Shuttles in ACTA:SF

[Myrm]

or do what ACTA did previously just call it a flight of fighters and don't define the exact numbers this included - so it was nominally 6 per counter / stand but you could have whatever you want on the base / depicted.

By choosing tweak attack dice and stats up and down to cover weird size formations from various non-true carriers, then yes this is effectively what I'm suggesting but coming at it from a differnet angle - I think it is the best way. Then it becomes a balance as to where you pitch your 'rough description of flight size' and hence your fighter power in the new ruleset.

 

[Myrm]

Multi hit fighters means tracking the damage which personally am not sure adds to the game enough to make it worth the while?

In general I have to agree. On theSF scale so far compared to weapons fighters are one to two hits each. I like the idea of abstracting it out and adding the dodge skill to represent the survivability. Multi hit fighters maybe for A10s and similar - IIRC the shadows had shielded fighters, so two hit jobs so its been done before and hopefully that kind of fighter only shows for serious carrier players and can be ignored for those that don;t want.....but in general - keep them at one per stand.

The attack dice then become a fraction of the SFB load out to represent fighters taking pot shots over several turns, dogfighting etc without having to track ammo. If you want to represent a serious number of fighters getting in an all in one strike add the alpha strike trait to them and they can dump everything for a double attack dice shot and remove the fighters as they have used all their energy and run for home (Fleet carrier traits and the like can cover their potential rearming)

 

[andypalmer]

I'd be concerned about a direct correlation between stand capability and damage that tracking by fighter would result in.

By having 3 fighter stands it allows for abstractions of things like
- when the stand takes X damage, capability is reduced to 1/2
- when stand takes Y damage, stand is destroyed

3 Fighter stands also creates a natural forced limit on the number of ways you can separate your fighter groups.

3 Fighter stands also may (depending on how stacking works in ACTA), reduce force concentration which would likely be a positive balancing factor.

 

[Rick]

What about dogfighting? If you have 1 stand = 1-100+ fighters and that dogfights a corresponding stand from the opposing fleet, it's more than likely that your entire fighter complements will just be off to one side doing nothing for pretty much the whole game. Using smaller fighter flights means that you should be able to break through a fighter screen with some of them at least!

 

[Da Boss]

Multi hit fighters means tracking the damage which personally am not sure adds to the game enough to make it worth the while?

In general I have to agree. On theSF scale so far compared to weapons fighters are one to two hits each. I like the idea of abstracting it out and adding the dodge skill to represent the survivability. Multi hit fighters maybe for A10s and similar - IIRC the shadows had shielded fighters, so two hit jobs so its been done before and hopefully that kind of fighter only shows for serious carrier players and can be ignored for those that don;t want.....but in general - keep them at one per stand.

The attack dice then become a fraction of the SFB load out to represent fighters taking pot shots over several turns, dogfighting etc without having to track ammo. If you want to represent a serious number of fighters getting in an all in one strike add the alpha strike trait to them and they can dump everything for a double attack dice shot and remove the fighters as they have used all their energy and run for home (Fleet carrier traits and the like can cover their potential rearming)

Some interestng ideas here thanks - I really like the Alpha Strike trait idea - mind if I borrow that - in fact I can think of some similar ideas for ships - cool?

If I knew more about ST fighters I'd post some stats to dicsuss but don't know the basics on them. It should be fairly easy to do

Good catch re shadow fighters - I like to think my thread "Shadow fighters - just why", all 30+ pages of it helped in some small way to get that rebalance

 

[Asguard101]

The Alpha Strike sounds great. The Fleet Carrier Trait for reloading is a good tool also, but there would need to be something for the Esscort Ships, in SFB true carriers have special escort ships that can help with the rearming.

Would the fighters still have a physical footprint, or would thier dice just be add to the Carrier attack?

 

[Rambler]

Da Boss - This isn't giving away any thing that can't be found on ADBs site, but if some tells me to take it down I will delete it. The standard Federation Strike Fighter in FC is the F18C Hornet. It has 2 Phaser 3s (Front Arc) 2 Drones (Front Arc) 10 Hit Points (takes three Phaser 3 hits to kill) speed 16 (probably 8 in ACTA). The same fighter in SFB carries more drones and has chaff pods. Like I side you can equip it with Warp Booster Packs (basically drop tanks) for more speed or Electronic Warfare Pods to make it work like a scout for the squadron.

 

[Da Boss]

Thanks - Ok so its a bit like a heavy fighter bomber in ACTA: B5 - are they good or bad dogfighters - I am guessing they are like the real world aircraft they are named for on so pretty effective?

So my first draft would be (using ACTA :B5/NA as a base and simplifying fighters including making them only have short range weapons and a defense mechanism to represent their size and agility - stealth - formerly known as Dodge)

Fighters in ACTA: ST
A fighter flight is treated as shuttle with the following exceptions
It may be moved up to its maximum speed, rather than the 4" of a Shuttle.
In the Movement phase a fighter may move into contact with another fighter, shuttle or suicide shuttle you are considered to be in a dogfight and niether craft may move further in this turn. No craft can move away until all opponents have been destroyed.
Dogfights are resolved at the begining of the attack phase before any weapons are fired. Both players roll 1 dice for their fighter and add their dogfight rating, the loser is eliminated. If its a draw, neither craft is eliminated and the dogfight continues next turn. You may add a cumulative +1 to your roll for each other flight you have in base contact with the enemy flight. If the enemy craft is a shuttle or suicide shuttle and has no fighters supporting it, it is eliminated without need for a dogfight roll.
In the Attack phase, a player may choose to fire all his fighters rather than a ship. A fighter that has been involved in a dogfight this turn may not fire its weapons
All weapons mounted on a fighter have the turret arc

F18-C Fighter flight
Speed: 8"
Turn: SM,
Shields: 0
Damage: 1,
Marines: 0,
Craft: None,
Dogfight: +2,
Traits: Stealth 3+,
Drone, Range 6", Devestating +1, Seeking,
Phaser-3, Range 2", Accurate,

 

[Myrm]

The Alpha Strike sounds great. The Fleet Carrier Trait for reloading is a good tool also, but there would need to be something for the Esscort Ships, in SFB true carriers have special escort ships that can help with the rearming.

Would the fighters still have a physical footprint, or would thier dice just be add to the Carrier attack?

Oh fighters need to be on table I think. A weapons system for a carrier is the alternative and I think its lacking something. Unless you treat them like seeking weapons and use defensive fire with a rule that other carriers in range can use their fighters as defensive fire. it can be done but you get a lot of novel dependencies.

Well fleet carrier is essentially a saving throw for fighters within N range. Carrier escorts with shuttle bays that carry phton freezers and ready racks and the like that are reloader types rather than defensive escorts could be given a trait that either improves that save or extends the range of the Fleet Carrier save.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Another point for the 3 fighter stands.

ACTA SF is based on FC which has no carriers, the odd numbers of fighters come from SFB.

Why not simply give carriers a number of flights rather than a number of fighters, so the hydran gains a little as it has one flight of stingers rather than two. The romulans have two or three flights rather than five or eight. Tweek the cost a tiny bit and you are away.

ACTA SF is more abstract anyway and only the hardcore purists are going to complain about the extra fighter for the odd numbered carriers.

Wait what did I just say, this is SFB/SFU. Its full of hard core purists :lol:

 

[Iron Domokun]

ACTA SF is based on FC which has no carriers, the odd numbers of fighters come from SFB.

ACTA:SF is based on the SFU database, which is the same for all the SFU games. Each game has a different take on it, but they all have the same data as a basis. FC ship cards may have been used as a reference, but only because they don't have a lot of stuff on them that ACTA would ignore anyway. When it's time for carriers and fighters to be introduced to ACTA, then I reckon the designers will take a look at the database and make decisions based on what makes sense in ACTA, not on what makes sense in F&E, FC, or SFB.

 

[Rambler]

Day Boss - In the SFU a phaser is a phaser. I would bump the range up to match the one carried on a ship. Also to balance aginst Stingers and Eagles (Which have Gatling Phasers) you probably need to add the second phaser back.

As far as the reducing the range of heavy weaponsand drones you may need to open that up some more. Gunboats and A20s Photons have a range of 12. But I am sure playtesting will balance that out.

One more thing the weapon systems should probably F or FH the only turrented weapons on fighters are Antidrone Systems on heavy fighters and bombers.

Jonah- Don't get hung up on the fact that one empire counts in base 3s =p. There are a lot of tweaks that can be added like when a flight of 6 or more fighters are formed it can be assumed one of them is a EW platform adding limited scout traits to the Flight. Something like that would encourage forming flights over just moving a jumble of tokens around the board. Or saying do to the antics an formation involved the flight gains the anti drone trait.

 

[Da Boss]

Day Boss - In the SFU a phaser is a phaser. I would bump the range up to match the one carried on a ship. Also to balance aginst Stingers and Eagles (Which have Gatling Phasers) you probably need to add the second phaser back.

As far as the reducing the range of heavy weaponsand drones you may need to open that up some more. Gunboats and A20s Photons have a range of 12. But I am sure playtesting will balance that out.

One more thing the weapon systems should probably F or FH the only turrented weapons on fighters are Antidrone Systems on heavy fighters and bombers.

thanks, my first draft was intended to show how previous versions of ACTA would incorporate SFU fighters.

Weapons Range: Well there is already precedent that in the ACTA :ST rules, smaller ships have the same weapons with shorter range than larger ships - could be same for fighters. Alot of this depends if the desire is for sit back and shoot fighters/bombers of a clash of fighters in and around the true warships.....(the latter is my preference).
Fighter weapon systems can be balanced against each other in the same way. I dadmit I don;t really know the background to how SFU fighters work - are they the same as their modern day US namesakes?

Previously fightes had T arc to represent their agility in comparison to thier targets - this may not be accurate in SFU?

Also some of the fighters armament ability is represented in its Dogfight score which is the primary weaopon against other fighters. Their actual weapons are mainly for anti-shipping work. Not really shure how this works in the SFU games

 

[Asguard101]

I don't think SFU Fighter had 360 weapons, but they were nimble enough they could always be facing their target. At the current stage of FC, which is what I understand the production of the CTA:SF is being based off of, the Hydran Stinger is the only player with fighters. The Heavy Fighters don't come out till near the end of the great war. And if I recall right (its been a while) only the Feds made Heavy Fighters all the other races went PFs.

 

[Rambler]

Asgaurd - Heavy Fighters were out almost from the beginning of the General War. There was a bout a year or 2 right in the middle where Heavies ruled the skies so to speak, then the Interceptors and Gunboats took over.

 

[andypalmer]

Given their nimbleness and, in SFB terms, a once/turn HET, given their weapons a Turret facing would be consistent with the "feel" of them.

In SFU, dogfight weapons are the same as the anti-ship weapons, with a few distinctions.
- heavy weapons cannot be used in dogfights
- there are special dogfight drones

For phasers, it's pretty much use them in dogfights, use them defensively, or use them offensively. Pick one per turn.

 

[Da Boss]

Cool so Turret weapon facing works (and saves time and energy)

Back to my previous question - is a SFU F18 the same as a US F18 but in space?

seems like pretty easy to convert to ACTA - depedning if you want long range or short range weapons.........