"SPACE FIGHT!" Starship combat boardgame

[Morrus]

100m?! In space??!? What, are you kidding me?

I am not.

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

Take that up with George Lucas, J Michael Strackzinski (however you spell his name), plus the makers of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica! Fighters race along the hulls of capital ships at a distance of a few feet and weave in and about each other at ranges similar to WW2 air combat, Star Trek capital ships fire at each other from distances of only a few ship lengths, and so on. Examples of ships engaging each other at rages of thousands of kilometers are virtually nonexistent in sci-fi space combat.

It's a fun space combat game based on TV and film, not a simulation of what space combat would be like in real life. And space combat on TV and film is pretty much like WW2 battleships and fighters (mainly because that's more cinematic).

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

Have you tried playing it yet? I assure you that the scale works perfectly! You really need to play this game to get a sense of how it feels.

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!

Just the ones in the book so far.

 

[Morrus]

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.

Possibly. That's yet another record sheet in play, though.

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.

I agree. The difficulty is balancing simplicity (a determinate hex pretty much cutting out any potential arguments re. range and targeting) and realism (a 3 hex wide ship squeezing between asteroids one hex apart shouldn't happen).

Perhaps simply reverting to using the edge of the counter is the way to go. I can foresee disagreements in play arising then, though!

 

[Morrus]

For those interested, I put together a basic mission pack/scenario PDF detailing the playtest scenario. It works well as an introductory scenario, I think (although a far more basic one will be included in the core rulebook - probably one with just a couple of ships, no heroes or baording parties). We've played this mission three time now, swapping sides, and it seems very balanced. That was more luck than anything else!

It kinda gives a starting glimose at the role I imagine for such Mission Packs in the product line. This one just uses ships from the core rules, but Mission Packs can contain new ships and counters, too, as well has new heroes or terrain features or other stuff particular to that scenario.

It'll need some prettying up, some art, and some better photos, of course.

 

[Elephant]

I am not.



Take that up with George Lucas,

Not a sci-fi director.

J Michael Strackzinski

Never heard of him.

(however you spell his name), plus the makers of Star Trek

WTF? The examples I cited were from the Star Trek universe! The fact that most firefights in ST happened after the ships zoomed up to kiss each other doesn't reduce the effective weapons range. Just because I could shoot a target with a rifle from 5' away doesn't mean that I should wait until *all* targets are 5' away before engaging them. That would just be stupid.

and Battlestar Galactica!

I've never seen it.

Fighters race along the hulls of capital ships at a distance of a few feet and weave in and about each other at ranges similar to WW2 air combat, Star Trek capital ships fire at each other from distances of only a few ship lengths, and so on. Examples of ships engaging each other at rages of thousands of kilometers are virtually nonexistent in sci-fi space combat.

I've been reading the wrong "sci-fi", then, I guess. Ships in the Honor Harrington novels certainly engaged each other at longer ranges.

It's a fun space combat game based on TV and film, not a simulation of what space combat would be like in real life. And space combat on TV and film is pretty much like WW2 battleships and fighters (mainly because that's more cinematic).

Aaand...my interest in space fight just evaporated. "Fun and cinematic" shouldn't have to mean "turn your brain off before you start".

Have you tried playing it yet? I assure you that the scale works perfectly! You really need to play this game to get a sense of how it feels.

Oh, I would have loved to play sometime in the past couple of months. Unfortunately, it's not available for download.

 

[Morrus]

Not a sci-fi director....Never heard of him....I've never seen it....I've been reading the wrong "sci-fi", then, I guess.

The game is very specifically designed around Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica. If you're unfamiliar with two of the four, dismiss the third, and prefer to base things on some technical manuals from the fourth rather than what happens onscreen, I'd agree that you probably won't get much out of the game - it's pretty much geared at those whose tastes mesh with the styles of battle shown onscreen in those four shows/movies.

You haven't been reading the "wrong" sci-fi; your tastes and preferences aren't wrong. They just appear to be aligned with things other than those that this particular game is modelled on.

WTF? The examples I cited were from the Star Trek universe! The fact that most firefights in ST happened after the ships zoomed up to kiss each other doesn't reduce the effective weapons range. Just because I could shoot a target with a rifle from 5' away doesn't mean that I should wait until *all* targets are 5' away before engaging them. That would just be stupid.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the Star Trek universe", but this game is based on the types of battles shown onscreen. If you're not a fan of those space battles then the game definitely isn't for you, since it has been specifically designed from the start to model the style of space battles shown onscreen in Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Bablyon 5.

But if the ranges are that important to you, it's easy enough to say "OK, each hex is 1000 km", since distances are measured in hexes. Won't change the gameplay.

Aaand...my interest in space fight just evaporated.

"Fun and cinematic" shouldn't have to mean "turn your brain off before you start".

Fair enough on the interest level; everyone's tastes vary. No idea what you mean with the second sentence. The game has a lot of tactical depth and requires a lot of thought.

Oh, I would have loved to play sometime in the past couple of months. Unfortunately, it's not available for download.

It's been available for download for over 6 months now (since 11 June 2009). That's how people are reading and commenting on it.

 

[Imperialus]

I've been reading the wrong "sci-fi", then, I guess. Ships in the Honor Harrington novels certainly engaged each other at longer ranges.

Well in that case play attack vector. Just don't forget to bring your graphing calculator.

 

[Imperialus]

Fair enough on the interest level; everyone's tastes vary. No idea what you mean with the second sentence. The game has a lot of tactical depth and requires a lot of thought.

I think he's trying to play the 'speculative fiction snob' card. Unfortunate, since he cited Honor Harrington as an example of accuracy.

 

[Morrus]

Just a quick update of where we're at (after the Xmas break) - combat unit art is starting to come in, another long playtest tomorrow for which we'll use different factions, and I started work on the first faction book (The Colonists) with a bunch of new ships, heroes and combat units.

 

[Diplomat123]

Following yesterday's play test session...

We wanted to try out cloaks, so had the standard two Federation ships facing off against two Spartan destroyers, and three scouts that could cloak. In the first fight the Spartans used their cloaks to get close without being shot, but after that they cost too many APs to be worth using. The fight was a fairly easy win for the Spartans, thanks to their battle tactic of not bothering to switch on their shields and relying on their numbers and high defence numbers to keep them safe. This allowed them to fire all weapons and take down the Lucky and Hood in turn. for the loss of one destroyer.

We talked about the game and agreed on making the cloak cheaper to use and adding in a specific tactic of decloaking and firing a single shot with bonus damage and a crit chance. We also introduced a crit chance when ships took certain amounts of damage. (50% chance). We then ran the game again with one less Spartan Destroyer.

This went even worse for the Feds. Whilst the cloaked Spartan ships sped around getting sensor locks on the Lucky, all the Feds could do was fly along with shields up and a readied intensify shield action. Then the Spartans did sequential uncloaking attacks and in one round vaporised the Lucky's shields and damaged some critical systems. By its next turn they had finished it off with concentrated disruptor fire.

Following this we had more discussion and agreed that there needed to be a counter to cloaked ships. Ideas that we discussed.

Allow sensor locks on cloaked ships as a penalty. Combined with this, cloaked ships moving fast are easier to lock onto. This should then mean that the bonus damage for the uncloaking attack is not received as it is no longer a surprise attack. However, at the end of a cloaked ships turn it automatically shakes off all sensor locks.

In the first fight there was a lot of transporter activity. We agreed that beaming your own people between your own ships should not require a sensor lock, but i found the AP cost of trying to get boarding parties aboard very high. It is very inefficeint for a small ship with one transporter as you need a sensor lock, and a lot better for a large ship with multiple transporters. Russ and I disagreed on that being a problem...

 

[Morrus]

I've updated the document with a bunch of changes from yesterday. I haven't yet included our suggestion that cloaked ships be limited in speed; I feel that will go a long way towards making them less uber-powerful.

The boarding combat it starting to come together well. The first system was not good; the current one (the one we used yesterday) is getting there. It's still not perfect, but it's a lot more playable and feels right in play. Needs more playtesting and tweaking though.