Federation Commander

[xalansa]

If you have a fair few ships on the table, a fair few drones or suicide shuttles in play, there's lot of targets.

How do folks usually go about keeping track of what each seeking weapon's target is? Do you just write it down on paper?


(One also has to note which ship is controlling the seeking weapon also, right?)

[Mike]

Yes, the firing/launching ship has to be noted. If it is destroyed, its drones lose tracking and are removed from the map.

It seems like I remember seeing a document someone made up with a chart to help with what you asked about. I've looked through my files and wasn't able to find it, though. It wouldn't be hard to make...just take a little time. If I know I'll be doing a scenario with lots of fighters and drones I'll usually make up something to help with the tracking.

One reason the fighter flight rules and drone swarm rules were introduced was to cut down on map clutter and make it easier to track firing ships, targets, and damage. Damage for individual drones would still need to be recorded, however.

One thing I've done with fighters is to do a screenshot of the set of fighter diagrams from their carrier ship card and then paste it into a blank document for printing. Just an idea.
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Mike

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Sandpaper gets the job done, but makes for a lot of friction.

[xalansa]

thanks mike.

Swarm rules sounds interesting. Newbie here and I only have the basic sets. Where would find the swarm rules?


What are people's thoughts on letting seeking weapons go after any target at any time? (meaning you don't have to track or remember where a weapon is going, each time you move one you can just move where you think is best)

Would this overly favour races who extensively utilise seeking weapons?

[cnuzzi]

That would affect tactics in a really weird way. It would basically become a big game of keep-away, since I assume that in most cases the seeker would head for the nearest target-of-opportunity. Bad idea, imho.

[xalansa]

ok thanks .I kinda figured it would have negative consequences yeah

[xalansa]

I have a similar kind of question with regards to direct fire.

When it's time for direct fire, all ships declare their target(s). (some ships might use the me too rule to wait to see if another ship is firing)

once all this is declared, a ship is picked and all it's firing is executed - damage noted on it's tagets.

then the another ship, maybe the ship that was just shot at.
And so on.

so my question is, similar to the drone question, in a farily large battle (maybe four ships a side) with lots of targets including drones and suicide shuittles, this procedure can take a while. How to folk go about keeping track of what was declared at the begging of the procedure? Does it all get written down? e.g. ship a is firing at ship b with these weapons and ship c with those weapons, b is fring at a with these and drone 1 with this etc

also, when do folk deduct the energy for shooting? at declaratioon or at the point of execution?

[mjwest]

To answer one specific question, the rules for Swarms can be found in Communique 128. The rule number is (4F6), as it is intended to be generally available to any seeking weapons, if desired, whether fired from fighters or ships.
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Federation Commander Answer Guy

[Mike]

Xalansa:

When I ran a large group we had a similar problem remembering everyone's fire orders so we created a set of cards for the various weapons. At the start of the scenario each player took the cards for his ship's weapons. During a big direct fire exchange, players would declare their fire and place those cards at the target ships. No one forgot.

It could all be written down, too, but that takes time.

We deducted the energy at the time of declaration.

As for changing the rules to allow seekers to go after whatever they want, whenever they want, I would say that should be a no-go. It would change the game entirely and probably upset play balance.

Since you are a new player, may I suggest putting in the time to gain experience with the game system before looking for ways to change the rules?

I hope all this helps!
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Mike

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Sandpaper gets the job done, but makes for a lot of friction.

[xalansa]

Sure, I've been playing since January, mostly 2 ship affairs, or 2 ships and a bunch of transports. First time trying something bigger and i realise i need a way to manage things better. Hence my questions. (i appreciate the game is not best suited to really big games , that's what actasf is for?)

I kind of figured a rules change to seeking weapons would probably umbalance things, as mentioned above. It's usually the way with war games as each unit and point cost is finely attuned to the fane environment, making rules changes near impossible. But it was worth an ask of the experienced

[Grimmshade]

For Direct Fire, we always deduct energy at declaration, then roll all the attacks and write down damage totals to the targets, then finally roll damage locations to all the targets.

Our biggest problem is we sometimes forget if a ship or drone/fighter/shuttle has moved if we have a lot of stuff moving all at once. Anyone have a good way to track that?

I did create a handy 4 sided sub-impulse counter with all the speeds and items (drones, MY drones, LY drones, fighters, etc.) that move on that pulse out of a Chessex dice container and some paper.