The Plasmatic Pulsar Device (PPD) -- UNOFFICIAL

[Finlos]

Disclaimer: This is my translation of the PPD from Star Fleet Battles to Call to Arms. It is unofficial and likely to be different from the official version eventually published by Mongoose.

One of my favourite fleets in Star Fleet Battles is the Interstellar Concordium (ISC for short) but with the Lyrans scheduled for expansion 1 and the Hydrans penciled in for expansion 2 the earliest I can expect to see the ISC officially in ACTA would be 2014. I set out to make my own conversion so I can use the 2400-line minis I already have. The ship conversions were relatively straightforward, with only one weapon not yet having an ACTA statline: the PPD.

"The basic concept of the weapon is a series of intensely focused plasma energy pulses that are conveyed to the target on a carrier wave" (E11.0, SFB Module C2).

The rationale behind my decision follows the statline here:
Weapon Range Arc AD Special
Plasmatic Pulsar 16 F 1 Accurate +1, Multihit X*, Precise, Reload

Range: This is my best guesstimate.

Accurate +1: The PPD fires multiple pulses with good odds to hit (E11.3). If it missed previously, it gets a new chance to lock-on during the next SFB impulse so it is highly likely that at least some damage will be inflicted by the PPD.

Multihit X: Due to the nature of the PPD, the AD die roll determines the multihit value. No extra die roll is needed, keeping it simple.
AD roll : 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Multihit value: 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 (Hopefully this table makes sense)

Precise: Each pulse of each individual PPD is, in SFB, a separate volley (E11.332). This causes a greater probability of stripping a ship of 'essential' systems (weapons, power, control systems, etc.) as opposed to 'softer' hits (hull, labs, shuttles, etc.) caused by a single, larger volley. Hence the greater likelihood of the PPD causing a critical hit.

Reload: Self-explanatory

There you have it, the PPD. I would like to make this as true to SFB as I can while retaining the simplicity of ACTA. Comments and constructive criticism welcome.

 

[Nerroth]

It seems that the floodgates are being wedged open with all of the "unofficial" threads being opened up...


One thing to consider is that, in keeping with how the conversion process has been so far, a fair basis for comparison might be how the PPD works in Federation Commander, as opposed to Star Fleet Battles*.

In FC, given the way the number of firing opportunities per turn has been reduced relative to the number of movement sub-pulses, the one-pulse-per-impulse method from SFB was no longer viable. So, the PPD instead has each of its firing pulses combined into a single volley (per shield facing); with the number of pulses hit depending on the die roll scored. There is no overload function for the PPD in FC; but, given how the nature of the weapon has been changed already, the trade-off has been a fair one.



*I suspect that this is going to be a persistent issue. It seems that most of those who returned to the SFU via ACtA:SF pretty much skipped the onset of FC altogether, and so are drawing their experiences (and expectations) exclusively from SFB. I hate to be the one to keep pointing this out; but while SFB of course has a role to play, it really is worth keeping in mind how relevant FC's ruleset currently is, and is likely to remain, in the development of A Call to Arms: Star Fleet going forward.

 

[Da Boss]

It seems that the floodgates are being wedged open with all of the "unofficial" threads being opened up...

Seems to be a fairly heathy thing - keeps people interested whilst they wait for official stuff........

re the actual weapon stats - its quite interesting - so low AD gets you high multihit and vice versa - would be interesting to play

 

[Nerroth]

It seems that the floodgates are being wedged open with all of the "unofficial" threads being opened up...

Seems to be a fairly heathy thing - keeps people interested whilst they wait for official stuff........

I was under the impression that Mongoose and ADB wanted to kep a lid on such open speculation for now, so as not to pre-empt any offical rules that might come down the pipe further on. (While the rules being discussed may be unofficial, they do have the potential of gathering a degree of fan momentum in the online community; which might risk pre-empting whatever offical rules we do end up getting. That said, if the unoffical stats end up being good enough, maybe they could be upgraded to offical status when the time comes?)

To be clear, I'm not personally opposed to the idea of threads like these; I for one have a number of areas I'd like to delve into (as anyone who knows me from the ADB BBS and forum would guess). I was just wondering about how much scope there is, or should be, for us on the other side of the screen to explore such options sooner rather than later.

 

[Da Boss]

From past experience I doubt MGP have strong views either way - and ADB have a very limited official presence these days over here it seems.

Ben2 asked Matt about doing his carrier stuff and that was apparently green lighted.

From my expereince with other games - its quite usual to see this sort of thing

 

[Ben2]

I did ask Matt about carriers before putting any fighter and carrier stuff up. I was asked to make sure I marked it as unofficial. It's also not something on the development radar at the moment, whereas say Lyrans, are.

If I can get it fine tuned to the point it meets the following critieria

- Doesn't slow the game down
- Non carrier fleets can fight carrier fleets at no disadvantage (ie fighters not compulsory)
- Retains the flavour of the SFU for those who want to add fighters as extra spice

then after enough play to nail the point values down (particularly after the next supplement is out and there's a lot more ships to playtest against) then I'll turn it all into a coherent submission for possible inclusion in a supplement.

 

[McKinstry]

Since ACTASF is supposed to come from an FC rather than an SFB background, I'd rather ignore SFB and use FC as a jumping off point for any speculation.

SFB has no interest for me as the level of detail is such as to render it a ship v ship game whereas FC is the product of a good beginning towards playability at multiple ship levels of which ACTASF is the evolution I've been waiting for to finally play feets of SFU ships in an evening (and most glorious of all, no darn pulses :x )

 

[Ben2]

I go from SFB because it's the original source material and I'm not going to spend vast quantities of cash buying FC stuff to convert it to ACTA when I can spend the money buying minis.

 

[Nerroth]

The only thing you'd need to actually buy to get into (the Alpha Octant material for) Federation Commander is the Reference Rulebook; a lot of the Ship Cards have low-toner editions available for free over on the Commander's Circle, which also includes a bunch of other free stuff (not least the aforementioned Borders of Madness playtest material covering fighters and carriers).

The above is addressed to anyone not currently familiar with the FC game mechanics, by the way; for the cost of one Starline 2500 cruiser, you can get caught up with the engine which has served as the primary port of call for the ACtA:SF conversion process.

 

[Sgt_G]

It seems that the floodgates are being wedged open with all of the "unofficial" threads being opened up...

Seems to be a fairly heathy thing - keeps people interested whilst they wait for official stuff........

I was under the impression that Mongoose and ADB wanted to kep a lid on such open speculation for now, so as not to pre-empt any offical rules that might come down the pipe further on.

Not to try to "set policy", but from past experience on the ADB boards the way things -usually- work is people will open a topic to suggest a new rule or ship. the discussion will continue until one of three things happen: (1) the idea is talked to death and people stop discussing it, (2) Steve Cole comes in and say he doesn't like it (favorate quote: "That way leads to madness!"), or (3), Steve comes in and says he has all the inputs he needs to write the offical rule, and he'll close the topic to new postings.

Ergo, rather than "unofficial rules" or "house rules", I would prefer to think of these topics as "suggestions and submissions".

From past experience I doubt MGP have strong views either way - and ADB have a very limited official presence these days over here it seems.

Oh, I think Jean's still here as much as ever.

 

[Finlos]

There hasn't been any significant reaction one way or another so I think I've got something workable until the official release several years down the road. I welcome further feedback if anyone else is interested in testing these rules. You'll have to convert your own ships, however, which really isn't that hard.

I playtested the ISC (vs Klingons) last night and my opponent thought the PPD was fairly balanced. Klingon ships are tough when they can stay 8.5" to 12" away and present their Fore shield. If you run them out of maneuver space and stay away from that Fore shield they die, fast.

I am one of those players who only recently got back into SFB (my last purchase was R5 back when it was released) and didn't realize FC even existed until recently. Not having FC doesn't overly concern me thanks to ADB's insistence that ships and fleets perform similarly regardless of which game you're playing.

 

[Captain Jonah]

My Thoughts

Change the damage to "To hit numbers the other way round.

Make damage the "To Hit roll" -1. So a modified roll of 6 does 5 damage, a modified roll of 4 does 3 damage etc.

Then over half range gives you minus one on the roll making it less likely to roll a 6 and less likely to do the top end damage.

Your way round at longer range when you have the +1 for accurate and the -1 for over 8" range it then becomes impossible to get 5 damage since you can no longer roll 3 which is not the case in SFB/FC. The FC rules give you a lesser chance of hitting with every pulse at long range, they do not prevent you from doing so.

See here for the FC rules for PPDs:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=1051


A 3 (in my mind anyway) represents a hit that just scrapes in whereas a 6 is a good solid hit. In ACTA-SF the dice rolls are the other way round to FC where low is better, In ACTA high is better.

Also I'm not at all sure about precise. It is a series of pulses that can burrow into a ship and do significant damage but it isn't a Phaser that can punch deep into the hull and be aimed for the vital bits. Devastating would seem more fitting to represent the fact that is it balls of plasma tearing through the hull, if one pulse hits something it is going to do a lot of damage but the pulses are not aimed or targeted in the same way that Phasers are.

Also Also the PPDs lose damage over range. Energy bleed is too harshs but an extra -1 over 8" should cover it meaning that 8" and under it does "To Hit Roll" -1 and at 9" + it does "To Hit roll" -2, combined with the -1 to hit for over half range this cuts them down a fair bit at long range which more accurately reflects the FC stats. So over 8" a roll of 6 will do 4 damage, 5 does 3 and 4 does 2 damage.

 

[Da Boss]

@ Cap Jonah

That revision does all sound complicated

remember weapons already loose accuracy over range so not sure more rules are need for this?

 

[gunner41c]

I was Finlos's opponent last night. Fun times and am learning how to run Klingon fleets (my fav). I found the PPD that we worked on to be similar hitting to the other races heavy weapons. Nasty but not overpowered. The plasma's were what really won the game for Finlos and my moving in too close also. We have also been discussing Maulers, Hell-bores, Fusion beams and the rest of the missing weapons. We submit these ideas to the forums in hope that maybe we will help play testing and developers to get the next sets done. I love the flow and balance of CTA-sfb and it handles large 2000 point battles fairly well. We did notice a need for a sheet with fired/reloading for ships with multiple "reload" weapons. It got fairly complex trying to figure out which weapons were ready, which had fired, and which were not reloaded.

 

[storeylf]

Also Also the PPDs lose damage over range.

So do disrupters, and everything else bar photons and drones (until you get into some minor races/weapons).

Keeping it simple I'd go with

PPD
range 24
4AD
accurate +2
reload
killzone 10

Rolling 4AD gives you your likelyhood of hitting with something. Range is large, it is the premier long range weapon in FC. Accurate represents that it is very accurate. Killzone gives it its very nasty damage up to mid range and drops off after that. No need for complicated stuff to provide some representation of its hit rate and damage. In killzone you can therefore do 8 damage. The PPD can do about 3 times photon damage in FC, so it may want to be a bit more potent. But that may depend on how you do your special effects on splash damage.

The 2 areas it might want some special rule is the damage splash effect and myopic zone- maybe it ignores klingon shield effect, or maybe it leaks on a 5+ (respresenting that the splashes are good at hitting weak points in the shields). Maybe it also needs a minimum range special rule, of 3"?

 

[Finlos]

Several points to answer recent posts (in no particular order):

I want to keep the Multihit X (if I keep it) determined as is. I don't want a roll of '6' doing max damage because that automatically bypasses the shields.

As mentioned by storyelf, most of the SFB weapons lose damage over range but remain constant over range in ACTA. As a direct fire weapon it should stay consistent with other ACTA parameters and leave Energy Bleed for plasmas. The variable Mutihit trait already accounts for this, I believe, with -1 to the die rolls preventing a roll of '3' doing Multihit 5

I did consider a myopic zone but a quick measurement showed that the minis / bases themselves are big enough that there was no point to including one. Also, too large of a myopic zone and you completely negate the option of using Overload Weapons!.

I'm not sure how to resolve the splash damage vs. unified shields. I may just ignore splash to keep it simple. I'm also not convinced having the PPD negate an empire's strength (Klingon shields) is a good idea but I'm open to suggestions here.

Storyelf's proposed statline gave me pause to consider. I never considered killzone for a heavy weapon but it sounds like a good idea to me. 24" better reflect SFB range (and messes with disruptor / plasma torpedo range-games) and 4AD + killzone 10 eliminates the need for the multihit X trait. Accurate +2 may be too much but would be a more accurate representation of its' SFB counterpart, this will require more playtesting.

I had originally decided to go with Devestating +1 but gunner41c convinced me that because Precise gives a better chance of getting a critical instead of the critical that hurts with Dev +1 and both would definitely be too much. More to consider for playtesting.

 

[Rambler]

A point to remember about the ISC is they are super anal about Eschelon Tatics to the point that if they are not using them in a Fleet game they should suffer a penalty.

Because of base sizes you might want to toy with exaggerating the Myoptic zone.

As far as Overloading goes PPD will need a new set of rules for how they use this special action works.

 

[Nerroth]

There is no particular need to have an overload function for the PPD; there is none for the version of the weapon that appears in FC. (It's balanced there by the combining of the pulses that are there into a single volley per shield facing.)

A myopic zone sounds like it might be a good idea; the distance might not seem that much, but it would still be important to not let ISC ship captains try to get closer to their targets with these weapons than they are supposed to.

Also, even in FC (which usualy tends to avoid general fleet restrictions), there is a limit on how many PPDs there can be per squadron, as noted in the last line of (4M1):

No ISC fleet can have more PPDs than ships.

One useful comparison may be how Mongoose port the web caster over to ACtA:SF. If that weapon retains the kind of fleet restrictions (in the Milky Way) that the weapon has in FC, then it would be far more likely to expect a similar limit imposed on the plasmatic pulsar device.



And on a more general note, while there are many similarities between SFB and FC in terms of how things work, there are also significant differences; areas where the streamlining process from one game to another sees a few things fall out in their own ways. (As has already been noted, the PPD is a prime example of this; with the mechanics of the turn in FC forcing the weapon to be re-written relative to how it had worked in SFB.)

When there is such a distinction, it would seem more likely that the FC version of the rule in question would be the first choice for conversion, as it has already been for what we see in the ACtA:SF core rulebook.

(Looking even further ahead, if/when the time comes for the Andromedans to be considered, I would much sooner imagine the more streamlined ruleset published for that empire in FC to be considered ahead of what SFB has to say about those troublesome arrivals from M31.)

 

[Sgt_G]

I want to keep the Multihit X (if I keep it) determined as is. I don't want a roll of '6' doing max damage because that automatically bypasses the shields.

I'm not at all sure the PPD should bypass shields. It has a large impact area, wrapping half-way around the target ship.

 

[Rambler]

Maybe it should be based more on a seeking weapon than a to hit roll. It will hit you but not have a chance to burn through?