Starship:Personal Scale Conversion

[BackworldTraveller]

So, what happens in a starship combat turn - in the personal combat turn cycle. I'm kind of assuming lots of aiming and 1 laser shot per Starship turn is not only what is going on.
I can envisage the Missile/Sand turn as spending a lot of time getting the missile manoeuvred from wherever it was stored to the loading cradle to get it into the tube to launch as shifting a hunk of missile-sized/sand-shot-sized material about a ship it awkward - and moving three for that triple turret is three times as tricky.

Any suggestions?

 

[mike wightman]

Pilot - the pilot will be inputting course information to the maneuver drive, the computer will be replying with course projections which will allow the pilot to then select from a menu of choices or to 'manually control' the maneuver drive - the aim is to not be where the enemy predicts you will be by the time their lasers are fired.

Navigator - scanning the immediate surrounds, gathering info about enemy manoeuvres and incoming missile course projections. Plotting likely future positions for objects in range.

Gunner - running computer sims of targeting solutions and then authorising weapons fire or using 'manual control' to select the firing solution. Reloading of sandcasters and missile racks if necessary.

Engineer - balancing power output with the needs of the maneuver drive, acceleration compensators, sensors and weapons.

Damage control parties - getting to areas of serious damage and performing emergency repairs.

 

[whartung]

The TU board games pin ship turns at 20-30 minutes each, depending on the game. The bulk of that is simply maneuver to cope with that whole "space is big" thing.

We can rationalize it as the weapons needs time to charge up, or simply that they're firing constantly as that's how they have any chance of hitting the target at all. Many have posited that this is how Lasers work, bathing the area around where the computers think the ship is to compensate for the natural error in the system that accumulates over the vast distances, hoping that something hits...something.

If you're trying to balance, say, melee/personal combat and ship combat, there's a LOT of personal combat rounds (which are, what, 15-30s each?) in each "Ship" turn.

 

[Condottiere]

Half the reason you shoot at your opponent is to prevent him from comfortably settling in to an optimal firing solution.

 

[Fovean]

I'm playing MgT 2e these days but for a long time have used a rule from GURPS Space - varying turn lengths based on distance.

So at Adjacent range, all combat turns are 10 seconds, 30 sec at Close, 1 min at Short, 3 min at Medium, 6 min at Long, etc. As others have noted, the longer turn lengths (and subsequently "reduced" rates of fire) are based on exponentially increasing computations required for achieving a firing solution, as well as a sort of "spray and pray" coverage of a volume of space as opposed to targeting a specific point in space.

By varying the turn length, it naturally ratchets up the tension regardless of whether a given ship is opening or closing range. Also weapon systems (and sensors IMTU) have optimal ranges so the strategy and tactics change as the range does.

More to the point, this also gives me a baseline for personal actions during space combat. Characters who are interfacing with the ship (pilot, gunner, sensors, Capt/Leader) work at the space combat turn length. Others may act at personal scale (10 second turns) but many things (damage control for instance) will require many turns to complete. We've had a few combats go from sweaty tense submarine hunt ala Citizen of the Galaxy all the way to zoomy swoopy Star Wars style dogfight. There's always a bit of improv and ad-libbing involved but my group loves it.

Totally agree with Mike Wightman as to what the individuals' discrete actions are. I'd only add the Steward/Medic scrambling from compartment to compartment applying first aid to keep the crew going