kc130flyer
SOC-2
Having previously used the HG combat system, flirting with BR and a few homebrewed rule systems, we finally converted our on-going TCS game to PP:F a few years back.
Yes, there is a lot of dice rolling when capital ships meet. We do use the aggregate tables in these cases and have not had problems doing so. However, that siad, we have found that the economics of maintaining and repairing capital ships over the course of a campaign has driven most of the players to use lighter (read: cheaper) cruisers for most of the actions, saving the battleships and dreadnoughts mainly for home world defense and "Showing the Flag" missions. PP:F combat can be pretty deadly when meson equipped ships meet and nothing drives a defense minister over the edge like leaving a 500 k-ton battleship with no working drives behind when your attack on Besancon fails...for the third time.
PP:F is by no means a perfect system, and we have had to tweak several areas, including most notably the design/construction/conversion tables. We are using a hybrid MT/FFS shipyard design spreadsheet from which we can build the SSD's. Early on we found that the PP:F rules allowed for almost no advantage between selecting various components, especially computers and electronics. The PP:F conversion table is too broad in this respect and had to be expanded to give higher TL systems and larger more complex computers some advantage. We also added power plants to the SSD as many of our naval architects are using a multiple power plants in their designs.
Combat between smaller ships such as fighters and escorts was greatly helped with the electronics TL changes we made. When engaged in battles with larger ships fighters and escorts generally battle one another with the victor going on to serve the coup de grâce to the cripples falling out of the main fight.
Using PP:F to run a major campaign like ours is a bit of a trick, and requires some thoughtful tweaks to work, but it does not really require all that much more than any of the other rules systems we have tried, and we have run our TCS campaign very happily now for about 2-3 years.
Yes, there is a lot of dice rolling when capital ships meet. We do use the aggregate tables in these cases and have not had problems doing so. However, that siad, we have found that the economics of maintaining and repairing capital ships over the course of a campaign has driven most of the players to use lighter (read: cheaper) cruisers for most of the actions, saving the battleships and dreadnoughts mainly for home world defense and "Showing the Flag" missions. PP:F combat can be pretty deadly when meson equipped ships meet and nothing drives a defense minister over the edge like leaving a 500 k-ton battleship with no working drives behind when your attack on Besancon fails...for the third time.
PP:F is by no means a perfect system, and we have had to tweak several areas, including most notably the design/construction/conversion tables. We are using a hybrid MT/FFS shipyard design spreadsheet from which we can build the SSD's. Early on we found that the PP:F rules allowed for almost no advantage between selecting various components, especially computers and electronics. The PP:F conversion table is too broad in this respect and had to be expanded to give higher TL systems and larger more complex computers some advantage. We also added power plants to the SSD as many of our naval architects are using a multiple power plants in their designs.
Combat between smaller ships such as fighters and escorts was greatly helped with the electronics TL changes we made. When engaged in battles with larger ships fighters and escorts generally battle one another with the victor going on to serve the coup de grâce to the cripples falling out of the main fight.
Using PP:F to run a major campaign like ours is a bit of a trick, and requires some thoughtful tweaks to work, but it does not really require all that much more than any of the other rules systems we have tried, and we have run our TCS campaign very happily now for about 2-3 years.
