Ok, your players have loaded up their trader, lifted out of their slot at docking bay 94 and are headed out into the deep black so they can engage jump drive when a pirate corsair starts overtaking them, fires up the active scanners and gets target capture on their ship.

How do you handle the ensuing imperonal combat? (BTW, I'm calling allcombat that isn't character vs. character to be impersonal combat, siuch as ship to ship actions.)

Do you switch to another system meant to hendle it or do you jave the PCs make skill rolls to avoid damage or inflict same on the enemy?

Many rpg systems feature some type of impersonal combat rules, such as traveller, mekton, etc. Do you use them and if so what are your favorite ones? Which ones don't you like?

To add variety to campaigns, it can be good to have a RPG session end with the pirate vessel closing on the PCs trader, then tell the players "Brush up on your ship to ship rules, looks like next session's going to be a digfight."

Impersonal level combat may not happen in a lot of game settings, but it can and does happen in a fair number of them, so let's talk about how we handle it.

Personally, I have no problems with the ship to ship combat systems in gurps traveller and gtiw. Especially when the PCs get to decie how to use the weapons and make the rolls for them.

I resolve it by player skill rolls or I move on, we're there to play an rpg, not a wargame.

It's called:

"Roll your dogfighting check, bitch."

Presumably a game with guns on spaceships will also have rules for using those guns on spaceships. My current favorite rules for that are Babylon 5 d20, but the Spacemaster 1e rules are cool too.

Subsystems galore!

Brilliant lances, Trillion Credit Squadron, Trillion Credit Wars, Pocket Empires, War Engine, Battlesystem, Fifth Frontier War, Invasion Earth, Siege Engine!

The more, the merrier.

Quote from: SettembriniSubsystems galore!

I don't know how that worked out in Traveller but basically switching what game you were playing midsession always seemed to cluster ram a big brilliant lance right up the hoop in Shadowrun.  It felt like doing taxes** instead of playing a game.

Another vote for "Roll your dogfighting check, bitch."


** EDIT: Which has its appeal to some. It just ain't gonna get my vote.