Space Dogfights - TROS mechanic (split)

[LordSmerf]

Eric,

Ok, i see your point on reactive maneuvers.  I like the idea of an increased Activation Cost for multiple enemies.  How about +1 for each enemy beyond the first with the option to only evade two of the four or something?

RE: Ramming.  How about rolling the idea of STN for damage and the option to take a more glancing blow into one mechanic.  A successful Ram allows you to roll up to your margin dice vs. STN to determine damage based on the appropriate chart.  It's not completely scientific, you don't have total control over the damage you'll be doing, but you do get to make a sort of estimate...

Thomas

[Harlequin]

Something like that.  I suspect an increased TN for multiple opponents would scale better, but we can test both.  The Ram thought is fine - although if you're only getting about half (assuming STN 6) of your margin on the Ram, as a "hurt him more than he hurt me" modifier, then it's maybe a little too close to even-steven.  I'd still like to treat rams just like collisions with asteroids or with turbolaser beams... there's a chance of a glancing impact, and a chance of a huge fireball, see table here.

However, I had another pair of fascinating thoughts.  The first one, which could even be optional but would really be fun, has to do with using representations (minis or otherwise) on a map; the second one has to do with a reinterpretation of one of the rules aspects I'd like to bring in.

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Use of Miniatures (Or Little Cardboard Bits)
Expand out the idea of the "Risk zones" a little, first.  Decouple them slightly from the margins on Relocate rolls.  Instead, draw your battlefield, and chop it up into zones.  Each zone should, conceptually, be large enough that the entire dogfight could take place inside it without ever being near enough to an adjacent zone that someone there could interfere without entering this one.  Each zone has a Risk factor associated with it.  Your margin on Relocate vs. Burn is the number of zones you travel.  This would be exactly equivalent to the old way, if the zones always counted off Risk by +1 per zone boundary, up to the max Risk... but now, done this way, it need not be so gradual in all cases, and moreover we can now have zones (such as the region right up against the wall of the Floating Fortress, threading between its guns) which can only be reached from certain other zones (inside the reach of its guns) but which have different types of Risk (+2 general for against the wall, rather than +5 targeted just one region out, where it's point-blank for the base's guns).

When rolling to Relocate, call destination as well as assign dice; the opponent can opt not to follow at this point, but not if he decides to roll against you.  Thus, if you roll well enough, you'll pull the fight right to your destination; if not, he'll catch up with you somewhere along that line, forcing engagement of some sort, even if it's just another Relocate on your part - question: should Relocate always surrender the initiative, as part of its effects?  Perhaps, only if you don't reach your declared target.  I like that a lot; it puts a penalty on trying to accomplish too much at once, which otherwise would not exist, and matches well with the mental image of having your pursuer catch up with you earlier than you had hoped.

Give everybody a miniature or some equivalent.  Since it won't be displaying exact position, facing, or anything else, nor moving all that often, just marking a zone, cardboard chits, standees or little paper airplanes would be just fine.  Just has to be recognizable.

If you're disengaged, we put you on the map, in the appropriate zone.  No problem.  Here's the neat trick: if you successfully become the Tail, you take your mini off the map, and set it in front of your target.  He's still on the map, and you're necessarily sharing a region with him, so we know where you are.  You can only tail one guy at once, so you still only need one mini.  And it's immediately obvious which set of maneuvers you should be using: Tail ones if your mini isn't on the map, Dog ones if there's a mini in front of you, both if both apply, and Disengaged if neither.  I can also see a little line of minis in front of the guy who has four Mercs on his tail, showing which one is in front.

I think this fixes my problem with Relocate, even though we weaken it slightly with the initiative thing (arguable, since we also have zones which jump more than +/-1 Risk)... because just adding the map makes Relocate, and thereby the STN, more substantial as a tactic, evening up the split between low-MTN and low-STN ships.

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Focus
I'm still very strongly inclined to keep the ability to spend dice on the initiative instead of on your maneuver.  My own playtest says that it's a neat option, it has good side effects, and it doesn't add noticeable rules overhead.  However, the one thing that isn't really apt is my original conception of this act as "Jinking," given the move to a more explicit set of Evade maneuvers and the like.  We've migrated away from the Jinking name, essentially.  But this may be an opportunity, instead of a loss...

I was thinking that this act might get renamed Focus.  "Evade for two dice, Focus for three" means roll two dice (presumably you don't much care if he succeeds, like a Lock On you plan to avoid by Breaking away), and get initiative based on [three plus your successes on the Evade].  The image being of a kind of Zen state, being "at one with your ship" or any number of other mystical statements, perhaps directly died in with your Honour or something.  Trying to steer away from "Use the Force, Luke" a bit, but nonetheless there's a certain mystique to being a Pilot, comparable to that of seeking the Riddle, which empowers the design.

So Focus is the act of centering yourself, ignoring distractions, spending your energies remaining on top of the situation and remaining in control.

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Comments, on either of the above?

- Eric

[contracycle]

I like the zones a lot, I was in fact going to suggest something along those lines; I developed a wargmae for herowars which used abstracted zones to organise large groups and ranged weapons.  Anyway, the above sounds fine to me and raises a couple of interesting possibilities due, as you mentioned, to the intorduction of the map as a real feature of play.

Firstly, the senario with the ragned weapons and the zone close to hull sounds a loke like the canyon run in star wars, which may have inspired it.  This is cool, and suggests a possible way to use the risk table without capships.  If fighter combat occurs mostly around big stations that can be represented as like a whole map side or something - sort of death star sized as per the canyon run - then the hazard region tables can be used there instead.

That said, it also occurred to me that it would be easy enough to use capships in the above structure in quite an interesting way.  The presence of a capship on the 'field' will project one or more hazard zones, and these could conceivably move.  Also, a squadron of capships might have interlocking or overlapping zones for mutual protection.  SO you could print a 'battle diagram' with the flight paths of the capships as the 'geography' of the battle field changes.

Further, a good abstracted zone system allows a much more radical opportunity tied to drawing presentations of formations inspired by interacting zones.  We could draw the zones and the map in three dimensions bag the first 3D space game ever, becuase movement between zones on the 3D map doesn't need to be directly measured.


On ramming: the reason I mentioned it is that it is a property that emerges from many of the conventions of fantastic space games.  The combination of one permanent and one temporary store of hit points in much the same ranges is what produces the effect.  I agree the effect is aesthetically rather unpleasant, and did not mean it as a reccomendation.  But if it is something we want to prevent, the system is going to have to be built so as to prevent it.

I have a concern about removing the minis from the map - firstly, if there is a complete circle chase, it seems to me everyone might be removed?  And second, the GM will likely have more than one character, so it won't be quite as clear cut as the description given above, which appears to be  cast on the assumption that each player only has one ship, ala a wargame.

[Harlequin]

I'm still uncertain about the use of mobile capital ships.  I don't think that an evolving zone diagram necessarily adds anything except complexity; perhaps as a one-off scenario, yes, but not as a standard.  Moreover the parallel, as I see it, is better supported by having even the lord just a knight in his own right, surrounded by his household.  (Shelter comes into play again, here - perhaps we should turn it into something the shielding ship does, though, for reasons of the honour of the Lord's player if nothing else.  Mmm - better - it's an action to hide behind, or an action to stand before someone, but they're additive... that way if the shielding ship wants to reduce your Shelter total, it's not free as presently writ, it's an action for him to do so.)  And certainly, as you said in the other thread, there's just no glory in being a gunnery tech.

A complete circle chase is a very difficult object to generate.  It requires someone who is already splitting his dice due to a tail (the lead ship) to be willing and able to then acquire a Tail on someone who needn't split his dice particularly (the last ship in the line), quite apart from the fact that it requires a chain at least four long (assuming only two sides to the conflict) to be formed and sustained long enough to set all of that up.  And if it happens, they'll remember where they are, or mark it.  Doesn't bother me a'tall.  The need for, f'rex, differently coloured or distinguished TIE-equivalents, is more relevant, but I think that it does add to the feel of the game, anyway... alpha, beta, gamma, anyone?  Alternately, I can see an interesting situation where, until you've damaged one, you can't tell TIEs apart - they truly are indistinguishable.  Anyone with a different skill than the rest will use heralic marks to set him apart - think Richtoffen.

Ablative vs. regenerating shields is, IMO, an issue we just duck, addressing it (at most) in the setting material.  Every starship has a Shields rating, and for some that could be armour, for others it could be energy screens, doesn't much matter to us mechanically at all - ram or no ram.

And lastly, nope, the first 3D space game ever is going to be Attack Vector: Tactics, unless you think we can push this all the way through publication before he gets his preorder queue filled - Ken's ready to publish already.  (And getting 3D in a fully-realistic space game was a heck of a lot bigger coup than this would be, anyway.  Moreover I think there are some on the market already that do 3D, they just generally do so fairly badly.)  As to 3D here, I'm not picky; I don't think I'd bother when I was GMing, the space-opera convention doesn't call for it particularly IMO, but yes, it comes for free if you draw your zones appropriately.

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

I like the idea of a set of zones for Risk.  I have a suggestion in that direction that increases print costs.  The question is: Is the value added suffecient to justify that?

Cards.  Print up a set of cards with some nice art (the same Hubble/CG Ships art we were discussing earlier) that has Risk numbers printed clearly on them somewhere.  Then you may set the cards up however you wish with the restriction that every card must be edge on to another card.  If you make the cards at a 2:1 ratio you can even stipulate that as long as one pair of corners are in contact and the edges are also in contact then they are adjacent.  This would allow for "L" shaped constructions.  Anyway, i estimate the need for somewhere around 60-80 cards (due to the need for multiples of astroids and clear space and such,) and i have no idea as to the cost (which is probably determined by card size.)

A question on Tail representation: If each marker is pretty much distinct then why put your marker in front of the Player you are tailing instead of behind his token.  This would require only a simple facing indicator (the use of an odd-sided shape like a triangle, or an arrow,) and would present a little more graphic representation of the situation (though it does seem to increase the difficulty of visualizing multiple tails on a single target.)

I like the idea of representing Risk Zones in this way because it does allow you to place non-consecutive Risk values adjacent to each other.

As to Focus, can you give me a quick recap of the way it works?  Is it like stealing initiative in vanilla TRoS?  I do like the idea of being able to invest CP dice in gaining the initiative though...

Thomas

[Harlequin]

As a countersuggestion to the cards, I would suggest that we get a halfway decent job of some "stock maps" done up - a lone asteroid field, a floating fortress and environs, etc etc - and made available in PDF.  I'd prefer to see zones irregular in size and with "natural" outlines, just to emphasize their nature.  I'm thinking of the "Regio" map in the GM's section of my Ars Magica book (3rd edition IIRC) as an example here.  The cards are neat but IMO we don't actually want that many regions in a typical fight - about five is plenty for your average PCs-versus-mercs or PCs-versus-Monster battle, and that few cards would IMO look kind of odd.

And the counter-in-front-of-player was mostly to (a) help you remember which set of maneuvers you're using, and (b) conserve space on the map where possible, so that an 8.5"x11" map would suffice for a gaming group and its foes.  I'm not tied to it, though I'd like to keep attitude markers off the map where possible, just to leave things nonrepresentational wherever possible.  (Let's not make D&D3E's "mistake" of putting the wargame-on-map above the RPG aspect.)

Focus recap: Active ship announces maneuver and dice; reactive ship announces maneuver and dice.  Now, in the same time slot where feints would go, either player may announce some additional number of dice in Focus.  His opponent may respond with his own Focus declaration if he likes.

Focus dice are spent, but not rolled, and do not help with the maneuver in any way.  However, when we go to work out who gets the initiative, it goes to the player with the highest total of (dice spent on Focus) plus (successes on the maneuver roll), tie means it does not change hands.  So Focus dice are autosuccesses for this one purpose - keeping/gaining initiative - but are lost for anything else.

I find, in swordfighting TROS with a one-die activation cost on any such allocation, that it gets used a little bit, about once or twice a duel.  Roughly as often as Feint, say.  We might choose to put that one-die activation cost back on this trick, if we want to keep it infrequent like that; I think it would depend on how things shaped up in playtest.

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

Ok, i can see your point on maps vs. cards.  The only problem i see is that you end up with less flexibility.  If there are 10 maps and you want an environment not represented by one you may choose to draw your own, but cards do present an enhanced flexibility.  Whether that flexibility out weighs irregular shaps and simplicity is a different matter.

Thomas

[Harlequin]

Si.  It may be telling that I can only come up with about a half-dozen stock situations off the top of my head, though... if the actual Risk values are input by the GM (more/less deadly asteroids, etc), then the flexibility may be pointless.

I wanted to revisit the Shelter thing for a sec, though, because having it appear only as an aside is possibly trouble.  If we're going to use it for the Lord and his bodyguard, then I definitely think we'll need to have it be possible as an action on the part of the shielding ship, and not always done as an action on the part of the hiding one.  Both, really, seems optimal; specify which when using it (are you hiding behind someone, or hiding someone behind you?).  I think the only question is under what circumstances an unwilling participant (on either side, I suppose) can take away from the effort.

We could make a pretty good case for that being true with any maneuvering other than the Shelter action, I suppose.  Every two successes on any action other than Shelter or Fire (any version), by either party, subtracts from the Shelter roll?  That way it's automatic - if they're doing something else, it gets harder, doesn't matter if they're friendly or not.  Problem is that it starts getting complex with this addition.  Hmm.

The other question is whether we want to do anything formal with commanders.  The possible existence of a Command Drone lets us generalize that ruleset to not only the Lord on one side, but the Brain on the other, if you will.  It's easy to envision rules for command, in several incarnations (Commander can lend dice freely; commander can roll a Command action, successes lend dice; Command actions are used to break off one sequence of round-round-round with one pair of combatants, so as to go check up on the progress of other fights).  The more fundamental question, I think, is whether such rules are wanted at all.  This ruleset is sufficiently complex that actual, real tactics (split into a decoy group and a vanguard, lure them away from the base [Relocate], split up into small forces and evade-only if outnumbered to tie up their forces, etc etc) play a noticeable part, and we may not need much other than that.  Plus there are setting ramifications... for example, do we undermine the "knights'" autonomy and veer more in the direction of modern-army structure if we do that?  Should a commander be limited to directing a smallish list of ships, so that we end up with household Pilots reporting to Pilots Banneret, reporting to Lords, reporting to Dukes, reporting to the King?

Not sure.

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

I agree that Shelter needs to be activatable as the Sheltered or the Shelterer.  I think i would want to see it treated as simple a reactive maneuver.  Think Evade with an Activation Cost.  So if you are trying to get Sheltered with no assistance, it's actually harder than simply evading.  The advantage being that if you are successful there's a good chance you can get your enemy hit.  I like doing things this way because it doesn't produce another set of numbers to track.  You use Shelter once, if you want to stay Sheltered use it again.

I think you are right when you say the system already covers tactics well enough.  A command ability would seem to me to take away from the focus which is on a kind of knightly combat system.  I guess i feel that a modern command structure does reduce the autonomy of the Pilots.

Thomas

[Harlequin]

Oh, absolutely - I don't want to see Shelter usable as a persistent thing, it's a maneuver like any other.  My question is how we handle this: Albert the Mercenary is Active and trying for a tail (on your pal Zorba, not relevant here).  He chooses pool and declares.  His comrade, Bruce the Mercenary, declares a Fire action on you; you respond by Sheltering behind Albert for lots of dice.  How does Albert, given that he disagrees with getting shot by Bruce, manifest this displeasure?

Option A was that he is permitted to spend dice on (Un)Shelter himself, no activation cost.  This is the original version.

Option B is that his successes on his action (Tail in this example) reduce the Shelter without him spending anything, simply because Shelter is fiddly if they're not cooperating.  I had put a x1/2 ratio on this but I'm not sure that (with an unfriendly "shield") that shouldn't be 1:1, from any action using his MTN or STN.

We then have the separate issue of how Albert, assuming he was instead your friend and wanted to help you with the Shelter, would do so.

Option One was that he, too, was permitted to spend dice on helping you out, no activation cost as with Option A.  This is the original version again.

Option Two was that it would have to be his reactive action for the round to actively Shelter you, using the normal Shelter rules.  Your successes, and his, would be additive to one big Shelter total.  (This is balanced out by an activation cost of at least 2, paid by each of you separately.)

Option Three is that because he's a friend, his successes on any MTN/STN based maneuver subtract only at 1:2 instead of 1:1, and that what he can do to "help" is to stand still.

We can combine these two sets of choices into just about any mix, per our preference.  I think I'm leaning toward A/Two, that is, an enemy shield can always resist but only by using dice to do so, and a friendly shield needs not only dice but a Shelter action (thus failing to protect themselves this exchange).  This is the simplest rules-comprehension form, IMO, even if it lacks a touch of the "realism" that options B and/or Three have.

And a last thought on Command: We might be able to handle this one, on the tactical scale, kind of like TROS deals with stuff like Acrobatics and Body Language.  Perhaps simply this:  A Commander can assess the situation in any given matchup by spending 2CP and rolling Wits/Tactics.  In addition to any strategy tips he wishes to give, the Commander is then allowed to decide whether to "switch camera" to another fight at the end of this round, or not.  The camera is important because it's considered to control the pacing; if you call "switch camera" then this matchup essentially goes on hold while we deal with some other player's actions for a while, perhaps letting him get free to come help with the "paused" fight.  Does that make sense, and (separately) is that just too bizarre?  It seems like a neat implementation of the TROS "do a bunch of rounds with one guy then switch" suggestion, but I'm not sure that mechanifying it is necessarily a good thing.

Alternately, a Command roll might let the commanded PC roll some dice (capped at the commander's successes, presumably) over the end of the round and/or borrow against the next, smoothing out the one-two-one-two pacing of standard TROS.  This is interesting, particularly with things like the Feint having been eliminated. Hmm again.

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

Shelter: I think the simplest solution is that a Shelter action works.  Give it a signifigant Activation cost and have it oppose all of the reactive actions.  Essentially if you are lining up to fire and i declare a Shelter using you, then i get it.  If you are Evading (even if you are my buddy) your Evade successes directly reduce my Shelter successes.  This makes things really simple, and in my mind is balanced by a 3 or 4 Activation Cost for Shelter.  The only exception i would allow for would be if both players declared Shelter for each other, one stipulating that he was being Sheltered and the other that he was Sheltering.  Any other declaration would bring up the opposed thing again.

Command: I'm not really sure that i like getting dice from your commander.  It seems to indicate that commander skill is pretty dang important such that even if you are slightly better than Phil, but Phil has a great commander your ability to win is greatly reduced.  I'm also not sure about "switching camera" as i've always felt that the GM should be handling the pacing for combat.  You could also get into some time-scale problems doing camera swaps since i'm thinking that each exchange will represent closer to 5-10 seconds (maybe more) instead of the 1-2 in TRoS.

Discussing the use of a commander to "assess the situation" brings up the question: Do we want to address Kinesthetics?  This is the primary determiner of "situational awareness."  Do we want to model the difficulty of keeping track of everyone in a ten or twenty participant dogfight or would we rather just assume that everyone has perfect knowledge in such a situation?

Thomas

[Harlequin]

I like your above for Shelter, esp. if the shelterer/shelteree may, if he desires, abort to a reactive action (just as if you were targeting him with Shelter).  In fact, IMO make Shelter an active action... perhaps even one which, if it doesn't work entirely, doesn't work at all (not reducing attacker's successes).  

As for commanders, perhaps simply, this:  It's a Tactics roll to find out, either on your part or on that of your commander, what the situation is outside your immediate "bubble."  The nice thing about a commander is that he can do this without you having to spend the 2CP or whatever to try and assess the situation.  I like that.

It does remove the immediate usefulness of NPC commanders, but then IMO we just ignore this in terms of human foes (the GM allocates them where he will, per his needs), and build the drone-squadrons to be reliant on their commander, either entirely (they shut down etc) or in order to be maximally effective.  In that instance, I could see some dice being tied up in the commander... not in him lending them dice action-by-action, but in the sense of "all drones are +1CP while the Lieutenant drone is present" or "drones without some sort of Command drone present are at 1/2 CP."  That sort of thing would make sense, if we're talking AI-hivemind, and is quite a separate situation.

So far, so good.  What next? :)

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

I'm with you on the Tactics thing now.  Questions to be answered.

How many players are we thinking is "standard?" and How often will we want 2 PCs vs. 1 NPC?  This will determine (in my mind) whether we will need to create an explicit rule-set for when it's another player's turn.  One round, two rounds, rounds equal to the number of enemies, etc.

How do we want to do damage since we are no longer dealing damage to a character directly, but instead to his weapon.  Essentially Armor, Weapon, and Target are all combined into a single object.  We definately want this customizeable as much as possible, but how do we want to handle damage tables and all that (especially since you can't always target the cockpit, in fact specific area targetting may not even occur at the ranges we're talking about.)

Also, what are your thoughts on Stats?  Do you just want to go to quickstart or do we want to try something different?

More as i think of it.

Thomas

[Harlequin]

If we have the AI Drones as monsters, then (per the Arthurian model) we have almost no situations where the PCs should ever outnumber the NPCs.  That's dishonorable, save when fighting dragons - and we've built the dragon like a small army.

A friend was pointing me at a WWI pilots' Code of the Skies, saying that they had something very much resembling a chivalric code.  If I find good links, I'll post 'em.  Things like if someone ran out of ammo, everybody (save rare blackguards) would just let them leave and go home.  Outnumbering the foe is definitely on this kind of list.  In Pendragon, I'd expect one PC to sit it out until there was a chance for a fair fight, if they outnumbered the foe (and it wasn't set up, much, given this).

Moreover, as you say, leave pacing to the GM.  Let him wing it, per TROS.  I suspect it'll vary according to taste.

Damage I'm not all that worried about.  I'd be inclined to split damage tables by damage type (laser, ion cannon, explosion, impact?), but then just use, say, a 1d10 random chart within each.  TROS' statement that no shot is just "at the other guy" does not in this instance apply.  Aiming for a specific location is a trick shot and unreliable - say, put dice into the called shot, don't roll them with the to-hit.  Roll them along with the location die, and they count only if they're the right number for what you called, else they're ignored.  Perhaps we then have specific ships which, say, modify the damage tables per their special rules (this one stages all hits to Cockpit up one level in severity, another one replaces the Hyperdrive row with the following: ...).  I'd have these uncommon, though.

Secondary weapon systems - especially missile-type - is as big a question, by me.  Are those just rolled into the ATN & Damage bonus, or do some ships have Lasers ATN 6/Damage +1, Ion Torpedos (two) ATN 9/Damage +5?  Esp. if you're to go attacking Floating Fortresses and the like, the latter may be a desirable addition.

- Eric

[LordSmerf]

Ok.  I like the idea of just doing a single damage table for each damage type.  The only thing is that we'll need broad enough categories to analog into other things (AI ships may or may not have cockpits.)  This may even allows us to go to ten regions without too much trouble which will get rid of that incongruous d6 :)

I say do damage with different weapons as if they were different attacks (pretty much what you have, think Slash vs. Thrust in TRoS.)  We will probably want to watch ammo on powerful seeking stuff.  I'd expect seeking missiles to have fairly low ATNs.

In fact that would add an entirely new element to standard TRoS combat.  Namely the ability to use expendable, but powerful resources.  It would essentially allow you to spend 5 dice (Assuming a large enough difference in ATN) to accomplish what you would normally need 10 dice for.  This makes splitting your pool a little bit more effective.  I'm not really sure if we want to deal with this though...

Thomas