"SPACE FIGHT!" Starship combat boardgame

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Defence Grids

So here's my proposed Defence Grid change.

• Defence Grids do more damage but require hit rolls
• They get a number of attacks against each each target
• This number of attacks is reduced through the damage track (4, 3, 2, 1)

This will eliminate the sudden cut-off (at present once the grid goes down, the carrier is effectively dead because fighter squadrons just continually unload into it with impunity at about ten times the rate that the ship can repair). It also adds a little more flexibility in grids, as accuracy, etc. can be changed on a per-ship basis.

Multiple attacks against multiple targets? That sounds like it could take some time to resolve each round. Would it be better to just have a varied attack bonus?

Combat Units

I propose removing hit points and damage. One hit kills. Nice and simple.

Do you still have something like variable attack and defense scores? It might be nice to be able to "simulate" a highly trained crew vs. just losts of troops.

Ship Explosions

Ship explosions need to happen much more quickly. Start at 4-6 on d6, next round it's 3-6, next round 2-6, final round 1-6. Less of the ships just flying on for ages while the player tries to guide it towards the enemy capital ships.

You mean the final round is autoamtic?

Self Destruct

Make the countdown much longer, making it very hard to time tactically and allowing opponents to move away or blow up the ship first. A minimum of 5 rounds or so.

Sounds like this could work. THough I still wonder if the explosion just shouldn't be weaker. Less damage or less range...

Turning

A minimum of two hexes between turns, allowing a turn at the end of your movement if you haven't made one. I also propose removing sidelip - it manifests as a "get out of jail free card" and renders asteroids pointless.

Sideslip could turn in a ship's special ability. It might make sense for some of the maneuverable fighters.

Speed

Need to slow fighters down a little. Whizzing round at speed 24 is pretty much "just place the fighter anywhere you want it on the map". It's almost a teleport ability. I suggest giving the fighters penalties to hit at high speeds similar to the Defence bonus they get.

Would you apply the penalty to everyone or just fighters?
You could base it on thrust spent each round.

Heroes

Still needs reworking. Passive bonuses need to be useful - initiative isn't uselful enough (Bold Captain and Seasoned Admiral).

Hmm. Attack or Defense bonuses will probably be always appreciated.

Sensors & ECM

ECM should provide a penalty to sensor rolls instead of simply blocking them. This allows the Science Genius to shine, as well as ships with sophisticated sensors.

Either that or ships with sophisticated sensors and science genius get special abilities to counter it. But Counter-COunter-measures have the tendency to get awkward...

 

[Morrus]

Multiple attacks against multiple targets? That sounds like it could take some time to resolve each round. Would it be better to just have a varied attack bonus?

How do you mean?

Do you still have something like variable attack and defense scores? It might be nice to be able to "simulate" a highly trained crew vs. just losts of troops.

Could have, yeah.

You mean the final round is autoamtic?

Yup. But expressing it as a die range means that it retains numerical flexibility - should we ever decide we want someone to be able to modifiy the die range.

Sounds like this could work. THough I still wonder if the explosion just shouldn't be weaker. Less damage or less range...

Yeah. I think I'll tone 'em down. Right now it's Max AP x 10 at the determinate hex, halved for each hex distance. Reducing it to a level where it's a threat to fighters and forces them to pull back but not a viable weapon against capital ships is the key here, I think.

Sideslip could turn in a ship's special ability. It might make sense for some of the maneuverable fighters.

True enough.

Would you apply the penalty to everyone or just fighters?

Yup. Though in practice the capital ships simply don't accelerate to those speeds. Their agility is low enough that it's too dangerous in combat.

You could base it on thrust spent each round.

Nah. I had a couple of squadrons simply moving at 24 for the entire game; they didn't use any thrust points to change speed once they reached 24.

Hmm. Attack or Defense bonuses will probably be always appreciated.

Yup. We've found that +/-2 modifiers really affects behaviour. The fighters try as best they can to get in behind each other because of the +2 from the rear.

Either that or ships with sophisticated sensors and science genius get special abilities to counter it. But Counter-COunter-measures have the tendency to get awkward...

Yeah. Modifiers are the way to go, I think. ECM gives -8 or something.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

How do you mean?

The way I understood your suggestion it means that a defensive grid makes multiple attacks each against every fighter in the grid. That sounds like a lot of rolls.

I'd rather give them a higher attack bonus (plus damage) and apply a penalty or reduce the bonus for a weakened state.

I forgot, don't defensive grids also require action points? Don't you think limiting action points will do enough?

 

[Morrus]

The way I understood your suggestion it means that a defensive grid makes multiple attacks each against every fighter in the grid. That sounds like a lot of rolls.

I'd rather give them a higher attack bonus (plus damage) and apply a penalty or reduce the bonus for a weakened state.

I forgot, don't defensive grids also require action points? Don't you think limiting action points will do enough?

I think it does, but maybe the AP reduction down the damage track needs to be increased slightly to make sure that the larger ships really are making hard choices as they get damaged. Plus we then get into an interesting dynamic of AP modification with heroes and the like, which I like. I like the idea of the engineer being able to bring the grid back online (by earning a couple of extra APs for the ship).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think it does, but maybe the AP reduction down the damage track needs to be increased slightly to make sure that the larger ships really are making hard choices as they get damaged. Plus we then get into an interesting dynamic of AP modification with heroes and the like, which I like. I like the idea of the engineer being able to bring the grid back online (by earning a couple of extra APs for the ship).

Maybe the action point cost of the individiual systems just aren't high enough? I am not sure that reducing action points more will help otherwise...

For example, the Alliance War Star grants you 50 shield points and resist 10 to damage for 3 action points. His standard attack seems to deal about 1d6 points of damage for 1 action point. So basically 3 action points can fend off up to 14 enemy action points. (assuming identical ships and no one using more effective weapons, but the weapon always hitting). Maybe that's just not the ideal ratio.

The Federation Cruiser has almost the same chance, except that sometimes it will take real damage.

I feel that you might be able to make similar calculations with the auto-hit defense grids, but this time looking at how many targets are affected and taking into account hit ratios. Of course now that you revamp them, that might be moot.
Though I am thinking about - why do you change it? Are the defense grids to effective against squadrons or too effective against capital ships? You could reverse the rules for their effectiveness against capital ships - they deal only 1 damage against capital ships but 1d4 against squadrons...

 

[Morrus]

Maybe the action point cost of the individiual systems just aren't high enough? I am not sure that reducing action points more will help otherwise...

For example, the Alliance War Star grants you 50 shield points and resist 10 to damage for 3 action points. His standard attack seems to deal about 1d6 points of damage for 1 action point. So basically 3 action points can fend off up to 14 enemy action points. (assuming identical ships and no one using more effective weapons, but the weapon always hitting). Maybe that's just not the ideal ratio.

Doesn't really play out like that in game. With all the dynamics going on, shields are a lot weaker than you'd think just looking at the numbers.

The Federation Cruiser has almost the same chance, except that sometimes it will take real damage.

That's the one we used yesterday. Turst me, nobody thought the shields were too effective!

Though I am thinking about - why do you change it? Are the defense grids to effective against squadrons or too effective against capital ships?

No, it's that they need to scale down instead of being 100% - 100% - 100% - 0%. When up, the ship's OK; once down it may as well be dead, because it ain't ever coming back up again! With a hundred points of damage per round raining in on it from various sources, no defence grid up to whittle down those attacks, and a repair rating of 5, a Colonial battleship is dead as soon as its defence grid goes down - it's a point of no return.

A scaled system gets rid of that "100% or 0%" thing that the Battleship has going for it.

So the nnumbers work like this: if you want the damage from a grid to scale down through the damage track, then you need to start at something higher than d4; that can give you a nice scale (say, d8, d6, d4 or something). To compensate for extra damage, assigning a hit probability rather than auto-damage stops it becoming too deadly.

 

[Elephant]

There are diagrams in the book. Space may well be big, but each hex in this game is only about 100m or so.

100m?! In space??!? What, are you kidding me? If we mounted weapons systems on *satellites* and were duking it out with Russia in orbit, engagement ranges would be more like 10-100km.

100m would be a friggin' knife fight in space.

Shoot, a quick Googling suggests that Star Trek phasers have ranges of 2000 km at a minimum -- some sources peg 'em at an effective range of 200,000 km.

100m per hex just seems way too small to me.



On another note, do you have any ship designs for this inspired by the Goa'uld ships from Stargate? 'cuz that would be positively peanutty!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Startrek Phasers are even supposed to have a range of 300.000 km. Never seen on screen, they are always way closer.

If you use such large scales, most ships will end up take up only a single hex. Pretty boring.

I agree. Stargate ships would be cool. As would be FarScape, by the way. But I guess there's always room for some "homebrew" ships - or later supplements.

 

[Diplomat123]

100m?! In space??!? What, are you kidding me? If we mounted weapons systems on *satellites* and were duking it out with Russia in orbit, engagement ranges would be more like 10-100km.

100m would be a friggin' knife fight in space.

Shoot, a quick Googling suggests that Star Trek phasers have ranges of 2000 km at a minimum -- some sources peg 'em at an effective range of 200,000 km.

100m per hex just seems way too small to me.



On another note, do you have any ship designs for this inspired by the Goa'uld ships from Stargate? 'cuz that would be positively peanutty!

Star Trek combat almost always happens within rock throwing range with ships banking past each other. Star Wars, B5 and Galactica are also in your face fights more akin to WW2 planes attacking a fleet, rather than Battleships standing off and firing at each other.

With regards to self destruct. Maybe the simple answer is to remove it as an option. I am struggling to think of a single Trek example of a combat use of self destruct (ramming yes). If the idea is to recreate the fell of TV and film, why put in an option that was never used. Standing by for multiple examples of uses in TV and Film.

 

[Diplomat123]

Russ,

Following our latest playtest you have covered most of the stuff that came up, and i generally like the suggestions. It certainly played a lot quicker with the revised ship cards, and the new shields were a much better mechanic, although from the Bridge they didn't seem to be stopping all that much stuff as it came in.

For boarding combat, how about have a separate card for boarding actions. As soon as a ship is boarded, write its name onto the sheet and move the combat units onto that sheet. You can then use that to track in as much detail as you like without cluttering up every ship card. eg, rather than hit points, each unit is healthy, wounded, crippled or dead. The boarding combat card has areas for each of those and you just move the units betweeen them as appropriate.

My major niggle is how determinate hexes work on large ships.

Taking the Galactica for an example. It is about 8 hexes long and 3 wide, and has a single determinate hex. To be shot at you count range to its determinate hex. It counts it own firing range and arcs from that hex as well. So far so good.

It can lauch fighters to any hex adjacent to the ship.
It projects an aura from the edge of the ship.
When flying along, every hex is susceptible to hitting an asteroid.
When being threatened by a self destrucing ship the determinate hex was the one to count to.
I'm not sure what the rule is where it comes to ramming - is it the determinate hex or the edge of the ship that makes contact.

I'm not sure what the right answer is, but it creates a lot of confusion having two totally different mechanics in play for effectively the same thing (where is the Galactica), depending on what you are doing.