"SPACE FIGHT!" Starship combat boardgame

[Morrus]

In this case, the best strategy would almost always be to cloak them as soon as the battle begins (they can be cloaked even when they would otherwise be sitting on their ship with nothing to do) and leave them cloaked the whole battle. Is this what you want?

Yup, I figure that's what they'll do. You're right. Hmm. How to handle that? Make it an action with a duration? Cloak for one round only?

That seems really weird. You would think that since auras usualy represent point-defense systems like turrets, that they would be programmed not to fire at friendly ships. An I certainly don't recall seeing, say, a Star Destroyer's turbolasers firing at TIE fighters. What's the reasoning behind this decision?

I thought it would add an extra level of tactical play; you think it's a bad idea? I'm not completely attached to the idea, so I can certainly be talked out of it!

First of all, if you target a multi-hex ship, which hex do you count the AoE from? Or is it 3 hexes away from any hex in the target ship's space (so the larger the target, the larger the AoE)? And can you target a hex of space that has no ship in it (I would guess not)?

It would be the nearest hex- the point of impact. The point is that the nukes go off on impact; so if they don't hit anything, they just drift off into space.

But I like the idea of choosing which hex of the target ship you're firing at. I think I'll add that in.

This could lead to some quite unorthodox tactics. For example if there were several squadrons of enemy fighters clustered in an area of space with no other ships, a good strategy would be to move a friendly Large or bigger ship in there and then nuke it - a large ship can easily soak up 3d6 damage and it would probably wipe out (or come close to wiping out) all of the squadrons (since it's an AoE, it does full damage to squadrons).

I can certianly envisage tactics whereby someone shoots at the easiest target rather than the intended, just to get the explosion. Heck, even shooting an asteroid!

The wording here is confusing, because the clause "with a roll of 11 or more on a d20" is placed in between the two powers, so it seems like it should be parsed as "On his turn, the IL may (a) inflict 1d8 damage to an enemy combat unit with a roll of 11 or more on a d20, or (b) restore 2d6 HP to a friendly combat unit".

Probably a clearer wording would be "...the IL may roll a d20. On a roll of 11 or more, the IL may inflict 1d8 damage to an enemy combat unit or restore 2d6 HP to a friendly combat unit."

Sounds reasonable.

Am I correct in my understanding that heroes and combat units have no ability to move from ship to ship under their own power? The ways to move them from ship to ship are (a) you can move them from a carrier to a ship that that carrier launched, when the carrier launches it; (b) you can use transporters, boarding party breach abilities, or other ship actions, which happen when those ships use those actions on their turns.

Correct. Infantry units can't fly in space!

Does the "let allies benefit from sensor locks" ability only apply to allied "fighters," or to all allied ships? If the first one, what ships count as a "fighter"?

A ship called a fighter - Rebel Fighter, Colonial fighter, Imperial Fighter.

The ECM pulse is centered on the ship itself, right?

Yep.

Can the breach ability move heroes from the IAC to the target ship? You said the IAC can carry only one combat unit, but ca it carry a combat unit and a hero, or multiple heroes? In general, do heroes count as combat units for purposes of abilities that move them, or are they different?

I plan to allow folks to "attach" Hero units to units. So they're part of the unit they're atached to.

It might be a good idea to remove repair abilities from squadrons. If we're operating under the idea that in a squadron, 1 HP = 1 ship and loss of HP represents ships being destroyed, then it doesn't make sense that the HP could be repaired. Also since they have an extra copy of this for each ship, then they could repair themselves very quickly.

Well, it could equally represent all of them being damaged to a lesser extent, in whihc case astromech droids can put out small fires etc.

 

[Morrus]

Also another thing this document needs is a table of contents and reorganization to make it easier to read.

I totally agree that the current organization of the document could be improved.

Right now things keep moving, page numbers change and the book gets longer. The table of contents needs to be the last thing I do unless I want to rewrite every time I change something!

That ToC looks great, though! I'll refer back to it in the closing stages of development when everything needs to be put into place and the fancy layout and stuff gets done.

 

[Morrus]

Also, I have a question about movement:

Suppose I have speed 6 and agility 2.

Can I do the following:

(1) Turn 60 degrees
(2) Move 3 hexes
(3) Turn 60 degrees
(4) Move 3 hexes
(5) Turn 60 degrees

I am leaving 3 hexes between each turn, so is that right? And suppose I don't change my speed, but I do the same thing next turn. That means that I've turned 60 degrees twice (once at the end of first turn movement and again at the beginning of second turn movement) with no intervening movement. Is that allowed? If not, that means at the end of each ship's turn you have to record how many hexes it moved since the last time it turned.

Nope. It resets each round - they don't carry over - too much book-keeping (we tried carrying it over in playtests and unanimously agreed it didn't improve the game and added extra work), and you have to move the distance before you can turn.

So you could only do:

Move 3 hexes
Turn 60 degrees
Move three hexes
Turn 60 degrees

And then the same the next turn.

 

[Elephant]

Do you mean the original large-size mages when you click through, or the smaller versions on the page itself?

What's the original size of those images? I don't think it matters if they're gigantic after I click through -- I expect a closer look if I do that. Besides, when the image is the only thing I'm looking at, it's not like needing to scroll to see part of the image will hide a bunch of other stuff on the page.

 

[Elephant]

It would be the nearest hex- the point of impact. The point is that the nukes go off on impact; so if they don't hit anything, they just drift off into space.

The guys with nukes never heard of a timer? It seems like a painfully obvious feature -- have a timer and a network connection to the nukes, and the targeting computer sets the timer and cuts the wire just before launch.

You might still want a miss chance, though -- depending on the speed and proximity of engagement, quality of sensors, and ECM involved, there might be some estimation and guesswork needed for targeting. Oops, the enemy ship suddenly decelerated while the nuke was en route, so the nuke detonates early, etc.

 

[Morrus]

The guys with nukes never heard of a timer? It seems like a painfully obvious feature -- have a timer and a network connection to the nukes, and the targeting computer sets the timer and cuts the wire just before launch.

Ask the guys who who wrote Battlestar Galactica. The nukes on the Colonial Battleship are modelled on those; and they went off on impact.

There's no reason someone else might not have nukes with timers; but that ship doesn't!

Unless I'm really very much misremembering the TV show (which is possible, of course).

 

[Morrus]

OK, I've taken your advice and had a spare hour or so, so I totally reorganized the book.

I based it on your structure above, Jack. Note that I haven't changed any text - just moved sections around.

I agree that it's a more intuitive structure. Whilst being a vast improvement, there are a couple of things which strike me as not quite right.

The main one is the turn sequence being buried at the end of the ship overview. I feel it's such a fundamental aspect of the game that it needs its own section. That section probably needs some more overview type stuff, too.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

OK, I've taken your advice and had a spare hour or so, so I totally reorganized the book.

I based it on your structure above, Jack. Note that I haven't changed any text - just moved sections around.

I agree that it's a more intuitive structure. Whilst being a vast improvement, there are a couple of things which strike me as not quite right.

The main one is the turn sequence being buried at the end of the ship overview. I feel it's such a fundamental aspect of the game that it needs its own section. That section probably needs some more overview type stuff, too.

Wether Auras/Flak should hurt enemies only or not - this could be in the realm of preferences and what you want to model. Battlestar Galactica style flak definitely hurts indiscrimetely - but of course the ship doesn't have to fire its Flak if it doesn't want to. It is essentially the final line of defense, when the Vipers fail to intercept Raiders or missiles. BSG Flak cannons are not targeting individual ships, instead they just fill the vacuum with shrapnels at a certain distance. (There are some shots in the series that make this more obvious).

If the Enterprise would set its Phaser Banks to a point defense mode (assuming that's possible), it would probably only hurt enemy ships. But in my view Startrek (or at least Federation) tech is all about controlled firepower and precision.

Regarding nukes - I think they work on impact because they are useless if they just explode in mid-space. In vacuum, they don't cause Shockwaves like they would in an atmosphere. So you will usually have lots of radiation flying around, most of it missing any target. Very inefficient, and probably also ineffective. At least I think that are the BSG assumptions on nukes. In essence, in BSG they work as HEAT missiles for space ships.

Of course, this would also mean that generally all area burst effects are unlikely to work, unless you use something that creates shrapnels. That's probably not reflected with Startrek style Photon Torpedos - near misses count, IIRC.

If you still like burst effects, you could make a different between a direct hit and a miss when close by. (Full damage on impact, half damage on targets in burst radius). In the end, this can also be a detail you vary based on spaceship and race.

 

[Morrus]

Wether Auras/Flak should hurt enemies only or not - this could be in the realm of preferences and what you want to model. Battlestar Galactica style flak definitely hurts indiscrimetely - but of course the ship doesn't have to fire its Flak if it doesn't want to. It is essentially the final line of defense, when the Vipers fail to intercept Raiders or missiles. BSG Flak cannons are not targeting individual ships, instead they just fill the vacuum with shrapnels at a certain distance. (There are some shots in the series that make this more obvious).

Good point, and solves the question completely. It can vary from ship-to-ship and be noted on the stat card.

 

[Morrus]

Fairly major update - after the re-org of the document, I've gone through and cleaned it up, added cloaking devices, and inserted a table of contents.