LucasC
First Post
Last night we gave the starship combat rules another pass. Here's the results.
PC Ships
NPC Ships
Very brief synopsis:
In general, the combat was much improved thanks to the new movement and initiative rules. All of the weirdness experienced in our last run vanished and the battles ran smoothly.
On Initiative
General Feedback
Questions
Here's a pic of our board somewhere towards the middle of the battle. I spent a few hours Saturday looking at miniature options and purchased a copy of Battleship Galaxies which worked out well. It gave us some pretty cool little spaceships to use, a hex board and we used the little red battleship markers to track shield SOAK reduction. I'll probably buy a second copy for more ships and more hex board space.
The dice sitting next to the ships are tracking velocity. Later in the fight some had two dice next to them, one for velocity and one for superstructure damage.
The 3d6 you see in the top-left is a countdown pool for a ship that was destroyed that turn. As I mention above, except in one instance, this didn't have an effect on the game as the ships drifted out of the battle quickly.
PC Ships
- (3) S-22 "Ambusher" Class IV Pirate Ship
NPC Ships
- (3) Modified "Millennial" Class Medium Freighter
- (1) Durog "Killer" (see below)
Very brief synopsis:
The PCs had to escort a noncombative ship past the enemy which included the 3 Millennial vessels and the Killer. The combat began with the PCs in a hidden base launching their ships into space while the enemy drifted around slowly above. The Killer never fired its weapons. The PCs focused all their guns on it and, thanks to some lucky rolls, destroyed it before it had a chance to shoot. The Millennial ships were eventually destroyed by the remaining PC vessels but not before they took out one of the Ambushers. These ships (Ambusher v Millennial) seemed a relatively good match.
In general, the combat was much improved thanks to the new movement and initiative rules. All of the weirdness experienced in our last run vanished and the battles ran smoothly.
On Initiative
- Everyone liked the way initiative worked.
- With the new rules, the initiative winner has a significant advantage given the losing party moves and then the winning party moves - on numerous occasions this allowed the winner to move out of the firing arc of an opposing ship.
- Our teams bounced initiative back and forth, with the PCs going first sometimes and the NPCs going first sometimes. This added a nice variety to the combat and (IMO) should be what you shoot for with the rules.
- When we started we were skeptical about re-rolling initiative every round given the extra bookkeeping and such, that concern evaporated entirely after seeing it in action and seeing how it affected gameplay. It would be an overpowering advantage to have it rolled once and set for the battle.
- We concluded immediately that re-rolling initiative every round was going to lead us to an awful lot of rolls given we had seven ships involved. As we were already tracking a lot of things (velocity, shield SOAK reduction, Superstructure damage, casualties, damage to PCs, etc.) we opted to forgo individual initiative and each side rolled initiative at the start of every turn - this worked out well and seemed to be a good compromise between the choices we had.
General Feedback
- The encounter took just over 1.5 hours to complete.
- The system is complex. I had a new player at the table and he was somewhat overwhelmed. At least one other player felt like there was too much for him to keep track of. This should be less of an issue as we play more, but it definitely intimidates some people.
- Using dice to track things such as velocity and damage was very helpful.
- Using Newtonian mechanics, and assuming a destroyed ship maintains its velocity, the combination of the countdown before explosion and the forward momentum generally meant that these ships flew off into space to explode with no impact on gameplay.
- In one instance, I rolled all 6s for the countdown and the ship exploded immediately, but that is not going to be the 'normal' result. There were a total of 5 ships destroyed.
Questions
- Should I check for an Ambush Turn in space when appropriate?
- Does the +1d6 ship action bonus for high morale apply to weapon damage?
- Using Newtonian mechanics, is there a minimum movement cost for turning if velocity is very low?
Here's a pic of our board somewhere towards the middle of the battle. I spent a few hours Saturday looking at miniature options and purchased a copy of Battleship Galaxies which worked out well. It gave us some pretty cool little spaceships to use, a hex board and we used the little red battleship markers to track shield SOAK reduction. I'll probably buy a second copy for more ships and more hex board space.
The dice sitting next to the ships are tracking velocity. Later in the fight some had two dice next to them, one for velocity and one for superstructure damage.
The 3d6 you see in the top-left is a countdown pool for a ship that was destroyed that turn. As I mention above, except in one instance, this didn't have an effect on the game as the ships drifted out of the battle quickly.
