Patrick v. said: How does Acta compare to SFB? No one if their sane mind would call SFB "fast paced", of course, but it need not be crippling. On the other hand, it does have a pretty significant complexity, to the extend that I'm somewhat worried over ring-rust where the rules are concerned. Guess I'd better allocate some energy to my plasmas. Can't be too sure these days! So now I've got more time. Like mentioned acta uses a sublicence of the sfb licence and was originally from mongoose publishing. It uses a regular turn mechanic. Thus both players roll for initiative and the winner moves 1 ship/squadron first and fires. Then the other player moves one of his until both are finished and the next turn starts. The game itself is less complex than sfb but still has a high complexity. Ships have 1 shield value and one hull hp value (although criticals can occur on specific dice rolls....there is not an: everything has its own hp). Furthermore instead of allocating energy points you have 1 single special order a ship/squadron can take per turn which has special effects and downsides (often a crew quality check determines if the action is successful or not): Overloading weapons (automatic): You overload the weapons that are counted as heavy (example photon torpedoes but not plasma torpedoes). This doubles their damage scores if they are used within 6'' of an enemy. The downside is that you need to choose from 1 of 3 possible downgrades when you use a special action: Reduced speed, only phasers can fire, or all but phasers can fire. On the note of speed: There is no acceleration or decelleration. Instead you can move up to you maximum (each ship has a different one) per turn. For weapons as example phaser 1s usually have a range of 18 and special rules at a range of up to 8 and have accurate and precise and usually give 2 attack dice (AD) . A constitution class cruiser has 3-4 of them (depending on configuration/upgrade). Each 4+ on an attack roll (1d6 each) is 1 point of damage. A heavy cruiser can often survive up to 24 shield damage and a bit over 30 hull damage. Got further questions there?
