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I have seen it time and time again: a player moves their action then proceeds to spend the next ten minutes performing 3-5 actions in a single round, bogging down the game and perform every single crewmembers action in a single turn. The ship ends up with a target lock, a scan, a Battle Stations, 5 evade dice (original agility 1), and attack value of 9 dice.

Am I alone in thinking a cap of 3 actions (1 normal, two free) is reasonable?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but there are far to many ways to get free action in this game. It is especially too easy to have TL & BS on every roll.

I think it is reasonable to only have two actions. (1 norm, 1 free) per round. our group isn't that big so we don't have the issue of people being s d**ks

Faction pure plays a lot into it also. The feds can stack lots of actions but the other factions aren't doing it too often beyond two. The big issues come in when you have Picard, Spock, Dukat, Martock, Borg Queen flying together in various fashions.

I always thought it would have been interesting to have a number of actions set for the turn and you decide how to pass them out among the fleet.

We only play faction pure, with the house rule of if a faction has 3 or fewer hull types, its is lumped into Independent (so Species 8472, Vulcan, and Fergengi are all Independent).

Our problem is we only recently added the Dominion in, so the free action combos were solidly all Federation. The guy who typically did it constantly argues that the Federation NEEDS all of those free actions, and the crew buffs allowing an agility two ship to throw five defense dice, because the ships suck...

I quietly remind him that I routinely kick his ass by running Federation swarms.

I HATE that the Federation ships are capable of throwing up to 7 defense dice with rerolls. Its insane. and the fact that you have one ship activating 5 different special abilities in a single round is ridiculous...

Capt. Picard in the starter set was the largest and biggest mistake of STAW. Slightly less was the Borg Tactical Cube.

Action economy is a big deal when you are running only 2-3 ships. At least one of those ships probably has 6 attack dice, and you want it to convert, and you want it to be able to hit outside your fire arcs (or maneuver the ship in such a way that opposing ships are in your fire arcs). I'm seeing a lot of one big ship, one medium/small support ship, and one tiny ship full of Romulan Cloaked Mines, and somehow a Fighter Stack is squeezed in the list too.

The action loops are nothing new. One only has to look back to the days of Weyun/Varel to see how busted they where.

An easy fix for Picard is to make it so that his ability only goes off if the ship has the action as well.

And despite how great he works, I don't see anyone run him much locally. I use him more than anyone else, and its mostly because of how everyone on here feels about him.

The borg tactical cube isn't that broken aside from speed in my opinion. Its one of the only ships that matches the actual on screen representation. It's not too powerful, and not over powered.

I am happy to see that I'm not the only one calling BS on the infinite loops...

I don't as many of him as I used to, but I have been to events where 8 out of 10 players had him. Now days at least one player will have him.

Personally I would like to see official OP play go to Faction Pure Fleets or an increase in the penalty. 3 points seems reasonable to me. Feds, Klingons, Romulans, Dominion, Borg, MU, and Independents all have plenty to play faction pure fleets. Kazon and Vulcans are on the cusp and could do ok with the right scenario. Species 8472 will be getting a second ship soon so I think they will be ok, 3 of the generics can do surprisingly well. Bajorans and Ferengi arenon the outside looking in right now. However Ferengi have a new ship next month which may give a big boost. I also still think 5-6 interceptors with Phaser Strike could do well in faction pure.

The Bajorans have alot of different ships at this point, and DS9. They are pretty solid looming from some one who has none (I am admittedly not the best choice for expert opinion). The Fergengi could use a few more hull types, even dling the route of the klingons where two classes have identical minis.

If you put 3 Bajoran Malitia on DSP it gets up to 8 attack dice and that isn't anything to laugh at.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
If you put 3 Bajoran Malitia on DSP it gets up to 8 attack dice and that isn't anything to laugh at.

Sure it is! DS9 still has a very, very bad maneuver dial, and only has 8 shields/8 hull, making it slightly better then a Tactical Cube. If you treat it like any other big ship in the game, it becomes a way less attractive thing to take in a game.

Now, that's if you are being all competitive and such. For just having fun? Yeah, DS9 with Bajoran Militia makes me giggle.

DS9 doesn't need a very dynamic dial due to the fact that its base is soo big. It is taking up a huge chunck of real estate. It does about all you need it to, forward, diagonal, spin, and the all important full stop. The only real drawback if defense, but there are some things you can pull off with shuttles to help with that. It isn't game changing, but certainly playable.

And it's tournament Legal. I can tjink of at least one previous OP where DS 9 would have been a beast.