Which RPG has the best combat rules for flying vehicles?

[DeviousQuail]

The two possible solutions I see are:

1. Explicitly make vehicle combat a central part of the game. Basically, don't make "Star Wars", make "Rogue Squadron". You might even want to give PCs separate character generation resources for the vehicle combat part.
2. Make vehicle combat use mostly the same abilities as other parts of the game. E.g. make "launch missile" the same skill as "shoot pistol". There's some sliding scale to be had here where you can opt-in to spend resources that are mostly focused on vehicles, but a baseline PC should be at least decent at it without pushing too much.

It also helps to have vehicles that are primarily crew-based rather than solo fighters, so you can have one player doing piloting, another doing gunnery, a third doing engineering stuff, and so on. This of course runs into the problem that not all groups are the same size.

Coriolis by Free League is an example of option 2. Ranged Combat is used for guns and ship weapons, Technology can repair cars and ship modules, Command aids allies that follow your orders on foot and in space, Data Djinn (aka hacking) can bypass terminals and overwhelm enemy systems attacking your ship, and more. My two cents is that it works pretty well, but there are balance issues with certain ship positions having more variance in what they do and how often they actually get to do it.

Mini rant: having played Coriolis for a while I think the thing I would like to change is the way everyone acts so independently all the time. You take your turn when your station comes up, do one of the few actions available to that station, and hope it works. The only collaborative aspect is deciding where the energy goes, which sucks because if you're the pilot, comms, or gunner you might get none and do nothing on your turn. Fun times. Any game that can make one ship space combat feel more like a team endeavor with its mechanics is something I'd like to read.

 

[aramis erak]

I concur on both points. I'll also add in the caveat that it really only worked on things of the same scale. The game broke things into personal, speeder, starship, capital ship, and Death Star scale (IIRC). The rules worked well on the same scale. The rules to try and play between scales (i.e. an X-Wing attacking a Star Destroyer) were much less successful.

I actually liked the Rules Companion scaling rules... where capping was "above cap = 0" instead of 2E's "above cap = cap"... But I prefer 2.0 over 1.0, 1.5 (Core+RC), or 2eR&E.

Tho the 1e rules do have scaling... see paage 65... only two explicit: Starfighter and Personal.

 

[dbm]

I would agree that most RPGs I have played were weak on vehicular combat.

I like the vehicle combat rules in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. It actually has four different options if you use the Sci-Fi Companion book (two in the main book, two in the Companion). Just sticking to the core book, in a more one-on-one vehicular combat the chase rules are good for adding in some texture to what is happening as movement occurs during the combat. You can take that up a notch with the dogfight rules which are primarily intended for mobile air combat but could be used for any highly mobile combat situation.

There are several reasons why I personally find this to be a great play experience.

First, the skill system in SWADE is quite broad-brush and the rules for helping allies or hindering enemies are pretty good. So the skills investment needed for vehicular combat is relatively light (the appropriate skill like driving or pilot) when characters usually have 8-10 skills and the non-vehicular focussed characters will be able to apply their skills in some way to influence the action.

Similarly, there is only one vehicle related Edge in the core book which means if you want to have one person in the group who is the hot shot driver / pilot this is, again, a relatively light investment required and the can still build out other aspects of their character so they aren’t a one-trick pony. That is less good if you wanted to have a game where everyone is a hot shot pilot, of course, but home brewing some more vehicle specific Edges would be relatively straightforward in that situation.

Lastly, the vehicle rules integrate brilliantly with the overall rules for action scenes or combat. They make great use of the card-based initiative system that Savage Worlds uses to introduce random wrinkles into what the party are doing. Given that there are quite a few Edges in SWADE which interact with the initiative system this means a character can invest in those kind of Edges to improve not only their driving etc. but their performance in any circumstances where initiative applies.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

I'm thinking about writing some D&D 2024 house rules for combats involving flying vehicles, and I'm looking for inspiration. Which RPG or supplement would you say has the best combat rules for flying vehicles, and what do you like most about those rules?

Apocalypse World second edition for sure.

It's mechanics can handle any vehicle from regular, hover, flying, to even starship battles. You could even re-skin them to be in terms of battle mecha too.

It has rules for anything you want to do in vehicle combat, even jumping and taking over someone else's craft. The vehicle creation rules are good too. Easy but detailed enough to make your own custom rig.

 

[Ath'kethin]

There was an Unearthed Arcana on ships and the sea, and I used those rules pretty successfully for airships (they have a stat block for an airship in the article). They're simple enough and they work.

https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/UA_ShipsSea.pdf

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

This question feels unanswerable without a better definition of what kind of flying vehicles you're interested in - and given that we're talking about D&D, I'm guessing that flying creatures of dubious aerodynamic performance are also expected to be dealt with. Most RPGs with these kinds of rules are specialized to one degree or another, eg Flying Circus is fine for vaguely-realistic WW1-inspired aircraft with a heavy dose of fantasy stuffed in, but if you want planes that don't need some forward momentum to stay airborne it's suddenly not as good. If you try to throw in the whole kitchen sink of possible D&D flight models, all I can wish you is good luck.