"SPACE FIGHT!" Starship combat boardgame
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
Diplomat123
First Post
It would be better if the crit numbers were in sequence, ie Combat Units =1, Thrust 2-5, Sensors 6-7 etc.
Says the man who, when presented with an Intensified Arc box, manages to completely miss it and invent his own notation!
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
How about the idea on grouping / colors for better idenitifaction and finding of important stats?Incidentaly, this is the current iteration of the ship cards we're using.
I worry it'll get too garish (we're already using a lot of colours to distinguish damage tracks and stuff already). In play, we certainly didn't experience any issues with finding stuff, although I'll ask Doug if he feels that colourising the systems would add anything.
Here's an idea I'm toying with - formations and patterns. These are like "stances" in D&D - they grant broad bonuses or effects. A ship may only be in one stance at a time, must remain in it for the entire turn, and not all ships are able to use all stances.
Some brief notes/examples - just brainstorming, really, to give an idea of what sort of thing I'm thinking of. I'm thinking both individual stances, and multiple ships gaining synergistic effects from formations.
Attack Run
“Stay on target!”
Prerequisite: Squadron; speed must be equal to thrust; may not change heading during this turn.
Effect: The squadron gains twice as many attacks as it would normally have, but becomes very vulnerable to enemy fire, suffering a 4-point penalty to Defence.
Cover Me!
“Cover me – I'm going in!”
Prerequisite: None.
Effect: A vessel or squadron may cover another vessel or squadron within its weapon range, using its weaponry to fire shots which distract and deter attackers. The covered vessel gains a +4 bonus to Defence, but the covering vessel may not fire at a target.
Attack Vector Zero
“Form up on my wing!"
Prerequisite: Within 3 hexes; size small or lower.
Effect: Three vessels may fly in a formation designed to optimize their capabilities. All three must select this pattern and be within 3 hexes of each other; if any of them moves more than three hexes from another or changes pattern, all three ships lose the benefit of the pattern. While in formation, the three ships all gain a +2 bonus to attack and defence.
Damage Control
"Seal those bulkheads!"
Prequisite: Size large or greater.
Effect: A vessel may divert all available resources to the repair effort, pulling crew away from other departments and shutting down all nonessential systems. The vessel gets a +2 bonus to repair checks and doubles the Repair Rating of its engineers, but all other systems go temporarily offline.
Evasive Maneuvers!
"Get us out of here!"
Prerequisite: Must be moving at a speed at least equal to its Thrust score.
Effect: The vessel gets a +4 bonus to its Defence score, but may not fire.
Guard
"Hold the line!"
Prerequisite: Must be moving at Speed 0 (stationary).
Effect: A vessel in a Guard pattern may not move. The vessel guards an area, creating an aura which causes damage to enemy vessels passing through that area. Multiple vessels may overlap these auras to create areas of intensified damage. The aura size is equal to the ship size (i.e. tiny = aura 1, small = aura 2, medium = aura3, etc.) A vessel in a Guard pattern is very vulnerable to enemy fire, suffering a -2 penalty to Defence.
Some brief notes/examples - just brainstorming, really, to give an idea of what sort of thing I'm thinking of. I'm thinking both individual stances, and multiple ships gaining synergistic effects from formations.
Attack Run
“Stay on target!”
Prerequisite: Squadron; speed must be equal to thrust; may not change heading during this turn.
Effect: The squadron gains twice as many attacks as it would normally have, but becomes very vulnerable to enemy fire, suffering a 4-point penalty to Defence.
Cover Me!
“Cover me – I'm going in!”
Prerequisite: None.
Effect: A vessel or squadron may cover another vessel or squadron within its weapon range, using its weaponry to fire shots which distract and deter attackers. The covered vessel gains a +4 bonus to Defence, but the covering vessel may not fire at a target.
Attack Vector Zero
“Form up on my wing!"
Prerequisite: Within 3 hexes; size small or lower.
Effect: Three vessels may fly in a formation designed to optimize their capabilities. All three must select this pattern and be within 3 hexes of each other; if any of them moves more than three hexes from another or changes pattern, all three ships lose the benefit of the pattern. While in formation, the three ships all gain a +2 bonus to attack and defence.
Damage Control
"Seal those bulkheads!"
Prequisite: Size large or greater.
Effect: A vessel may divert all available resources to the repair effort, pulling crew away from other departments and shutting down all nonessential systems. The vessel gets a +2 bonus to repair checks and doubles the Repair Rating of its engineers, but all other systems go temporarily offline.
Evasive Maneuvers!
"Get us out of here!"
Prerequisite: Must be moving at a speed at least equal to its Thrust score.
Effect: The vessel gets a +4 bonus to its Defence score, but may not fire.
Guard
"Hold the line!"
Prerequisite: Must be moving at Speed 0 (stationary).
Effect: A vessel in a Guard pattern may not move. The vessel guards an area, creating an aura which causes damage to enemy vessels passing through that area. Multiple vessels may overlap these auras to create areas of intensified damage. The aura size is equal to the ship size (i.e. tiny = aura 1, small = aura 2, medium = aura3, etc.) A vessel in a Guard pattern is very vulnerable to enemy fire, suffering a -2 penalty to Defence.
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A few more points of clarification about the new rules:
Damage to Systems:
1. Can any repair facility be used to repair a damaged system, including both engineering departments and sick bays?
2. Suppose that a system is damaged twice, so its "11" and "15" damage boxes are checked off. If a repair facility gets a repair roll of 15 on it, does that restore it to full functionality, or does it just erase the "15" box and you need another roll to remove the "11" box? If so, do you have to repair the boxes in order from right to left, or can you, say, repair the "11" box (leaving the "15" box for later) if you only roll an 11? Do you have to declare which damage box you are trying to repair before you attempt the roll?
Shields:
1. Suppose that a shield that normally has Shield Rating 5 is intensified (to SR 10) and is hit with an attack that does 6 points. Am I correct to assume this would take 3 points off the shield (as in the example, you take off half the amount that the shield absorbed?)
2. Does "recharge at the beginning of each round" mean beginning of the whole round, or beginning of that ship's turn? Probably it would make more sense to say at the beginning of that ship's turn. And does it still recharge even if you don't spend APs to keep them up? If not then you will want to make them recharge when the player spends APs to keep them up (at the beginning of his turn he might not know whether he is spending the APs to keep them up yet).
Auras:
Is each arc considered a separate aura for purposes of calculating damage? For example, suppose that Ship A has a 1d8 aura, and Ship B moves past Ship A in such a way that it goes through both its front and side arcs - does it take 1d8 or 2d8 damage? What happens if it goes through both an intensified and an unintensified arc?
Transporters:
Do you need a sensor lock to beam crew from your ship to another friendly ship? In a previous discussion IIRC you said that's how it would work, but the current rules just address beaming back, not beaming out to another friendly ship.
Also, there's a sentence in there about shields completely blocking transporters - that's been removed from the game right, now it's just a penalty?
And also to clarify, you need a sensor lock to even attempt the teleport, and once you have that you still need to make the roll right?
Cloaking:
How is this tracked on the board? Do you remove the mini from the board and track secret movement somehow? Otherwise it will still be pretty obvious to the enemy where the "cloaked" ship is.
Boarding Craft:
Do you have to match direction as well as speed? For example, if Ship A is going at speed 10 going right, and Ship B is going at speed 10 going left, can Ship A put boarding parties on board Ship B?
Boarding Combat:
Have you thought about rebalancing the attack/defense numbers now that combat units only take 1 hit to kill rather than the 3-4 hits they took before? If not then it seems like combat units will be very short-lived.
Repair Ends:
This part is very confusing. Let me see if I am understaing it correctly:
In order to try to end a "repair ends" condition you have to activate a repair facility, and when you do that you can choose to try to end a "repair ends" condition. Since you can only activate each facility once per turn, this means that you couldn't also use that facility to, say, repair hull damage that turn. A few more implications of this are:
- If you have only one repair facility you could only try to repair one "Repair ends" condition per turn, even if you have more than one on you.
- If you have two repair facilities then you could try to repair the same condition twice on a turn if the first attempt failed.
- If your only repair facility is damaged or disabled, there's no way to fix it.
And also, it seems like repair facilities are getting quite versatile in the latest version. By my count there are at least four things you can do with a repair facility:
1. Restore hit points
2. Restore shield points
3. Repair ship systems
4. Get rid of "repair ends" conditions
Damage to Systems:
1. Can any repair facility be used to repair a damaged system, including both engineering departments and sick bays?
2. Suppose that a system is damaged twice, so its "11" and "15" damage boxes are checked off. If a repair facility gets a repair roll of 15 on it, does that restore it to full functionality, or does it just erase the "15" box and you need another roll to remove the "11" box? If so, do you have to repair the boxes in order from right to left, or can you, say, repair the "11" box (leaving the "15" box for later) if you only roll an 11? Do you have to declare which damage box you are trying to repair before you attempt the roll?
Shields:
1. Suppose that a shield that normally has Shield Rating 5 is intensified (to SR 10) and is hit with an attack that does 6 points. Am I correct to assume this would take 3 points off the shield (as in the example, you take off half the amount that the shield absorbed?)
2. Does "recharge at the beginning of each round" mean beginning of the whole round, or beginning of that ship's turn? Probably it would make more sense to say at the beginning of that ship's turn. And does it still recharge even if you don't spend APs to keep them up? If not then you will want to make them recharge when the player spends APs to keep them up (at the beginning of his turn he might not know whether he is spending the APs to keep them up yet).
Auras:
Is each arc considered a separate aura for purposes of calculating damage? For example, suppose that Ship A has a 1d8 aura, and Ship B moves past Ship A in such a way that it goes through both its front and side arcs - does it take 1d8 or 2d8 damage? What happens if it goes through both an intensified and an unintensified arc?
Transporters:
Do you need a sensor lock to beam crew from your ship to another friendly ship? In a previous discussion IIRC you said that's how it would work, but the current rules just address beaming back, not beaming out to another friendly ship.
Also, there's a sentence in there about shields completely blocking transporters - that's been removed from the game right, now it's just a penalty?
And also to clarify, you need a sensor lock to even attempt the teleport, and once you have that you still need to make the roll right?
Cloaking:
How is this tracked on the board? Do you remove the mini from the board and track secret movement somehow? Otherwise it will still be pretty obvious to the enemy where the "cloaked" ship is.
Boarding Craft:
Do you have to match direction as well as speed? For example, if Ship A is going at speed 10 going right, and Ship B is going at speed 10 going left, can Ship A put boarding parties on board Ship B?
Boarding Combat:
Have you thought about rebalancing the attack/defense numbers now that combat units only take 1 hit to kill rather than the 3-4 hits they took before? If not then it seems like combat units will be very short-lived.
Repair Ends:
This part is very confusing. Let me see if I am understaing it correctly:
In order to try to end a "repair ends" condition you have to activate a repair facility, and when you do that you can choose to try to end a "repair ends" condition. Since you can only activate each facility once per turn, this means that you couldn't also use that facility to, say, repair hull damage that turn. A few more implications of this are:
- If you have only one repair facility you could only try to repair one "Repair ends" condition per turn, even if you have more than one on you.
- If you have two repair facilities then you could try to repair the same condition twice on a turn if the first attempt failed.
- If your only repair facility is damaged or disabled, there's no way to fix it.
And also, it seems like repair facilities are getting quite versatile in the latest version. By my count there are at least four things you can do with a repair facility:
1. Restore hit points
2. Restore shield points
3. Repair ship systems
4. Get rid of "repair ends" conditions
Nope. Sick bays can repair combat units (and, later when I write it, heroes). Engineers repair systems.
At the moment, a single roll to repair completely. However it hasn't been playtested yet (we have a session on Thursday) so we'll be seeing how that works out.
Yup. Otherwise intensifying doesn't create an advantage.
It's slotted into the turn sequence near the beginning of the book. At least, it is in the copy I have - hopefully the latest version is uploaded!
Oh yes! Seeing fighters trying to curve in without crossing into another arc was fun!
You would, yeah. Transporters are simply far too powerful otherwise.
That's right. Sentence needs removing.
Yup.
We simply turn the counter over. The player knows where the ship is (although his ship tecnically doesn't until it gets that sensor lock), although he still ahs to make a difficult sensor lock to even try firing at it. We did consider removing the counter from the board like some other games do, but we find it so clumsy.
Boarding proved absolutely impossible, so we're looking at lowering the requirements. At present you have to be within 3 of its speed and don't have to match direction. We'll see how that works out.l
It seemed to work out about right in the one playtest we did. But we'll keep testing it.
That's right.
At present, yes, that's correct.
That is true, and is something which came up. We've proposed a couple of fixes:
1) Repair facilities can't be damaged; or
2) Damaged repair facilities can repair themselves but nothing else.
Yup. Although we find that they mainly end up doing (3).
Wait a second: Does each side in the boarding combat get one attack per round, or one attack per combat unit? For example, if you have a boarding combat with each side having 5 combat units, is each side attacking 5 times (once with each combat unit) or is each side attacking only once?
