Starship Combat

[princelian]

Are any of you using a different starship combat system than a Traveller-esque one for your campaigns? I don't really care for the Traveller ones (CT, MT, T20, etc.).

In my mind, the Traveller starship combat systems, going back to CT, are an attempt to make starship combat relatively simple while avoiding a cinematic approach.

I'm toying with the idea of using something like Renegade Legion: Interceptor or even Star Fleet Battles, with modifications to make those systems conform with the Traveller universe somewhat. On the other hand, I don't necessarily want to force my players to learn complex wargame systems just because I don't like the Traveller ones....

 

[Black Globe Generator]

What exactly do you mean by "a cinematic approach?" Are we talking Star Wars or something?

 

[mike wightman]

My preferred choice for in-game ship to ship combat is to use the CT Starter edition range band movement system, and have a range of tasks to keep each member of the crew busy with something to do.

This thread contains a few of my ideas, although I usually just use a midified LBB2 weapons and damage system.

 

[princelian]

Black Globe Generator stated:

What exactly do you mean by "a cinematic approach?" Are we talking Star Wars or something?

"Real" space combat involves physics and vector addition and lots of <square root <t^2/.5a>> calculations. Toss in heading and weapons bearing rules, and you've got some heavy math that the CT designers didn't want, so they made A Terribly Bad Assumption: that all that really mattered was the range between targets and their speed toward/away from each other.

It's ATBA because all that goes out the window when you introduce a course change or a third target that chooses, for whatever reason, to deviate from a direct-line course. (Space mines are an example of why one might not wish to follow directly in the path of your target. Fighters launched from a heretofore undetected asteroid base might be another. A course change might be warranted because help is waiting behind the Venturi moon. A better example is when a lower acceleration attacker is closing at a high base speed and the higher-acceleration defender wishes to open the range as quickly as possible. Rather than running "away" from the attacker, the high-accel defender would accelerate at right angles to the approaching ship's vector, and the approaching ship will never be able to close beyond a certain range.)

The range band system, however good or bad an assumption, is an attempt to keep it simple and playable but not create a system where X-wing fighters in a vacuum "pull up" or veer sharply. It tries to simulate a very simple physics model (one-dimensional though it may be).

"Cinematic" systems are where you start to throw out real-world physics assumptions to make the game operate more smoothly (and possibly, to make it more fun for the players). Star Fleet Battles itself has some cinematic features, like a turn radius for a ship under warp. Ships in SFB maneuver much like oceangoing ships in our world and not very much like spacecraft. Sure, one can explain this away by the "nature of warp drive," and say the ships are following the physics of the SFB (read: Star Trek) universe, but it's still somewhat cinematic.

A REALLY cinematic game is one like the Star Wars RPG, where fighters do Immelman turns in space and other silliness.

Somewhere higher on the scale than SFB and lower than Star Wars: tRPG is T20, which uses a very cinematic approach to starship movement. Starships drift and turn and behave in ways that are contrary to actual spatial mechanics, all to make the game more playable and (to many of you) enjoyable. I qualified that because I don't like the system, but maybe it's just because I can't get past the movement system.

I appreciate, however, that Hunter et al. created the T20 starship combat system to do what other games do - create an approximation of "real" physical movement in space while not requiring advanced math skills from the players. I just think they shaded too far on the simplistic side, is all.

 

[mike wightman]

If you want a real vector movement system have a look at Atack Vector by Ad Astra Games, or their Honor Harrington adaptation Saganami Island Tactical Similator.

For a more cinematic system I liked the old FASA Star Trek ship combat game...

 

[Valarian]

FASA's Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator - wonderful game. I've even got the Starship Design manual.

 

[Valarian]

Personally, for a roleplaying game I prefer a method of combat that is fast to resolve, and has the minimum of paperwork. Dice to be thrown only to determine whether a hit has been made and to determine the amount of damage.

I like space combat systems that do the same. I don't want to have to figure out the number of hexes between ships. I want to be able to say that you're at this range - that means roll this to hit. The T20 combat system is weighted toward miniture combat. This is the last thing I want in a roleplay session. It slows things down.

I also want facing to be independant from direction of movement, so that my ships can do the rotate on the spot to fire weapons.

Unfortuanately, I've not yet had the time to sit down and come up with a vehicle/ship combat system for T20 that will be a roleplaying system rather than a wargaming system.

 

[princelian]

Valarian wrote:

Unfortuanately, I've not yet had the time to sit down and come up with a vehicle/ship combat system for T20 that will be a roleplaying system rather than a wargaming system.

That's one reason I'm tempted toward Star Fleet Battles. I used it as the ship-to-ship combat system for my Star Trek: the Role-Playing Game campaigns and as there are a number of roles, it's amenable to a party of players all having something to do.

</font>

• Energy allocation (i.e., engineering)</font>
• Course/heading and speed (i.e., helm)</font>
• Electronic warfare</font>
• Weapons fire</font>
• Smallcraft control (shuttles, fighters) and special actions (transporters, mines, etc.)</font>

Each players can have responsibility for certain aspects, and it's not hard to create a ship system diagram (SSD) for any given ship.

One big problem in adapting SFB to use in Traveller is that the movement system is decidedly un-physics based. However, if one made the assumption that T2320's Stutterwarp remained in use, if only for intrasystem travel, one could use the SFB system pretty much as-is. The other big problem is that it's pretty darned complex, even if you stuck just to the Basic rules set.

I'm still looking at Renegade Legion: Interceptor, though, because it does use a reaction thrust basis for movement and its damage system is more amenable to Traveller ship systems.

 

[Valarian]

SFB is far too much of a wargaming system for me when trying to resolve combat in a roleplay session. Ok for an evening by itself, but not when your players are trying to escape from pirates/imperial customs.

 

[princelian]

I may have solved my problem with T20's starship combat system, at least for movement, by borrowing Renegade Legion: Interceptor's maneuvering rules.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Thrust cost to change heading by 1 hexrow = (Velocity / 3, rounding down) + 1 (minimum 1)</pre>[/QUOTE]Thrust is in G's of acceleration (the RL:I space combat scale happens to be fairly similar to T20's). Heading is defined as the direction of movement, not the facing of the ship (they're independent).

Thus, if a 5G fighter has accelerated three full turns (moving 15) and wished to change heading 60 degrees, it would take (15/3 + 1 = 5) all 5G of thrust to do so in one turn.

A 1G far trader moving 10 (10/3 + 1 = 4) would have to either decelerate first or change course over the course of 4 turns. (In this example, it would move forward for 3 turns at a speed of 10 and then on the 4th turn it would move 10 hexes 60 degrees off its original course.)

If you sat down with the physics, this approximates within 10-15% the vector change requirements for "real" space maneuvering.

You can find the whole RL:I rulebook (for the never-published 2nd edition) on this website.

If you consider fighter tonnage in the game as mass and divide it in approximately 5 for dtons, it's fairly close to Traveller scales.

Now I get to take a closer look at T20's starship combat system besides movement. I may end up just using RL:I for everything, modifying the weapon types to match the Traveller universe.

 

[BetterThanLife]

You could always use the Mayday rules for movement and the T20 weapon rules. THough using Mayday rules with High Guard tables I always considered Missiles to be direct fire equivalents, I always considered their accelleration to be that much more than starships were capable of. (Out running or out maneuvering a missile in those rules is otherwise too simple.) That would give you most of the effect that you are looking for. The advanced combat rules for T20 are also not bad. (Though I prefer the Mayday floating map rules to the fixed size map. In the advanced combat rules in T20 if you exited the map you managed to disengage. That doesn't matter if the enemy was one hex behind you or across the map. (Further the map is well within effective range of most T20 weapons (Fusion and Plasma being the exception.) and in many cases put your ships twice that distance apart and they are still in weapons range.