SF - Question About Fed Combined Drone Racks

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

I completely understand what to do with ships with only one drone rack - if you are using the ADD and get a 1 - no more ADD or drones for the rest of the game.

What happens when you have a multiple AD drone rack? the rule states ".. if it runs out of ammunition...". Is that if you roll "1" once, or is that if you roll a number of 1's equal to the AD rating?

The simplest interpretation I can think of is that you only count as running out of ammo if you roll enough 1's to reduce the ADD rating to 0. If that is the case then the DNG/Kirov/DWD are going to have really the best ADD system in the game - they will have 3 "don't worry" 1's per turn.

-Tim

 

[MongooseMatt]

If you roll _any_ number of 1's, the ADD loses one rating, so 2 goes down to 1.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

If you roll _any_ number of 1's, the ADD loses one rating, so 2 goes down to 1.

Matt does this new ADD rating carry on from turn to turn? Does it affect the AD of the drone rack?

 

[Sgt_G]

Yes, the ADD rating is lost for the rest of the game. Yes, the Feds lose the drone rack for the rest of the game. They can only lose on ADD / drone rack per incoming wave, no matter how many drones are in it.

If I understand Matthew right: Let's say you have one or more ADD / Fed drone rack and 18 inbound drones in the wave. You roll 18 dice, and it doesn't matter if you roll 18 "1", all 18 drones go away, and you lose one ADD rating / Fed drone rack. If that was your last one ... next drone wave, you're hosed.

When I first read the rule, I thought that you rolled one d6 at a time for each drone in the wave, and once you rolled a "1", that drone died and you lost the ADD, the rest of the drones would get thru. But that's not how it reads and not what Matthew said in his last post.

 

[Greg Smith]

I think the OP is asking what happens with a ship like the Kirov.

On turn one it has ADD 4.
Drones are fired, it rolls a 1. ADD goes down to 3.

On turn 2, it decides to fire its drones. Does it have 3AD of drones? Or 4. (3 seems right)

On turn 3, it uses anti-drone again. Presumably it now has ADD 3.

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As a follow-on question, could it split its drones and fire 2AD and have ADD2.

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As a follow-on question to the SFB guys, what does ADD stand for?

 

[Sgt_G]

ADD = Anti-Drone Defenses or Anti-Drone Defense systems.

 

[Sgt_G]

The rule says that "If a federation ship has not used its drones in a turn...."

So, not, it appears that you can't fire some-but-not-all drones to save some back for ADD use. In fact, the way the rule reads, it would not matter if the drone racks were split into two separate lines in the stats, making them two different systems -- the ship must choose between offensive drones and ADD.

If Matthew intended otherwise, I haven't seen it in writing yet.


Do note that in SFB / FedCmdr, the BCG has two G-racks which can be used as ADD and two B-racks that cannot be used as ADD. I suppose that's too much detail to port over, so they made it simple.

 

[Iain McGhee]

The only weapons systems that can fire less than their full AD when used are those with the Reload trait (other than Plasma), so currently that's just Photon Torpedoes.

 

[Sgt_G]

The only weapons systems that can fire less than their full AD when used are those with the Reload trait (other than Plasma), so currently that's just Photon Torpedoes.

I don't read the rule that way, so I would like to get Matthew's take on that one.

Granted, it's hard to see a reason why you want to fire less that max AD with other weapons. I guess perhaps you could find yourself where you only need to hit a ship with one or two AD of Disurptors to kill it off, but all four AD would be overkill and cause the target to blow up too close to a friendly ship.

 

[Iain McGhee]

You already have, it's in the rulebook

Splitting Fire on p18.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Say you have a Flat top DWD with 4 AD of Drones.

Turn 1 you fire 4 drones
Turn 2 you fire 2 Drones and hold back 2 for use as ADDS, a wave of two drones is fired at you and you roll 2, 4 stopping both. Then 4 drones are fired at you and you roll 1,2,4,6. All four are stopped but you have used up the ammo in one ADD rack.

Turn 3 you fire all 4 drones.
Turn 4 before you have acted the entire enemy fleet targets you and you use your 3 drone launchers with ADD ammo left onto point defence. You have a single drone launcher that can be fired at the enemy.

Think of it this way. Your ships have a vast store of drones and a magazine of anti drones stacked by each laucher. If one launcher uses its anti drones it still draws from the ships supply od drones to fire but can no longer act as an ADD. The other racks still have ADD ammo and so can fight on.

Regarding weapons with higher than 1AD. Unless it is a plasma the number of AD represent the number of weapons in a position. Phaser-1 2AD FH is two phaser ones in a wide angle mount and the two can be used together or seperately. Only plasmas represent a single weapon with more than one dice. All other weapons can be split fired.

 

[Stumonster]

Just a clarification request on that last example: After the one rack runs out of ammo in ADD mode (on turn 2), for turn 3 would you really only have 3 racks you can shoot normally? Then on turn 4 you could use all 3 racks for defense but would have none left to attack.

The reason I ask is the rule in the fleet sections for the Federation would seem to say that if you run out of ammo in ADD mode, that rack cannot fire at all during the rest of the battle. It says "may not fire any drones for the rest of the battle", which seems to me to say no attacks or defense for that rack from that point on.

I would rather keep it the way you show in the example, personally, but I just would like to know the official line.

Thanks!

 

[Iain McGhee]

@ Captain Jonah:That contradicts two parts of the Combined Drone Racks special rules.

1) "if it runs out of ammunition while using the Anti-Drone trait, then it may not use any drones for the rest of the battle" (my emphasis) so you drop 1 AD of drones as well as 1 ADD.

2) As Sgt_G already mentioned "if a Federation ship has not used it's drones in a turn.......it may choose to forego any firing of drones in that turn and instead gain the anti-drone trait...." (again, my emphasis) so you either use one mode or the other, not both in the same turn.

Regarding split fire: Yes, you can split all but plasma weapons systems' AD amongst multiple targets, but if you've played previous incarnations of ACTA you'll know that you've never been allowed to just fire part of a weapons system's AD before, even when it represents multiple mounts, so the fact that other weapons with Reload are specifically mentioned must make them the only exception (otherwise the distinction wouldn't have been made).

 

[Captain Jonah]

I stand corrected. The rule does say Running out of ammo preculdes any firing and not just ADD fire.

Re point 2 this means that all the drones on a Fed ship become a single weapon system in effect since you cannot split fire with them if you are using them as ADDs. Since a single ADD can stop a huge number of drones as long as they are in a single wave this means that a Fed ship that is fired on before it has been activated is electing to lose all drone fire for the turn by activating even a single ADD.

With a flat top having a single drone rack that isn't a problem but when you reach the 4 AD ships you are then sacrificing an entire set of weapons for what may be a single use of ADD.

Re splitting fire. Previous versions aside. The rule is clear that "If a weapon system has more than one AD other than plasmas a player can chose to split his fire allocating AD to differant targets with arc and range. Under defensive fire it says a phaser can be fired either defensively or offensively but can only be fired once.

A ship with Phaser-1 FH 3AD represents 3 phaser-1 weapons in a mount where they have the same arc. If you are fired at by a drone before you have activated that ship you can elect to fire one P1 at the drone, later when you activate you can fire the remaining two P1s, one at a shuttle and one at an enemy ship.

It mentions Photons but it does say any weapon other than plasmas. There are reasons why you want to not fire everything at one target or even at all, dumping all 4 disruptors into a target on 1 hull at 1" will probably make a mess of your paint work :lol:

 

[Iain McGhee]

No, you're firing weapons systems not individual phasers or whatever like in SFB/FC. Each phaser (and sometimes drone) entry on the ship's weapon list can be fired either offensively or defensively and can be split among multiple targets (except for plasma). Why would you be expected to track every single AD fired in one mode or the other for every phaser entry in what's intended to be a fast-playing fleet scale game with perhaps a dozen or more ships per side ?

Under Attacking on page 7 it states that the AD score "is the number of dice rolled every time the weapon system is fired". That isn't altered by the split fire rules, other than for the exception noted for some weapons with Reload.

 

[Keeper Nilbog]

:?: The rules on page 7 are the Basic Rules, as i understand. The spliting fire rule is an Advanced Rule and starts with the line If a weapon system OTHER than a plasma torpedo has move than one attack die,a player can choose to split his fire, allocating different attack die to different targets that are within range and fire arc.. Surely this means that ANY weapon system (entry line) with more than 1AD die is able to split fire. It has to fire all together (allocate different AD to different targets), so can be used to target multiple targets offencively OR defencively.

The note relating to Photon torpedoes seem to suggest that weapons with the 'Reload' Trait CAN fire less AD than the system has, so that they can be held-over whilst reloading. This is the only mention of a system being able to fire less AD than it has, and seems to be dependant on the 'Reload' Trait.

Would be interesting to have an official anwser to this, as it does effect some of the tactics in the game.

 

[Iron Domokun]

Why would you be expected to track every single AD fired in one mode or the other for every phaser entry in what's intended to be a fast-playing fleet scale game with perhaps a dozen or more ships per side ?

The assumption I made was that you had to track every AD fired... maybe it's because I come from SFB/FC, where each phaser is a separate entity even though it's in the same "bank" as others. That has tactical implications... let's say I launch a single drone and hit a ship in an arc which has a single entry of 3AD of phasers able to fire through it, and no other defensive weapons. Well, in that case, may as well fire all three AD at the single drone target because I can't split fire (no other targets) and after I fire at that drone, the bank counts as fired.

 

[AdmiralGrafSpee]

Yes, the ADD rating is lost for the rest of the game. Yes, the Feds lose the drone rack for the rest of the game. They can only lose on ADD / drone rack per incoming wave, no matter how many drones are in it.

If I understand Matthew right: Let's say you have one or more ADD / Fed drone rack and 18 inbound drones in the wave. You roll 18 dice, and it doesn't matter if you roll 18 "1", all 18 drones go away, and you lose one ADD rating / Fed drone rack. If that was your last one ... next drone wave, you're hosed.

When I first read the rule, I thought that you rolled one d6 at a time for each drone in the wave, and once you rolled a "1", that drone died and you lost the ADD, the rest of the drones would get thru. But that's not how it reads and not what Matthew said in his last post.

This way certainly makes the most sense and is the most consistent with the way the rest of the rules are written. If it is the "official" way it works there needs to be a clarification posted. The rulebook makes no mention of "loses an AD from its drone rack". Seems to me it was written in the perspective of a single AD drone rack not one with multiple AD.

-Tim

BTW, I also agree that when you do defensive fire it has to be all the AD from a particular phaser weapon system. Too bad the Kzinti DN had all of its side Ph-3's lumped together!!!

 

[Sgt_G]

Iain, I do not agree with your interpretation of the rules. Sadly, they're not clear to the intent and thus too open to multiple interpretations. I'll have to put together some well-thought out questons / examples and post them to ask Matthew to clarify the true intent of the rules. I don't want to post a vauge question and get an off-the-cuff answer that only covers one aspect of the complex / interrelated problem set. Give me a day or two.

 

[Captain Jonah]

This is getting odder by the minute.

Ships move one by one. Ships fire one by one. "Defensive fire takes place as soon as a ship is targeted and is about to be hit.

There were mentions in earlier stages of play testing that all seeking weapons on a ship were left there till the end of firing and then defensive fire took place after all direct weapons had been done so you knew what was incoming and could allocate fire accordingly.

Nothing in the rules mentions this so to me this says you fire a ships seeking weapons, then do defensive fire against that lot, then move to the next attacking ship. Large fllet simple games yes but I like them to make sense.

A C7 with its friends hasn't fired yet. Its ADD is empty and its drones are being saved for attacking. Several Kzinti ships fire long range drones from the C7s number 6 arc. Forward left for non SFB types. The C7 has in arc to defend:

Phaser-1 F/P/S 4AD
Phaser-1 PH 2AD

The first Kzinti ship fires one drone at each of 4 Klingons. Say the klingon fires 1AD from the PH battery and destroys the drone, is the other AD now useless? What about a second Kzinti ship firing one drone at each of 4 Klinkgons. Does the klingon then fire a phaser from the F/P/S battery and the other 3 are now useless? Does the kzinti player just scatters his long range fire round till someone has wasted his phaser batteries and then concentrates all remaining fire there. Or do you ignore single incoming drones to save the phaser batterys and just let them hit you after your tractors are gone.

What about the C8 with its nose battery of "Phaser-1 10 AD" ?

Is that the way the rules are to work? Do you sacrifice every Phaser-3 in the Kzinti DNs side battery to stop a single drone or let that drone hit you and wait to use the battery against a larger wave.

If this is the case then this is getting house ruled in any game people will let me to either allow people to track phaser fire or to move all seeking weapons to an extra stage after all ships have fired direct weapons.

We are talking about the difficulty of dealing with Drone heavy fleets and between this and IDF being 50% useable because of the crew check its getting harder and harder to see how this is possible.

I think we wait for Sgt_Gs message to the powers that be otherwise this is going to cause riots at the first tournament. I'm not going to be there but I don't want anyone’s game spoilt by having rules interpreted in a number of different ways to suit people’s individual understandings and then many people finding they are wrong when they are mid game.