Correct.
It seems counter-intuitive, but the game is designed to be simple without a plethora of rules specific interactions. This sometimes leads to something that seems wrong, but works within the confines of ACTASF.

Your undamaged Federation CA may be moving 0 inches, but you still have the ability to maneuver left right, up, down, forward, and back within the boundaries of your station keeping mechanism to avoid incoming fire, or at least to make it more difficult to hit you. Think of it as changing your heading to bring a new weapon into arc or rolling the ship at just the right moment to provide an edge on aspect to the saucer instead of the full face circular aspect.

And most of the time, if the Plasma R is that close to you, you will not be sitting still anyway.
Do note however; that being tractored and not moving is not the same as moving 0 inches.

By Nicholas Sandberg (Savedfromwhat) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 04:01 pm: Edit

So is current maximum speed affected by the power drain movement penalty? I cannot see a way to get that below a 6 until damage has been done. Are nimble ships even able to be hit? Is defensive fire allocated before or after the to hit roll?

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 04:20 pm: Edit

A roll of a 6 ALWAYS hits. So statistically speaking, 1 drone in 6 will impact an undamaged ship.
Or... resolve direct fire weapons first and hope that a lucky critical slows the ship down. Remember, in ACTASF damage points are resolved as soon as they are received and each hit potentially affects the way the next hit is received.

Critical hits to the Impulse Drive / Dilithium Chamber reduce Current Maximum Speed, and that is the basis of the calculation. Not how far you actually moved.

Defensive Fire is declared after seeking wwapons hit you.

By Nick Blank (Nickgb) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 06:15 pm: Edit

Well, Plasma has Accurate+3 and Drones have Accurate+2 so to hit an undamaged ship with the seeking weapon to-hit roll of 6 actually means you hit with die result of 3 or better for plasma or 4 or better for drones, barring other effects like evasion modifier from high speed or whatever.

By Nicholas Sandberg (Savedfromwhat) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 06:17 pm: Edit

First thanks for your responses, second, so my torpedoes will average hitting once every 12 turns if I have that straight and then if I am lucky enough to hit it all goes to shields, and before that there is defensive fire on only the AD that hit?

Well that really seems absurdly out of balance. In universe no empire would be stupid enough to fly around with so ineffective a main weapons system. I feel like I have to be missing something here.

By Nicholas Sandberg (Savedfromwhat) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 06:29 pm: Edit

I am going to stop posting on the Internet now as I see that plasma has accurate +3. I suck and am not attractive. Tony is very handsome and does not suck in any way.

By Nicholas Sandberg (Savedfromwhat) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 06:30 pm: Edit

Also Nick Blank you too are handsome and one who does not suck. :D

By Nick Blank (Nickgb) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 07:44 pm: Edit

Also, I believe you only roll one to hit die per torpedo, even a Plasma R with 7 AD. If you hit, all AD (that remain after any removed by energy bleed or defensive fire) then either damage shields (with multihit 4 for each AD) or roll (again with multihit 4) attacks on the damage table once shields are gone.

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 11:17 pm: Edit

And do not forget... damage effects occur as they are rolled.
Hit with phasers first. It's relatively easy to score at least one critical hit with a full barrage of phasers. If any one of them scores a critical, there's a 50% chance it will be to a power system - which immediately reduces the Maximum Speed by 2. thus making it easier for the seeking weapons to hit.

By Tim Fitzmaurice (Myrm) on Friday, November 14, 2014 - 07:59 am: Edit

Hopefully a quick question here. The freighters in the Civilian Ship section all quote damage in the format X/Y + Z.

I'm guessing that the Z is the damage rating of the pods in them but am I missing a section that explains how damage is supposed to be applied to these vessels or is that a potential errata/addendum that needs adding?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, November 14, 2014 - 08:51 am: Edit

The "+ Z" values are covered in the Cargo Trait rules on page 19.

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Friday, November 14, 2014 - 09:07 am: Edit

Tim F checkout the Cargo Trait description in the Trait Section. Page 19 I think it is on.

By Tim Fitzmaurice (Myrm) on Friday, November 14, 2014 - 09:08 am: Edit

Thanks, completely missed that! Sanity resumes, cheers all.

By Jair Bobys (Jairb) on Tuesday, December 09, 2014 - 01:44 pm: Edit

On page 23 in the section titled Defensive Use by Allied Ships it's noted that "The seeking weapons targeted by the allied sihp must pass through the firing arc of the phaser being fired."

Does this mean that in the following geometry the Klingon F5 can use its F Phaser-1 banks in allied defensive fire supporting the Klingon D7 being attacked by Drones launched from the Kzinti CM? The ^ is meant to denote that both Klingons are facing the Kzinti.

 
          ZCM 
 
 
          ^ 
         KF5 
 
 
             ^ 
            KD7

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - 10:06 am: Edit

When play testing... the rule was that the target ship must be in the arc of weapons used defensively.
The 'must pass through the firing arc' was added by ADB. I will clarify this with ADB, but as written - yes. That is what it means.

By Jair Bobys (Jairb) on Sunday, December 28, 2014 - 09:25 pm: Edit

On page 21 in the section titled Operating the Cloaking Device under Engaging the Cloaking Device is the statement "During this turn, the ship may not move more than 8”"

Two paragraphs later under Disengaging the Cloaking Device is the sentence "Instead of making its normal movement, a decloaking ship may be moved up to 6” in any direction and be turned up to and including 45° in either direction."

The actual question is, in the turn when a ship decloaks, if it's targeted by Seeking Weapons, what is it's Maximum Speed for purposes of calculating the base To Hit number? Is it considered speed 8 (cloaked maximum), speed 6 (distance displaced), or speed 12 because it's no longer under a maximum speed restriction?

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Monday, December 29, 2014 - 10:40 am: Edit

It is no longer cloaked, so it's not under any cloak restrictions.

It's Maximum Speed is returned to whatever it was before cloaking. If it's undamaged, then its Maximum Speed is 12, even though it may have only moved 6 inches.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 29, 2014 - 02:19 pm: Edit

Tony, be sure to send me any FAQs or rewording needed. I can't dig them out of this topic for myself.

By Jair Bobys (Jairb) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 02:21 am: Edit

Another Cloak clarification ...

A cloaked ship starts the turn cloaked and just outside an Asteroid Field. When activated to move, it uses the Special Action Disengage Cloaking Device! and displaces 6" resulting in placement INSIDE the Asteroid Field. The question is, how far did it move in the turn for purposes of determining how many Attack Dice to apply if it fails the asteroid damage check (Crew Quality Score + d6 vs Asteroid Field Density Rating)?

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 10:44 am: Edit

Jair isn't the speed of a Cloaked ship 6".

In the source material you were restricted to a slower speed while cloaked thus the speed 6. And remember just because you appear to jump when you decloak. It doesn't mean you were going faster or slower just you were not where they thought you were.

By Jair Bobys (Jairb) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 11:50 am: Edit

In ACTA the max speed while cloaked is 8". Per Tony's clarification above though, at the moment the cloak is dropped it's no longer under any restiction regardless of the displacement effect. But the Asteroid Field damage dice are dictated by actual distance moved.

I can see multiple correct answers here:
1. Distance displaced (0-6")
2. Distance it COULD have moved under cloak (0-8")
3. Distance it COULD have moved without cloak (0-Maximum Speed)

Since the entire reason for the displacement replacing movement is that the actual location of the ship was unknown I'd vote for treating it as though it only actually moved the distance from the edge of the Asteroid Field (where the cloak would have been voided and revealed the actual location) to where it was placed. If that's 2" then the risk is 2 Attack Dice.

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 04:05 pm: Edit

I would recommend directing the question to Mr. Carney.
He knows all about the SFU, so he can answer it far better (and more accurately) than I ever could.

By Jair Bobys (Jairb) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 04:27 pm: Edit

While I have tremendous respect for Mr. Carney's continuity knowledge, I have the same respect for the design work you've done with ACTA:SF 1.2.

Personally, I'm far less concerned with ship nomenclature than playability and rules interactions.

SVC has already commented that he'll handle the refit / nomenclature resolutions.

I hope I'm not adding to your frustration level. We have a group of people VERY excited about the work you've done. They're all exercising the rules and funneling questions through me. Most of them are equally excited to see what you'll do with Book 2 and beyond and at least half of them are too young to know the difference between a KF5R and an ROFL5 much less care. That's a REALLY good thing for the future of both ACTA:SF and SFU as a whole.

Looks like with these two cents I'm almost up to a nickle's worth of sunshine today.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 05:23 pm: Edit

That cloak/movement thing is a game mechanic that only Tony can answer. Gary (and I for that matter) wouldn't even try.

Besides, Gary is gone from ACTASF as of an hour ago.

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Saturday, January 03, 2015 - 06:00 pm: Edit

I haven't considered it in that light before, but IIRC; the rule reads "in lieu of normal movement, displace the unit by up to 6 inches"
Based on this, I would recommend using the actual distance displaced as the distance moved this turn.
It's not 100% accurate, but it has everything ACTASF wants:
It's simple
It's easy to remember
and it's simple...