Starship Bridge Battles

jinat · Feb 17, 2015

Game that would handle a Starship Bridge - i dont mean with tactical combat with ship minis, i mean rules that help give the feel of being on a bridge with the helmsman, tactical officer, captain etc. all doing their part.

Morrus · Feb 17, 2015

FASA gave that a good shot back in the 1980s with their Star Trek RPG, but I feel they fell short. It's something I'm struggling with for N.E.W., too. The challenge is ensuring that everybody has enough to do and feels part of the game.

Generally speaking, six players controlling one entity (a character or a starship or whatever) tends to result in six bored players without much to do. What they're used to doing all by themselves (move, attack, take actions, etc.) now they're only doing part of. If all you're responsible for is the movement in an encounter (and even that you're have to agree with everyone else what to do), you're not doing much.

I'd be interested in hearing about other games that have tried it, too. Did Star Wars (any iteration) or Firefly or anything give it a shot? Traveller's starship combat I personally found pretty awful, but YMMV.

gamerprinter · Feb 17, 2015

I'd think you could have a helmsman, navigator, and gunnery officer (for example) each contributing to operating a starship. The helmsman would actually be responsible for flying the ship, making necessary turns, speed adjustments, docking procedures with probable skill checks for each action. A navigator would be responsible for keeping the ship on course in relationship to the intended destination, along with considerations to negotiate hazards such a passing asteroids and comets, gama ray bursts and other interstellar hazards. A gunnery officer would be responsible for all ship gun operations. Thus in a combat situation with another starship would require participation from all 3 to maximize the combat effectiveness - I wouldn't think setting that up would be difficult, and thus prevent bridge activities from boring.

I have in mind some ideas for starship combat operations for a sci-fi game. I'm currently working on a homebrew setting borrowing ideas from EN Publishing Santiago setting as well as the Paizo Technology Guide for a Pathfinder based sci-fi game. Nothing wrong with the Santiago defined universe, however, I prefer to create homebrew settings, and creating a viable universe is part of my plan. The multi-officer bridge officers mentioned in the previous paragraph is part of that intended direction.

Morrus · Feb 17, 2015

gamerprinter said:
I'd think you could have a helmsman, navigator, and gunnery officer (for example) each contributing to operating a starship. The helmsman would actually be responsible for flying the ship, making necessary turns, speed adjustments, docking procedures with probable skill checks for each action. A navigator would be responsible for keeping the ship on course in relationship to the intended destination, along with considerations to negotiate hazards such a passing asteroids and comets, gama ray bursts and other interstellar hazards. A gunnery officer would be responsible for all ship gun operations. Thus in a combat situation with another starship would require participation from all 3 to maximize the combat effectiveness - I wouldn't think setting that up would be difficult, and thus prevent bridge activities from boring.

That's exactly how previous attempts have done it. It sounds like it should be fun, but sadly, it doesn't quite work; it does end up pretty boring. Either people don't have enough to do, or you end up continuously inventing ridiculous tasks and skill checks for them to make, which ends up as a different kind of tedious.

Think of it like this - would you want six players controlling one character in combat? That's what a starship essentially is. A fairly complex character, admittedly (though no more so than a high level 3.x character, I'd wager!)

It needs some kind of additional new approach to drag it out of that.

Umbran · Feb 17, 2015

Well, there is always Spaceteam - available for mobile devices. A team of people have devices, and must collaborate to accomplish tasks. However, the tasks are more arbitrary nonsense than Star Trek simulation.

Umbran · Feb 17, 2015

If you want to go further, there is the Artemis starship bridge simulator.

Www.artemis.eochu.com

Koloth · Feb 17, 2015

I like how Star Fleet Battles summed up the issue: 6 months of boredom punctuated with a few minutes of terror.

How many different ways can the GM make Captain issuing order - "Come to course 325 Mark 21" , Helmsman - "Change to course 325 Mark 21, aye aye Skipper" seem exciting before the whole game falls apart?

Any ship where such things keep resulting in excitement would likely be quickly recalled to base for evaluation of the command team.

Gradine · Feb 17, 2015

I'm not sure it's impossible to make this work. After all, isn't most RPG combat spent waiting around for your turn? There's two real concerns to keep in mind. The first, and most obvious, is keeping players engaged in what's happening even when it's not their turn. The second, which speaks to Morrus's concern, is to give everyone enough to do (enough distinct decision points) to make their turns feel important.

I'd go obscenely crunchy with it.

First, combat is synchronous; unlike the traditional turn structure in tabletop RPGs, everything is happening all at once. Space generally lacks inertia, so each "tick" every ship moves simultaneously based on its current speed and trajectory.

The second, more important point, is to ensure players have enough decision points that they feel have to do to contribute to combat. Treating a single ship as a single character with the usual set of decisions and splitting those up is not the way to go. This is where things get crunchy, and complex. Each "tick" every player can perform one action based on the position (engineering could adjust speed or shield positioning; gunner can adjust the angle of a gun, enter a targeting algorithm for a missile, or fire); helm can adjust trajectory, attempt to hail another ship, etc.)

The main work in building such a system lies in defining the roles and making sure their available actions are well balanced so everyone feels like they are carrying their weight.

Razjah · Feb 17, 2015

In my experience ship combat stuff works in a really abstracted manner. Or something like a skill challenge. The pilot tries to avoid damage, navigator is trying to find a way to get out of the situation, gunners are working on fighting off the enemy. They either make rolls to aid each other, leading to one important roll; or they each help contribute to reaching a number of successes before failure.

But ship combat the way most system handle combat is really boring.