The Shipyard: Brakiri Patrol Ships for A Call To Arms

    One of my biggest complaints with regards to A Call to Arms is that some factions are well rounded while others have gaps. The Brakiri for example have no official ships at Patrol level (Fleets and Powers & Principalities), only fighters, and this means in a campaign setting there are certain missions at lower priorities that they simply cannot ever hope to win as attacker or defender. While I accept that the different factions should have strengths and weaknesses, not being able to even have a chance at winning certain missions is a major oversight. Thankfully, there is plenty of material in Babylon 5 Wars (B5W) and various unoffical expansions for ACTA to draw from, and that is what I'm going to do.

    There are no guidelines to designing ships in ACTA and the power curve is logarithmic with no granularity. For that reason I've had to look through the various Patrol choices and select 2 that under no circumstances can my ships be better than. Those choices are the Centauri Kutai, and the ISA Blue Star.

My pick for second best Patrol choice in ACTA

    The Kutai is an absolute beast of a ship, sporting incredible firepower, very respectable speed and agility, and is reasonably tough. there is very little that can threaten it. Its weaknesses are that it concentrates most of its firepower forwards as do most centauri ships, and it is vulnerable to fighters since it lacks Anti-Fighter

One of the best skirmish ships in ACTA, and its a patrol choice

    The Blue Star is frankly ridiculous for a patrol choice. It is incredibly fast, incredibly agile. very tough with a combination of high dodge and adaptive armour. it lacks Anti-Fighter like the Kutai, but it can outrun almost every single one in the game, and it is very well armed. Quite how any patrol or skirmish ship is supposed to beat it, i do not know. The only vulnerability it will have is energy mines since it has low armour. 

With those benchmarks set, lets get onto (re)designing some Brakiri Patrol ships.

Kabrik

A very handsome little ship

    The Kabrik Police ship is, as it's name would suggest, a police ship, so in addition to being a choice for the Brakiri fleet, you can also take it as a police ship in certain scenarios. The Ship itself is fragile but packs a punch, and also has a lot of utility since it carries a breaching pod. this isn't as useful as a fighter flight, but it can prove to be a nasty surprise if its unexpected. It is somewhat excessive for a single Patrol choice since, while it by no means can match a Kutai or Blue Star, even on a very very good day. You get do get 2 of them, and 2 should be able to match a Kutai if you are a good player on a good day, but against a Blue Star, you will still likely be out of luck. In most other cases, the combination of excellent firepower combined with numbers means that I think the ship needs to be brought down a little so it isn't oppressive.

    The first thought I had was to reduce the offensive power by lowering the number of AD on both weapons by 1 each. this will still give a potent punch when combined, exactly matching the Ikorta with 2 Grav Cannon and 6 Graviton Pulsar shots for a single Patrol choice (on par with the Kutai) but lacking anything resembling any defensive ability other than the higher than average (for Brakiri) speed, and the excellent agility. I've named this the Kabrik-A.

The second idea, and my favourite is to buff the ship, and take it as a single patrol ship, the Kabrik-B. This is simply increasing the damage and crew, and adding Anti-fighter 1. It's a police ship, its not supposed to engage real warships, and the biggest danger it would likely face is raider fighters. The anti-fighter gives it a very decent chance against raider fighters, and it can out run any raider fighter it can't use anti-fighter against.

Tobrik

This is an escort carrier from Babylon 5 Wars, and is in essence simply a Kabrik that swaps the Breaching pod for a flight of fighters and the Grav Cannon for a Medium Laser, but I think this might be a bit excessive for a patrol choice. The Earth Alliance Tethys does something similar but has a slow loading weapon, but you get 2 of them for a single patrol point. For now I will give it a single shot medium laser since the breaching pod is slightly more expensive than a Falkosi, but this may change after playtesting either upping to 2 shots, or swapping for the Grav Cannon.

Rakarta

Awaiting a coat of paint, these are very good looking mini Ikortas

    The other Patrol choice that you can take is the Rakarta. It appears in the Dilgar war by Charles Lister and is, as presented, a scout at Patrol level. that is all it really has to recomend it to anyone. Scouts can be very useful and a force multiplier, but in my mind, it doesn't really 'fit' the Brakiri way of doing things. Its putting a lot of very expensive equipment on a very fragile hull. So I've redesigned it to more closely match the B5W version. In B5W the Rakarta is in many ways just a smaller Ikorta. It has the same engine performance and is equipped in a similar fashion with Grav cannons and Graviton Pulsars. What it is not is an assault ship so has far fewer troops. I decided to keep the same hull move and turn values, and reduce the offensive output. 2 Rakartas will outgun an Ikorta, but a single Rakarta will lose to a Kutai, and the aforementioned Ikorta is not a dedicated warship, its designed to land troops on the ground in the face of resistance. 

    The Rakarta does lack grav shields in B5W, but as no other ship in the Brakiri roster has dodge, I decided to give it Interceptors to give it a slight boost to its resilience, and in keeping with other Pri-Wakat ships, it also has Anti-fighter. I think that this gives a good contrast between the Kabrik-B and the Rakarta. The Kabrik is faster, more agile and has more utility, but the Rakarta is tougher and has more overall firepower but similar firepower in the most favourable arc, forwards.

    Next time I will be looking at Ikorta Variants, there are plenty of different versions in B5W and one of them made it into the Dilgar war expansion.

Let me know what you think. How would you design the ships? do you think they are overpowered, underpowered, or just right?

Thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.

STL's by Tyrel Lohr
AI Art by IMG2GO.com