How do you do space (ship-to-ship) combat in a way that:
a) doesn't bore everyone else in the party aside from the gunner and the pilot?
b) doesn't just amount to the biggest fucking potential Total Party Kill due to Bad Rolls of any sci-fi game?
c) Isn't boring?
d) actually feels like what starship combats LOOK like in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek?
Virtually every system I've ever seen for this is pathetic at it. Most of them are ultra-complex, and usually are NOTHING like what they're attempting to emulate.
RPGPundit
For (a), that's the primary reason that I love Traveller d20's space combat system. Engineers, navigators, sensor operators (medics can have sensor operation skill) all contribute to success in the combat.
TPKs are still possible, but that wouldn't be too hard to house rule. Most combats end up disabling your ship before blowing them up, though.
You give everyone their own ship where they are the captain, pilot, and gunner. It's really that simple.
Since we seem to be talking about simulating Star Trek style big capital ships in play, even if you analyze the source material and try to make it fit in an RPG, everyone except the captain is really just set dressing. Kirk makes the decisions. Kirk sets the tactics. Kirk decides if the ship is going to fire photon torpedoes or turn hard to starboard. Hell, if that no name over at the Nav console doesn't hurry up, Kirk will get out of his chair and do shit himself.
It's the same as running any specialty character. Setting up a starship combat scene is the same as setting up a scene dedicated solely to the specialty characters involved. In D&D, it's like spending an hour while the thief or ranger scouts a target area. In Cyberpunk/Shadowrun it's when the Netrunner starts their magic. Every once in a while you give Kirk a scene so he can take his starship out and photorp things to hell. It isn't supposed to be a whole party thing. That's just an illusion created by the source material that you're trying to base the game off of.
Quote from: Caesar SlaadMost combats end up disabling your ship before blowing them up, though.
I think this is key. Regardless of how we might speculate space combat would "really" work, or how it does work in the movies, if you have a lot of it in an RPG you probably want a system that allows large ships to be disabled and then either captured or towed, and for people to get on life rafts when neither of those happen.
But I also agree with Gabriel that if you don't have command of your own ship, space combat isn't going to be that interesting. Star Wars is better for this because the PCs can pilot fighters; it's also a good argument in favor of mecha from a pure gameplay perspective.
Quote from: Caesar SlaadFor (a), that's the primary reason that I love Traveller d20's space combat system. Engineers, navigators, sensor operators (medics can have sensor operation skill) all contribute to success in the combat.
TPKs are still possible, but that wouldn't be too hard to house rule. Most combats end up disabling your ship before blowing them up, though.
That's what I did back when I wrote the StarCluster Starship Crew supplement - that combat system eventually moved over to the main book in StarCluster 2E. Everyone in the crew has a job, and every job contributes. I certainly wasn't the first with that notion - I never am. Was it LUG Trek that came up with it first?
-clash
Our space combats put everyone to use. Whether you're operating sensors to detect threats or ECM/ECCM, gunning down the attackers, piloting the ship, repairing the damage being done, healing up the people getting hurt, tweaking the engines to give you additional output, modifying the computer to execute unusual maneuvers or rearranging the cargo to keep it from blasting out of the hold, guarding the prisoners, etc., etc.
I keep all the players busy.
Our usual situation is a tramp-freighter/corvette that can't really hold its own against a squadron of fighters or a capital ship, but is enough of a nuisance to accomplish various missions.
We had a situation once where a ship flew into the cargo/launch bay of a huge capital ship, unloaded all of its ordnance (scoring multiple, multiple successes, critical and otherwise) and then kicked in the boosters to escape the ship's explosion. Everyone playing had a blast, even the "non-starship" players who were busy running commands back and forth between the cockpit/bridge and the engineers because the internal communications had been blown out. :)
The thing is, in Star Wars most fighters will blow up if hit ONCE. And of course, everyone on board will die.
And in Star Trek (and SW when dealing with bigger ships), its usually a question that anytime there is a "hit" on a ship, there's a lot of shaking around, people go flying, panels blow up, and ship systems are damaged in some way.
But in RPG space combats, this almost never happens; instead you get huge long battles where people are doing points of damage to armour or shields, back and forth, with no one getting significantly harmed.
On the other hand, if you try to make the system more direct, the risk becomes immense that your players will bite off more than they can chew. In a combat in a dungeon, when this sort of thing happens, half the party might die but the other half can always run away screaming like little girls.
But in space, there's no where to run, and no one can hear you scream.
When your ship blows up, that's it, campaign's over.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPunditThe thing is, in Star Wars most fighters will blow up if hit ONCE. And of course, everyone on board will die.
X-Wings and Y-Wings have shields. Although in the movies they blow up pretty easily, in the video games this isn't the case. Unless the PCs are flying TIEs, you're guaranteed a few hits before they go KABOOM! :) (And remember Luke, the hero, got hit a couple times and had a stabilizer that kept coming loose that R2 had to fix...)
QuoteAnd in Star Trek (and SW when dealing with bigger ships), its usually a question that anytime there is a "hit" on a ship, there's a lot of shaking around, people go flying, panels blow up, and ship systems are damaged in some way.
Which is the perfect time to have non-gunners/non-pilots go running around to fix things, batten down the hatches and generally "help out."
QuoteBut in RPG space combats, this almost never happens;
Perhaps in
your games it almost never happens. It happens
all the time in my games. In fact, I deliberately
add it into the game to keep the non-gunners/non-pilots active and participating.
Quoteinstead you get huge long battles where people are doing points of damage to armour or shields, back and forth, with no one getting significantly harmed.
Wow. That sounds like you're playing D20 or something. :D :p
I've never had a space combat that was just a bunch of "armor crunch." It's always been a serious situation that required the attention of the whole crew, it involved every skill set used by a team of players.
QuoteOnthe other hand, if you try to make the system more direct, the risk becomes immense that your players will bite off more than they can chew. In a combat in a dungeon, when this sort of thing happens, half the party might die but the other half can always run away screaming like little girls.
But in space, there's no where to run, and no one can hear you scream.
When your ship blows up, that's it, campaign's over.
Wow. No. Definitely not.
First of all, there's the fact that every player should be in a space-suit/evironment suit that provides them a little time in the vacuum before they're dead.
Secondly, you have plenty of time to get to escape pods.
Thirdly, you can seal off sections of the ship so that they can be captured, providing all sorts of fun plot twisting.
Fourthly, ever heard of the "emergency hyperdrive?" They
can go screaming off into the void, they just burn out their hyperdrive in the process and have to spend the next few days/weeks/months/years involved in repairing their ship (depending on the specific needs of the campaign). I've had PCs stranded on uncharted worlds for so long they forgot about the space campaign and had a blast on the planet where they crashed.
Honestly, Pundit, it sounds like you fell into the "D20 trap" of hack-n-slash with your space campaign and can't see your way out of the box because D20 has locked up your thinking. Time to reboot and look for a more creative and less closed-system mechanic.
One part of this discussion is extremely easy. Don't make the goal of every encounter to blow up the bad guys. There is a lot more money in dissabling, scrapping and salvaging a ship then there is in just blowing it up.
As for the how's. One system I was toying with is making space combat abstract and breaking it down into parts that come together to make the whole.
Now the number of rolls dependend on how big the ships were.
So a 1 man crew each round pilots would make opposed rolls the winner of the roll gains the advantage. The extra success (past 1) go into a pool if that pool is possitive you can attack or you can run. If you are running you move onto the next round and make opposed rolls again extra success keep stacking to your advantage and prevent the other guy from getting a good shot on you. The person chasing you can still attack but you can use your successes to help cancel out his attack roll - think of it like a dodge/defense action.
If you are attacking you then make an attack roll using the extra success from your position to add to your attack roll. Once you attack your advantage pool is set back to zero. If you are on the run and decide to attack then your advantage is also set back to zero but you get to make an unmodified attack roll.
In multi-crewed ships you make multiple rolls that help in the next event that ultimately lead to the run/shot phase.
Quote from: RPGPunditHow do you do space (ship-to-ship) combat in a way that:
a) doesn't bore everyone else in the party aside from the gunner and the pilot?
As has been common in Traveller for some time... have additional posts, like sensors, screens, damage control, etc.
Quoteb) doesn't just amount to the biggest fucking potential Total Party Kill due to Bad Rolls of any sci-fi game?
Give opportunities to run, activating jump drive, asteroid fields, planets. Have the enemies objective not to kill but to capture, hence they target weapons and drive systems.
Quotec) Isn't boring?
Considerably less so than any hacking system in an rpg.
Quoted) actually feels like what starship combats LOOK like in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek?
That's has a lot to do with the GM's discription of the battle.
Quote from: GabrielYou give everyone their own ship where they are the captain, pilot, and gunner. It's really that simple.
Except it's not since most people aren't playing a pilot/gunner, and probably don't want to have the take the role of an NPC, besides there might only be one PC friendly ship involved.
QuoteSince we seem to be talking about simulating Star Trek style big capital ships in play, even if you analyze the source material and try to make it fit in an RPG, everyone except the captain is really just set dressing. Kirk makes the decisions. Kirk sets the tactics. Kirk decides if the ship is going to fire photon torpedoes or turn hard to starboard.
But Kirk doesn't actually get to make the gunnery or helmsman rolls so at least you get two other players involved then....
QuoteIt's the same as running any specialty character. Setting up a starship combat scene is the same as setting up a scene dedicated solely to the specialty characters involved. In D&D, it's like spending an hour while the thief or ranger scouts a target area. In Cyberpunk/Shadowrun it's when the Netrunner starts their magic. Every once in a while you give Kirk a scene so he can take his starship out and photorp things to hell. It isn't supposed to be a whole party thing. That's just an illusion created by the source material that you're trying to base the game off of.
Except it's nothing like that, it is a whole party thing, every time I've played Star Trek it has been.
Captain gives commands, which depending on his leadership can give bonus to certain crew areas. Tactical Officer fires weapons, Helmsman pilots ship, Engineering control power and damage control, Medical treat the wounded, Security repel borders. Every player usually has a role.
Every Star Trek RPG space battle I've been involved in was thrilling and invoked the TV Series and movies, and included every player at the table to some degree. We had a group of eight players, and none were bored, not even the Science officers.
If anything in Star Trek it's easier to involve the whole party than in a system with smaller craft.
Another way of handling this is to make a bigger deal of boarding. Seriously... having hand-to hand combat in ship *while* there's the flying and the shooting and the fixing and the shouting.
Just a thought.
Quote from: BagpussBut Kirk doesn't actually get to make the gunnery or helmsman rolls so at least you get two other players involved then....
I realize I am probably missing something but...getting to roll dice and look at numbers on your character sheet, without actually making any decisions, doesn't seem very enjoyable.
Quote from: BagpussConsiderably less so than any hacking system in an rpg.
I'd agree that hacking is the one thing that I think is the most obvious case where RPGs have fucked up even worse than starship combat.
And this is NOT a D20 issue, Ian. I haven't seen any RPG anywhere that handles starship combat well. Either it is too deadly, or not deadly at all, it fails to involve the pcs, and it fails to emulate the tv/movie feel that one wants.
Of course, when I run a starship battle its not any of these things. But that's because I cheat. Rampantly. I lie, I utterly ignore the rules, I make the dice mean whatever the fuck I want them to mean, so basically there is no "system" I use. I just make it all up as I go along. But really, that sort of sucks that I have to be put in the position where I feel I must do that.
RPGPundit
Quote from: Elliot WilenI realize I am probably missing something but...getting to roll dice and look at numbers on your character sheet, without actually making any decisions, doesn't seem very enjoyable.
Pass I was in Engineering. Generally I think our captain gave targeting choiced to the weapons officer (unless there was a specific requirement), so while the captain picked the target the weapons officer decided on stuff like target weapons or engine, etc.
Quote from: VellorianX-Wings and Y-Wings have shields. Although in the movies they blow up pretty easily, in the video games this isn't the case. Unless the PCs are flying TIEs, you're guaranteed a few hits before they go KABOOM! :) (And remember Luke, the hero, got hit a couple times and had a stabilizer that kept coming loose that R2 had to fix...)
Which is the perfect time to have non-gunners/non-pilots go running around to fix things, batten down the hatches and generally "help out."
Perhaps in your games it almost never happens. It happens all the time in my games. In fact, I deliberately add it into the game to keep the non-gunners/non-pilots active and participating.
Wow. That sounds like you're playing D20 or something. :D :p
I've never had a space combat that was just a bunch of "armor crunch." It's always been a serious situation that required the attention of the whole crew, it involved every skill set used by a team of players.
Wow. No. Definitely not.
First of all, there's the fact that every player should be in a space-suit/evironment suit that provides them a little time in the vacuum before they're dead.
Secondly, you have plenty of time to get to escape pods.
Thirdly, you can seal off sections of the ship so that they can be captured, providing all sorts of fun plot twisting.
Fourthly, ever heard of the "emergency hyperdrive?" They can go screaming off into the void, they just burn out their hyperdrive in the process and have to spend the next few days/weeks/months/years involved in repairing their ship (depending on the specific needs of the campaign). I've had PCs stranded on uncharted worlds for so long they forgot about the space campaign and had a blast on the planet where they crashed.
Honestly, Pundit, it sounds like you fell into the "D20 trap" of hack-n-slash with your space campaign and can't see your way out of the box because D20 has locked up your thinking. Time to reboot and look for a more creative and less closed-system mechanic.
Dang it! I could have written this! Are you telepathically linked to me or something, Ian?
-clash
whoops wrong thread
How do Star Trek RPGs handle combat then?
Is it like Pendragon with tactics rolls or is it that the captain gives orders (generate a tactics total) then the helmsman interpret the orders (generate a piloting total) and then the security officer adjusts shields or fires on the enemy(generate shield or capital gunnery total) then add em all up and oppose them to a similar set of rolls on the other ship?
I'll be interested to see how QuestWorlds suggests handling this sort of thing. Certainly ship combat in HeroQuest worked well for me since everyone can contribute and the bidding/contest system gave good control over the outcome. I think abstracting it like that is the best way to deal with it in a personal, hero centred RPG capacity.
Quote from: RPGPunditHow do you do space (ship-to-ship) combat in a way that:
a) doesn't bore everyone else in the party aside from the gunner and the pilot?
b) doesn't just amount to the biggest fucking potential Total Party Kill due to Bad Rolls of any sci-fi game?
c) Isn't boring?
d) actually feels like what starship combats LOOK like in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek?
Virtually every system I've ever seen for this is pathetic at it. Most of them are ultra-complex, and usually are NOTHING like what they're attempting to emulate.
Cowboy Bebop got it right. Give everyone their own ship, and design the ships to match the roles/classes in your game.
Quote from: mearlsCowboy Bebop got it right. Give everyone their own ship, and design the ships to match the roles/classes in your game.
Hell yes! Bebop is for the WIN!
Of course, what they had there could hardly be called a party... I'd be at a bit of a loss trying to run something like that.
Quote from: RPGPunditOf course, when I run a starship battle its not any of these things. But that's because I cheat. Rampantly. I lie, I utterly ignore the rules, I make the dice mean whatever the fuck I want them to mean, so basically there is no "system" I use. I just make it all up as I go along. But really, that sort of sucks that I have to be put in the position where I feel I must do that.
That's because the kind of roleplaying that requires real team-work, dealing with a problem the way that people really enjoy it and the way it is portrayed in the movies we know and love needs to be as fluid as possible, with as little mechanics involved as possible.
A mechanic that gives you a
basic concept of how well you accomplish a task while the GM interprets that along with the whole plethora of data flowing in.
I would posit that you
can't make a game mechanic do this because it's not an issue of
mechanics. It's an issue of
story,
setting,
play-style and
the ability of the GM to keep the story rolling when the mechanics get in the way.
This is my biggest gripe with D20. Even after you strip it of its levels and give it a decent skill system, remove the wonky bits and strip it down to a baseline mechanic, you still have the "D20 trap" that has players thinking in terms of how to ramjet their square ships into the round hole patterns that D20 has overlaid their thinking patterns.
With this kind of thinking you get the concept that the more armor you have, the harder you are to hit! So combat begins to resolve into a tragically mundane battle of "hack n slashing" your starships. Instead of focusing on the incredibly skillful methods of
avoiding being hit, you wind up rolling dice and removing layer upon layer of virtual armor.
The way that I do it is to "wing it." It's not hard. You can even make up the "mechanic" on the fly. The PCs all roll on their respective rolls. Every successful roll makes it +1 harder for their ship to be hit (sensors, maneuvering, "angling the deflector screens," etc.). Then you roll for the baddies against a target number with all those mods. If it fails, then the shot just misses, the ship jiggles, you make a quick check to see if anything "jiggled loose" and then next action.
When the ship is finally hit, you have a "short list" of affected systems. Roll against it. That's what got damaged. If you get a critical, then roll two times.
If you want to make it more complex, you can, but it's really just you, the GM, whose going to take much away from a more complex system. The PCs are
blind to the world unless you
show it to them. When the ship gets "rattled", you can tell them to make Dex checks to remain standing or Int rolls to see if they can maintain their focus.
Do you need a
system to tell you that when the ship is rattled, the toolbox may skitter across the decking and crash into your Engineer's head while he's in the guts of the ship, desperately trying to repair the hyperdrive so they can go screaming "like little girls" into the void?
Or does your common sense, your ability to tell a story and your love the
story over the mechanic take over and give your PCs the ride of their lives?
Wing it, man. WING IT! :D
If you want a mechanic heavy battle, then go get some minis and one of the many space battle games where it's a question of how powerful your ship is against another ship. What you've done is mix up
tactical space combat game with a
roleplaying game. In a roleplaying game, you get the players involved in what's happening
inside the ship. In a tactical space combat game, you get them involved in what's happening
outside the ship.
I don't normaly run much space combat, but what I do is, that I have a massive (I constantly keep adding and subtracting stuff) list of random stuff that can happen to a starship when hit in combat. So after taking into account deflector sheilds, force fieilds etc, I just roll on the list and see what happens.
Sometimes the stuff that happens is minor, sometimes it's major - very ,very bad, esp if it's the first couple of shots in the game :D - So everyone has something to do, not just the pilot or gunner. Repairs need to be carried out, passagers saved, crew members hurt, things falling of in the heat of battle etc - so combat is always messy and fun.
Regards,
David R
Quote from: David RI have a massive (I constantly keep adding and subtracting stuff) list of random stuff that can happen to a starship when hit in combat.
David,
What you have sounds really cool. Can you share your list? :)
Quote from: RPGPunditI'd agree that hacking is the one thing that I think is the most obvious case where RPGs have fucked up even worse than starship combat.
And this is NOT a D20 issue, Ian. I haven't seen any RPG anywhere that handles starship combat well. Either it is too deadly, or not deadly at all, it fails to involve the pcs, and it fails to emulate the tv/movie feel that one wants.
Of course, when I run a starship battle its not any of these things. But that's because I cheat. Rampantly. I lie, I utterly ignore the rules, I make the dice mean whatever the fuck I want them to mean, so basically there is no "system" I use. I just make it all up as I go along. But really, that sort of sucks that I have to be put in the position where I feel I must do that.
RPGPundit
While I don't like pimping SJG products, I have to say that the gurps traveller combat system is pretty good and allows multiple players to do important things on a ship.
Quote from: VellorianDavid,
What you have sounds really cool. Can you share your list? :)
I don't mind sharing the list, but the thing is, it's hand written in various ledgers, which I dig up, when running space campaigns :o (I'm really old school)
One of the things about the list, is that it is based on stuff I've read or seen in books or movies. Sure, the dog fights in
Star Wars was cool and all, but the stuff that really translates well to rpgs IMHO, are moments like when
Han was busy trying to fix up the Falcon's hyper drive (?) - his head sticking up and muttering to Chewie :D
So, if I'm remembering correctly my list includes charts for stuff like :
- the ship's enviromental controls are damaged and things begin heating up. Sweat clouding your vision, dripping on to the controls, etc
- if the pcs have incorporated any alien tech they are only slightly familiar with, it begins acting up, in the heat of battle. Things come alive, weapons begin randomly firing on their own.
- If the ship had previous owners, hidden computer programs are suddenly activited when the ship is hit. Old messages for the previous owners come up, dire warnings, intriguing calls for help...
- passagers acting up during the battle. Some may need medical attention, caught under debris, screaming for attention, getting in the way, etc
-old repairs not holding up. Damage from previous encounters requirng immediate attention.
- cargo. If they are transporting cargo, said cargo, may need to be stored in a specific way. During a battle, shit happens, and the cargo is compromised.
All the examples above make up the general stuff that could happen. Each of these aspects are further divided into sublist that have grown over the years. Each part now contains about twenty or thirty posssible random outcomes, that I personlize for each campaign and sometimes even for each adventure.
I only use each event once. But the effects of that random event are felt long after the batte finishes. Most folks I gather have a lot of trouble, running space battles, because besides the pilot, gunner and maybe navigator, nobody else has anything to do.
Now, my charts, aren't really for hard scifi games. Like I said, it's mostly stuff from books, tv and the movies.
When I use these charts, I find that everybody, is scrambling to do something. In every battle, there can be heard shouts between the players to 'fix this" or "handle that". Space combat is rarely boring in my games :)
Regards,
David R
Quote from: mearlsCowboy Bebop got it right. Give everyone their own ship, and design the ships to match the roles/classes in your game.
Yea, except that in many campaigns/genres that doesn't really fit. I mean, its great if you're playing Cowboy Bebop... not so much if you're playing Star Trek.
RPGPundit
Star Wars D6 totally ruled.
Half the group in the freighter, the other half in fighters. Totally rocks.
Quote from: kryystAs for the how's. One system I was toying with is making space combat abstract and breaking it down into parts that come together to make the whole.
Now the number of rolls dependend on how big the ships were.
So a 1 man crew each round pilots would make opposed rolls the winner of the roll gains the advantage. The extra success (past 1) go into a pool if that pool is possitive you can attack or you can run. If you are running you move onto the next round and make opposed rolls again extra success keep stacking to your advantage and prevent the other guy from getting a good shot on you. The person chasing you can still attack but you can use your successes to help cancel out his attack roll - think of it like a dodge/defense action.
If you are attacking you then make an attack roll using the extra success from your position to add to your attack roll. Once you attack your advantage pool is set back to zero. If you are on the run and decide to attack then your advantage is also set back to zero but you get to make an unmodified attack roll.
In multi-crewed ships you make multiple rolls that help in the next event that ultimately lead to the run/shot phase.
This is officialy the coolest sounding dice pool system that I think I've read. :)
Thanks. At first I wasn't sure how to work it out with multiple ships on each side but it's all very easy. Just roll as normal and then calculate your pools based on who you are against. If you are running and attack - say you are tailing one opponent while being tailed you'd have to split up your advantage accordingly.
Which seems unfair but actually makes a lot of sense in the end. If you are spending all your time getting a nice steady perfect line on someone it's much easier for the guy behind you to draw a beed on you.
You could make it more involved if you want speed and maneouverability to get involved by modifying rolls or adding extra dice. But ultimately if it's a space, air, or a horse chase. It comes down to the skill of the people involved and becomes less about the ships. If you want to engage you are all going to be moving at the same relative speed. The exception would be fly by attacks. The faster ship can certain swoop in attack and move away - but a slower ship can turn face and fire.
Quote from: RPGPunditHow do you do space (ship-to-ship) combat in a way that:
a) doesn't bore everyone else in the party aside from the gunner and the pilot?
b) doesn't just amount to the biggest fucking potential Total Party Kill due to Bad Rolls of any sci-fi game?
c) Isn't boring?
d) actually feels like what starship combats LOOK like in movies like Star Wars or Star Trek?
Virtually every system I've ever seen for this is pathetic at it. Most of them are ultra-complex, and usually are NOTHING like what they're attempting to emulate.
RPGPundit
I'm not a big fan of mook rules or meta-game rules, but if you've got PC's in tie-fighters (or even x-wings) where there's a decent chance of the whole thing going up, then you need some kind of special-character-rule to prevent Darth Vader from being blown up in his tie-fighter.
Another possibility: make skill (and skill *differences*) very important. Luke and the other Star Wars main characters (And the Star Trek bridge crew) are all exceptional. In D20, this gives them, maybe, and extra 20% edge of your average crew -- not enough to risk life and game on.
If the system amplifies skill differences and the PCs are significantly better than the average competition then you'd have a game where PC-grade characters are unlikely to be killed by average characters.
My completely inexpert understanding of modern-day fighter combat suggests it works this way ("aces" are way, way, way better than average pilots and unlikely to be shot down by them -- although I suspect modern weaponry makes skill less of a factor these days).
In terms of boredom, I think someone mentioned giving everyone a role in battles (engineering roles, shield operations roles, sensor ops roles, etc.)
That does star trek pretty well. In starwars, didn't everyone have their own gun?
For me the big question is "how abstract should the system be" -- on one end of the scale would be a tactical war game like SFB with rules for all kinds of things, and on the other end would be a completely abstract system that didn't even require a map...
IME I see a huge range of space combat situations -- ones I'd prefer to resolve without a specific battle map and others (often in the same game) where having an Star Fleet Battles style system would be really useful.
Having a system that somehow scaled between very abstract and very specific without significantly changing the odds of the outcome would be really useful. I have no idea how practical that would be though.
Cheers,
-E.
Quote from: -E.My completely inexpert understanding of modern-day fighter combat suggests it works this way ("aces" are way, way, way better than average pilots and unlikely to be shot down by them -- although I suspect modern weaponry makes skill less of a factor these days).
Sorry, this digression I'm embarking on has little to do with improving games per se, but I believe the the current wisdom is that training is overwhelmingly important, even beyond combat experience. I'd speculate that the importance of experience to early aerial combat (WW I) is possibly because actual training in simulated combat was rare.
I happened across a RAND study that supports this view, if anyone'd care to look: http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD147/RGSD147.chap6.pdf
Quote from: RPGPunditI'd agree that hacking is the one thing that I think is the most obvious case where RPGs have fucked up even worse than starship combat.
And this is NOT a D20 issue, Ian. I haven't seen any RPG anywhere that handles starship combat well. Either it is too deadly, or not deadly at all, it fails to involve the pcs, and it fails to emulate the tv/movie feel that one wants.
Of course, when I run a starship battle its not any of these things. But that's because I cheat. Rampantly. I lie, I utterly ignore the rules, I make the dice mean whatever the fuck I want them to mean, so basically there is no "system" I use. I just make it all up as I go along. But really, that sort of sucks that I have to be put in the position where I feel I must do that.
RPGPundit
I agree with you here, and it's definitely not just D20 because I had the same trouble in my Stardrive Alternity game. I was a disapointed enough that I stopped running Stardrive comepletely and only ran Dark Matter.
When we played Star Wars D20, we never got involved with ship-to-ship combat. which I feel was the only way to handle it. If I were to run a sci-fi game again I would treat space combat like I treat army combat in DnD. The characters might hear about it, see it happen, try in a small and peripheral way to contribute, but wouldn't get directly involved. I prefer sci-fi games that don't feature space combat these days, either because they aren't advanced enough (pick a cyberpunk title), it isn't part of the story (like Blue Planet), or the game focuses on espionage/intrigue (the last Traveller campaign I played).
Quote from: Elliot WilenSorry, this digression I'm embarking on has little to do with improving games per se, but I believe the the current wisdom is that training is overwhelmingly important, even beyond combat experience. I'd speculate that the importance of experience to early aerial combat (WW I) is possibly because actual training in simulated combat was rare.
I happened across a RAND study that supports this view, if anyone'd care to look: http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD147/RGSD147.chap6.pdf
Well, that would support the "make skill *really* important approach.
What's interesting is that skill is important both offensively and defensively. It's gotta be a good defense or you still have the TIE fighter = Flying Coffin issue.
Cheers,
-E.
Well a general rule of aerial combat is that seeing the other guy before he sees you is the best way for you to live and him to die. Avoiding a dogfight is the best thing you can do defensively; failing that you need to do your best to stay aware of everything around you (i.e., don't fall victim to tunnel vision while lining up a target).
In a one-on-one situation the importance of pure skill is important for both offense and defense mostly because the best offensive position (right behind the other guy) is also the position where you're relatively invulnerable (unless he's got a tailgunner). So maneuver factors in heavily compared to forms of combat that emphasize pure offense. (Not to say that any combat does so completely, but a tank duel in open ground, for example, will be decided more by gunnery than maneuver, assuming both sides are aware of each other.)
So to bring it back to games I'd say that for fighter combat, some kind of positioning test is called for, with the winner getting progressive levels of advantage (up to riding the other guy's tail) with higher & higher bonuses "to hit", while the disadvantaged combatant wouldn't be able to shoot at all. The "skill" bonus would figure very highly in the positioning test.
With multiple opponents on each side, each one could probably designate a "target". A single die roll would be made for each combatant in the positioning test; however a negative modifier would apply to the roll of your target unless he was targeting you back. Something like that. The general principle is that higher skill generally improves your maneuver performance, which in turn increases your ability to shoot without being shot at.
I've seen a clever system of abstract positioning/maneuver, which also incorporates types of maneuver and aircraft characteristics, in a wargame called Down in Flames. Something like that could be brought in.
An advantage of this general approach from a gameplay standpoint is that you can "give aid" to a hard-pressed ally by targeting his attacker and forcing him to break off or be hit. As a result, individual random death is less likely. An overmatched party, though, will have trouble fleeing unless you include some sort of fuel limitations, an "emergency jump" to bug out, or a concept of "friendly lines" so that even a faster enemy won't be able to pursue indefinitely.
Quote from: Elliot WilenSo to bring it back to games I'd say that for fighter combat, some kind of positioning test is called for, with the winner getting progressive levels of advantage...
Sounds a lot like the great rules they had in the original Star Wars D20, until the tactical-miniature based gaming lobby demanded that they use a battlemat for space combat.
Quote from: Elliot WilenWell a general rule of aerial combat is that seeing the other guy before he sees you is the best way for you to live and him to die. Avoiding a dogfight is the best thing you can do defensively; failing that you need to do your best to stay aware of everything around you (i.e., don't fall victim to tunnel vision while lining up a target).
In a one-on-one situation the importance of pure skill is important for both offense and defense mostly because the best offensive position (right behind the other guy) is also the position where you're relatively invulnerable (unless he's got a tailgunner). So maneuver factors in heavily compared to forms of combat that emphasize pure offense. (Not to say that any combat does so completely, but a tank duel in open ground, for example, will be decided more by gunnery than maneuver, assuming both sides are aware of each other.)
So to bring it back to games I'd say that for fighter combat, some kind of positioning test is called for, with the winner getting progressive levels of advantage (up to riding the other guy's tail) with higher & higher bonuses "to hit", while the disadvantaged combatant wouldn't be able to shoot at all. The "skill" bonus would figure very highly in the positioning test.
With multiple opponents on each side, each one could probably designate a "target". A single die roll would be made for each combatant in the positioning test; however a negative modifier would apply to the roll of your target unless he was targeting you back. Something like that. The general principle is that higher skill generally improves your maneuver performance, which in turn increases your ability to shoot without being shot at.
I've seen a clever system of abstract positioning/maneuver, which also incorporates types of maneuver and aircraft characteristics, in a wargame called Down in Flames. Something like that could be brought in.
An advantage of this general approach from a gameplay standpoint is that you can "give aid" to a hard-pressed ally by targeting his attacker and forcing him to break off or be hit. As a result, individual random death is less likely. An overmatched party, though, will have trouble fleeing unless you include some sort of fuel limitations, an "emergency jump" to bug out, or a concept of "friendly lines" so that even a faster enemy won't be able to pursue indefinitely.
Those kinds of systems are hard to do in multi-ship combat -- you have to allow for "A is behind B who is behind C" and then what happens when C tries to fire on A, and so on.
If you have a map, manuver is simple (if, usually, 2-dimensional).
Fighter combat and naval combat are the most common paradigms for space combat but there are others -- and I'd think anything approaching the more-realistic end of the spectrum would care far less about facing and firing arcs than last-generation weapons systems do.
Again: I think manuver and skill *have* to be critically important (I'd include the quality of weapons-systems for essentially post-human worlds, but the concept's the same: a "better" opponent is way-dominant over lesser combatants).
But the devil's in how you make those things pay off in complex rpg scenarios...
I'm putting together a generic system in my head, reading through this... if it congeals into anything I'll post it.
Cheers,
-E.
Quote from: -E.Fighter combat and naval combat are the most common paradigms for space combat but there are others -- and I'd think anything approaching the more-realistic end of the spectrum would care far less about facing and firing arcs than last-generation weapons systems do.
Oh, yes, definitely. If you want realistic, I'd expect that space combat would look something like modern surface combat, with an emphasis on detection, ECM, and fleet formations based on dispersal and interlocking defensive zones.
There skill would mostly apply to effective use of "the terrain" (hiding behind planets and stars, if possible, and obtaining optimal range) and overall ability to integrate systems such as ECM. Unless you used a map, it would have to be very abstract.
Quote from: Elliot WilenOh, yes, definitely. If you want realistic, I'd expect that space combat would look something like modern surface combat, with an emphasis on detection, ECM, and fleet formations based on dispersal and interlocking defensive zones.
There skill would mostly apply to effective use of "the terrain" (hiding behind planets and stars, if possible, and obtaining optimal range) and overall ability to integrate systems such as ECM. Unless you used a map, it would have to be very abstract.
Building on this --
There's a lot of "terrainless" space out there -- but I agree. I think a substantial number of RPG-scenarios would take place near interesting terrain features.
In terms of scenarios a space-combat RPG should do reasonably well, I think star-trek-esque duels in deep space would be a major, but not-complete part of the solution. I think the game should also handle
* Ambush (presumably space pirates ambush their targets... maybe like submarine wolf packs? With space-stealth technology to let them get close enough)
* Blocadeing / blockade running: IME the good guys will want to get through a "screen" of ships (like X-Wings attacking the Death Star have to get through the cloud of TIE fighters or like the climactic scene in Serinity). The rules should allow ships to effectively prevent enemies for progressing / escaping.
Both of these call for a relatively sophisticated set of range rules (how does one "out run" an ambush? When is a ship considered "through" a blockade").
That makes it a bit harder to be purely abstract, IME.
Cheers,
-E.
The Shatterzone RPG, brought to you by WEG (who also did Star Wars) had a sidebar in the rule book about trying to avoid space combat, since it's mainly just rolling to move, rolling to shoot, rolling to resist damage, rolling to fix, on to next round.
The Decipher Star Trek, using their in-house system which is pretty much D20 with 2d6 swapped in for the d20, had a pretty neat system where each person is in a Star Trek bridge position, with their own thing to do.
(FASA's Star Trek had a similar thing, where each bridge officer even got their own 'console' - a paper sheet to handle whatever it was each person was in charge of. Helm got moving, navigation got shields I think, etc. I remember that communications was in charge of keeping track of how many people got wounded/killed on board with each hit.)
The neat thing about the Decipher Star Trek ship combat system is that you can shift power from one system (like drive) to boost another system (like shields) easily, where the drive system takes one hit and the shields system moves up one rank.
With Star Trek-style combat, what you really need is players who can really get into it. When there's a hit, the GM figures out which system, then tells that player controlling that system, who rolls the damage and tells the 'captain,' instead of the GM just telling everybody what got damaged. So, instead of the GM just going 'another hit to your engine room, you take another rank off engine power,' the player can shout "our engines got hit again! We can't take another shot like that!"
I would LOVE to play in that kind of game.
Quote from: Elliot WilenWell a general rule of aerial combat is that seeing the other guy before he sees you is the best way for you to live and him to die. Avoiding a dogfight is the best thing you can do defensively; failing that you need to do your best to stay aware of everything around you (i.e., don't fall victim to tunnel vision while lining up a target).
In a one-on-one situation the importance of pure skill is important for both offense and defense mostly because the best offensive position (right behind the other guy) is also the position where you're relatively invulnerable (unless he's got a tailgunner). So maneuver factors in heavily compared to forms of combat that emphasize pure offense. (Not to say that any combat does so completely, but a tank duel in open ground, for example, will be decided more by gunnery than maneuver, assuming both sides are aware of each other.)
So to bring it back to games I'd say that for fighter combat, some kind of positioning test is called for, with the winner getting progressive levels of advantage (up to riding the other guy's tail) with higher & higher bonuses "to hit", while the disadvantaged combatant wouldn't be able to shoot at all. The "skill" bonus would figure very highly in the positioning test.
With multiple opponents on each side, each one could probably designate a "target". A single die roll would be made for each combatant in the positioning test; however a negative modifier would apply to the roll of your target unless he was targeting you back. Something like that. The general principle is that higher skill generally improves your maneuver performance, which in turn increases your ability to shoot without being shot at.
I've seen a clever system of abstract positioning/maneuver, which also incorporates types of maneuver and aircraft characteristics, in a wargame called Down in Flames. Something like that could be brought in.
An advantage of this general approach from a gameplay standpoint is that you can "give aid" to a hard-pressed ally by targeting his attacker and forcing him to break off or be hit. As a result, individual random death is less likely. An overmatched party, though, will have trouble fleeing unless you include some sort of fuel limitations, an "emergency jump" to bug out, or a concept of "friendly lines" so that even a faster enemy won't be able to pursue indefinitely.
In a setting with fairly realistic tech a scenario like this can lead to a ship musing 'silent running' mode where it runs as "quiet" as possible while listening for active emissions from firecontrol systems from ships 'on the prowl". Since in a realistic campaign a ship using active fire control will be detectable before it spots a ship without AFC running the PCs can choose to avoid a fight if they can outrun/maneuver the ship with AFC running.
This can lead to various deciscions being made, like do we run with active sensors going and announcing our presence, or without them and maybe risk smacking an asteroid or meteor?