PC scale High Guard combat

[Ptah]

Sigg, this is great.

far-trader wrote:

Hmm, modelling vector movement with range bands, never thought of it quite that way, interesting. You've put a picture in my head of a very simple way of modelling 3D vector movement for multiple elements, now who has a hammer to beat it out of my skull

far-trader, how about this. I've tried something similar to what Sigg suggests (yet like all things Sigg he has the details nicely worked out) here's a 3D approach. I set the PC ship at the center of a piece of paper with range bands emanating in 4 or 6 directions from this center. In the case of 4 bands, each represents an axis of a tetrahedron, in the case of 6 bands each represents an axis of a cube. With 6, the center can be a hex and the hexes emanating from it the bands. This also places the PC at the center of all the action

I vastly prefer 6 as it is easier to visualize and perform movement. So the following will be addressed to the 6 band case. Movement is relative to the PC ship, so you can use Sigg's movement mechanic, e.g., as follows. The party which loses initiative moves first.

If the PC loses initiative:
The PC moves all the NPC ships on one axis up to the PC's ships movement rate (this represents the PC moving along this axis). Trigonometry is then used to move ships along any other axis (a table is very handy for this and readily made). The formula is if I move a distance Z along one axis (+Z) the distance X along an axis in plane perpendicular to Z is now Xnew = SQRT(Z^2 + Xold^2). Ships on the oppositie axis (e.g., -Z) receed a distance Z. The NPC then moves his ship (if he wishes). If the NPC does not wish to change range or only a little bit, well that extra movement can go to agility. This is the advantage of gaining initiative.

If the PC wins initiative
The NPC moves all their ships. The PC then moves all the NPC ships on one axis as above if the PC so desires. Otherwise the PC can channel unused movement to agility.

Comments?

 

[The Oz]

That's similar to a 2D system I used, where the PC ship stayed in the center of a set of concentric rings representing the range bands, with each range circle being sub-divided into smaller, sorta wedge-shaped compartments. The outer range circles had more compartments than the inner circles.

If the PC ship turned to face right, all the other ships were rotated to the left and vice versa. If the PCs moved forwards, all other ships moved "aft" one space, etc, etc. After the PCs moved then the other side could move their vessels.

The idea was to have sort of a "radar scope" view that was always centered on the PC ship.

 

[far-trader]

Thanks for the insights Sigg, Ptah, and Oz. They do help, if only to keep me thinking about it. I was stuck and had moved it to subconscious solving. One day it will just be. Or not. But more often be than not. Does anybody else's brain work that way

 

[mike wightman]

To make my suggested system 3d I'd either use a coloured die next to the ship to represent distance above/below the plane - e.g. a red d20 for above, a black d20 for below.
If you don't want to use dice as markers, then just record the number on a piece of card/paper next to each ship.

Simple trig gives you true distance between objects - or you can simplify if you wish to.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Here are the damage tables reduced to the LBB2 2d system, with bits borrowed from HG version 1:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">2d6 Surface Radiation Internal
roll explosion damage explosion
2 fuel weapon crew
3 weapon weapon power plant
4 fuel screen jump
5 weapon crew power plant
6 fuel computer screen
7 weapon weapon computer
8 maneuver computer jump
9 maneuver computer screen
10 misc. screen critical
11 interior crew critical
12 interior crew critical</pre>

[/quote]Hmmm... What about losing hull integrity (that is, losing internal pressure)? And what about onboard small craft - could they be hit if the mothership gets hit?

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:

Success on improvement can give you EITHER +1 to hit on the combat roll OR +1 hex to your range; short goes to 6 and long to 16. Success on spoofing can give you EITHER a -1 to hit on all of a single enemy's attacks OR -1 hex to a single enemy's range.

What about anti-missile ECM-work?

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:

Pilot- pilot, bonus to agility

Computer Operator- computer, bonus to computer
or penalty to
enemy computer

What about pilots rolling skill checks (UGM tasks in my variant) when trying to evade an enemy or to pursuit an enemy?

And what about sensor rolls to detect stuff in the system, done by the Navigator (Computer Operator on bigger ships)?

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
PC scale High Guard design ships can't put turret weapons in batteries, but they can use heavy turrets, light barbettes and barbettes to increase their weapon factors.

Why have no batteries of turrets? Batteries would make combat far easier for, say a 1,000-dton PC ship (think Leviathan or Kinunir).

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Employee 2-4601
Hmmm... What about losing hull integrity (that is, losing internal pressure)? And what about onboard small craft - could they be hit if the mothership gets hit?

Good questions.
The High Guard damage chart doesn't really deal with such things - I produced a hybrid LBB2/HG chart once.
An internal hit result on the surface explosion table should definitely be a hull breach.

Small craft are only hit as a result of a critical, althogh a miscellaneous result could be added to the internal table - much like it was in High Guard first edition (whose damage charts I prefer in many ways).

What about anti-missile ECM-work?

This is subsumed within the bonus to effective computer model which affects the missile's to hit chance and penetration roll.

What about pilots rolling skill checks (UGM tasks in my variant) when trying to evade an enemy or to pursuit an enemy?

Not a feature of High Guard directly, but I do include it in my combat system.
In High Guard it is represented by the agility bonus.

And what about sensor rolls to detect stuff in the system, done by the Navigator (Computer Operator on bigger ships)?

Again, not something that's part of High Guard - or Mayday for that matter.
A decent sensor system is another one of those holy grails of mine.

Why have no batteries of turrets? Batteries would make combat far easier for, say a 1,000-dton PC ship (think Leviathan or Kinunir).

Because I don't like the way High Guard handles batteries - the hit and penetration bonus is fair enough but what about the number of hits caused?
How come a factor 9 laser battery inflicts 9 hits on a black globe but only 1 on a ship?
I prefer a statistical method for lots of turrets firing - we came up with a fairly good one a few weeks ago.
Here it is.

 

[BillDowns]

Sigg, I don't understand your criticism of HG.

A battery hits once but there may be up to 3 damage rolls depending on the type of weapon. A nuke missle, for example will get a roll on the surface table and 1 on the radiation damage. Spinal mounts get a extra rolls on each table; presumably to reinforce their importance.

On the Black Globe issue, I have never liked it, but I still don't understand what you are saying. A Black Globe hit is still 1 hit regardless of the factor that hits it. Now, a factor 9 battery will transfer more energy to capacitors than a factor 5 battery.

Please explain, I am really interested.

 

[mike wightman]

A factor 1 laser battery hits a ship. It causes 1 damage roll.
It hits a black globe, it causes the black globe to absorb 1 EP - I guess I'm equating 1EP to 1 damage roll.

A factor 9 laser battery hits a ship and causes 1 damage roll, if it hits a black globe the globe absorbs 9 EPs. So 9 EPs have the same damage potential as 1 EP?

I can understand the grouping of weapons to increas your chance to hit, but they should do more damage too IMHO.

Then how come a drive 1 hit on a 100,000t ship is the same as a drive 1 hit on a 1000t ship?

And my biggest complaint about High Guard is how pathetic the missiles are compared with LBB2, Mayday, and especially SS3.

 

[Dom]

The main handwave I could see is that although you get an increased number of shots (and better hit chance) you may not get as many damage rolls because those extra-shots only increase the hit likelihood.

Of course, as you increase the number of shots inevitablely you'll do more hits (or more damage to a single system)?

Needs some thought...

 

[BillDowns]

Sigg, my thought train leads me to this conclusion:

if you have 1 or 30 lasers firing at a target, being aimed by a Predict program, then the odds of hitting the target should be the same. It is a battery fire after all. So the difference between the 1 and the 30 should be the amount of damage caused, after penetration. Shouldn't it?

 

[aramis]

Actually, Bill, it varies widely.

If one is doing saturation fire solutions, the cross-sectional-area of the current profile is the important figure. You have a certain level of uncertainty; to wit, in Traveller, for Lasers: 25*(G^2)*Pi*Dls^4 square meters. You need to put shots every sqrt(Acsa) meters. This all simplifies to 25*(G^2)*Pi*Dls^4/Acsa shots per assured hit. (Dls is distance in LS, Acsa is Area, cross-section-apparent) This nearly guarantees a single hit. Predict narrows this down a bit, and continuing observation can as well, but its the basic physics of lasers. It's also ignoring the movement of the targeting circle, but that's a minor bit.

at ranges less than 0.1LS, yes, the battery should do much more damage with similar to-hits, since the apparent area is is seldom moving more than the length of the ship.

At one shot per laser per 6 sec, that gives 1000/6 shots per CT turn: 166 shots... so that laser is probably hitting multiple times. But at longer ranges, or higher G's and small ships, it adds up REALLY fast.

(These calcs are pased upon the POD formulae for S&R, BTW...)

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
I can understand the grouping of weapons to increas your chance to hit, but they should do more damage too IMHO.

Sigg,

Grouped weapons do cause more damage. You're forgetting critical hits.

And my biggest complaint about High Guard is how pathetic the missiles are compared with LBB2, Mayday, and especially SS3.

It's a trade-off. 'Vanilla' missiles and SS3 missiles in LBB:2 and Mayday need to maneuver, have limited gee ratings, and limited endurance. Fire missiles in LBB:3/Mayday on the wrong vector or at the wrong time or at the wrong target and you've just thrown them away.

OTOH, missiles in HG2 are automatically given at least a chance to hit their target no matter what. And missiles gain TL bonuses relatively early in the HG2 'tech tree' too, making those all important critical hits easier to generate.

Critical hits are just as important, if not more important, in 'PC-scale' ship battles as they are in 'IN-scale' battles. And 'PC-scale' is what this thread is all about.

From a game design perspective, I can understand and even admire the decision to 'fold' the idea of extra damage from weapons groupings (i.e. batteries) into a single critical hit die roll. It speeds play for one thing, do we really want the roll 9 times to see if every 'tube' in those three triple laser turrets hits? And then nine more times for penetration? And then damage? Matching the battery's USP code to the target's USP size and rolling the crits generated is much faster.

Crits change space combat in exciting ways too. In Mayday/LBB:2 the Vargr corsair isn't that scary, certainly not scary enough to live up to its reputation and the PCs will be tempted to fight one in their Beowulf or Marava.

In HG2, that corsair is going to land THREE crits on the PCs Beowulf or Marava EACH time it's USP factor 5 laser battery hits and penetrates. The same battery will land ONE crit each time it does the same to a TYpe-R.

There's the extra damage you're looking for!


Have fun,
Bill

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Doesn't a high factor X battery cause critical hits in HG combat as they do in MT ?
In MT a battery with a high factor is likely to reduce small ships to dust quite quickly.
This makes the TU a very dangerous place for unamoured small ships and perhaps creates some brutal moments for typical player ships.

Anyway a high factor increases both, chances to hit and chances to penetrate possible defenses.

Sigg, regrading the drive hit effect on a 100dton or 100000 dton ship. Thats truly a kind of weakness of combat abstraction. Aramis pesonal space combat variant might help here.
Personally I just consider the drive to be a very sensible component, which is damaged completely even if just a small part of it is destroyed.

Regards,

Mert

 

[Whipsnade]

Why do I even bother to post?

 

[mike wightman]

 

[mike wightman]

Hi Bill.

I hadn't really thought about the critical hit rule for PC scale - good catch

I agree that the critical hit extra damage will be a factor for the PC level game - which is one of the reasons I've limited the battery to single turrets
You can still get the larger battery sizes by installing bays instead.


Somehow I got sidetracked into explaining some of my dislikes for standard High Guard - in my example above I used 1000t and 100000t because neither is bothered by the critical rule for anything less than a spinal mount

 

[BillDowns]

I guess I have to take the blame for that, but I really could not see the essential difference between your tables and the High Guard batteries, other than adjustment in the odds.

BTW, what is SS3?

All I have is LBB1 thru 5 from way back, so I don't know what MT, TNE, etc have. I am just wondering about the differences in all of these. My game preferences have always been more to strategy games than anything and Traveller makes a good base for one, or tactical, or well, a lot.

One of my personal dislikes of HG is that grouping multiple bays into batteries is not provided for and the - IMHO - over-reliance on spinal mounts for big guns. I can't see spinal mounts having a very good field of fire and aiming the entire ship, rather than a few bays seems ....

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by BillDowns:
I guess I have to take the blame for that, but I really could not see the essential difference between your tables and the High Guard batteries, other than adjustment in the odds.

Which tables do you mean Bill?

BTW, what is SS3?

Special Supplement 3: Missiles. It provides advanced rules for missiles in LBB2, and was included in Journal issue 21.
Which, incidently, is ©1985, so it was produced long after High Guard second edition.

One of my personal dislikes of HG is that grouping multiple bays into batteries is not provided for and the - IMHO - over-reliance on spinal mounts for big guns. I can't see spinal mounts having a very good field of fire and aiming the entire ship, rather than a few bays seems ....

Now there's a thought, massed batteries of bay weapons having spinal equivalency...

this really belongs in the High Guard3 thread...

 

[BillDowns]

The tables I was referring to are linked in one of your earlier posts.

SS3 is definitely after my time

I don't have anything newer than '82, maybe '83.

I'll go throw betteries of bay weapons on HG3.

 

[mike wightman]

Ahh, you mean the one for firing lots of turrets in LBB2 combat.

The difference between that approach and High Guard batteries is that the LBB version produces a lot more damage rolls.