The Shipyard: Ikorta Variants for A Call To Arms

    Last time I looked at Brakiri Patrol level ships. Today I'm going to be going over some variants of the Brakiri Ikorta that first appeared in Babylon 5 Wars (B5W). My reason for this is that while some factions have fully rounded rosters with lots of ships for players to choose from, others, such as the Brakiri are not so fortunate. The challenge is to design ships that fit the character of the race in question while not being overpowered and overshadowing the existing official ships that appear in the 2nd edition fleets list and Powers and Principalities. I aim to create options, not auto includes.

    As before, I have selected some ships from various fleet lists as benchmarks. The ships are the Centauri Vorchan, and the Earth Alliance Artemis Heavy Frigate. In my opinion, both these ships are at the top of the power curve when it comes to Skirmish priority ships, with the Vorchan just edging the Artemis into second place.

    The Artemis is reasonably fast, agile, powerfully armed, and has decent defenses. It is somewhat vulnerable to beam weapons with its fairly low damage capacity, but it makes up for this by having good interceptors and excellent anti-fighter. Where it shines is in the armament, It has a staggering 16 AP Double Damage shots. These are divided between all its various arcs, but if you can get it into position it can seriously damage numerous enemy ships. and the range is a fairly respectable 12" as well. 

    The Vorchan is a very fast, very hard hitting ship. It falls behind the Artemis in total number of shots with a mere 12 Double Damage attacks, but in keeping with many Centauri ships all its firepower is focused forwards. This gives it, in a single arc, more than double the firepower of the Artemis. The trade-off for the speed and firepower is any kind of defense. Fighters will tear it to pieces, and incoming fire cannot be avoided except by not being there. It can be assisted by the Maximus, but it will often outrun what is probably the best escort ship in the game as it is almost twice the Maximus' speed. It also has access to the Hunting pack rule meaning it can often outrange enemy ships when you may think it won't.

With the benchmark set, lets get into it:

The Ikorta

An Ikorta and Brikorta

The Ikorta is probably the single best assault ship in the game. It's role is to get the largest number of troops possible on to a planets surface as quickly as possible. It is well defended with a reasonable pool of hitpoints, has Interceptors and antifighter, and is supreme at assaulting planets since it is atmospheric, and unlike many other assault ships who have to use shuttles, it can land all its troops in one go. The troops also give it the ability to board enemy ships if given an opportunity and has an excellent chance of being able to overpower the crews of most enemy ships. No other Skirmish ship can boast the number of troops It has, and many Battle level ships only have about half the number of troops the Ikorta does.

The Premier Assault ship

This comes at a price, the ship is not the most agile with a single turn, and fairly poorly armed. 

These factors alone are not the reason for the variants, but they are, background wise, the foundation. Troops and equipment require space, lots of space, and if they weren't there, you could probably fit lots of other things in there instead, like, weapons, or extra sensors?
It was also well positioned to become very important during the Dilgar War. In that conflict, the Dilgar very nearly overcame the Brakiri, and devastated the orbital shipyards around Brakir. The Ikorta, being an atmospheric craft, could be built on the surface and then launched into space, unlike the Larger Brakiri ships, and this is exactly what the Brakiri did. The other variant included in the official rules is the Brikorta, a decent, but not terribly inspiring light carrier. It trades the troops and a little firepower for 4 flights of fighters. a lot of Patrol ships outgun the Brikorta handily.

Calorta-class ELINT cruiser

The Calorta in company with a Shakara

The Calorta trades troop carrying capacity and the long range firepower for Scout and Stealth. The original ACTA rules appeared in 'The Wave' by Richard Bax and were tailored for the weapons the Brakiri had at the time of the Dilgar war, The Graviton Bolt. The supplement does provide guidelines on how to convert ships back and forth, but this resulted in the ship having 8 forward firing Pulsar shots. I reduced this to 6 so it was more in line with the Shakara scout. Compared to the Shakara, the Calorta has better defenses, comparable firepower, worse stealth and is generally a little more survivable, but it lacks the Comms disruptor which makes the Shakara such a good ship. I think it makes a decent alternative, but if you are planning on taking the Haltana in numbers, the Shakara will probably remain the choice to take.

Drikorta-class power cruiser

The Drikorta appears in B5W Ships of the fleet and is essentially an upgunned Ikorta. Rather than having a mixed armament the Drikorta has a uniform main battery of Pulsars. I simply doubled the shots. In B5W the Drikorta trades troop carrying capacity for more power generation in the freed up space. 12 AP shots may seem like a lot, but the ship still has the same handling characteristics, and the shots are still single damage. It outguns the Artemis in a single arc, but otherwise the Artemis has superior all round firepower, and the Vorchan has double the forward firepower. It does outgun the Haltona when firing at targets in the forward arc on turns when the Haltonas main weapon is recharging, but only the forward arc, and the Haltona is far more agile.

Halikorta-class escort cruiser

Another ship from B5W, this one by Fred Moehrle. The Halikorta, given its in service date was likely a response to the Halik using a reliable hull design. It has extra Anti-Fighter and Escort, but it falls far short of being as good in that role as the Halik. It is cheaper though being a Skirmish choice and like  the other ships in the yard today, it gives up its troops. I buffed the forward pulsars slightly since i was giving up the Grav Cannon shots and escort, while very useful, is a lot more niche than the scout on the Calorta. It's probably a better escort than the Artemis Escort Frigate, but that ship has more, shorter ranged, firepower.

The only other variant I have converted to ACTA is the Shokan Areko, but i'm going to leave that for when I write some background material on 'the totally not funded by Resha-Kar' Shokan group

I hope you enjoyed the article, and if you use any of the ships in your games, please let me know what you think. Are they a hit or a miss.

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


STL's by Tyrel Lohr
AI art by IMG2GO.com
Thanks to Richard Bax and Fred Moehrle for their B5W contributions on which these ships are based