thol said:
I know the book is a building block for more advanced stuff which is great. At any time did you consider a more advanced look at how different technology is dependent others?
Did you consider how a civilization who functions on realistic space travel (ala Alien) might not have developed laser weapons, even though it might be in their PL?
Or how mileau like Star Wars or Star Trek have pretty consistent use of certain types of technologies? Star Wars ships use Ion cannons and everyone uses Blaster pistols. Their technology level is sufficient to support plasma weapons or proton weapons, but they are not used.
I guess this is more of an abstract thought than a hard question.
What I would love to see is a more in-depth look at weapon technologies. Like a listing of each classic type of weapon and its place in science-fiction campaigns.
For example, listing all the major types of weapons possible realistically or semi-realistically (such as laser, maser, blaster, proton, plasma, ion, gauss, neutron, sonic, advanced projectiles, etc.) and telling which type fits into what kind of PL and what kind of campaign. Also some info on what weapons would exist based on the other technology in the campaign, which weapons might coexist, what types would be interchangable, and what types would develop exclusively.
That really sounds interesting and useful.
Back to Space Combat rules:
I did also thougt about making space combat rounds longer than 1 ground combat round. The main advantage of the current system is the possiblity to mix space combat with "onboard" combat. That`s really a nice possiblity - imagine MejDarhar Warriors transmitting on the bridge of a Confederation Milky Way class star ship "corporation" - the Feygon tactical officer uses his personal plasmarifle to attack the invaders, while at the same time attempting to target the enemies attack fighters...
But this situation might come up as often as the situation where you decharge all your plasma batteries at the tough hero - never.
So, using different scales (both in space, time and damage) would be more useful.
If the combat situations actually mix, you could make the controlling of a ship a fullround action that needs to be repeated for 10 rounds (depending on the length of the round), and for each round you do something else the character takes a penalty to his checks at the end of the 10 rounds you resolve the space combat with the penalties determined in the meanwhile. The effects of the starship combat would apply in the next 10 ground combat rounds (if there are any effects that aren`t instantenous.
What I also prefer is the possibilty of all characters to somehow affect the space combat, even if they are not trained pilots. Aid another isn`t that much. Spellcasters are useless most the time in space (except for a Cat´s Grace or similar spells that might boost the pilots or gunners abilities a little).
One option I recently considered was allowing a character to take the damage the ship originally would have taken.
So, if (on the new damage scale for space ships) the ship took 20 points of damage, the character could declare to take the damage instead (or maybe only half of the damage) - that would be exactly what you see in movies and series - when a crewmember on the bridge is killed be an exploding console, he just sacrificed himself to avoid severe damage to the ship. (And when the Captain does it, he is just thrown out of his chair, because he has more hp
)
This option would only be available to (acting) characters on the bridge or in the cockpit, not to passengers or regular crewmen.
ADDENDUM:
For hit locations:
I think it might be interesting to allow this in space combat, because it fits one of my favorite sci-fi universe - in Startrek they always aim at certain systems to speed up the fight without having to kill all crewmen of the enemy ship (being good and all that).
I wouldn`t attempt to split the hp on the targettable systems.
My take is:
Either you attack the ship directly, and this just deals hp damage.
If you target a specific system, the damage is applied to the ships general hp and the specific systems hp. The hp of the system are probably somewhat in correlation to the total ship hp (maybe x % of the hull hp), but if you add all the hp of the vital systems together, you don`t get to 100 % of the ships hp, but probably a lot more (anything above 100%)
To balance this, targeting a specific system must be more difficult than the standard attack, and the ship cannot be destroyed or fully disabled just because one system was destroyed (unless this would deal enough damage to the ship to destroy it anway.)
Other possible balance options could be:
o Damage to specific systems is somehow reduced (depending on scale, by half or one damage die or any other number)
o Critical hits are only possible when attacking the ship, not when a system (or the critical damage would have a notably different and weaker effect)
o If you consider using MDT for space ships (however you adjucate this), it wouldn´t apply to specific systems, only for the base hull frame. (Similar to the critical damage rule above)
o Excess damage does not harm the ship (so the damage when destroying a specific system can never exceeds the systems hp - so maybe destroying all 60 Turbolasers on a Stardestroyer wouldn´t really be effective if each only had 2hp, while the weapon damage would be 2d6 points)
