Interesting space dogfights

[Valamir]

Gee Mike, sounds like you just reinvented the old Star Warrior board game...which I can't believe I forgot when listing space combat systems above, especially since Jake wants to concentrate on the fighter issue (I'm a cap ship fan myself).

Somewhere I even worked up a system to convert all of the WEG d6 SW ships to the SW game.

[Mike Holmes]

Want some authentic fighter combat manuvers complete with diagrams?
Go here: http://members.tripod.com/~F15EEagle/manu.html

See, the thing is that what you don't want is to have all the actual maneuvers. You need to have classifiable categories of maneuvers. Because in actual combat, the maneuver that actually get's performed is frequently some modification of one of the "taught" maneuvers. Basically, there are infinite variations. So you have to consider only the mechanical ramifications.

Worse, these are almost all dependant on atmophere. It's bad enough that space fighters seem to bank and roll, I wouldn't want to encourage it with naming maneuvers after their real life equivalent.

That said, is there some sort of maneuver amongst those listed  (or elsewhere) that people see as not being represented by some TROS maneuver?

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

1. I'm of the opinion that much of "fighterism" in space novels is based on romanitcizations of the WWI-WWII fighter pilot, and I think we can get some milage out of that.
a. Fighters are always in squadrons.
b. Fighters benefit from formations somehow.
c. Fighters seem to benefit from wingmen.

I completely agree w/ the WWII issue. The more we borrow from here, the better.

2. Fighters in these worlds can be Long Range or Short Range. Meaning:
a. The Long Range fighter can go anywhere that a starship can go (x-wings have hyperspace and can take you as far as Degobah).
b. Short Range fighters have to have support nearby, like a larger ship, or a base.
c. This means that there must be some sort of fuel supply or something that can be burnt through with short range fighters.

I'm less concerned about a lot of this. I think that in order to milk, say, the Arthurian romance of this all we need long-range fighters that need to stop for supplies, which supplies need to be available even beyond civilization somehow.

The reason for both long-and-short range fighters probably has something to do with cost. There was an old anime--I can't remember the title for my life--but it was about a mercenary fighter-pilot group in a more-or-less modern world. Fighters had to buy their own gear (like battletech), and eventually buy their way out of the corps. This could certainly be an issue. Part of me wants to flip the "evil empire" thing on it's head and make all the PCs stormtroopers and the like. In equivalent, that is. It'd be pretty easy to turn Arthur into the Evil Empire, really.

3. Dogfights involve direct-fire weapons. Like the pilots of the earlier wars, they have no seeking weapons.
a. "torpedoes" have to be targeted and fired manually at least to some extent, and are only used on stationary targets.
b. Only direct fire weapons can take out other fighters.
c. This one is contradicted by the computer games available, for what reason I don't know. But it's a bad idea to allow guided weapons, because that makes it hard to explain the existence of fighters, again. Why not just fire missiles from a large platform? It's the direct-fire necessity that makes fighters even vaguely swallowable.
d. for some inexplicable reason, the pilot is only allowed weapons which fire forward. To fire backwards, you have to have a tailgunner. And even that is rare. For dramatic reasons, obviously.

This is a realism issue of importance, because stories  can come out of the decisions we make here. Technology can be a reasonable excuse for why guided systems don't work. In fact, we could easily say that once upon a time the whole army was dominated by guided-fire attacks, but then the counter to that became readily available and rendered the seekers obsolete. This required skill over technology now, and a new generation of "rider" had to appear to fill the gap. Thus out-dated material might still have batteries of seeker-ammo on them, which could come into play when the shields or whatever of an enemy ship are disabled. Now I'm envisioning histories and stuff. Neat.

4. Fighters have shields and can take partial damage.
a. Many hits only seem to weaken shields
b. Some hits damage internal components, usually one at a time, even if shields are still up.
c. Often a hit on a ship with no shield vaporizes it. This is a good rule because it explains why someone with technology great enough to have nuclear weapons or much worse, can't design weapons powerful enough to vaporize something the size of a figher. They can, but for the shields.

Agreed on all points. The shield technology is really the issue here, as I think it's the shields that outdate seekers as well as protect the ships from incoming blasts. Likewise, fighters could carry a number of seekers for "finishing" un-shielded fighters. I see 3 kinds of ammo:

1. Seeking ammo. Missiles, etc, probably mini-nukes or whatever.
2. Balistic ammo. Requires none of the energy needed to run the shields, and is good for when you're "recharging." This kind of ammo can penetrate weakened shields (maybe), and is responsible for those "wounds" that don't vaporize an un-shielded ship.
3. Energy ammo (or whatever). These are the lazers that vaporize. They deplete shields and require energy from the firing ship, not "ammo" per se. A high-impact blast of this stuff can rattle the ship within the shields, causing the internal damage we discussed earlier. How do they weaken shields? Perhaps by over-loading them with too much power? Hmmm...

Not too much to work with. What's notably missing is any actual maneuvers or anything. This is because in the source material, all they ever say is, "I'm on the leader!" and "I can't shake him" and the like.

So we have to go to the parallels again (and unfortunately, IMO). Actual RL dogfights all deal with matching vectors. You want to stay on the tail of the person (since he's got no tailgunner), so that you can shoot him, and he can shoot you. This is simpler in space than in an atmosphere, because you don't have to consider gravity. Even when near a planet, we're assuming anti-gravity drives, so it's a non-factor (more importantly, it never comes up in the source material unless the drives have been knocked out).

Anyhow, what does that leave us with. Well, there's the fighter's performance, which in space is it's ability to accellerate and (for drama's sake) bank. These would be important considerations, much like TROS ATN and DTN type calculations. In fact, I'd think of the fighter itself as a weapon, with ablative stats as it gets damaged. The weapon itself would determine the damage amount and type.

Swordfighting is about vectors, too, in a way. That's why a large degree of abstraction is important--actually tracking this stuff with any kind of minature or counter isn't what we want here. I see a combination of TROS abstraction of maneuvers with Pendragon's abstraction of the individual's role in a larger-scale conflict. Thus "I'm on the leader" is the kind of thing that can really happen in-play, and the banking, etc., is what will give the player the thrill of out-matching the leader.

From there, I'd just use some of the TROS maneuvers to simulate jockying for position. "Initiative" is being on the opponent's tail and firing. Successes on attacks represent having lined up and scored hits. Maneuvers that make sense to me are:
Thrust - (Lining Up) - this is better for penetrating because the shots tend to hit in one place, but worse for damage, and the shots tend to hit in one place.
Cut - (Strafe) - this does the inverse of thrust's description as you rake your opponent with fire.
Evade - (Breaking off)
Feint - (Coralling fire)
Counter - (Maneuvers like Hitting the Brakes)
Dodge - (Jink)

For maneuvers that actually require the weapon to be involved in something other than an attack, like Beat, Parry, Bind, etc, I don't see cognates up front. But the above is a start. Shield's work like armor, but ablate over time (shouldn't be hard to work out). You'd need to have a set of damage charts then.

Yeah...this is looking pretty easy. I was hoping for something less TROS-y, but TROS is hard to beat mechanically for this sort of thing. Dammit.

Anyhow the squadron tactics and wingman stuff translates into being outnumbered less somehow. When outnumbered, one can maneuver to only be engaged by one opponent, just like normal.

Fuel could translate into Endurance somehow, using the classic "extra effort" rules.

Is this heading in the direction you're looking for, Jake?

Mike

Yeah, it's the right direction...I still want to use different dice... Sometimes you go with what seems right, though. What we need is an outline of rules and a playtest. Also, we'll need something to handle a lot of the chaos nearby. Random tables are fun and often do the right thing, but they're a pain to create and often don't deliver as much as one might hope. I think the 1-on-1 scale will be easy...it's the slightly larger group (3-on-1, etc) that we need to spruce up.

Jake

[Mike Holmes]

I was only using TROS as a jumping off point. To show where the parts might lay with respect to each other. In the end the system might be totally different, but you have to start from somewhere. And since you wanted a TROS level of abstraction....

Mike

[LordSmerf]

I think the main problem you'll have is ships don't "bleed" or take shock.  The damage mechanics and their reflection in combat from TROS don't really seem to work here.  Also initiative, what does it mean to throw a white die?

Of course, the rest looks like it would work pretty dang well.

Thomas

[Walt Freitag]

One important convention that Mike missed, probably because it's so universally taken for granted (it applies pretty generally to all real-world surface and atmospheric vehicles, even though it's not in force for real-world space vehicles): vehicles must be pointing in the direction they're moving. Even at sublight speed, where conventional principles of momenum should apply, neither an X-Wing nor the Enterprise is capable of pivoting, say, 180 degrees on the yaw or pitch axis while continuing (backward) in its original trajectory. Same reasons as for the lack of rear-fire or turret fire: if they could, it would obviate dramatic dogfight-style maneuvering.

(Heck, the Enterprise can't even angle slightly sideways while it's backing up at full-speed to escape an incoming head-on energy blast, it has to just keep backing up in a perfectly straight line for over a minute until the blast finally catches up and hits it. But that's a whole different complaint.)

While I'm not familiar with most of the systems referenced so far in this thread, there's one that I do know well that might make a useful starting point for a new system. When I think of dogfight games, the first thing I think of is Ace of Aces.

Ace of Aces is a straightforward state --> maneuvers --> new state game representing WWI dogfighting. There are 222 states (plus a special state for out of contact with the enemy), each representing one of the 222 ways that two planes can be placed relative to one another on an underlying 2-D hexagonal grid, each plane facing a hex side and no more than three hexes apart. Each player has a book with 222 numbered pages, each page representing one of the states and showing an illustration of what the other player's plane looks like from the cockpit of your plane, conveying the other plane's relative facing (are you looking at its propeller, its tail, or what?) and its position relative to yours (are you looking at it over your tail, over your wing, or through your gunsights?). Since the state includes the relative positions of both planes, both players are always on the same page number. Each player simultaneously chooses one of about 25 maneuvers; the combination of maneuvers leads both players (through a process whose details don't matter) to a new state/page. Some states allow one (or both) planes to fire at the other.

Now, I'm not suggesting the use of illustrations, or having hundreds of states, or dozens of distinct maneuvers. But the idea of state --> maneuvers --> new state still makes sense even if it's stripped way down, and even if a success roll element is introduced (state --> maneuvers + who succeeds --> new state). It's the greater variety of positional states that distinguish a dogfight from melee combat and give it its different dramatic feel. Most rpg melee combat systems only have a handful of positional states at most (such as, inside or outside a pole weapon's guard, or ranges for missile fire) which is why they usually require the addition of miniatures and movement turns to handle pursuit or mounted combat with any crunch.

So, states for dogfighting spaceships. I'd suggest that each ship can be in only one of three possible zones, relative to the other ship's facing and movement, that make any difference: "in front," "in back", and "somewhere off to the side." Space being 3-D, the third position includes above and below as well as left and right. Think of "in front" as being within a cone about 60 to 90 degrees wide projecting from the front of the ship, "behind" as being within a similar cone projecting behind the ship, and "abeam" (to borrow an old nautical term) as being anywhere else. Because each ship can also be turned (and therefore moving) in any direction, the relative position and movement of the two ships can be summed up as one of the nine combinations of the three positional zones.

A in front of B, B in front of A -- head-on, closing
A behind B, B behind A -- passed, separating
A in front of B, B behind A -- B on A's tail
A behind B, B in front of A -- A on B's tail
A abeam of B, B abeam of A -- passing, circling, or parallel
A abeam of B, B in front of A -- A closing in on B's flank
A abeam of B, B behind A -- A moving away from B's course
A in front of B, B abeam of A -- B closing in on A's flank
A behind B, B abeam of A -- B moving away from A's course

In addition, you could have an independent distance variable -- close or far, or perhaps short, medium, long range.

Now your maneuvers have to be specific enough to be interesting, but not so specific that you need more state information than one of the above nine states to figure out its effect. So, for instance, a maneuver like "turn left" won't work. I'd try something like these:

track toward enemy (also: track and fire, when applicable)
close with enemy (also: close and fire, when applicable)
small-scale evasive maneuvers (jink)
large-scale evasive manuevers (random turns)
break (turn) away
slow down
speed ahead
wide turn
tight circle

Maneuvers are announced simultaneously (yes, that's a bit of a problem in an rpg). The players make a success roll which can be modified by skills, ship capabilities, and situational variables that affect the particular maneuver chosen. (This could be an opposed roll, with two outcomes, or two independent success rolles, with four outcomes). The maneuvers chosen by each side and the success roll result determines the new state (this uses an enormous table, but there are ways to keep its size under control), as well as additonal effects like damage.

For 3 or more, you must choose a maneuver relative to only one other ship. You retain a positional state for the ship you choose to focus on, and with any other ship that chooses to focus on you. So if A is closing in on B's flank, and Z is on A's tail, A can choose to "track toward" B, and Z can choose to "close and fire" on A, and both positional states will be updated. But if A chooses instead to "tight circle" around Z to try to get Z off his tail, and B maneuvers relative to some other ship Y or chooses an avoidance maneuver away from A, then A and B no longer have a position state relative to each other. Some random roll could be used to bring such disengaged or otherwise-engaged ships into contact from time to time during a big herring-ball battle.

Does any of this have any appeal, or is it looking too crunchy?

- Walt

[Daniel Solis]

a. Fighters are always in squadrons.
b. Fighters benefit from formations somehow.
c. Fighters seem to benefit from wingmen.

The most obvious solution to me would be something like what was discussed over in RPG theory. Someone had suggested rejustifying "hit points" so that they don't reflect anything about health or physical injury, but were simply ablative layers of coolness or luck surrounding the hero. The strength of a squadron, formation and number of wingmen surrounding the hero could represent this layer of coolness surrounding her as she storms through the enemy fleet. I personally like the scenes from Babylon 5 where whole clouds of single-person fighters pop like so many fireworks. Sure, it's sad that each little burst is the end of someone's life, but they're not the main character, are they? So that's a way to do it, I think.

Squadrons represent the "hit points" during a dogfight. The no-name fighter pilots whose sole purpose, in dramatic terms, is to die so that the hero can save the day for the folks back home. Formations may form a bit of defense or "damage resistance" so the squadron doesn't get decimated as easily. Wingmen are a completely different matter. They're the secondary characters who are competant enough to be assistance in battle without stealing the spotlight. Think of Wedge Antilles (sp?) in the three original Star Wars movies. From what my SW fanatic friends tell me, Wedge is the only pilot to engage in battle in all three movies. Obviously he's a competant fighter, but is he a main character? Nope. In cold dramatic terms, he's just another weapon in the rebel arsenal.

2. Fighters in these worlds can be Long Range or Short Range. Meaning:
a. The Long Range fighter can go anywhere that a starship can go (x-wings have hyperspace and can take you as far as Degobah).
b. Short Range fighters have to have support nearby, like a larger ship, or a base.
c. This means that there must be some sort of fuel supply or something that can be burnt through with short range fighters.

Perhaps the technology is based on a transmissible energy field. As long as the little ships are within the field of the mothership. Once out of range of the mothership's energy source, the fighter starts feeding of its own miniscule energy resources. I know we're trying to avoid explaining away the BS, but this could just be explained as "energy sources need to be big to be effective," hence the necessity of a "carrier" or the fighter ships.

3. Dogfights involve direct-fire weapons. Like the pilots of the earlier wars, they have no seeking weapons.

You could also take an even more Arthurian route and only give fighters melee weapons of some sort. Hell, call the fighter ships "Caliburs" and give them each a big friggin' sword. I've always been fascinated with the possibilities of zero-g martial arts and swordplay, the logistics of which I've yet to see taken to their full dramatic potential even in anime.

Not too much to work with. What's notably missing is any actual maneuvers or anything. This is because in the source material, all they ever say is, "I'm on the leader!" and "I can't shake him" and the like.

I came to the very same conclusion when working out the space combat rules for PUNK.

Even when near a planet, we're assuming anti-gravity drives, so it's a non-factor (more importantly, it never comes up in the source material unless the drives have been knocked out).

Could this be executed by letting the player decide the fate of whatever target is successfully attacked?

"You hit 'em! Decide their fate."
"According to the code of Arthur, I must show mercy to a bested foe. I will leave the enemy ships immobilized and spare the lives of pilots escaping in lifepods."

Thrust - (Lining Up) - this is better for penetrating because the shots tend to hit in one place, but worse for damage, and the shots tend to hit in one place.
Cut - (Strafe) - this does the inverse of thrust's description as you rake your opponent with fire.
Evade - (Breaking off)
Feint - (Coralling fire)
Counter - (Maneuvers like Hitting the Brakes)
Dodge - (Jink)

We could augment the concept of scripted combat used in Burning Wheel for space combat using these terms, and perhaps a few more, written on cards. A "Maneuver" is when you decide a series of action cards as described above. If you have a more aggressively designed ship, you have more "cut" cards available. If you have a faster ship, you have more "dodge" cards available. Certain cards trump other cards in an extended rock-paper-scissors mechanic.

Just 'cause you have the cards doesn't mean you can play them all, however. The number of cards you can play is limited by your skill as a pilot. At any time, you can abort the rest of your maneuver to take the always life-saving "dodge" action.

[Overdrive]

Regarding the need of fighter craft. How does one destroy an aircraft carrier nowadays, or in WWII? They have oodles of escort vehicles like destroyers, frigates, submarines and whatnot. I guess a carrier can take some hits from big bombs/missiles, and have point-defence gunnery to fend these off. It's difficult to sneak in with any ship or submarine because of the escort craft. Well, just something to think about.

And those "seekers" can be jammed? If they are guided from the launch craft, just present some great interference. If they have a seeking mechanism (heat, magnetic field, anysort), you can have stuff that presents greater attraction to the seeker. And if those shields can stop meteors and debris flying around, they can vaporize the incoming missiles easily (like in Independence day). A workaround could be that the missile has to be slow enough to pass the shields unharmed, and thus has to be launched from very close. These sort of justifications for fighters could work.

[Mike Holmes]

Lots to respond to. Walt, that's what I was talking about in terms of "banking", that turns with airframes are performed against the air, and that makes vector changes less simple than they would be in space. Interestingly, the scientists are overcoming these problems as we speak even in atmospheres, and the most modern fightercraft do have some ability to "reverse attitude". It's really quite remarkable.

The BS explanation that usually gets used in space is that ships are accellerating to substantial portions of the speed of light instantaneously, and that requires a different motive power. The nature of that motive power makes it so that the vehicle can only turn with stress, hence the turning patterns. Oh, and Plasma torpedoes are homing devices, not direct fire. Or at least that's how SFB explains away the Trek episode where they meet the Romulans.

On the subject of position, Jake has stated that he wants to abstract that. I assumed that he meant on the same level as TROS or so. Meaning that position is just narrated as a result of dice rolls. OTOH, I've always wanted a space fighter game based on Ace of Aces.... :-)


Overdrive, the reason why fighters exist today is because you don't need a larger weapons platform to carry the most advanced and deadly weapons. The ships, like carriers, exist as mobile bases. This is why I mentioned the long/short range thing. See, if you have long range fighters, then you do not need capital ships for any reason. This is a problem in most BS explanations. In SFB, if you can get a disruptor on a fighter, and you can get 12 fighters in a carrier, then why can't you just put the 12 disriptors on the carrier? It's faster, and more survivable. The answer is, because then you wouldn't have fighters to play with. That's a bad answer. The question in Jake's universe is, if fighters can carry powerful weapons and travel as far as needed, then why do you need capital ships? Maybe you don't?

There's always a BS explanation available. OTOH, Jake says we can just go with drama for the most part. So perhaps we should leave these unanswered.

Someone had suggested rejustifying "hit points" so that they don't reflect anything about health or physical injury, but were simply ablative layers of coolness or luck surrounding the hero.

What you're telling me is that we should use Hero Quest? I agree. :-)

I know we're trying to avoid explaining away the BS, but this could just be explained as "energy sources need to be big to be effective," hence the necessity of a "carrier" or the fighter ships.

Jake has already stated that he wants fighters to be capable of long-range missions. Basically, they're warhorses for the Jedi Knights, if you will.

Even when near a planet, we're assuming anti-gravity drives, so it's a non-factor (more importantly, it never comes up in the source material unless the drives have been knocked out).

Could this be executed by letting the player decide the fate of whatever target is successfully attacked?

"You hit 'em! Decide their fate."
"According to the code of Arthur, I must show mercy to a bested foe. I will leave the enemy ships immobilized and spare the lives of pilots escaping in lifepods."

I'm not sure what problem you're addressing. I was simply saying that you don't have to take most things like Gravity into account.

We could augment the concept of scripted combat used in Burning Wheel for space combat using these terms, and perhaps a few more, written on cards. A "Maneuver" is when you decide a series of action cards as described above. If you have a more aggressively designed ship, you have more "cut" cards available. If you have a faster ship, you have more "dodge" cards available. Certain cards trump other cards in an extended rock-paper-scissors mechanic.

That's somewhat like Walt's method. To be more precise, instead of being like Ace of Aces, what you've described is the mechanic for the game called "Blue Max", another WWI arial combat game. One could also use the mechanics from Dawn Patrol, or any of several other WWI arial combat games. But again, I think this is all more than what Jake's looking for. Jake?

Mike

[Daniel Solis]

I'm not sure what problem you're addressing. I was simply saying that you don't have to take most things like Gravity into account.

My mistake, I had thought you were addressing the issue of called shots to specific ship-parts.

I've been reading up on TROS's combat on their webpage and I think I understand how it handles damage. So, with that possibly incorrect knowledge, I got the following idea:

When you roll an attack, the result is compared to a simple chart that has a big list of various kinds of things that are caused by being the the subject of an attack of that magnitude.

Each increment could have maybe three or four possible results from attacks of that severity such as, "Engines Damaged: -3 Speed" or "Weapons Offline for two rounds." The effects get worse as the number gets higher. When you successfully attack an enemy, choose to inflict on his ship one of those effects from the severity increment equal to your roll.

So you've rolled a 5 on your attack, compare it to the chart, and choose one of the effects listed under "severity 5." Perhaps a high piloting skill could allow you to pick multiple effects to inflict with a single attack.

An idea for squadron formations: Each formation has a different purpose. To establish a formation, roll the relevant skill (probably "Leadership" or something). Whatever you rolled on your formation attempt is the extra layers of ablative coolness you have surrounding your character. But that's not all. Each formation grants special effects depending on the severity of your attacks against an enemy. In other words, you can choose damage effects from either the "standard" list or from the little mini-list made available by that formation.

So let's say the "Knights of the Round" formation has the following effects at the following severity increments:

2: "Flank the Enemy." +4 attack.
6: "Stab Thine Eyes." Enemy sensors destroyed.
8: "Speed of the Righteous." +3 speed.

This list would be supplementary to the standard list of possible effects for attack severities of 2, 6, and 8. The pilot doesn't have to choose those effects made available by the formation, but chances are that the formation effects are more powerful than their equivalents in the default list. Hence the benefit of formations: More powerful effects with a lower required degree of success.

You might also throw in a cap in the effectiveness as a result of the formation's cohesion. Say your formation has taken heavy losses and has been reduced to merely 3 "layers of coolness." That means, either because of the missing pilots or the sudden psychological trauma of war, the formation's effectiveness has been capped at 3. So, even if your attack result was 8, the only result you can choose from your formation's list of effects is "Flank thine Enemy."

Does any of that make a lick of sense? I'm not so sure. :P

[Mike Holmes]

Lots of sense, I think.

One of the usual problems with systems that try to model damage to targets that have potentially drastic differences (think fighters vs capital ships) is that you either have to ignore the differences, or get mired in detailing the target. In SFB you'll hear the following, "Hmmm, 73 internal hits to that NCL? That's close to bsing a sure kill, but we'd better roll it just in case." Then commence 73 chart referenced die rolls, and subsequent chalking off of boxes until, "Yep, that was the last of the 'excess damage' boxes: booom!"

A challenge for the system will be finding a way to detail damage to varying targets without making the system drag.

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

As Mike said, lots to respond to, and I feel like a lot of it is stuff that's either over my head or outside of my game experience (I don't know most of the games we've been discussing, for example).

Gobi-

You're more recent post on flanking and group maneuvers is good stuff, and it's in the right direction, generally. I like it.

Mike, ect-

The BS stuff is actually turning out to be fun, so we can run with it here, too. It's also true that I want position to be abstract enough that you can say "I'm in front" or "I'm behind" or whatever, but in an environment that's changing in ships moving really really fast there is no longer any decent way to keep all but the most immediate position issues under wraps and still be involved in action as opposed to position.

As for hit points and "my squad vs. their squad," I think that this sort of thing should be pretty easy to determine mechanically, so that while it is happening in the background (and it has a real effect on things) the players can stay in the real heat of the action and not get bogged down with their buddies' results. The idea of group maneuvers as determined by a squad leader is a good one, which then dissolves into the dog-fight chaos of fighter-on-fighter battle when the formation is broken (or whatever).

So mechanically I'm thinking that a squad starts out "together." The aim, generally, is to stay together (strength in numbers). Each position in a formation has it's role, based on some attribute or other in-game roll. If this roll is failed, then something bad happens, such as getting separated or even causing the crumble of the whole unit, leading to more chaotic fighting. In tighter battles this will happen more quickly because the rolls will be harder; in other situations, such as strafing, it will be very easy to keep the formation together.

This will all work best on a scale of opposed rolls, I think, as it's the opposition that makes things harder for skilled individuals.

So, should we just go ahead and use TROS mechanics as a base or skeleton and start putting something more solid together?

Jake

[Mike Holmes]

What I'm currently envisioning is a combination of TROS maneuvers with Hero Quest AP rules for tracking "damage". But ultimately it's your project Jake. I'm with you if you want to do it, however.

Mike

[Daniel Solis]

Gobi-

You're more recent post on flanking and group maneuvers is good stuff, and it's in the right direction, generally. I like it.

Swing the bat a few hundred times, you're bound to hit the ball at least once. :)

So, should we just go ahead and use TROS mechanics as a base or skeleton and start putting something more solid together?

A TROS derivative seems like the best way to go, but it's your call. For the time being, here's a more concise (hopefully) explanation of what I was rambling about earlier.

Keep in mind that this is written without any knowledge of what would be used as the base task resolution system.

Your character is the squad leader of a whole mess of single-pilot starfighters. They're fresh out of basic training and know nothing about the real hell of space war. There are only two things a cadet can do: (1) take orders and (2) die.

The fleet is yours to lead into the heart of battle. Most of the young pilots won't make it home alive, those that do will have nightmares for years. Nevertheless, they are your most reliable weapon when facing the enemy. As long as you prove yourself a worthy leader, they'll gladly follow you straight to their flaming death.

Dogfighting

The Fleet
A disorganized bunch of fighters awaiting orders. When not in formation, a fleet has "Speed 1" "Cohesion 1" and "Attack 1." These terms are explained below.

Step One: Formation
All squad leaders choose a formation and roll their "leadership" skill hoping to meet the required successes.

If the formation is unsuccessful, the whole fleet is vulnerable to enemy attack. Further, your next attempt to establish a formation is at a -1 penalty. This penalty does not apply if attempting formation in peaceful circumstances. As a matter of fact, all formation attempts are automatically successful if established while outside the heat of battle.

If the formation was successful, note how much the roll exceeded the required degree of success. This number is called "Cohesion" and it represents the strength of the formation, the morale of the fleet as a whole, and the ability of each individual pilot to maintain focus in the chaos of battle.

Step Two: Attack
Squad leaders roll "attack," add Cohesion, subtract the target's Cohesion, and the final result is referenced to the "Table of Doom."

The Table of Doom has a big list of numbers. Those numbers are all the possible outcomes of your attack rolls. Each number has listed in it a few painful things that are likely to occur as the result of attacks of that severity, these are more conveniently referred to as "dooms." Higher numbers have more possible dooms, each one nastier than the last.

Further, every formation has its own Mini-Table of Doom, each entry of which is yet another possible doom resulting from attacks of that severity. The primary mechanical benefit of formations is that they provide more powerful dooms at lower required degrees of success.

From the accumulated list of possible Dooms, you can choose a number equal to your fleet's current speed. Whichever and however many effects you choose are immediately executed.

Here's the catch. All these possible dooms would be great if you had a moment's peace to mull them over like the stuffy strategists sitting back on homeworld plotting out the war with little game pieces. You're in the thick of it though, where every second is precious. That being the case, you only have three seconds of real time in which to pick whatever doom you're going to execute. If you don't declare a doom within that time, your formation dissolves and your fleet reverts back to its base stats.

I just added that time limit right this second. It had seemed counterintutive to me that we're trying to make a fast-paced, chaotic dogfighting system yet a player could possibly stall the game for whole minutes at a time trying to decide which effect to use.

[MachMoth]

Okay, I'm a bit late on the discussion, but I have something to add on the basis of shields.  IIRC, there are two common types of shields:  Regular "absorb until ya die" shields (or Barrier Shields), and Deflector Shields.  

Barrier Shields
- Provide ample protection against all forms of attacks
- Require a large power supply that fighters cannot support.
- Will go down if:
--- a) Worn down.
--- b) Generator/Panels are destroyed.

Deflector Shields
- Make "seekers" ineffective, because they push them away/jam them.
- Direct fire weapons aren't as affected.  Glancing blows are deflected, but "direct hits" have too much forward force to be pushed off.  Explains single hit kills.
- Allows a fighter to pass through the Barrier Shields of larger ships, accounting for the effectiveness of a swarm of fighters against a single capital (assuming they can get in close).

P.S.
Don't ask where I got this from.  I helped with a space combat game long before I ever discovered the forge.  My sources are long since gone.