D20 future starship combat, tweeks and improvements

[The Edge]

I recently got the D20 modern and future books, their ok overall. There are somethings I wouldn't have been able to work out my self, and other bits I just had to tinker with. One of the bits that just didn't quite cut it for me was the starship combat, as I was warned it might.

Im wondering what changes others have made to suit their games, big or small. There were things I considerd like scraping the idea that a hulking capital ship can turn instantly to bring its weapons to bear, instead requiring movement cost or some such, and then adding in fire arcs for each weapon etc. It all gets a bit complex but I would rather have a rare but deep starship battle than the (seemingly rather lazy) system provided.

What do you use?

 

[Bagpuss]

I always find fire arcs are done wrong IMHO in space battle games. There should only be three, front, rear and side. There is no need for left or right side, just side. If a weapon is mounted on the side the ship can just spin to bring it to bear on a target. If you have left or right then you are making assumptions about up and down in space. Why can't a ship fly upside down, thus making it's left arc fire on its right of visa versa?

You should even allow front guns to come to bear on rear targets, since if you cut the main engines you can flip the ship and still keep moving in the same direction.

So in one way D20 removing facing is a great idea since its easy to turn to face any guns to any target, it's movement rules are stupid however (unless the ships are powered by stutterwarp drives).

 

[The Edge]

I guess the faceing issue depends partly on how quickly you imagine these ships to be moveing and whether you take acount of the fact that you wouldn't simply stop. If capital ships are meant to be fairly cumbersome then haveing it rapidly doing 180 spins each turn to fire at various targets does't work.

I imagine capital ships as being fairly unweildly and slow to react (like any current day ship) but only they can house the engines that make them faster than any other once they build up speed. Smaller craft or fighters are kind of the opposite, they can dodge and weave in an instant but alothough by no means slow are limited from achiveing any real velocity and are nearly all short range craft.

Rather than four or so set fire arcs, each gun would have its own based on its type and where it is. Eg a pair of side mounted turreted guns could cover everywhere except directly in front and behind, and also 'above and bellow' (however above and bellow can obviouly be changed by rotateing). A different weapon, say a colosal ion cannon (for those who know it, think the game Homeworld) running along the entire spine of the vessel, is compleately bound to a straight forwards line of fire.

The problem I realise with this is that it is horribly complex, and every battle would have to be planed out in detail.

 

[delericho]

I always find fire arcs are done wrong IMHO in space battle games. There should only be three, front, rear and side. There is no need for left or right side, just side. If a weapon is mounted on the side the ship can just spin to bring it to bear on a target. If you have left or right then you are making assumptions about up and down in space.

Except that large ships can't just flip on their axis at a moment's notice. Rotating the ship takes time. So, fire arcs do make sense. That said, you shouldn't have just left and right - you should have top and bottom fire arcs as well. These are, of course, measured relative to the ship itself, so a ship flying 'upside-down' has the arcs pointed in the opposite (absolute) directions.

Of course, space combat really should be done on a three-dimensional 'grid'.

Now, I also don't think that the same movement allowance should be used for moving a large ship and for changing its direction. Instead, a large ship should have two movement speeds - a straight-line movement that is near-constant from round to round (perhaps adjustable by 1 square per round per round, with a huge upper limit - but only in a straight forward direction), and a maneuver allowance, which allows the ship to very slowly adjust its facing and alignment relative to the grid (that is, it can turn and rotate, but only slowly).

But it all starts to get really complex really quickly. If the PCs can't meaningfully affect the outcome, you're probably better just narrating the battle.

 

[The Edge]

I agree with that. All sounds just how Id like it.

a maneuver allowance, which allows the ship to very slowly adjust its facing and alignment relative to the grid (that is, it can turn and rotate, but only slowly).

But this is where the grid fails. How do you rotate in degrees that a grid does't allow? Posibly even more pressing is how would fixed weapons (eg the afore mentioned ion cannon) fire at diagonal targets, or even ones just to the side of their line. This would sugest a free form non grid based, tape measured system to be best. So allowing any angle of fire or movement direction, as well as turning in degrees. But that sounds like a very hard job on my part.

 

[Bagpuss]

I actually liked the system in the original D20 Star Wars, which was much more abstract. Or the chase rules from Stargate SG-1's Unexplored Worlds expansion book, again very abstract, and descriptive.

If you get down to grids, hex's and rulers you've stopped playing an RPG and started playing a starships battlegame. If I wanted to play one of those I'ld get out Star Cruiser for 2300AD. You almost always lose things like the 3rd dimension, drift, etc. when you use boards and grids, those things are much easier to including in an abstract and descriptive system, and it's easier to keep the focus on the crew and not the ship itself.

 

[The Edge]

Hmm, I see what you mean. I don't mind that it would be a battle game as you said, as these situations would be sparse, and although RPing is still the center of my games I see no problem with the ocassional variation such as this. After all is something the characters might do. If they want to have starship combat, then Im not going to say, "no. you can't do that because its not role playing". But the characters/players must stay key to it all.

A problem is that the main part of gunnery (excluding perhaps fighter craft) would really be automated, so what do the players do? Also when piloting is almost a matter of "computer go that way", it just more and more character redundancy.

Im thinking that every battle should if posible, have personal efects, in that the result of a battle might mean something important to the characters (other than the obvious matter of dieing). Unless you use a odd rules like D20's where a character strength can adjust the power of robotic arms that are 5000 times heavier than him (D20 future mecha), then it comes down to the bigger gun. And that shouldn't be the case whenever it can be helped, but can be hard to work round. :\

 

[ukgpublishing]

OK this is by no means thought fully through, just a few random idea's.

For facing on a square grid

Ships which are in the square bisected by the red line are in the arc of both sets of guns.

This is unecessarily simplified, but with the low damages done by d20f weapons we don't want the combat to last longer now do we

Changing Facing

This is were is gets a bit nasty on square grids. The rate of spin is determined by the class of ship, as is the type of action the manouver takes. So:

Ultra Light - 180 degree spin as a standard move action.
Light - 180 degree spin as a standard move action.
Medium - 90 degree spin as a standard move action.
Heavy - 90 degree spin as a standard move action.
Super Heavy - 90 degree spin as a full round action.

This reflects to some degree the combersome nature of the heavier ships. Although I did consider giving the Ultra Lights a spin as a free action, but I held back as it may be too unbalancing.

Thoughts?

 

[The Edge]

Your turn system is probably about right, Its what I was thinking about, flawed as any would be but as good as I can think of for a grid. It also requires that you stick to all ships takeing up whole squares of space even if their narrow, which I didn't like much either. (am I just being too fussy?)

What alterations would be needed for a conversion to non grid based? Things like speed and fire arcs still work well enough. Im wondering whether its actually as difficult as I first thought.

 

[ukgpublishing]

Your turn system is probably about right, Its what I was thinking about, flawed as any would be but as good as I can think of for a grid. It also requires that you stick to all ships takeing up whole squares of space even if their narrow, which I didn't like much either. (am I just being too fussy?)

What alterations would be needed for a conversion to non grid based? Things like speed and fire arcs still work well enough. Im wondering whether its actually as difficult as I first thought.

To be honest for a grid based system use the original battletech fire arcs on a hex grid make the turn increments 60 degree, so an UL can still turn through 180, but a super heavy can only manage a 60 dgree turn as a full round action.