Questions on space combat
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
I could do that. Do you have an illustrations of the kinds of ships you want, or is anything goes a possibility? I am also doing a product line with Louis Porter Jr. Designs in creating ship deck plans as stock art for small publishers, called Stock Armada. If you have particular ship designs in mind, email them to me, and I'll see what I can do.
Returning to starship combat, here is one more question.
The rules specify that a ship has, in addition to its move, a number of actions equal to its class. Assuming a classic stratrek type combat between the enterprise and two Klingons bird of prey (arguably class 8 or above ships) that would mean after the players' turn that the DM will need to take a staggering 16 actions ! While I understand the GM is not required to take that many actions he or she will still need to take a substantial amount to offer a challenge to the PC.
This seems very unwieldy in practice. How do others who have play tested such combats handle this in practice ?
The rules specify that a ship has, in addition to its move, a number of actions equal to its class. Assuming a classic stratrek type combat between the enterprise and two Klingons bird of prey (arguably class 8 or above ships) that would mean after the players' turn that the DM will need to take a staggering 16 actions ! While I understand the GM is not required to take that many actions he or she will still need to take a substantial amount to offer a challenge to the PC.
This seems very unwieldy in practice. How do others who have play tested such combats handle this in practice ?
A BoP is much smaller than that - Class V, so five actions. You'd be surprised how quickly you whip through those. A couple of disruptor blasts, repair some damage, a sensor question, etc.
Most large ships with lots of actions are going to be capital ships with tons of guns covering all firing arcs. And it probably won't even get to use all of those unless it's surrounded. But the capability is there should the situation arise. A capital ship is quicker to use than a large pack of enemies (say, when you have the PCs attacked by 12 bandits, each of which needs to move and act - the classic D&D style encounter).
PCs tend to do more; the actions are there and ensure that every PC gets to do something useful, whether that be repairing something, doing a maneuver, firing a weapon, using sensors, medical procedures, directing fighter squadrons, using tractor beams, and so on. The GM doesn't have the burden of making sure all his NPC crew is having fun, so don't feel obligated to find actions to fill all those slots. They're there if necessary, but they aren't obligations. I don't think I'd ever bother with an NPC ship's medical procedures, for example.
The inspiration for the system was - in part - FASA's Starship Combat Simulator and Star Fleet Battles. It's *much* faster in my experience than either of those.
Most large ships with lots of actions are going to be capital ships with tons of guns covering all firing arcs. And it probably won't even get to use all of those unless it's surrounded. But the capability is there should the situation arise. A capital ship is quicker to use than a large pack of enemies (say, when you have the PCs attacked by 12 bandits, each of which needs to move and act - the classic D&D style encounter).
PCs tend to do more; the actions are there and ensure that every PC gets to do something useful, whether that be repairing something, doing a maneuver, firing a weapon, using sensors, medical procedures, directing fighter squadrons, using tractor beams, and so on. The GM doesn't have the burden of making sure all his NPC crew is having fun, so don't feel obligated to find actions to fill all those slots. They're there if necessary, but they aren't obligations. I don't think I'd ever bother with an NPC ship's medical procedures, for example.
The inspiration for the system was - in part - FASA's Starship Combat Simulator and Star Fleet Battles. It's *much* faster in my experience than either of those.
That's a rather large reversal of the core WOIN mechanic. 
You can do that yourself of course (it's your game), but in my experience the system doesn't really need speeding up. Once you have the hang of it, it whips along at a fair pace.
If you're finding players don't have much to do (I haven't found that myself) once technique you can use is to have stuff happening on their ship at the same time. Maybe there's a saboteur aboard or they have to technobabble the sensor array to bypass the new shields the enemy has or something.
You can do that yourself of course (it's your game), but in my experience the system doesn't really need speeding up. Once you have the hang of it, it whips along at a fair pace.
If you're finding players don't have much to do (I haven't found that myself) once technique you can use is to have stuff happening on their ship at the same time. Maybe there's a saboteur aboard or they have to technobabble the sensor array to bypass the new shields the enemy has or something.
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After a couple more sessions I have a few more questions about space combat that have came up :
1- is it possible to trade attack dice for damage dice 2 for 1 in space combat as per normal combat ?
2- is there any effect for a critical (triple-6) during spaceship combat ?
3- Are ion weapons stopped by shielding and/or armor or does it bypass them ?
4- if e-warfare defense is 1/2 CPU does it go down if you lose CPU due to ion attacks or e-warfare or does it stay constant ?
5- can the same action be taken multiple time, such as repair, to gain back more than 2 points of Super structure or is it limited to once ?
6- page 3:26 mention that a repair action can get back 2 CPU. However the starship construction manual p.18 states that "reduced CPU is automatically restored at the rate of one point per turn per size category of the computer. Firstly is the size category of the computer the same as the ship ? And how do these two rules reconcile ? Does a class VIII ship recover 8 CPU cycle automatically and then 2 more if a repair action is attempted. And if so doesnt that make ion attacks and e-warfare rather pointless as it will regenerate faster than it can ever be taken out ?
Thanks !
1- is it possible to trade attack dice for damage dice 2 for 1 in space combat as per normal combat ?
2- is there any effect for a critical (triple-6) during spaceship combat ?
3- Are ion weapons stopped by shielding and/or armor or does it bypass them ?
4- if e-warfare defense is 1/2 CPU does it go down if you lose CPU due to ion attacks or e-warfare or does it stay constant ?
5- can the same action be taken multiple time, such as repair, to gain back more than 2 points of Super structure or is it limited to once ?
6- page 3:26 mention that a repair action can get back 2 CPU. However the starship construction manual p.18 states that "reduced CPU is automatically restored at the rate of one point per turn per size category of the computer. Firstly is the size category of the computer the same as the ship ? And how do these two rules reconcile ? Does a class VIII ship recover 8 CPU cycle automatically and then 2 more if a repair action is attempted. And if so doesnt that make ion attacks and e-warfare rather pointless as it will regenerate faster than it can ever be taken out ?
Thanks !
Absolutely! Attacks are resolved in the same way as regular combat.
So - as written - yes; technically you could inflict a status on a starship. That said, the only damage types from starship weapons at present are heat, radiation, ballistic, and ion, and tired or nauseous ship doesn't make much sense (though one on fire or bleeding/leaking does). There needs to be some language adjustment. I didn't plan to include crits in the starship combat rules, and save them for an advanced article, but for now yes, you can use them, but you may have to change some words and descriptions to make them make sense!
They are described in detail in the Starship Construction Manual -- shields only get half SOAK against them, and any damage that gets through is applied directly to CPU not to SS.
It stays constant. Note that the minimum value of a DEFENSE is always 10, also.
Yup. You can divert all crew to emergency repairs if you need to.
On larger ships, yes, it regenerates pretty fast. Those ships have multiple redundancies, all sorts of stuff - it's substantially more difficult to drop an EMP on a carrier and knock it out, and even if you did, you might only get a round or two out of it unless the EMP was *really* big! You'd need to do more CPU damage than the ship class, basically - on a Class VIII ship, you would need to be doing more than 8 CPU damage to start having any useful effect. There are larger weapons which can do that easily - the GIC-1 does 5d6 ion damage, as does the EIP-1, ; the LIC-1 does 3d6. And if you trade some attack dice for damage dice, that starts to get quite painful for the target.
You are correct in that the extra 2 CPU is on top of the automatic recovery. On a small ship, that can matter. Imagine R-2 fixing the Millennium Falcon -- it's a Class I ship, only recovers 1 MP per turn. If you can do more than 1 MP damage to it in any given turn, then it's going to be hurting.
Thanks Morrus.
I see that I had guessed most of them correctly, but I missed the 1/2 soak for the shield !
In light of the rapid replenishing of the CPU for a big ship I am thinking of having the system shut down for a longer time if CPU reach zero (need a complete system reboot or some such).
I see that I had guessed most of them correctly, but I missed the 1/2 soak for the shield !
In light of the rapid replenishing of the CPU for a big ship I am thinking of having the system shut down for a longer time if CPU reach zero (need a complete system reboot or some such).
ChumSlinger
First Post
Ranges for Electronic Attacks
What are the ranges for Electronic Attacks? Does it vary from ship to ship?
What are the ranges for Electronic Attacks? Does it vary from ship to ship?
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