Greetings all! After long last the Firestorm Armada Beta test is here. It began on the 9th of September and has already been revised a couple times after a slew of player feedback. I am not going to go real in depth into the rules as they are changing week to week, but I thought I would talk about some of the new mechanisms that make up the game. I would have gotten into things sooner than the end of the month, but I wanted to play some games and see some games played. I also wanted to chat with the group about the new version. Lets dive in
The first thing I have to say is that this version of FSA is very different than 2.0. Gone are hull points, DR and CR. What we have instead is a damage system that I have honestly not seen before. It is rather unique and in the michigan groups opinion needs some refienment. I know refinement will happen as we are very early in the beta, but I wanted to state the position currently held by members of the Michigan crew. If you have not been playing the beta I will do a quick run down of the way damage works.
Your weapon systems still have pools of dice that you roll to hit your target. The target number or TN to score a hit on the target is dependent on its Shields value. So if a battleship has a shield value of 4 you need a 4 or better to score a hit. Once you have determined the number of hits, you have to look at the armor value of the target. For each mulitple of the armor value you score a system damage, or get a system damage die. So if you have an armor value of 4 on a target and you score 12 hits you score 3 system damage, or rather get to roll 3 system damage dice. Once you roll the dice you look to see if any of the numbers match up. whatever the majority number is, is the type of system damage that is done. After repairs in the last phase of the game are complete, if you have a number of system damage types that exceeds the mass value of the ship, then that ship is destroyed. So if you have a mass 3 ship and it has 4 drive leak system damage results then it is removed from play.
Now at first glance this appears to be a little more complicated than the old system. It kinda is, but it seems to flow ok once you start playing more. The real difference with this system is that you can attempt to repair the damage at the end of the turn. This is a major change from 2.0. Once you hit the hull point limit that ship was gone right then and there.
Weapons have changed quite a bit. Firstly you have 6 arcs thanks to the new hex bases. Kinetic weapons, even after a couple tweaks are pretty deadly as they bypass shields and their to hit number is based on range to target. They can however be intercepted by point defense. The real killer though was they initially bypassed armor too so every hit was bascially a system damage. In version 3, weapons really do not have a range limit. Although weapons of the kinetic type have their to hit number go higher the farther a target is away they technically have no range limit. The only way a weapon has a range limit is if it has the Effective rule. Many of the special weapon types allow you to manipulate system damage die results.
Movement is pretty different in the new version as well. Ships are on hex bases as I previously stated. There is constatnt momentum as well. That means you must move a certain distance every time you move. That is you must move your current speed, which can be changed by using thrust. Every ship has a thurst value. You can modify your speed up to your thrust value. Constant motion or momentum is not a new concept in space based ship games. Ships have a turn limit, but in this version it is the number of turns you can make in a single movement. so if you have turn limit 5 you can make up to 5 turns along your movement path. The angle is smaller than 45 degrees as it was in 2.0 but the turning template is similar. It looks like an arch. There are some special movement rules that can come into play, but they have changed a bit between versions, so I am not going to talk about them quit yet.
Honestly you really need to read the beta rules. There is so much I could talk about. The one thing I wanted to talk about is how it compares, so far, to 2.0. This is a very different game. The names of the races are there and the name Firestorm Armada is on it, but it does not feel like old FSA as of yet. In fact it may never feel like the old game. I am ok with that. I know its early and I am giving it its fair shake, but you need to go into this with no preconceived notions. This is not 2.0 by any stretch. I have played a lot of games in my time and I have played games where an edition jump turned a game into somehting that was completly different. That is they built a system from the ground up and completly threw away the past edition rather than building on it. Right now thats what it feels like with FSA and that is ok. Sometimes you need a fresh start. I know a couple of the guys are turned off by the game after playing a couple times. It wasn't becasue of the things they are tweaking and refining either. It is becasue they are not having fun. They think the new core mechanisms take away from the game being fun. We are going to let the game get revised a couple more times and try again with them, but it worries me they may not be the only ones who feel the same way. Like I said you need to go into it with an open mind and no preconceived notions.
Like I said I am giving everything a chance and I am going to go on the journey to whereever the beta takes us. I love Firestorm Armada. I would have not been so involved in the Spartan days if I didn't. I want to rekindle that love again and I am hoping the new edition does that. All we have is rules right now, but I think things might pick up and excitement will be increased once we actually see some renders of models or models themselves. Afterall this is a miniatures game and we all want new shiney models.
Well that is all for now. I didn't want to nit pick stuff here. I have been doing that on the Facebook group. Next time I am probably going to be talking about the new edition of Infinity. N4 is out in PDF and the books are shipping. I have to wait for my book, as I cannot get the PDF to load on my tablet or cooperate when it does decide to load. Corvus Belli really needs to learn how to make an ebook or PDF that doesn't have to re render every time you go to the next page.
see you next time! as always
REMEMBER DRAMOS!
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