Federation Commander

OK. w/o going into the specifics of the "tweaks" - a new revision of heh playtest rules came out Friday afternoon. We didn't have time to fully digest it as our session was scheduled for a 6:00 p.m. start time and we all had the rule revison released on Tuesday.

We played six games of ACTA: SF between 6 and 11. Each was 3 Fed ships versus 3 Klignon ships. The game between the two totally green players took about 1 1/2 hours to play out (between explaing the rules before hand and answering questions during).
Most of the other games took roughly 1 hour.

The big surprise of the night was the game between myself and Merl DeWitt. We both have played several games of ACTA: SF now and feel like we know the system fairly well.
Our game was a Federation CA, CA, and CA versus a Klingon D7, D7, and D7C. The game went 4 complete turns before we called it. It took 47 minutes, from first roll for intitiative to my final, "Good Game"
During that 47 minutes, Two Klingon vessels were blown-up and the third suffered enough damage that it would have been killed before leavig the map in Turn 5, so I conceded. In addition, the Federation had two ships crippled and the third damaged.

All of the changes from the previous draft worked to speed the game. Merl and I still were required to consult the rulebook a couple of times. There were instances where we knew a rule had changed from the previous draft, but couldn't remember exactly how it had changed.
The next game between he and I should be over in 30 minutes if only 3 ships as we'll have to consult the rules even less.

Changes in the movement rules (specifically rate of turn) made explanations to the new players easy. Durign play, the turn action was intuitive; and the Klingon ships were almost always able to turn insode the Federation ships.

Changes to the Special Actions gave you more control over how your ship will react to the power expenditures required by the various special actions.

Changes to the drone rules cause them to mimic the end result of a SFB turn of drone launch/movement w/o he detailed rule minutia present in that game.
Drones are quick and painless... at least in a Fed / Klingon game.
Our next game will be Kzinti versus someone so we can determine how they work with massive numbers of drones on the table.
Anti-Drone changes made them simpler as well. Drones are still combat effective weapons - just not the rulers of the battlefield like they were before.

and so on...

And before anyone accuses me of forgettign to provide a playtest report...
6 Games,
18 Federation ships
18 Klingon ships.

During the course of the games, 15 Klingon ships exploded and 4 Federation ones; although 10 or so other Fed ships were crippled.

So, I counted for 3 of the dead Feds?

Only because John wouln't admit the game was lost and disengage to try again later.

And actually, that means 5 Federation ships were destoryed. I thought one of John's survived.

Klingon and Kzinti games this time.
500 point games to start with.
First off: 1 game went 6 turns and the second (after swapping sides) went 7 turns. Both games completed in under 1 hour.
The new seeking weapon rules really worked well.
w/o giving anything away... the first two turns were the Kzinti trying to overwhelm the Klignon anti-drone defenses. Regardless of how well you are defended, eventually one of your anti-drone launchers will run out of ammunition.
Until that point, the Klingons seemed to rule the board. Once the first ADD ran dry, things began to shift and the Kzinti seemed to have the upper hand.
In the end, each empire won one of the games.

Next up was a 1500 point Klingon versus Kzinti game. This game ran 8 turns and took less than 90 minutes to play out.
With the new rules for drones, an increase in drone bombardment ships does not necessarily mean an increase in resolution time; or at least not a significant increase.

Out next games will be Fed / Gorn / Romulan to try out the Plasma Torpedo rules again.