Firestorm Armadafall - First Impressions of FSAv3 (beta 0.02)

Well v3 is here and...I missed it...despite being on the Facebook group and subscribing to Warcradle's blog, somehow I missed any notifications of the release of the public beta for FSA v3. Unfortunate, but then both home and work life is still incredibly busy and stressful, so from my side not too bad...I just hope the buzz got around to more fans in a more comprehensive manner than for me. Anyway, I downloaded the rules and force lists and...with the caveat that whilst I haven't yet played a game, I have some initial impressions - some good, some bad...and maybe some ugly....

The Good

1) Well, a few things - the rules are free, available for everyone, and that's going to be true for the finished rules as it is for the beta - great to see and Warcradle are to be commended on this.

2) Next, the rules are BRIEF (at least for the beta) - just 22 pages, which includes 2 front sheets and a bunch of pictures, so the core ruleset is much slimmed down...of course this is a beta and I expect (and hope for - more on that in a minute) inflation come the final release, but it's a good intent.

3) More space FEEL...movement is now varied by thrust, meaning you have to slow as well as speed up, which is very Full Thrust like (without the insane algorithms!). I think this should give the game a more "spacey" feeling, and separates it from the naval-game-in-space that FSA has always been.

4) Fleet building uses a Helix system - I always liked the Helix system, it's a nice mechanic and has some good potential - the devil, of course, is in the detail...and that I've not delved into yet. Watch this space.

5) Turn structure - the turn structure has been altered, with some things (like SRS deployment and Cyberwarfare) now taking place for both players at the start of a turn. Whilst I think this is a good idea as a general statement, again the detail is important, and I have some reservations right off the bat here.

6) Tokens - there's less of them...Yay! Warcradle also provide PDF downloads of them - thanks, guys!

7) Linking - Now you have a secondary value in parentheses after your main weapon value for linking...something I and the group was working on before, so nice to see here - it provides much more flexibility in rules design and enables different implementation of different weapons, which leads to differences in how factions "feel", which is a good thing.

8) Boarding & SRS - Now both moved outside of the "core" of the turn, and addressed at the start and end instead - that's not a bad move at all. It's cleaner, stops a lot of shenanigans that could be pulled off before and will make turns (I think) a bit more strategic rather than tactical (meaning you'll have to plan more during your turn).

The Bad

I'll try to start small to larger as I see them.

1) Bases. OK, not really a bad, and I can almost feel the pushback here, but when I heard about the Hex bases I was sceptical but wanted to reserve judgement - after all, it didn't seem like a cash grab from Warcradle by the way it was introduced, so I imagined interesting new mechanics involving it....but no, unless I've missed something major here, it just complicates the firing arcs. Now I will say I can see some possibilities with this, but so far I don't see any real gameplay advantages.

2) Clarity. The beta rules may be brief, but they are NOT clear. Several areas need seriously re-writing and examples and pictures (like the old FSA rulebooks) would all help, especially for newcomers to gaming. This seems minor, but in fact it's massive, as if people can't get into the game quickly nowadays, they'll be onto something else - that was oine of the keys to X-Wing's success. However, this is in beta, so I expect this one to improve hugely prior to official release.

3) Initiative. I don't really get the mechanic, or what it adds to the game. The ability to reroll your lowest dice alternating each turn between players who lost the last initiative...ugh, what's the point? It's a minor thing, but it seems unnecessary complication for no real tactical effect. For me, if you can remove a rule and it makes no effect on the play experience, then it's superfluous.

4) SRS & Cyberwarfare. SRS needed sorting somewhat from v2, they were the most argued-about element in the game. Warcradle have massively simplified them...I think maybe too much. Now they're all just one thing, SRS take each other out 1 for 1...it just feels a bit too token-like rather than wargaming. It may be my personal feeling, others may like the simplicity, but I would have preferred at least an offensive and defensive type to give a bit more here. Cyberwarfare is (on the whole) improved I think in terms of the language and mechanics (I like the "casting" verb use), but I don't know why it needs to be resolved all at the same time...for me it could remain a discrete weapon system as before. 

5) Templates. In space. Ugh. Just, no. I could leave it at that, but it's not that helpful, so here's the extended piece. Templates mean you need things, more things is more complexity, templates are often hard to use, especially where models are on flight stands, and this really DETRACTS from the "spacey feel" - These templates would cover millions (or more) of cubic kilometers...<sigh>... I know we don't expect accurate physics, but this makes it feel MORE like a naval wargame (or even a ground wargame). It seems what Warcradle gives, Warcradle also taketh away....Also, there is STILL A TURN TEMPLATE! If there was one thing I was hoping for with the new Hex bases, it was the ability to do away with the need...that (to me) would be an excellent reason to change them...but no...it just seems like a missed opportunity.

6) Goodbye Weapon Types, hello Qualities. Oh dear. Weapon Types were one of the great improvements in FSA, and I didn't see any great call to change them., whereas Qualities are a Planetfall thing (which I'll address later too). The problem is twofold, that these "Qualities" now apply to everything, so instead of a weapon being "Kinetic" it now has the Kinetic Quality. That seems a small difference, but what that means is you end up with weapons with lots of qualities, rather than having a general "class" of weapons that you can then layer with other things if you want. That allows you to make some bulk changes to the type, or keep the rules separate, rather than having to look up the quality every time you need it. For example, a weapon with the Kinetic Quality;

"Target Number is determined by the distance between the Model with the Lead Weapon System and the Initial Target. Up to 5” the Target Number is 2. After each full 5” of distance thereafter the Target Number increases by 1, so an Initial Target 24” away would have a Target Number of 5." 

You have to look that up when you fire with that weapon, rather than having a set of ranges and values on your ship stats. Now, you may think that's a small thing, but you're reading this as a seasoned gamer. Now go and ask your 14 year old to explain it....see what I mean? 

The second thing is that this means weapons just have a single value, which limits design space - it makes me sad.

7) MARs...There are still more rules you can apply to things, such as Experienced Engineers, which means you get a lot of "stuff" on a stat card that is just words referring to other rules. No MAR bloat was a question in v2, but now with Qualities to content with as well....hmmm

8) Boarding - Yes I know I said there was good here, but also bad...the bad is the models need to be within 2" - just cram those models up on the table!

9) Faction Flavour. Yes, I know this is a reboot, but the two provided races for the beta are Dindrenzi and Sorylian....the Dindrenzi have shields and dorsal beam arrays, the Sorylians have things like "Broadside Particle Storm", which is a kinetic weapon (?). I hope they get good feedback from people in the beta. Yes, it's your universe Warcradle, but why change things like this? What does it achieve? Again, if it's not broken (or doesn't add anything new/exciting/interesting), then don't do it. Now if the rules NEED ships to have shields that's a different thing, and should either be covered in the fluff or thought about in the rules. Also, I don't know who is naming these things, but by god please change them - "Heavy Sunder Barrage"? Maybe it's just my filthy mind, but I immediately thought of a Sorylian after a particularly heavy curry night.... 

The Ugly

OK, here's were the crux of things lie for me....

1) There is an obvious and strongly present smell of Planetfall here, and Planetfall was a f*cking mess when Spartan folded. It was rushed out, not tested properly, imbalanced and more fluid than the alien in The Thing. Sure it was fun (at times, depending on which faction you were at which moment), and I have a massive amount of PF minis, but I'm not sure taking so much influence from it was/is such a good idea, compared to Firestorm which was stable and well developed with some flaws that needed fixing. If anything, Planetfall needed to take some tips from Firestorm more than the other way around (not that there wasn't good in there, and a union could have brought great things, if mixed in the correct ratios).

2) Does it feel like Firestorm anymore? This is the big one for me...I can play Planetfall if I want a hot mess of a game that's quick and dirty, I can play Full Thrust if I've a weekend free and I want to dust off my slide rule and scientific calculator. I can play X-Wing or Dropfleet for a space thrill, but I still have an FSA itch that isn't scratched. I'm not sure at the moment that this is it. Now that's fine, Warcradle said it was rebooting the game, and it's their IP now, they can do what they want with it, but I hope they do make it FEEL more like Firestorm than this first impression on reading through the rules gives me....I was very open to what Warcradle was going to bring us with what they'd already done with WWE, but...well, let me put it this way - I wasn't excited to break my models out to try the new rules, and that feels like a fail to me.

Summary

It's an open beta, and I suspect from Warcradle's other betas that it's going to be a reasonable length, which is good, because my overall impression from the release is a strong C- "must try harder" or "disappointing". There are some interesting things in there, for sure, but there are also a lot of things which seem retrograde and/or simply missed. Players of v2 had main themes of complaint;

1) Games took too long (I will caveat that this was biased towards NA player feedback), mostly due to movement, but also with things like opposed rolls in shields, PD etc. I can't comment on what the effect of the changes is here until I play, but I'm not sure games will be much shorter based on first read-through.

2) Movement - Which has changed, but still uses a template for turning, currently has abuse potential and I still don't see it being much quicker than before.

3) SRS - Which have now been simplified in a way that (for me at least) makes them seem much less interesting, though the core concept of moving them outside of the "core" of the turn is a good one.

4) Cyberwarfare and boarding - These were very "marmite" (people loved them or hated them). I think the boarding mechanics are interesting, and having a discrete boarding phase is not a bad idea at all (along with the SRS). I'm not sure that applies to Cyberwarfare, and we still have to see what the rules are for the effects of these. 

5) Difficulties in placing models, especially in the "knife fight" end stages of the game. I don't know if anything here addresses that, but certainly requiring boarding to be within 2" is NOT going to help.

So if I look here some of these have been addressed, but then other things have been introduced (like blast templates) that no one ever asked for and I don't think are a good addition to the game in any way, so I'm left scratching my head a bit with it all.

Now, I'm an evidence-based scientist at heart, and in experimental design you change one variable at a time - same with engineering and problem resolution, and a whole bunch of other things. I don't know if that's been applied here, but I'm not seeing the results I would expect had it been. Alternatively, you design a system from the ground up, and that doesn't seem to be the case either. What appears to have happened is a lot pf Planetfall (also know as Planetfail by many people because of the instability and unbalanced nature of the rules), with some Firestorm mechanics and a bunch of other things. Let's see what happens with all of that...