From Planet Mongoose: "The total number of hits from a weapon system against a ship with this trait will be reduced by the Armour score. Their effects are completely ignored". Is that from one out of all the weapon systems fired at you this turn, one weapon system from each ship firing at you this turn, or every weapon system which fires at you?BFalcon said:
Star Fleet Advanced Rules Preview
- Thread starter MongooseMatt
- Start date
No, that's Stealth - you can see something is there but you can't lock a weapon onto it. Cloak means you can't see it. Stealth plus the free move and turn is a reasonable way to depict an invisible ship without actually removing the model from the table. Thus, as stated on Planet Mongoose, "Once engaged, a cloak will cause a ship to disappear, both visually and on sensors".Nerroth said:
Incidentally, on screen the KR really is a D7, complete with original Klingon markings. (I remember having painted my old Starline 2200 D7 as a KR, then watching "The Enterprise Incident a while later and looking specifically to see the Romulan markings, then being disappointed to find that there weren't any.) Which means if I get some D7's for use with a Klingon fleet, I also get to use them as KR's depending on whether I'm playing Klingons or Romulans that day.
(The remastered version shows Romulan markings, but I'm not supposed to refer to that. :lol
AdrianH said:
Then it's worded a tad incorrectly.
Stealth, in the context of the SFU, refers to the kind of built-in countermeasures that Oiron Pirate ships have integrated into their hull coatings. (In other game systems, this provides their ships with a +1 die roll modifier when facing enemy direct fire; but the effect is not cumulative with cloaking benefits.)
The cloak is a different story altogether, but again it is only a true "hidden cloak" in certain game systems. (Even in SFB, the "standard" cloak rules still require a counter to be placed on the board to show where the cloaked ship is going; the "hidden cloak" rules are strictly optional, and requires the consent of all players involved.)
It was clarified earlier that ACtA:SF will not be using the hidden cloak rule; so the "practical invisibility screen" is not entirely flawless. It's still a pretty useful system, it seems.
Incidentally, on screen the KR really is a D7, complete with original Klingon markings. (I remember having painted my old Starline 2200 D7 as a KR, then watching "The Enterprise Incident a while later and looking specifically to see the Romulan markings, then being disappointed to find that there weren't any.) Which means if I get some D7's for use with a Klingon fleet, I also get to use them as KR's depending on whether I'm playing Klingons or Romulans that day.
Bear in mind that in the SFU, the concept of what was in the "tri-video" is not as deeply wedded to the canon as it would be over in the Paramount/CBS Franchise. (As noted before, an example is shown with the Fed-Gorn first contact; "The event was dramatized for tri-video in a fanciful story involving an unknown super-race similar to the Organians.")
So the SFU KRs are D6s; with fresh coats of paint and everything. (The Kestrel version of the D7 is listed as the K7R.) And they had those paint jobs long before the remastered version of the original series showed up.
That said, it's not like anyone is going to kick down your front door and order you to paint them as Kestrels if you don't want to...
Iain McGhee
Mongoose
Da Boss said:
That should be pretty easy to work out, even if it's not spelled out in the rulebook, from the descriptions (and FC for that matter). I know you're really only talking about Cloaks, but for completeness' sake:- Depending on whatever is applicable against the firing weapons system; ADD fires first, then phasers, then last ditch defence is tractors. Anything getting past that lot hits the shield and then penetrating hits subtract the armour value (looks like it's per weapons system fired for armour damage reduction to me).
Cloaked ships only get to use their stealth score against each weapon fired at it for defence, since they're unable to fire, plus shields and armour of course. Makes the armour on the War Eagle very useful at protecting against the odd shield penetrating hit while cloaked, hmm ?
Iain McGhee
Mongoose
AFAIK there's only ever been one Trek ship with a cloak that was completely undetectable, and you're never ever going to see the Scimitar in the SFU 
Whereas Stealth in the context of ACTA refers to a ship which you can see but your sensors can't. You know where it is but you can't lock weapons.Nerroth said:
The bit about the cloak distorting the background starfield is true, although there's a lot of starfield and the cloak will only be affecting a very small part of it. Maybe have a special action "Search for Cloaked Ship", representing the crew's effort to spot the distortion, detect the ion trail, or whatever else the science officer can think of - if the CQ check is passed then the ship gets to fire its weapons semi-blind.
I know SFU had eagles on Kestrels long before Trek - as I said, I have one.
But the point is that if I get some new ships and paint them as Klingons then I can use them as Romulans as well. Since I have limited space in which to store models, this appeals to me - two fleets for the price and storage of one!I completely missed the forward arc rule.
It really does even things up a bit.
However I'm now wondering about using squadrons of the smaller and more manoeuvrable Fed ships to flank Klingon cruisers and knock their shields down, leaving cruisers to pound them to bits.
We'll get the rulebook next month, but I'm already wondering how many police ships, frigates or battle frigates you get in a blister and how many points they are.
Anyone who's a playtester know if using frigate wolfpacks is as viable in ACTA:SFU as it was in B5W or ACTA?
It really does even things up a bit.
However I'm now wondering about using squadrons of the smaller and more manoeuvrable Fed ships to flank Klingon cruisers and knock their shields down, leaving cruisers to pound them to bits.
We'll get the rulebook next month, but I'm already wondering how many police ships, frigates or battle frigates you get in a blister and how many points they are.
Anyone who's a playtester know if using frigate wolfpacks is as viable in ACTA:SFU as it was in B5W or ACTA?
Iron Domokun
Mongoose
In the source material (the TOS episode Balance of Terror) you see the Big E blasting an area of space with proximity photons ("depth charges", really) and damage the Romulan ship. To be true to the source material, you have to be able to fire at a cloaked ship. Even if it is silly.
As for what "stealth" or "cloak" mean in ACtA, they mean whatever Matt wants them to mean. They're game mechanics and are used to make the game work the way the designers want it to work. The bit about making the ship "disappear" is probably advertising puffery. I've bought cleaning products that promised to make stains "disappear, visually and on sensors!!" which did not work as promised. I'm sure things haven't changed by the 24th century. :mrgreen:
As for what "stealth" or "cloak" mean in ACtA, they mean whatever Matt wants them to mean. They're game mechanics and are used to make the game work the way the designers want it to work. The bit about making the ship "disappear" is probably advertising puffery. I've bought cleaning products that promised to make stains "disappear, visually and on sensors!!" which did not work as promised. I'm sure things haven't changed by the 24th century. :mrgreen:
Ben2 said:
It smore likely the Klingons will be using their superior agility to try and keep their front arcs on your guns - also remember that even the strongest shield can be ignored if you roll a 6 to hit.
In the blog Matt suggests that Klingon cruisers are nearly as agile as Fed frigates - given all ships can move the same speed - this does make it a bit different to ACTA:B5 where the smaller ships usually could move a lot quicker and were more agile than the big ships.
Again as its points based, it will depend on the ratios between firgates and cruisers as to how much you can do this- of course in sinking will remain important - esp with / against cloaking ships.
@Iain McGhee
That should be pretty easy to work out, even if it's not spelled out in the rulebook, from the descriptions (and FC for that matter). I know you're really only talking about Cloaks, but for completeness' sake:- Depending on whatever is applicable against the firing weapons system; ADD fires first, then phasers, then last ditch defence is tractors. Anything getting past that lot hits the shield and then penetrating hits subtract the armour value (looks like it's per weapons system fired for armour damage reduction to me). Cloaked ships only get to use their stealth score against each weapon fired at it for defence, since they're unable to fire, plus shields and armour of course. Makes the armour on the War Eagle very useful at protecting against the odd shield penetrating hit while cloaked, hmm ?
Yes and no - you may wish to change the order in which you use them depending on the circumstances and the amount of AD being thrown at you and what you may have to deal with next. Eg as anti-drone can run out you may just use your point defense phasers (which are not doing anythign else at the odd drone being chucked at you at long range - saving the more sure fire anti-drone for later.
That's with photon torpedoes which have a large blast radius - it's not so much shotgunning as carpet-bombing. And something of that sort has already been done in B5:ACTA - energy mines.Iron Domokun said:In the source material (the TOS episode Balance of Terror) you see the Big E blasting an area of space with proximity photons ("depth charges", really) and damage the Romulan ship. To be true to the source material, you have to be able to fire at a cloaked ship. Even if it is silly.
Energy mines don't target a ship, they target a point in space. Anything within 3" of that point gets attacked. Energy mines can't score critical hits but are still an effective way to attack stealth ships and represent a more sensible way of blind-firing at a cloaked ship. So what you need is a procedure to turn photon torpedoes into energy mines - possibly allow it to be done to other explosive weapons too, for the benefit of those fleets who don't have photon torpedoes. Since you can see where the cloaked ship is and can put the torpedo right next to it, whereas the captain of your ship can not, maybe have a crew quality check to detonate the torpedo in the right place at the right time.
Perhaps declare a special action "Remove guidance", which for the next turn adds the "Energy Mine" to a drone, torpedo etc., and deletes the "Seeking" trait if present. Next turn declare a special action "Bomb cloaked ship", place your energy mine, then roll a crew quality check to see if the cloaked ship is there when it goes off. If the Romulan player has been silly enough to put more than one cloaked ship in close formation when you do this, you get to attack the lot.
Ben2 said:
In a word, yes.
The ship balancing in CTA:SF is different from any other CTA game (I went into this a bit in another thread).
In a nutshell, the mid-ranged ships (D7, Heavy Cruiser) tend to be king. However, tactical use of the high and low end stuff can swing things for you.
For example, a lot of people will read the stats of the Federation Dreadnought and decide they want a piece of that action. It has fearsome weaponry and can take a lot of punishment, nearly twice that of a Heavy Cruiser. And you have to love six photon torpedoes up front.
However, it moves like a drunken cow. That means after it has made a pass on a target, it may well find itself completely wrong-footed as it tries to get back into the fight (and then you'll see how much damage it can take!). For an all round heavy hitter, you may be better off with the Battlecruiser - no way near as much damage, only two thirds of the torpedoes but nearly as many phasers and it can get its weaponry on target more often.
Also, we have seen many times that big ships can have plenty of damage left but are effectively taken out of action by criticals being stacked against them (the critical effects are slightly different in SF than in Noble Armada). I had a Battlecruiser earlier this week that should have been smashing the enemy apart but the crew were way too busy fighting fires on multiple decks and praying the dilithium chamber did not spin out of control.
At the other end of the scale, small ships are great. They can nip about the battlefield, do not draw as much attention as a Dreadnought and, against the right enemy, can just sit on their tail out of heavy weapon arcs and absorb the odd phaser hit as they chip and harry away at shields and hulls (their phasers do criticals as well as anyone else's!). Their agility also means they can let loose with overloaded torpedoes more often.
But, of course, they cannot take the damage. If something like a Battlecruiser gets them at short range with all up front weaponry, they can be boiled away in a single turn (you just get a Frigate-shaped hole left in space). So, tread carefully and stay out from under the footsteps of giants...
I'll do a comparison between the Federation Frigate and Battle Frigate before launch (perhaps when we get the painted minis back next week), as they are an interesting choice. The Battle Frigate has an extra phaser and another photon, the latter meaning a great deal when there is every chance two torpedoes can miss a target completely. It also has increased shields which not only offers more protection, but it makes boosting shields far more effective. All for 15 points extra. Seems the logical choice.
However, the base Frigate is Agile, and the Battle Frigate isn't - and that makes all the difference when you are trying to wrong foot the big stuff. The Battle Frigate is king among small ships (well, until Destroyers start appearing), but in a fleet action, you need to think carefully about which you want to take.
This is, by far, the most tactical version of CTA we have created. Personally speaking, I love it
All this is making me happy. In ACTA:NA the destroyer is king, and they pretty much chew everything up. The smaller raider type ships just don't have the points, and the broadside arcs and turret dice on destroyers mean that a formed wall of battle will absolutely crush small raiding squadrons.
However from what I've heard of the SFU conversion things like an E4 flanking squadron, or Snipes! (particularly the Snipe-B) have the potential to be really effective.
Hell with the drone rules as they are now I can see myself taking a swarm of G-2s and using them to saturate a cruisers drone defence if they are cheap enough.
Really looking forward to this coming out.
However from what I've heard of the SFU conversion things like an E4 flanking squadron, or Snipes! (particularly the Snipe-B) have the potential to be really effective.
Hell with the drone rules as they are now I can see myself taking a swarm of G-2s and using them to saturate a cruisers drone defence if they are cheap enough.
Really looking forward to this coming out.
Good! Licensing issues aside, a 3rd generation warbird is not exactly something you can put in a game with Constitution-class ships and expect a fair fight...
I'm not convinced by that statement myself, either. I mean, what happens if the firing ship is launching torpedoes from inside the kill-zone range? Does not compute...
That said, kill-zone only affects the weapon's multihit trait. This is more-or-less irrelevant when using phasers as flak weapons - a multihit phaser hit on a drone just means a really, really dead drone. The only time it needs clarifying is for plasma torps, where you're 'gradually sapping' the power.
With sort-of-boresight-but-not-really, I'd imagine a fair number of lighter vessels are a good idea for getting yourself lined up on enemies. And yes, if your standard enemy has forward arc, then sign me up for the agile ships.
from the blog:
"Traits such as Accurate apply as normal but Kill Zone will not as drones are engaged beyond this range."
So I guess not matter what the actual range between the two ships ts assumed that Kill zone is ignored for defensive fire. It probably would have been easier to omitt the last (Explanatary)part and just say:
"Traits such as Accurate apply as normal but Kill Zone will not."
I would think is a (welcome) ACTA simplification of rules for speed.
Going back to the agility of Cruisers - the Romulan version of the Klingon battlecruiser is both turn 4 and agile so it is likely not going to be significantly different from the frigates and escorts. to put it in perspective:
the B5 White Star was speed 15 or 16 and had two 90 degree turns (and that was super fast and agile)
In comparison a workhorse battlecruiser, the R/K D6 is Speed 12 with three 90 degree turns if it moves flat out.
Even the Constitution class is speed 12 with two 45 degree turns if it moves flat out which is pretty good for a heavy cruiser in B5 but relatvely cumbersome in ST!
the frigates are likely turn 3-4 so speed 12 with four (!) 90 degree turns if it move flat out.
The big difference is that all ships move the same rate so your dreadnought can suddenely leap across the table which can be a bit disconcerting!
"Traits such as Accurate apply as normal but Kill Zone will not as drones are engaged beyond this range."
So I guess not matter what the actual range between the two ships ts assumed that Kill zone is ignored for defensive fire. It probably would have been easier to omitt the last (Explanatary)part and just say:
"Traits such as Accurate apply as normal but Kill Zone will not."
I would think is a (welcome) ACTA simplification of rules for speed.
Going back to the agility of Cruisers - the Romulan version of the Klingon battlecruiser is both turn 4 and agile so it is likely not going to be significantly different from the frigates and escorts. to put it in perspective:
the B5 White Star was speed 15 or 16 and had two 90 degree turns (and that was super fast and agile)
In comparison a workhorse battlecruiser, the R/K D6 is Speed 12 with three 90 degree turns if it moves flat out.
Even the Constitution class is speed 12 with two 45 degree turns if it moves flat out which is pretty good for a heavy cruiser in B5 but relatvely cumbersome in ST!
the frigates are likely turn 3-4 so speed 12 with four (!) 90 degree turns if it move flat out.
The big difference is that all ships move the same rate so your dreadnought can suddenely leap across the table which can be a bit disconcerting!
AdrianH said:
Was that aimed at my plasma shotgun comment? If so then I think you may misunderstand what it would do. The Romulans have big, high damage, slow firing weapons in SFU and for the top plasma torpedo that lowers there overall number of shooting options - I think the classic war eagle had one big torpedo (did 50 points of damage at close range, enough to vaporise most things up to frigate size in the game and a cruiser has a seriously bad day) and umm 2 phasers total - its a single-enemy engagement system - fine in the classic Duel scenario - bit of an issue in a squadron or fleet action.
THis produced a big weakness in those sorts of ships against multiple smaller enemies.....particularly a swarm of fighters, who could lose one vessel to the massively overkill torpedo hit and then the rest of the small ships all just launch their attacks.
The Plasma shotgun split the one big torpedo into a few smaller ones (5 for the biggest R plasma), and redressed the worst elements of the single ship vs horde - important in a game where lots of small ships or fighter do have certain benefits over a single big one.
AdmiralGrafSpee
Mongoose
Myrm said:
Yes, if you haven't played SFB before then perhaps shotgunning sounds weird, but it is the only real way for romulans to deal with fighters or PF's. While maybe its not in the works this time around, I think it could be added in the future as a special order, much like has been done for overloading photons/disruptors this time around. It would simply allow you to split your plasma dice among different targets.
I don't know how much fighters will play a role in this game. Are there carrier stats in this book? I haven't seen any carrier miniatures previewed. Maybe things like fighters and shotgunning will be in a supplement?
On the note of "defensive fire" - I suspect there is no need to worry about "kill zone" as in SFB the optimum time to fire at drones/plasma is when the seeking weapon was at very close range (i.e. it doesn't matter how far away the launching ship is, you'd wait until the drone/torp was close to you to fire on it). Perhaps this is the simulation they are going for with both defensive phaser fire as well as anti-drones.
Iron Domokun
Mongoose
Admiral, I don't think the OP was referring to shotgun plasma, which is something totally different to hunting a cloaked ship by firing where you think the target probably is.
In the SFU at least, not having a lock-on to the target doesn't mean you don't know where it is, it's just harder to hit. Your computers are calculating probable courses of the target and spreading your fire around the predicted courses anyway, without a lock-on it's just harder to predict where the target will be when your bullets get there.
Shotgun plasma, as the Admiral points out, is a way of dividing up a big torpedo into a number of smaller torpedoes and is very effective for dealing with fighters/PFs.
In the SFU at least, not having a lock-on to the target doesn't mean you don't know where it is, it's just harder to hit. Your computers are calculating probable courses of the target and spreading your fire around the predicted courses anyway, without a lock-on it's just harder to predict where the target will be when your bullets get there.
Shotgun plasma, as the Admiral points out, is a way of dividing up a big torpedo into a number of smaller torpedoes and is very effective for dealing with fighters/PFs.
I should note that the plasma shotgun (along with some other plasma options, such as pseudo-plasmas and the sabot upgrade) do not exist in Federation Commander nor Starmada; and nor do (non-Hydran) fighters or gunboats, for that matter.
Indeed, opinion is far from uniform on whether or not those games should ever get any of the above at all...
Indeed, opinion is far from uniform on whether or not those games should ever get any of the above at all...
No, at this line on Planet Mongoose:Myrm said:
"The Stealth 2+ trait basically keeps a cloaked ship hidden but, because Stealth is now rolled against every single hit, it allows players to ‘shotgun’ areas of space and get some lucky hits."
At the sort of ranges in SFU combat, an enemy starship is a tiny dot. In TOS, approaching starships were usually barely if at all visible as a dot unless the viewscreen was heavily magnified - that's what you're trying to hit with this "shotgun".
That actually makes sense. Or the torpedo could convert into a much larger, less intense bolt which covers a broader area. The natural tendency of a plasma torpedo is to do this anyway, which is why it loses power at longer ranges. The challenge to the Romulan weapon makers is not to turn a plasma torpedo into such a broad, weak weapon; it's to prevent the torpedo from doing it.
There's a sort of precedent in ACTA, although with a different type of weapon. In B5, the Shadows' big ship-slicing beam can be turned into a sweeping weapon against fighters. You declare this when the ship moves, then the weapon loses most of the traits which make it lethal to big ships and gains a couple which make it more useful against fighters. The only snag is that in B5:ACTA, all fighters move after all capital ships, so if you declare this then the fighters just run away and now you can't do much harm to big ships. The same might happen with the plasma shotgun rule - it becomes a deterrent rather than an actual weapon.
The best way to stop enemy fighters is to bring some of your own.
