Realistic Space Battles (Long)

[Kedamono]

I'd like to express my thanks to everyone who commented on this subject and offered their opinions, comments, and even suggestions. I really can't say much more about the SFRPG game I'm working on as it has yet to be announced and I'm under NDA for various components about it. However when we do make the announcement, I'll definitely make sure to include you folks here.

Thanks again!

[Vaxalon]

Only the captain/bridge crew will have anything to do, and depending on the circumstances, only the captain will make the final decision. That's about the only thing the captain and bridge crew can do is make decisions on tactics, maneuvers, and targets, but the actual implementation of these decisions will be left up to the ship's AIs.

There's a reason why Hollywood doesn't do space combat this way.

Bo-ring!

If I was sitting down at an RPG table, and we had worked up to a space battle, and this was how it worked...

I would shake my head and have a talk with the GM about deprotagonization.

[Kedamono]

There's a reason why Hollywood doesn't do space combat this way.

Bo-ring!

If I was sitting down at an RPG table, and we had worked up to a space battle, and this was how it worked...

I would shake my head and have a talk with the GM about deprotagonization.

Actually Babylon 5 came close. Almost all the "big ship" battles took place where you could not see the other side and only when the battle was near the station itself or a jump gate did you have more "traditional" naval battles.

However in the SFRPGs I've played in, Traveler, FTL: 2448, Star Trek, Universe, unless you're the captain of the vessel, your role in space combat is to roll a die when it comes time to shoot at something. Otherwise it's up to the captain to make all the decisions. You can make comments, and if you're a non-combatant, like my characters (I routinely played engineers), you just watched the battle and prayed.

This is the reality of SFRPG space combat. As a player, my input into the combat depends on skill sets and whether I'm the commander of the ship. Typically it will be one ship vs one ship and largely played out by those folks into miniature combat.

I'd rather set the situation up where you roleplayed the combat instead of using miniatures.

[contracycle]

I agree with Johns point here - the failure, IMO, of present RPG systems has been that they seem to think that sitting the character in a gunnery chair and asking them to make a To Hit roll like normal combat is the way to go, and it simply cannot be.  The whole point of a complex but rigidly structured system like the command heiracrhy of a ship is to bring all the ships systems to bear with a single decision.  Reducing the players to the point of crew who carry out specifically defined and limited roles is what deprotagonises them, not obliging them to act through tools.

Another of my nebulously remembered SF short-stories, By Clarke I think, concerned a form of combat that was rather like the rocket interception games of early console computer gaming.  A warhead would drop down toward a target from interplanetary range and would require interception by some sort of countermeasure before it could strike.  The dramatically central  character operated in cybernetic interface with these drones and expended them against incoming warheads, the tension in the piece, like the game, arising from the opportunity costs of expending time tracking and targeting.  As I recall an additional wrinkle in the story was that the headset that allowed access to these gunnery systems contained holographic records of the thoughts and experiences of prior gunners, rendering thew whole exercise rather more personal.

With the application of creative thought to remote and cybernetic systems quite a lot could be achieved IMO that would break out of the deadlocks induced by trying to mirror WW2 style "dogfighting" as some sort of necessary prerequisite to SF warfare.  Collapsing the game into one vessel, rendering the separate identities of the characters moot, reinstates the multi-legged beast of the adventuring party joined at the hip.

[Vaxalon]

If I was sitting down at an RPG table, and we had worked up to a space battle, and this was how it worked...

I would shake my head and have a talk with the GM about deprotagonization.

Actually Babylon 5 came close. ...

However in the SFRPGs I've played in, Traveler, FTL: 2448, Star Trek, Universe, unless you're the captain of the vessel, your role in space combat is to roll a die when it comes time to shoot at something. ...

This is the reality of SFRPG space combat. As a player, my input into the combat depends on skill sets and whether I'm the commander of the ship. Typically it will be one ship vs one ship and largely played out by those folks into miniature combat. ...

Just because it has always been done that way doesn't mean that's the only way to do it.

Imagine you're playing out the battle of Yavin V as an event in a roleplaying game.  The PC's are Luke, Han, and Leia, played by Lance, Harry, and Laura respectively.

Luke Skywalker isn't in command of Red squadron, but when Red Leader gets taken out early in the battle, he assumes command.  In this context, I could see a dialogue between Lance and the GM where he arranges for this in order to explain why he's going to make the strategic decisions for Red squadron.

Laura's PC, Leia, isn't really in command of anything, but she's the only PC back at HQ, so while she isn't in command of the other squadrons, she is a witness to it.  That's reason enough, in my book, for Laura to push the pieces around for the other squadrons on the battlemat.

Harry really really wants the Millennium Falcon to be the "cavalry" that comes in at the crisis moment to save the day.  Harry spent lots of character points on the ship, leading to this moment.  Even though he has to sit out the first half of the battle, he gets to have his "moment in the sun."  :)

Everyone has, not only a strong line of RP through the battle, but also a strong hand to play in its tactical evolution.

I agree entirely with contracycle's post, above.  If space combat is to be an important part of a campaign, then arranging the particulars so that ALL of the players (if not all the PC's) have important parts of it in their laps.

That being said, we've gotten way off the original point:

In the game I envision I don't see space battles being the primary focus of the game. Instead I see exploration, trade, commerce, interpersonal relations take center stage. I want to make space combat both boring and incredibly dangerous at the same time. And using reality is the best method.

This method will, indeed, make space combat both boring and lethal.  Your players will probably do just what you want, and avoid it.   If that's what you want, great.  Space combat is an important part of most SF space settings, though, and in my opinion, there's a reason; players generally expect to be able to have fun with it from time to time.

[Stephen]

A favourite article of mine on tactics should be as applicable to space combat as anything else.  Essentially, this article characterized the elements of tactics as:

-- Resource Allocation: expenditure of resources to accomplish something;
-- Combine Dissimilar Assets:  use units with differing capabilities to achieve something no one unit could do on its own, and compensate for each others' weaknesses;
-- Manoeuvre:  the coordination and timing of actions for maximum effect in ways that require skill and planning to accomplish successfully.

With a fourth element that was more a description of preferred results, called "Pace of Decision", or, how many mistakes can you afford to make before you lose?

The essence of making space combat exciting for the players is to ensure they always have something to do.  Which leads me, by way of ramble, to a thought that should be ironclad in all SF RPGs:

NEVER DESTROY A SPACESHIP THE CHARACTERS ARE ON IF THEY CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO CHANGE THE OUTCOME OF THE BATTLE.  If the PCs are on a ship that goes into combat, and they can't personally make the difference between success and failure, never destroy the ship -- that's a Total Party Kill in the most unfair way imaginable, and unsatisfying from every stance except perhaps the purest of Simulationists.  The ship should always be incapacitated and captured, giving the PCs a chance to continue their story.

But back to the idea of what the PCs do aboard a ship.  If they're not making the actual tactical and strategic decisions for the vessel, PC actions could include the following:

- Damage control.  This ranges from equipment/system repair to human repair, for the medics.  This is particularly exciting if the system is crucially important, or involves life-risking activities (cf. Spock in WRATH OF KHAN).

- Hotshotting systems.  This covers any roll or series of rolls designed to let a particular equipment/system exceed its normal rated capacity.  This can be invaluable in fights where the enemy thinks he knows your ship's rated abilities.

- Control of a particular system that allows for direct personal action.  The ranges and speed of most "realistic" space combat prevents old-style hand-eye gunnery, unless it's some kind of brain-computer direct neurolink.  Navigation and evasive manoeuvres are excellent PC responsibilities in universes where it's possible.  If fire control and ECM are under player control, this too can be an exciting contest of skill between enemy jammers and your own targeting systems.

- Coming up with unorthodox manoeuvres or tactics, particularly if they can contribute knowledge of the enemy that the captain may not have.  One reason to put organic lifeforms in charge of space combat is the edge of unpredictability they bring when put up against straight AIs; but this advantage is lost against fellow organics, especially if that organic is the man who knows you inside out because you used to be best friends, and knows you never turn into the sun on your evasions because of a mental block formed back during your first traumatizing battle....

[Kensan_Oni]

When I was designing Tortuga (A game I plan to get back to), one of the things I thought about was how BORING Space Combat is in most RPG's. Let us face it. Unless you are a pilot, or a gunner, you just simply don't have anything to do during these times. It simply wasn't fun.

While the points about realistic space combat are kinda neat, and I DO love this debate, I am not sure if it's all that useful to RPG design, except to say that in a game that is designed for realism, don't include space battles. ;'D

So, the problem I saw was that players basicly didn't do anything during space combat. Like the Hackers from the Cybergames, once you are in space, it's a one man show. No one really likes that.

So I gave everyone ships.

It is my firm belief that if you are going to have starship combat in a game, and you are going to make it a feature in the game, everyone should participate. Deviding a Capital Ship into little subsections for people to play just does not work. You must give everyone their own little ship. Each little ship can have a function, and it will still be important to protect the Capital Ship that allows people to travel the huge distances between stars without using local transportation abilities. However, each ship will be armed and can do something, and there should be enough possibilities so that each player could have their own unique ship, which can be seen as an extension of ther charecter.

I could go on about why you would engage deep in space, but I'll just let that be for now...

[zedturtle]

An alternate solution to the quandary of most of the players being out of the action, especially for the examples Kedamono first gave would be for the players to take the role of the ship's AIs.

Each AI would be given a specific responsibility and personality, it would be up to the players to allow the AIs to calculate, innovate and report to the decision making human character/player. The resolution system might involve a degree of accuracy mechanic. For example one AI is tasked with indentifying and tracking targets, the accuracy with which the AI could do this would potentially provide bonuses to the AI tasked with engaging the hostile vessels, and perhaps also the AI tasked with evasion and defense. The degree of success at each task could be transparent to the players, or perhaps more satisfyingly, hidden until the AIs are done reporting to the captain and then put their plans into action.

Plus, it would be fun writing a combat chapter that begins "The standard round is equivalent to 100 picoseconds, enough time for each AI to do one or two major actions..."

[Omen]

I'm new to this forum, and you have the privilege of my first post :P.  I have to agree with you on most points.  The only exception would be the extreme temperatures involved, and the way space acts as an insulator.

The shuttle and the ISS do not have these problems because the structure loses more heat then is generated.  Heaters must be used to keep the crew in comfort.  This probably wouldn't be the case in a warship.

Such a powerful propulsion system would most likely have a high-energy capacity.  Energy weapons would also be a cause of extreme thermal build up.  This transfered into heat, would not just immediately bleed into space.  A ship would indeed have to be massive, and filled with heat exchangers to distribute throughout the structure.  The crew would find themselves cooking as they sat at their control stations.  

I would imagine huge deployable heat sinks, basically "wings in space" ( I know disgusting thought ).  The problem would be the exposure you are providing to your enemy.  You've just raised a big glowing flag that computers can lock onto easily.  Maybe battles will be fought in brief spurts, where ships have to flee to disipate excess heat.

[Kedamono]

I'm new to this forum, and you have the privilege of my first post :P.  I have to agree with you on most points.  The only exception would be the extreme temperatures involved, and the way space acts as an insulator.

The shuttle and the ISS do not have these problems because the structure loses more heat then is generated.  Heaters must be used to keep the crew in comfort.  This probably wouldn't be the case in a warship.

Such a powerful propulsion system would most likely have a high-energy capacity.  Energy weapons would also be a cause of extreme thermal build up.  This transfered into heat, would not just immediately bleed into space.  A ship would indeed have to be massive, and filled with heat exchangers to distribute throughout the structure.  The crew would find themselves cooking as they sat at their control stations.  

I would imagine huge deployable heat sinks, basically "wings in space" ( I know disgusting thought ).  The problem would be the exposure you are providing to your enemy.  You've just raised a big glowing flag that computers can lock onto easily.  Maybe battles will be fought in brief spurts, where ships have to flee to disipate excess heat.

Welcome Omen!

You make some very valid points, ones I should have brought up too. Right now we have space telescopes that can see in the IR and can see stars behind clouds of cold dust tens of thousands of light years away. A ship with an active drive would not be a problem, right?

Maybe.

And maybe not. If you hold a dime out at arms length against the night sky, the area it is blocking off is several times larger than the area this IR telescope can see in high detail. And this high detail is created by scanning that portion of the sky over and over and over, building up layers of detail that a snapshot cannot attain.

The wider you make the area it must scan at one time, the lower the detail it must be. Even when you do spot something, you will have trouble distinguishing between an engine plume at 12 AU and a cosmic ray that hit the optics.

High energy also means a high level of EM radiation from the ship in question. As a EM target, a fusion drive stands out like a beacon in the radio spectrum.

The main problem we have is that we have not defined the goals, the objectives the attacker and defender have. The attacker is not there to blow up ships, he's there to destroy the defender's means of production. To take out your space based industry, your satellites, and any ground based defense production.

As a defender, you're there to protect those assets. And for the most part, this will be done through automated defenses.

A big assumption with this is that the attacker wants to spare your civilians and capture your world more or less intact. If all he wants is the raw materials that your world can provide in the form of organic matter, all bets are off.

He can stand off and toss kiloton mass nickel-iron bricks at you, or worse yet, comets. Comets are worse since they are so frangible, any attempt to stop them will cause them to break up into pieces. "Shotgun"!

By the way Omen, your sig:

"The nuclear pumped laser burns through your crew quarters, roll to dodge."

...had me LMAO! Good job!

[Erick Wujcik]

There's a mess of stuff that I'd argue about in the initial post, but most of you have done it quite nicely. Thanks!

So I'll just respond to one statement:

...Fusion engines put out a ton of neutrons and the only protection from neutrons is mass and distance...

Yes, Fusion engines would likely put out a lot of neutrons, many at damaging speeds that are a significant percentage of the speed of light.

However, there are systems for protection against neutrons. One is water: there was an old John W. Campbell story, of pre-WWII vintage, wherein ships had a layer of water used as 'shielding' against neutron weapons.

A quick on-line search turned up the following: "Light hydrogen-based materials such as water, snow, paraffin, or oil offer good neutron protection..." (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/9-207/appe.htm), as well as "Neutron protection is afforded by the granular fill, wood, and borated polyethylene..." (http://www.jacmp.org/cJournal/archive.php?op=read&mode=html&articleid=25313).

From personal experience (long story), I learned that plain old paraffin wax, widely available in commercial packaging, used for candle-making and other craft projets, is the very best defense against high-speed neutrons, since the wax surface creates a cloud of electrons.

Erick

[Vaxalon]

Keep in mind, also, that capturing those neutrons, and more importantly, their kinetic energy, is one of the things that makes a fusion drive WORK.

[Kedamono]

Keep in mind, also, that capturing those neutrons, and more importantly, their kinetic energy, is one of the things that makes a fusion drive WORK.

No, it's not that you're capturing the neutrons that makes the ship move. It's the much heavier stream of superheated helium plasma streaming out the nozzle that pushes the ship forward.

And if you want to move faster, add a reaction mass, say water or even straight hydrogen, to this plasma and you get even more thrust.

As an example, consider a ship massing M = 900 metric tonnes (9 ×105 kg), with a load of reaction mass m = 100 metric tonnes (1 ×105 kg), wishing to travel S = 1 AU (1.5 ×1011 m) in a total time t = 1 week (604,800 s). Using the minimal power solution, the engine power required is P = 1.63 ×1011 W, or 163 gigawatts.

P = m S^2 / { 2T (T /2 + ?)^2 [ ln [ ( M + m ) / M ] ]^2 }

Neutrons need not apply.

[Vaxalon]

I won't argue the point further; it's WAY offtopic.

[HereticalFaction]

WARNING!  MORE OFF TOPIC NONSENSE!

The "Fusion Rocket" model where thrust is applied by expelling the fusion product (superheated helium) itself is a rather silly one: The fusion fuel (deuterium or deuterium/tritium) is, admittedly under extreme pressure in order to cause it to fuse, and the fusion product will be at higher temperature due to the energy relesed by the fusion. However, expelling the helium alone is inefficient since a) helium is fairly light  and b) you only get to expell one monatomic helium particle for every two monatomic hydrogen particles which you feed your engine which presupposes a tremendous ammount of feul realtive to the ships mass and a lot of wasted heat. In fact, the only impulse you would see projecting the helium astern would be produced by the compression of your magnetic bottle in the fusion space, I.E. the actual fusion would only serve to produce the EM radiation to feed it's own containment and sustainance.

Wouldn't it be more likely that you would use the heat energy of the helium to evaporate a dense reaction mass like a chunk of iron or something, so as to maximise the gaseous expansion to heat ratio and expell something of sufficient mass to giva a real kick?

In other matters:

I like that you are limiting yourself to sub-relativistic STL travel.

I agree with you that the most likely model for space combat in a newtonian rocket scenario is the type of single-pass fight you described. Unless the aggressor ship had a massively greater capacity to accellerate than the attacked ship, matching velocities in space would require the cooperation of the attacked ship unless the aggressor started out close, at comparable speed, on the same vactor, and dead astern. Otherwise, the attacked ship can just burn as hard as the agressor in the straight path of it's travel and be forever out of reach.

I wouldn't worry about heat so much... The "Refrigeration Laser" concept is sound even based on current tech, and it even provides some abillity to A) burn space-junk in the ships path, B) Burn enemies, or C) supercharge fusion plasma at lower pressures leaving more EM to be used by nifty ships systems.

And no, I don't see any reason why you would want to fight in deep space given this level of tech, unless you suppose an interplanetary war where neither side wishes to sterilize their enemies' planet.