[d20 Future/Star Wars] Starships?

[humble minion]

I think that making Star Wars space combat more like personal combat would be a good thing, on the whole. The VP/WP system, with ships flown by higher level pilots having more VP) would work better than a flat hull point number in emulating what happens in the movies - at least when you're mostly dealing with fighters and other small craft, as you will be most of the time in a roleplaying campaign.

So how much do the stats (level, skills, feats, etc) of the pilot affect combat in d20 Future?

 

[d4]

D4, just so you know, you're getting the Cruiser and the Strike Cruiser confused a lot. The Strike Cruiser has antimatter guns, not fusion beams. Also the ship has to succeed it's damage control check for it to heal that 22 damage.

i was confusing the two stat lines a bit. the strike cruiser does have antimatter guns, not fusions beams -- but they do the same damage, so that doesn't change the numbers at all.

the DC of the damage control check is 15 -- a trained crew succeeds on a 11, an expert crew only needs to roll a 7. strike cruisers have expert crews, so they succeed 70% of the time.

Also I I believe that a cruiser isn't really the kind of ship you use to press an attack with. It's really general purpose. You don't blow up ships with that. In PL 7 you blow up ships with a Battlecruiser which does a whopping 32d8 damage, and that bad boy only has hardness 30 and 9,000 HP...

ok, a battlecruiser needs 39 successful hits with its heavy particle beams to destroy a strike cruiser. it needs 79 successful hits to destroy another battlecruiser. (this doesn't count in extra damage from possible missile hits or critical hits, but it's also ignoring damage control.) that's just too long for me. i don't want to limit PC starship combat to fighters; i want them to get involved in capital ship fights too. and even 39 rounds of combat seems way too long for me to devote to taking out a single capital ship.

...or you send in wings of Assault Fighters which do 18d8 per ship attacking.

according to the rules for forming wings, only the wing leader fires his weapons at the enemy. his wingmen use their attack actions for "aid another" to improve the wing leader's attack roll.

i still think the weapon damages are too low. especially considering that a ship-mounted fusion beam or antimatter gun (like what capital ships are using) does an average of 45 points of damage... a 6th or 7th level Tough Hero can take that and have a pretty good chance of walking away... (he's got enough hit points, and a good enough Fort save to make the massive damage save fairly easily.)

 

[Hollywood]

I listened to this "young" generation of roleplayers who simply want RPG, not wargame.

Can't understand that myself. Real-life combat is not some "fun and games"; it invovles a lot of tatical and strategic considerations. And it always has throughout history. Why should combat in a game not also be about tactics and strategy rather than "abstract cinematics".

Me? I'm old-school enough to recognize and acknowledge where the root of RPG came from. That and the fact I like to blend them together, whether I'm a Lord of a vast army, or a loyal Davion House soldier piloting my Battlemech.

Same here.

And speaking of, I too was disappointed in the Blood and Space rules. The very fact there was not a mention a third dimension truly bugged me. Its like attempting to simulate submarine warfare but all the subs have to remain on the surface of the water. It just don't work.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think they want you to only pilot small craft. To be honest, I can't see how commanding a large spacecraft is going to be anything but munchkinism... a heavy cruiser is going to have everything you want, and then some.

Can't understand that myself. Real-life combat is not some "fun and games"; it invovles a lot of tatical and strategic considerations. And it always has throughout history. Why should combat in a game not also be about tactics and strategy rather than "abstract cinematics".

Most people aren't such good tacticians, though. (This is why the Plan talent doesn't require an actual plan, for instance, just like Move Silently doesn't require the player to be sneaky in real life.) Even so, creative players can still come up with good tactics, so long as they're cool and cinematic and not "I calculate their max range and..."

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Eh, and my wife loves Honor Harrington and so loves the tactical nature of large-ship combat in space.

That's another reason we liked the Warships rules ... it was more along the lines of "Eggs With Sledgehammers". After a certain point, the weapons were absolutely devestating to ANY ship You used defensive systems to reduce the chance of a hit and computer systems to increase a chance of your own hit and pray the AMM and AMS lasers take out the anti-matter missiles before they rip you in half.

We had a very entertaining game this summer of Space Marines and Navy Officers. My wife, her brother, and their friends wanted me to dust off my old Alternity books so I just whipped together some characters for them. Each person had two characters ... one from a Marine squad with power armor and big guns, another from the cruiser the marines were stationed on. We could alternate between bug-hunting and ship-board tactical combat and they loved it.

She wants me to flesh it out and play some of that again. If they didn't bother to make the system scalable where we can have any fun commanding large ships in combat (and I was using rather cinematic combat without grids, it's still quite tactical) then that's a big part of our fun that d20 Future isn't supporting.

--fje

 

[Pagan priest]

I think they want you to only pilot small craft. To be honest, I can't see how commanding a large spacecraft is going to be anything but munchkinism... a heavy cruiser is going to have everything you want, and then some.

I disagree. It is easy to have a party in a cruiser and not have the game be even vaguely munchkinesque.

Picture a party sent out in a cruiser on a piracy suppression mission... a long way from home and resupply, no allies to call on, local authorities that are likely aiding the pirates, and now word comes that the pirates are getting organized...

 

[Ranger REG]

I think they want you to only pilot small craft. To be honest, I can't see how commanding a large spacecraft is going to be anything but munchkinism... a heavy cruiser is going to have everything you want, and then some.

Unless you go after another large spacecraft. I'd like to do that, since I am a longtime Trek fans and have played Star Fleet Battles.

In fact, you could emulate much of that game into d20. Of course, I wouldn't use the impulse movement rules. But when it comes to small fighter crafts, if both opposing fighters enters into one square and declare their attack to the other, that "dogfighting" in D&D would be considered "grappling."

Most people aren't such good tacticians, though. (This is why the Plan talent doesn't require an actual plan, for instance, just like Move Silently doesn't require the player to be sneaky in real life.) Even so, creative players can still come up with good tactics, so long as they're cool and cinematic and not "I calculate their max range and..."

Or some of them would rather just do it without maps. I recalled having to run a Robotech game without using maps and counters but rather hands to simulate the fighter's movement. It's okay when you're dealing with a small number of crafts or just focus on one particular fight in a mass battle.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Eh, and my wife loves Honor Harrington and so loves the tactical nature of large-ship combat in space.

That's another reason we liked the Warships rules ... it was more along the lines of "Eggs With Sledgehammers".

That comes in Star Wars, too, where capitol ships have so few HP that it's not funny. A few sessions ago, a piddly 100 heavy concussion missiles launched into a MonCal cruiser and two Corvettes resulted in one drifting Corvette and two expanding plasma clouds*.

My Star Wars GM and I were talking about how pitifully fragile the cap ships in SW are. I'm a bit happier about the undergunned cap ships in d20 Future, since that means average staying power is better, which means that character survival is more likely (since you have time to negotiate when it's obvious you're gonna lose).

Brad

* - If you must know, we were assigned to obtain data from a Rebel battlegroup that was known to be heading to attack a factory outpost. The defenses were mostly absent, save for the first four dozen or so assault gunboats that the factory had produced. We "altered" the clear lane through the asteroid field into the station, and, at my suggestion, found a Colossal asteroid that was orbiting on the edge of the lane and mounted about 100 concussion missile launchers on it. When the Rebels jumped in, they split into four task forces and sent their fighters in to attack the station. One of the MonCal task forces went...slowly...into...the..."clear"...lane, and we sent the asteroid (via a tug) hurtling into its shields, spewing concussion missiles as it went. One Corvette vaporized the first round, and the other two ships got exceedingly lucky and lived. Then the missiles re-acquired and came back, and the MonCal blew up with all hands, while the Corvette was so far down that it was ionized into submission and the remnants of the CSP beat feet.

Of course, this was actually a Bad Thing, since we hadn't...quite...intended to hit it that hard. But, hey. We got it on the next one, and that one blew up, too.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

All a matter of taste, I suppose.

--fje

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That comes in Star Wars, too, where capitol ships have so few HP that it's not funny. A few sessions ago, a piddly 100 heavy concussion missiles launched into a MonCal cruiser and two Corvettes resulted in one drifting Corvette and two expanding plasma clouds*.

My Star Wars GM and I were talking about how pitifully fragile the cap ships in SW are. I'm a bit happier about the undergunned cap ships in d20 Future, since that means average staying power is better, which means that character survival is more likely (since you have time to negotiate when it's obvious you're gonna lose).

Brad

* - If you must know, we were assigned to obtain data from a Rebel battlegroup that was known to be heading to attack a factory outpost. The defenses were mostly absent, save for the first four dozen or so assault gunboats that the factory had produced. We "altered" the clear lane through the asteroid field into the station, and, at my suggestion, found a Colossal asteroid that was orbiting on the edge of the lane and mounted about 100 concussion missile launchers on it. When the Rebels jumped in, they split into four task forces and sent their fighters in to attack the station. One of the MonCal task forces went...slowly...into...the..."clear"...lane, and we sent the asteroid (via a tug) hurtling into its shields, spewing concussion missiles as it went. One Corvette vaporized the first round, and the other two ships got exceedingly lucky and lived. Then the missiles re-acquired and came back, and the MonCal blew up with all hands, while the Corvette was so far down that it was ionized into submission and the remnants of the CSP beat feet.

Of course, this was actually a Bad Thing, since we hadn't...quite...intended to hit it that hard. But, hey. We got it on the next one, and that one blew up, too.

Well, that mimics the results in the Starwars Computer games (most notably X-Wing and TIE Fighter) quite well. There you had a fair chance of destroying a star destroyer with a single X-Wing (especially easy in the X-Wing game, where destroying the shield generators on top of the bridge did disenganged the shields - spares some time. And since enemy reeinforcement would only arrive after the destruction of a full wing, it was quite easy to handle the dogfighting..).
The Missile Boat loaded with 80 concussion missles was also able to destroy a cruiser, I think. (thouyh you might consider a better payload, maybe 40 concussion missles + 30 torpedos, or 20 (? - don`t remember the exact number) heavy rockets).

(My favourite "mission" for showing off piloting skills and superiority of spacecraft was the TIE Fighters TIE Defender mission where you could fight all types of rebel fighters with all flavours of skill - and even other TIE Defenders. ... "So, Mu1, you want to run with the big dogs, eh? Are you really that sure of yourself?")

It was a bit ridcilous sometimes, but fun, anyway.

But a bit more back to topic:

I eagerly await my D20 Future, but till then, I just ask the question:
How good can non-pilots contribute to a space battle?
This is one of the major problems in most games, I think - it`s the same as with decking in Shadowrun. There is only one capable of doing it well, and the rest watches. I would prefer the possiblity of all characters to interact - fighters should be able to fire turrets, if they can`t do anything else, spellcasters should be able to cast spells in space (and this should have some effect )

For my Dragonstarbased campaign I created the concept of "Spellbanks" - special devices integrated into a ships hull that were able to enlarge spell effects to affect the space. So you could launch fireballs at enemy fighter wings or whatever else you wanted to do. (The system does only work in vacuum, not on planets). It`s not perfect, but without such a system, a wizard in space would be bored to hell, and I didn`t want that...