Federation Commander

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

I've been wondering what might make up a good 4-5 ship demo fleet of roughly equal-ish points for each of the 5 factions would be from book 1?

Scoutdad · Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2017 2:55 pm Post subject:

I tried that...
The old Fed squadron box #1 comes out right at 1,000 points - so I tried to do similar fleet for all the others.
Sounds easy, right?
WRONG!!!
To much for new players to remember.

I quickly learned that the best way to actually demo and teach new players was to limit the ship classes available.
Use 4 Fed CAs... or 3 NCLs and 2 CAs; then build similar 1 or 2 ship fleets from the others.
The points may be off, but that won't matter.

By limiting your demos to only one or at most, 2 classes per side - the new players will have an easier time remembering the firing arcs for their weapons.

Nothing slows a game down as much as having a player unfamiliar with both the rules and the ships stopping three times during every movement action to re-check the ship roster to confirm firing arcs. If all the ships are the same, then all the firing arcs are the same, too. And its easy to remember after just a turn or two.
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Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF

JohnDDW · Lieutenant JG Joined: 11 Feb 2017 Posts: 41

That makes sense. Keep it simple,

pvt64 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:53 pm Post subject: Demos

The Demos that I have run have been limited to Romulan or Klingon Vs. Federation. 2 KR & 2 KF5R or 2 D5 & 2 F5 Vs. 2 NCL & 2 FF. Points are very close and I figure the hull shapes are very well recognized to the general public.
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Tom

Jiraiya1969 · Lieutenant JG Joined: 17 May 2007 Posts: 90

I was thinking 2 CARs and 1 CC for the Federation and 2 D7s and one C7 for the Klingon Empire.

It seems like a pretty even match up gesturing 2 classic opponents, and the hulls aren't so dissimilar that they would confuse new players.

Scoutdad · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 1:28 pm Post subject:

petrov27 · Ensign Joined: 13 Sep 2017 Posts: 12

Been thinking about purchasing the rules for this and researching a bit - just curious what forced the big weapon arc changes between SFB and A Call to Arms SF?

djdood · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 6:54 pm Post subject:

Tony Thomas (Scoutdad) will chime in with an official answer, but the short unofficial version is that ACTA used 4 arcs and the entire system was pretty hard-coded for them and the simplicity they bring. Changing it to the SFB/FedCom standard of 6 arcs was studied and tested, extensively, but in the end leaving that part of ACTA alone was the decision.
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Scoutdad · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 1:59 am Post subject:

It's all part of the deal when converting to another game engine.
Many of the things you are used to have to be tweaked or altered to make the existing universe work inside a new framework.

As Will said, the 90-degree arcs are a part and parcel of the ACTA game engine and the original conversion (Version 1.00 was performed by Mongoose Publishing - the owners of the ACTA game system. They converted the Fed Comm ships and their 60-degree arcs to the ACTA compliant 90-degree arcs.

I'm guessing that if ADB had developed their own fleet combat game, the 60 degree arcs would have most likely been kept. As it was, when ADB took over development of ACTASF for version 1.2 - we did discuss converting it to 60-degree arcs.
Ultimately, it was decided that the ACTA game engine worked best with 90-degree arcs,and the time required to play test 60 degree arcs and re-write rules from the ground up would have taken so long that the game would have effectively been killed.

Even as it is... the SFU ships strain the ACTA system to its limits.
ACTA uses 90 degree arcs and most ships have a maximum of one weapon bank in each arc... and most do not have weapons in every arc. And there are few (if any) ships with a single weapon bank spanning multiple arcs. This lack of weapon count makes the ACTA game quick and brutal. The SFU ships retain t he same number of weapons, even though the arcs change somewhat. While the ACTASF game is faster than either SFB or Fed Comm (our group can play a 12 on 12 battle in about 2 hours), it still takes 2 to 3 times as long to fight an ACTASF battle as it does an ACTA: NA / ACTA:B5 battle with an equal number of units on each side.

I'm probably biased, but I think the game is an excellent addition to the SFU.
I'd still prefer to play Federation and Empire or SFB given the chance, but I can find 20 times the number of people willing to learn and play ACTASF than I can Federation Commander... much less SFB.
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Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF

Myrm · Ensign Joined: 25 Jun 2012 Posts: 11

Scoutdad · Posted: Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:21 pm Post subject:

It works the same way for us [Battlegroup Murfreesboro] as well.
But for most players not familiar with the ACTA game engine... while there is an increase in speed over SFB / Fed Comm; it doesn't seem to be as marked as the increase in those groups that are familiar with both ACTA and SFB / Fed Comm.

We [BGM] regularly run a massive scenario [The Battle for Kh'rtis Rock] that features 31 Federation ships, 28 Klingon ships, a Klingon BATS, 6 freighters, and a few special scenario rules / units. It's a little over 10,000 points total and we c an run it in 4 to 4.5 hours... not counting the two hours required to set-up before hand and put away afterwards.

If we're only doing a 1500 to 2000 point battle, it's a 60 to 75 minute proposition.
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Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF