Running a starship combat

[Tigerlil]

Hehe yes, it probably can't be written often enough, should be in all combat sections of all books

Ive now personally finished designing a small armada of space ships so can start playing some space battles.
To spice things up a little bit more I've expanded on the advanced shield rules a little:
1: whatever power you didn't use for moving can be diverted to shields "divert all power to shields!"
2: shields have a Vulnerability and a resistance. (Need better words that don't clash with other rules terms)
-if a shield is hit by a weapon it's vulnerable to follow normal shield deterioration rules (-1 shield). If the ships shield value is 0, but was shielded because of speed diversion to shields, you loose speed instead (ouch)
-resistance to a damage type doubles all shield values.

The human fleet that I've designed use deflector shields: Vulnerable to impact, resist heat.
the normal human weapons are all impact, and torpedoes/nukes (limited but higher damage) are heat.


My theory is that this will make choosing which weapons to fire and how much to move will have some tactical choices instead of just fireing everything. Also it will make sensor operators much more valuable.
"Their shields are down captain, launch torpedoes?"


Now to design the enemy ships: A bioship armada from the shadow dimension (tyranid from 40k like)...now that's going to be a challenge to the system which is all based around engines

 

[Morrus]

1: whatever power you didn't use for moving can be diverted to shields "divert all power to shields!"

That's a specific combat trick in the next iteration. As are speed boosts, slingshots around gravity wells, and plenty of other things.

 

[Sniperfox47]

I'd recommend trying 'em before recommending alternatives.

Touché. We'll give them a shot at tonight's game. I just thought the extended encounter rules seem to mesh really well with starship battles xD

As are speed boosts, slingshots around gravity wells, and plenty of other things.

Now I kinda want to run a spaceship only campaign. Each person with their own fighter (tactical combat) that combine, power-ranger style, into an überdreadnaught (complex combat), slingshotting around the sun fast enough to go back in time!

 

[Morrus]

Touché. We'll give them a shot at tonight's game. I just thought the extended encounter rules seem to mesh really well with starship battles xD

Did you try it in the end?

 

[Sniperfox47]

Did you try it in the end?

Sorry for the slow reply. Yeah we did. Had to force them into it though since out of the four of us I'm the only one interested in NEW, but we didn't have any issues with it, was pretty strait forward. My PCs much preferred the tactical fighting where each of them had their own little ship, but I'm sure that will vary group to group (it wouldn't be very viable in a lot of campaigns anyways).