Hello once again! It has taken me far longer than I had anticipated, but I finally got around to this, the second installment of my comparison articles between BFG and FSA. If you recall from the first installment, I left off talking about moving and shooting and promised to continue with carrier operations and boarding in this post. So, lets dig right in!
Sci-Fi category Award Winner
Carrier Operations
In BFG, the small craft launched by carrier vessels are referred to as Attack Craft. They are represented by small 20mm square markers on the game board, and are placed in base contact when launched from their mother ship. The tokens can then move a given number of cm (generally 20-30) during each ordnance phase, including the opponent’s. This effectively means that attack craft get to move twice in each game turn. The total number of attack craft a player can have on the table at once is limited to the number of launch bays present in the fleet; ships with carrier capability have a set number of these launch bays listed on their profile, typically 4 for a cruiser-sized ship and 8 for a battleship. There are three basic types of attack craft in the game, including fighters, bombers, and assault boats. Fighters are able to eliminate other attack craft and torpedoes, but are expended as a result. Bombers are effective against ships, though there are a series of die rolls involved that make them somewhat unreliable. First, the attacking player rolls 1D6 for each bomber in the wave, and subtracts the number of defensive turrets on the target from each dice. So, if a ship has two turrets, I subtract two from each die result, ignoring any dice that go to 0 or a negative number. I then add the modified results, which gives me the number of dice I get to roll for my attack. I then roll this number of D6’s, looking to equal or exceed the target’s armor value. Even if I hit, my opponent may be on Brace for Impact special orders, which gives him a 4+ save against my hits. The good news is that my bomber strikes ignore shields. Assault boats are a bit more reliable, as they result in a critical hit if they survive the target’s defenses. This can very quickly result in a “soft kill” of a target, where it has plenty of hull left but is rendered combat ineffective by critical effects.
FSA’s carrier mechanics are very different. First of all, fighter-sized craft (called Short-Range Ships, or SRS) are required to remain within fairly close proximity of their mother ship. This distance is equal to the faction’s command distance, which is generally 6-8″. These SRS are represented by a single token on the board, which is activated with the mother ship. The basic types of SRS are Interceptors, Fighters, Bombers, Assault Craft, and Support Shuttles. Interceptors are strictly defensive, being effective against torpedoes, other SRS, and boarding. Fighters are a mix between Bombers and Interceptors, being able to effectively attack both ships and SRS. Bombers are slower than Fighters and Interceptors, but pack a heavier punch against ship models. Assault craft allow for boarding attacks against enemy models (as the name suggests), while Support Shuttles can assist friendly models by replacing lost crew or assisting in critical damage repair.
Between these two systems, I like BFG’s better, though by no means is the FSA system the worst carrier system I’ve ever seen (DW 1.0, I’m looking at you!). The fact that small craft in BFG can range all over the board is a huge plus in my book; I’ve found it difficult to effectively employ SRS offensively in FSA.
Boarding
In BFG, boarding is a somewhat perilous affair. First of all, ships have to be close. As in, base to base contact! Then, the attacking player has to announce their intention to board. The model initiating the assault is now focused entirely on the boarding action, and may not shoot or launch ordnance this turn. Each player then rolls 1D6 each, and adds a series of modifiers to that roll. They then determine the difference between their two totals. The player with the higher total wins, and the loser takes the difference in the two boarding rolls as hull damage. In addition, the players consult a table to determine if one or both sides takes a critical. If the attacker managed to roll poorly and wound up with a score significantly less than the defender, it is possible they could be hurt worse than their target! Likewise, it is possible for the defender to roll so poorly that an otherwise healthy ship is reduced to junk in a single round of boarding. There is no limit to the number of boarding assaults a model can attempt during a game.
In FSA, boarding assaults can be performed on enemy models that are within 6″ and have not been fired upon by the attacking model’s squadron during that turn. The attacking player first declares what major sub-system on the target model he is attacking, choosing between the Bridge, Propulsion Systems, Weapons Systems, Life Support Systems, and Defensive Systems. The defender gets to use it’s Point Defence weapons and onboard compliment of marines to try and defend against the assault. Nearby friendly SRS can add in their PD into this defense as well. The attacker rolls his dice, while the defender roll his, with the defense canceling the attacker’s hits for any hits he gets of his own (both players are looking for a 4+, with 6’s exploding). IF the attacker has any hits left after this process, the defending model takes one point of damage, and the attacker gets to roll 1D3 on the appropriate system chart to determine what other effects the boarding assault has (the minimum effect is a Hazard marker). Models in FSA can only conduct one boarding assault per turn, though the Second Assault MAR allows models to make two assaults (it’s a relatively uncommon MAR, however).
Overall, boarding assaults in BFG can be much more deadly than in FSA, but are more difficult to pull off and can be as dangerous to the model initiating the assault as they are to the target. FSA boarding actions do not have the potential risk to the model launching the assault, but can only be made once per game and are limited in how much damage they can do to the enemy.
Next time…
That will about do it for part 2 of this series! In Part 3, I will do a quick run-down in the difference between game concepts between FSA and BFG, before wrapping up with my final thoughts. Stay tuned!
And I’ll continue my rundown of how Star Fleet Battles works in comparison.
Carriers:
This is the point where SFB really stops feeling like Star Trek, but some early decisions in the game design made it inevitable.
Almost all ships carry a few shuttles, which can move at speed 6 (compared to the likely 12-24 for a lot of ships), and are outfitted with a low-power phaser, making them occasionally useful for point-defense.
Fighters are dedicated shuttles with speeds from 10 to 15. Later technology allows this to be doubled, but causes the fighter to take damage twice as fast. They generally have slightly better phasers and some form of ‘heavy weapon’, in most cases drones. The number of drones a fighter squadron can fire off can make a carrier battle quite tedious to track, and many people don’t bother with them much.
Dedicated carriers usually carry one squadron of 12 fighters, though there are lighter ones, and especially heavy carriers with more. Generally, only three squadrons are allowed on a side. There are also heavy fighters, with six per squadron, and fast patrol ships/gunboats, which are actually mini-starships (with shields and tiny SSDs), with six/flotilla.
Fighters are all rated for how much damage they can take, and their operations are generally just limited by taking damage and expending their heavy weapons (in the strategic game, Federation and Empire they can actually operate one hex away from their carrier, so a fighter squadron appearing without its carrier is legal). They can be recovered by the carrier, and re-armed and repaired (each weapon and point taking a turn), so a longer battle can see patched up squadrons launching for a second strike.
Boarding
There are a few ways to initiate a boarding action in SFB: You can fill a shuttlecraft with boarding parties, fly it over to an enemy ship, and crash it into that ship’s shuttlebay, where the boarding parties will disembark and start fighting (I have done this on an occasion or two). You can tractor a ship and force a docking with it, and have the boarding parties fight it out (this requires an immobile target, and generally doesn’t happen). Or, if the facing enemy ship’s shield is down, and he’s within 5 hexes, you can lower yours (both of these may have been helped along by weapons fire…) you can warm up the transporters and beam boarding parties aboard!
All ships are rated for how many boarding parties they start with (some can be killed by taking damage), and boarding party combat happens at the end of each turn, and uses a fire table and d6 to generate casualties. You can take a control station (bridge, etc.) by doing less damage, and the enemy can voluntarily give up control stations to take fewer casualties. If all operating control stations pass to the boarders, then he’s captured the ship (from an operations standpoint), and has some limited control over it (such as preventing self-destruction).
An alternative is the hit and run raid which beams a boarding party to a particular box on the enemy ship in an effort to destroy it. The other ship can guard boxes with boarding parties, but they’re not available for regular boarding party combat that turn.
Hit and runs can be important (and can hit things that weapons fire normally can’t, like a cloaking device), but chancy. Boarding parties are slow, and getting enough troops over to a ship is a problem, though Klingons tend to have more transporters, and Gorns usually carry shuttles that are better for troop transport. There is also a more detailed optional system that breaks ships up into sections, and define what is where, so enemy boarding parties can strike directly at the engineering area, for instance, instead of the usual all-or-nothing of ‘control’; but I have yet to try them out.