty for EA, Centauri, Abai (or shields), losing self repair, shields, armour (even for one turn) is not good for Vorlons and Shadows.

The only fleets likely to be immune are those without them - Probably Narn, Dilgar and other primatives.............

But as Burger pointed out, the Drakh pretty much rely on the GEG to stop them getting torn apart by everything, and the Minbari without their stealth might as well just pack it all up and go home.
And god forbid an ISA (or IA depending on wether you pay attention to Lost Tales) player should lose the Adaptive Armour on a white star carrier or gunship. Those things will go down faster than the Titanic.
A few races rely totally on the special traits to make them able to hold their own. If these traits go offline, even for a turn, it could prove totally game winning, no matter how the game has been going up to that point.

Then there'll be other races who can just entirely ignore this portion of the critical hit because they're not going to worry about a jump engine they were never going to use going off line.

And back to the original point, if the Drakh have no effective anti-fighter weapons, if the GEG is wiped out by a lucky crit early on, that just leaves the Drakh ship screwed over by fighters while the enemy uses his bigger guns to take on other ships until they get the GEG taken offline by a crit.

 

[Greg Smith]

I would have liked to see a different crit chart for ancients, where instead of having 'thrusters damaged' you had 'bioelectric rupture' or some such, with similar effects.

 

[H]

Losing Interceptors could be quite nasty for EA, Centauri, Abai (or shields), losing self repair, shields, armour (even for one turn) is not good for Vorlons and Shadows.

The only fleets likely to be immune are those without them - Probably Narn, Dilgar and other primatives.............

But as Burger pointed out, the Drakh pretty much rely on the GEG to stop them getting torn apart by everything, and the Minbari without their stealth might as well just pack it all up and go home.
And god forbid an ISA (or IA depending on wether you pay attention to Lost Tales) player should lose the Adaptive Armour on a white star carrier or gunship. Those things will go down faster than the Titanic.
A few races rely totally on the special traits to make them able to hold their own. If these traits go offline, even for a turn, it could prove totally game winning, no matter how the game has been going up to that point.

Then there'll be other races who can just entirely ignore this portion of the critical hit because they're not going to worry about a jump engine they were never going to use going off line.

And back to the original point, if the Drakh have no effective anti-fighter weapons, if the GEG is wiped out by a lucky crit early on, that just leaves the Drakh ship screwed over by fighters while the enemy uses his bigger guns to take on other ships until they get the GEG taken offline by a crit.

but the GEG REALLY isn't that great, but thats a different argument, I mean, yes, a sharlin is a lacking in hull and damage, but even if it drops stealth, it's still one bigass scary beam that will rip you to pieces before you benefit.

 

[Burger]

I would have liked to see a different crit chart for ancients, where instead of having 'thrusters damaged' you had 'bioelectric rupture' or some such, with similar effects.

Yeah, all the critical damage and effects apply (as long as the wording is fixed... as it currently reads, Shadows and Vorlons are totally immune to 19 out of the 22 critical hits!!!), you can just give it a different name. Such as the ship's leg got hurt so it is at -1 speed, etc.

 

[thePirv]

but the GEG REALLY isn't that great, but thats a different argument, I mean, yes, a sharlin is a lacking in hull and damage, but even if it drops stealth, it's still one bigass scary beam that will rip you to pieces before you benefit.

True dat, but the GEG is still useful at fending off fighters. It's really about the only useful fighter defence the Drakh have because of their lack of fighters. But if the GEG is critted out early on, especially on the big hull 4's like the mothership, then enemy fighters will have a field day and there's very little the Drakh can do about it, unless said fighters have an abysmal dodge like a 6+ or something.

 

[Stonehorse]

Having read the article in S&P I have to say the new edition sounds to be spot on, and Mongoose's flagship Miniature game (after all they have 'killed off' their other systems).

The new Shield trait is very scary, especially on the Shadow ship: Shields 20/10, ouch.

Looking forward to getting my hands on the books.

Some traits cannot be lost, such as "Immobile", "Space Station", "Lumbering". Unfortunately GEG is not one of them. Minbari, ISA and Drakh all suffer greatly whereas other races are barely affected.

This just fuels my idea of selling of my Minbari and buying a new fleet.
I'll wait till I see the fleet book before I make mu mind up.

The Gaim do sound very tempting, as do the Abbai. Too many Choices

 

[MongooseMatt]

This just fuels my idea of selling of my Minbari and buying a new fleet.
I'll wait till I see the fleet book before I make mu mind up.

Just remember, they have to see you to cause a crit and lose a trait - Minbari are very exciting to play now. . .

 

[Captain Kremmen]

I am lead to believe that there SHOULD be copies of 2nd edition available at the open day in swindon on Saturday.

Anyone other than me going looking for a copy?

Cpt K

 

[RayB]

It's not so hard to kill fighters with drakh! Just have well placed Light Raiders with overlapping fire arcs! Also when they launch they are most vulnerable! (If you can get there in time!)

The Light Raiders kick ass! I'd take them as the majority of my raiders (If I didn't use all my raiders every time!

Mind you the fighters will more often than not get at least one attack run in! And Nials, well they just kick ass! Hate them!

Cheers,

RayB

 

[Burger]

Also when they launch they are most vulnerable! (If you can get there in time!)

Err, not any more

 

[thePirv]

It's not so hard to kill fighters with drakh! Just have well placed Light Raiders with overlapping fire arcs! Also when they launch they are most vulnerable! (If you can get there in time!)

The Light Raiders kick ass! I'd take them as the majority of my raiders (If I didn't use all my raiders every time!

Mind you the fighters will more often than not get at least one attack run in! And Nials, well they just kick ass! Hate them!

Cheers,

RayB

The only problem with this is that if you're taking mostly Light Raiders to act as a fighter screen for your larger ships, the enemy is pounding the crap outta you and you're losing a large portion of your offensive power just dealing with Fighters.
The trick is trying to get a nice balance of Raiders in a Drakh fleet.
I'm just insanely woried that in 2e, any fleet that brings a decent number of fighters will pretty much own the hell outta the Drakh every time because of the Drakh severe weakness to fighters.
Oh and now having read the 2e stats on the Poseidon, I am now terrified of this thing.

 

[katadder]

but the GEG REALLY isn't that great, but thats a different argument, I mean, yes, a sharlin is a lacking in hull and damage, but even if it drops stealth, it's still one bigass scary beam that will rip you to pieces before you benefit.

True dat, but the GEG is still useful at fending off fighters. It's really about the only useful fighter defence the Drakh have because of their lack of fighters. But if the GEG is critted out early on, especially on the big hull 4's like the mothership, then enemy fighters will have a field day and there's very little the Drakh can do about it, unless said fighters have an abysmal dodge like a 6+ or something.

the drakh mo'ship is now hull 5 and armageddon level (with more huge hangars and ability to carry bigger ships).

as for getting the GEG critted out (or stealth or AA) dont forget you have flight comps, advanced jump engines, huge hangars, carrier etc that all count so not only do they have to get the trait killing crit but then they also have to get the right trait to be of any use which is another generally 1 in 6 chance on the high tech races.

and as was said with the sharlin, if you kill its stealth it still has a big ass beam, this also applies to the drakh war cruiser.

 

[Davesaint]

The gaim might just crush the Drakh. I don't know how the drakh are going to deal with all of those fighters and photon bombs


Dave