Re: Noble Armada

At 08:19 AM 8/1/98 , IronLimper@aol.com wrote:
>Has anyone bought or reviewed this space combat game for the Fading
Suns RPG?
>I just saw it in the store yesterday and apparently it is both a space
combat
>game and a boarding actions game. It includes aprox. 20 odd plastic
figs, but
>there were no pictures of them on the box. The price was $55.00. How is
the
>game, and is the company planning to bring out a line of ship figs?
Thanks
for
>any help.
>
>Don
> 
I picked this up at Origins after talking to the game designer and
playing
a demo.

Over in on the SF-Consimn List, they panned it mostly because the vector
movement in it is not a very good Newtonian system ("silly" is the word
they liked to use).  Personally, I found that little "silly" movement
system to be "fun" and added to the overall feel of the game.  I do have
an
idea to adjust the movement system into being more Newtonian-like, but
have
yet to play it that way.

As for the figs, they are fairly decent, with good detailing.  The only
"ugly" ship is really a combination tug and transport: it looks like a
hand-held vacuum cleaner.  One problem we have had is that the mounting
holes are the same size as the stand extension, we have broken off two
stands in those holes on two of the figures already.

They do plan on coming out with more figs, expanding the line into the
heavy cruiser and dreadnought classes.	These figures will be based for
two
and three hex stands, respectively.  (Oh, these are 1 inch stands, and
the
current figures are about 1" large.)

They also plan on coming out with Deck Plans (25mm scale) for the ships
as
well!  There are two sheets of deck plans included in the game, one for
each of two small ships (about 10man crews).  These deck plans are for
playing out the boarding actions with the Fading Suns Minis that are
coming
out, if you want more detail.
Now back to the game itself.  The rules are very simple, almost making
FT
complex in comparison!	Turns are done with a mini-impulse system of 4
phases per turn.  Each ship has maneuver thrusters that allow it to
change
heading.  Then there are the main engines which give movement thrust to
change speed in the direction you are heading.	Depending on what speed
you
are going in each phase, you get to move so many hexes (example, speed 4
=
1, 1, 1, 1; speed 6 = 2, 1, 2, 1; speed 9 = 2, 2, 2, 3).  You get to
fire
each system of weapons only once per turn (thus causing all sorts of
"wobbling" as you fire your port-side broadside, rotate for your forward
guns, then rotate again for your starboard-side broadside, then reverse
for
the next turn).  Firing is done by starting with the basic rating of the
gunners (say 12), then dropping that down by 1 for each full 4 hexes
away
the target is, and rolling a D20.  A 1 is always a hit.  A roll of
exactly
what you needed to hit is a critical.  A 20 always misses.

Another neat thing is that shields are very "Dune"-like; the fast you
go,
the less shields you have for protection.  So as shields suffer
burn-out,
ships have a tendency to slow down to bring the "reserves" back on line.
Shield burn-out also has the added effect on ship "wobbling" (there is a
shield for each hex-side) as ships try to protect and attack weaker
sides.

Now, boarding actions.	This is what drew my attention to the game in
the
first place (I'm quite happy with FT, I wasn't looking for a new Space
Combat game).  First step in boarding is to grapple the other ship. 
Then
you send your marines over to board.  Combat is very simple, for each
marine you have, roll a D20.  For each hit, remove an enemy marine.  The
side who takes more losses must retreat into another section.  When the
bridge is taken, the ship is captured.	There are limits to the number
of
marines that can leave a ship each phase, and a limit on how many
marines
can be in a ship location.

One problem we encountered:  When two forces, each with ships designed
primarily for boarding actions, mingle it up in one big grappled mess,
boarding actions can get a bit out of hand.  We had 6 ships all in a big
mess, with over 60 marines per side raising general havoc.  When it was
over, it was the marines that won.  Only two ships survived with their
bridge crews intact, most of the others having been run through back and
forth in the battle.

-JAG  (Hoping this wasn't too long nor too short, but probably wrong on
both counts)