T20 Starship Combat

[Al_Beddow]

Wow... looking at the old e-mail address in my profile AND the date when I joined... the last two years passed me by at (the newly discovered) Jump-8!

Anyway, one of the adventure types I love is when the PC's end up engaged in combat in space... good ol' ship vs ship where no one can hear you get blown out of through that hull-breach into space.

I tried searching the forums to see if there were any rules posted for this but that didn't work so well so I'll just ask here... anyone know where I can get rules for ship vs ship combat in T20?

Thanks,
Al B.

 

[GypsyComet]

Other than the rulebook?

 

[Al_Beddow]

Well, I've been looking through the rulebook and can't find the rules... (which could easily be staring me in the face)

and So I asked hoping to find where they are.

 

[GypsyComet]

Page 159 is where the basic rules specific to vehicles and starships begin. The very first paragraph states that these are really for roleplaying purposes, not naval simulations. For naval sims, I'd recommend other products, including but not limited to High Guard (available from FFE) and the Traveller adaption of Full Thrust ("Power Projection" as published by BITS).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Well then, a PDF rules supplement for actual T20 Naval Simulation might very well be the first PDF publication I ever buy (hint, hint; Hunter, MJD

).

 

[clementk]

A second for Power Projection. PP: Fleet has the full rules including some campaign stuff while Escort's good for learning the rules and fewer ships. It can convert ships from High Guard, T20, etc. . The game it's based upon, Full Thrust, tends to bog down a little at about 25+ ships a side depending on how much time you have for a game.
http://www.powerprojection.net/

T4 had Imperial Squadrons which is a good naval simulation book. It's at the squadron level. CT also had TCS. I've not played either but have both and they've both gotten good reviews. Both are oop but can be found, TCS esp., if you look around. IS is available on DRM-ebook PDF at drivethrurpg.com and TCS in one of the CT reprint books (Games?) from farfuture.net.

I think when you said ship vs. ship people were thinking 1 ship vs. 1 ship. It might help if you clarify exactly what level you're looking at, both in approx. number of ships involved and how much detail you want (SFB power maintenance, a counter for a fleet, etc.).

HTH.
Casey

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually the advanced Combat rules in the T20 rulebook aren't bad. If you discount the "Meson weapons splat everything" problem with them.

 

[mike wightman]

And the fact that you hit everything you shoot at because your attack bonuses are so high

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
And the fact that you hit everything you shoot at because your attack bonuses are so high

Those two reasons are why IMTU there is no Gunnery Skill, use BAB, and Naval NPC gunners get the Martial Feat. Spinal mounts don't get the +5 bonus to Crit rating. And none of the starship weapons have a crit multiplier higher than x3. Gives you a reason to build ships bigger than Light Cruisers, cuts down on the auto hits and eliminates the PMOS/Spinal Meson Auto Crit bug.

The big problem is that your too hit bonuses are still a bit high, especially for Capital ships but at least two equal fighters can still hit each other. It keeps the small scale ships combat interesting, instead of looking for that magic 12 in HG. (Which, in HG, still won't guarantee a hit from a Type-T or even FH.)