Now my ships are painted, we've just had our first few ACTA SF games. Only small ones to date, but it makes a hell of a change playing instead of just reading rules and trying to mentally read across from B5 and Noble Armada.
Games to date have been:
A couple of 2v2s - paired Command D7s vs paired Command Constitutions, which went one each way (the latter due to one local player's obsession with launching shuttles rather than doing anything else. He's a Tau BFG player, what can I say? I imagine the Hydrans will suit him...)
A 4 v 3 'We Come In Peace - Shoot To Kill' with two constitutions and a battle frigate versus two d7s and a pair of light frigates. Klingons won on objectives (although Feds won on kills).
A 2 v 2 v 2 with paired constitutions, d7s and King Eagles. This was an awesome (if bloody) game, which resulted in one of each ship being destroyed, the survivors all being battered to scrap and (in the end) the D7 and King Eagle went down in the same turn, leaving a heavily singed constitution as the only survivor.
Thoughts:
a) Battle frigates are scarily hard to kill - I'd planned on sweeping everything in and taking out the 'soft target' on turn one (Hey! It'd work in B5!) before someone rolled 11 extra shields for the bloody thing and I essentially bounced off.
b) Suicide shuttles - like drones - seem to be really easy to stop but lethal if you don't stop them. The fact that drones can't go through shields plus their lack of accuracy means they don't seem to do much in the early stages. I'm fully aware that we haven't used any drone-heavy ships (like a drone covette) yet.
c) The King Eagle's shields are awesome but this doesn't seem to matter. Both ships died from shield-piercing hits with shields still up.
d) Even without using intensify defensive fire, plasma was easy to stop against a ship ready for it but lethal if people weren't; firing into the front of a klingon ship with phasers and shields ready did virtually nothing, firing into the flank of a klingon ship (only able to use 6 phasers) virtually collapsed it's shields, and firing into the back of a crippled constitution which had just lost its ability to fire defensively effectively due to being crippled and taking weapons-1 critical blew it to -20 odd damage in one volley.
e) Photons were seriously nasty. Whilst hard to hit with at range, the fact that they can punch through shields means you might as well fling them at range because one multihit can still cause mayhem.
f) Klingon manouvrability wasn't quite as all-encompassing as hoped once multiple ships appear on the field - it's almost impossible to keep everyone in your frontal arc, especially since you want to really centreline your main target to give them both batteries of Ph-2.
g) Weapons-1 crits are nasty unless I misunderstood. Do you lose 1AD from EACH weapons line item, or one from each weapon type firing on each ship - particulalry confusing with feds where you usually have multiple seperate batteries of Ph-1 on each target.
h) I am really, really bad at rolling dice.
I think I get how to use Feds and Klingons - or at least I can see how they should be used and it'll come with practice. Romulans appear more of a dark art, especially the use of cloaked ships, and any general tactics discussions (both for and against) would be appreciated.
Games to date have been:
A couple of 2v2s - paired Command D7s vs paired Command Constitutions, which went one each way (the latter due to one local player's obsession with launching shuttles rather than doing anything else. He's a Tau BFG player, what can I say? I imagine the Hydrans will suit him...)
A 4 v 3 'We Come In Peace - Shoot To Kill' with two constitutions and a battle frigate versus two d7s and a pair of light frigates. Klingons won on objectives (although Feds won on kills).
A 2 v 2 v 2 with paired constitutions, d7s and King Eagles. This was an awesome (if bloody) game, which resulted in one of each ship being destroyed, the survivors all being battered to scrap and (in the end) the D7 and King Eagle went down in the same turn, leaving a heavily singed constitution as the only survivor.
Thoughts:
a) Battle frigates are scarily hard to kill - I'd planned on sweeping everything in and taking out the 'soft target' on turn one (Hey! It'd work in B5!) before someone rolled 11 extra shields for the bloody thing and I essentially bounced off.
b) Suicide shuttles - like drones - seem to be really easy to stop but lethal if you don't stop them. The fact that drones can't go through shields plus their lack of accuracy means they don't seem to do much in the early stages. I'm fully aware that we haven't used any drone-heavy ships (like a drone covette) yet.
c) The King Eagle's shields are awesome but this doesn't seem to matter. Both ships died from shield-piercing hits with shields still up.
d) Even without using intensify defensive fire, plasma was easy to stop against a ship ready for it but lethal if people weren't; firing into the front of a klingon ship with phasers and shields ready did virtually nothing, firing into the flank of a klingon ship (only able to use 6 phasers) virtually collapsed it's shields, and firing into the back of a crippled constitution which had just lost its ability to fire defensively effectively due to being crippled and taking weapons-1 critical blew it to -20 odd damage in one volley.
e) Photons were seriously nasty. Whilst hard to hit with at range, the fact that they can punch through shields means you might as well fling them at range because one multihit can still cause mayhem.
f) Klingon manouvrability wasn't quite as all-encompassing as hoped once multiple ships appear on the field - it's almost impossible to keep everyone in your frontal arc, especially since you want to really centreline your main target to give them both batteries of Ph-2.
g) Weapons-1 crits are nasty unless I misunderstood. Do you lose 1AD from EACH weapons line item, or one from each weapon type firing on each ship - particulalry confusing with feds where you usually have multiple seperate batteries of Ph-1 on each target.
h) I am really, really bad at rolling dice.
I think I get how to use Feds and Klingons - or at least I can see how they should be used and it'll come with practice. Romulans appear more of a dark art, especially the use of cloaked ships, and any general tactics discussions (both for and against) would be appreciated.
