Interesting space dogfights

[Jake Norwood]

One of the things that made the early Star Wars films so cool was the space battles and dogfighting. I've tried several such systems in playing starwars, but none of them are really any "fun." This usually drops things into freeform and made-up-placebo die rolls, which isn't what I want either.

So I've been thinking about how to "do it right." One approach that sticks out to me is the Pendragon mass combat approach, but while that fits a large space battle well, it lacks the intensity and personal investment of a dogfight.

Here's my goals with such a system:
-Fast-moving in-game and in-play
-Manevuering makes a difference, but isn't complicated mechanically
-Differences in ships and character abilities make a difference as well, but player choice is still paramount.
-Players are in control and can easily visualize the action, but directorial power is still mostly in the GM's hands (what I'd consider "standard" use of stances and player direction).

The first thing that popped into my head was a variation on the fundamental TROS mechanics, but I'm curious what non-TROS based systems we can come up with. Ideas?

Jake

[Valamir]

Recommendation #1:  Get thee out and buy a copy of Full Thrust post haste.  The simplest, most fun, most tactically engageing yet non complicated table top space combat game there is.

Recommendation #2: Then find a copy of the Earth Force Sourcebook, the first and only supplement for the ill fated original B5 roleplaying game from Chameleon Eclectic which adapted (under license) the Full Thrust rules to the B5 universe and invented a system for fast realistic space movement that Full Thrust then adopted itself.  This supplement was not only a table top space combat game but also incorporated characters from the RPG into the combat.

Recommendation #3: If you want less table top minis and more pure role playing, than the single best example of that ever done bar none is the ship to ship combat from Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG RPG, where the entire battle was played out from the perspective of the bridge crew.


As something of a space combat game nut, there are few such games I haven't played and several I've written myself, so these recommendations come as the result of years of eager play.

[Brian Leybourne]

I still say that Silent Death is pretty damn good as a dog fighting space ship style game, although it falls down a bit when you come to larger (capital) ships.

On the other hand, it's very "sim" and not unlike a boardgame in feel, which isn't so much what you're grasping for I guess.

Brian.

[contracycle]

Recommendation #3: If you want less table top minis and more pure role playing, than the single best example of that ever done bar none is the ship to ship combat from Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG RPG, where the entire battle was played out from the perspective of the bridge crew.

Hmm, sounds interesting - could you expand?  I;ve not seen it probably 'cos I wont touch anything Trek with a barge pole.  Is it still in print?

I agree with Jake tho - to date, all such "mass battle" systems compromise the 1st person experience badly in order to present some sort of resolution.  I have come to see this a serious problem.

[Daniel Solis]

Here's one way to do it...

Space combat in PUNK doesn't really bother with crazy things like the inertia or space physics. All it takes into account are the traits for that action. (I do this a lot in PUNK, come to think of it.) What's a relevant trait? Well, it depends on the sort of game you want to play, but let's assume you're wanting to find a middle-ground between the technicalities of space combat and the dramatic connection of the character in the fight. Let's also assume your goal for this dogfight is to fire a missile into the weak spot of the evil empire's planet-killer.

Your ship has a few traits that you feel are relevant: "fast," "dodges like a greased pig," and "cloaking device." Ah, but that's not all. Your character has some equally relevant traits: "Raced the cannonball run in 2.5 parsecs," "lives for danger," "faith in the teachings of his master Yo-Gurt." By declaring these traits relevant to your actions, you imply that you'll actually be using those traits in your action when the outcome is narrated.

Now, the ships of the empire will be hot on your tail as you take your action. They're treated as a single enemy with the following traits: "Quell the Rebellion" and "Defend the Planet-Killer."

Each trait gives its owner a d10. Roll all your d10s and take the highest. The GM, playing the enemy fleet, rolls his d10s. You win! Either you or the GM can narrate the success, but let's assume it's your GM. As he narrates, he checks off each trait both opponents declared that they'd be using. When it finally comes down to incorporating "faith in the teachings of his master Yo-Gurt" to the dogfight, the GM is stumped until he remembers a fun little scifi movie he saw once as a kid. He finishes off the narration of your action by describing how in a moment of self-doubt, right at the mouth of the exhaust port, you hear the voice of Yo-Gurt from beyond the grave reminding you to believe in the Force. You launch the missiles and zooooom away as the planet-killer explodes.

So yeah, PUNK just treats space dogfights the same way as most anything else. Traits, whether the physical characteristics of the ship or the dramatic characteristics of the protagonist, have equal influence over an action's success. After the dice are rolled, the traits then become a bag of ingredients to incorporate into narration.

[Grex]

Hi Jake,

so you're working on spaceship combat rules, eh?

-Fast-moving in-game and in-play
-Manevuering makes a difference, but isn't complicated mechanically
-Differences in ships and character abilities make a difference as well, but player choice is still paramount.
-Players are in control and can easily visualize the action, but directorial power is still mostly in the GM's hands (what I'd consider "standard" use of stances and player direction).

The first thing that popped into my head was a variation on the fundamental TROS mechanics, but I'm curious what non-TROS based systems we can come up with. Ideas?

I've always been fond of Chris Conkles Fuzion-based Lightspeed RPG, so I would suggest that you take a look at InstantLightspeed for inspiration. It is freely downloadable and fully featured; the space combat rules are simple but functional and fun. You can find it right here:

http://www.lightspeed-rpg.com/downloads/InstantLightspeed.PDF

If everything else fails: Just steal the extended contest mechanic from HQ. :^)

Best regards,
Chris

[Jake Norwood]

I'd love to be working on space rules right now, but my plate is *really* full with the next TROS book at the moment. I love sci-fi, however, and one of these days...

I thought this would be a good way to get back into regular forum attendance, too.

These are all really good ideas so far. Gareth--had we discussed working out some space/sci-fi stuff together once? I can't recall...

Jake

[LordSmerf]

Whenever i think of dogfighting the first thing that pops into my head is the stuff Jay Turner tossed around for Freefall.  Essentially the system uses a Roll + Keep mechanic with Skill determining one side and equipment determining the other.  Simply use whichever one (Skill or Equipment) as the Roll (which needs to be higher) and the other for Keep.  I don't know if he ever got any playtesting done, and i've not tried it myself, i just thought it was pretty cool...  And damage can simply hit specific equipment which would reduce you ability to continue performing...

Thomas

[Valamir]

Recommendation #3: If you want less table top minis and more pure role playing, than the single best example of that ever done bar none is the ship to ship combat from Last Unicorn's Star Trek TNG RPG, where the entire battle was played out from the perspective of the bridge crew.

Hmm, sounds interesting - could you expand?  I;ve not seen it probably 'cos I wont touch anything Trek with a barge pole.  Is it still in print?

Last Unicorn is long gone, unfortuneately.  The game was from back in 98 and IMO really ushered in the idea of the high production value hard cover with glossy pages and full color layout throughout.  It is still one of the prettiest books made (if one likes the pseudo trekkie tech look they gave it).

The system basically treated the ship as seperate entity with certain capabilities.  Each capability fell under the pervue of one of the bridge command positions (the assumption of the game was that, like the show, the players would be largely representatives of the bridge crew of a Galaxy Class ship).

For instance, the first thing every round, the player who was the Operations Officer would allocate the ships power to the shields, weaponry etc.  Standard power allocation did not require a roll, but doing any of the traditional Trek gimmicks like bolstering the forward shield by taking power from life support on decks 14-23 did.

The player playing the Flight Control Officer (or whoever was sitting at "the Conn" would be responsible for moving the ship.  If using a map to represent position, this includes moving the mini a distance based on the the amount of power allocated to Impulse Drives.  The FCO would selecting maneuvers from a standard list (or invent their own with a difficulty determined by the GM) and make skill rolls to execute them.  The game would use the normal RPG rules for 1 character trying to do multiple actions in a single round, to allow the FCO to perform complex maneuvers of several moves at a time.

The Tactical Officer gets to roll the dice for making weapon attacks, and can perform special augments like aiming and called shots

The Science Officer makes the rolls to man the Sensors and if faced with multiple targets must use the multiple action rules to get sensor locks on more than one at a time.  The Tactical Officer uses the Sensor Locks to fire the weapons.

The player playing the Captain gets to tell the other positions what to do and make Captain rolls to give them modifiers to their rolls.

The Engineer gets to roll to repair the damage.  

Basically, every function a Star Trek ship would perform in combat was mapped to the appropriate bridge position and put in the hands of the player playing that position (or playing the NPC currently in that position).

Worked very slick.

Not quite the fighter level dogfighting Jake was looking for, but conceptually I think it works pretty well.  
Standard power allocation

[John Kim]

The Science Officer makes the rolls to man the Sensors and if faced with multiple targets must use the multiple action rules to get sensor locks on more than one at a time.  The Tactical Officer uses the Sensor Locks to fire the weapons.  

Just a note.  I did something similar when I ran my Star Trek campaigns.  I was using Star Fleet Battles as my basis -- which I certainly don't recommend it unless your players are already SFB players.  

Anyhow, the interesting variation here was that I put the Science Officer player in charge of allocating damage and stuff for the enemy ship.  He sat beside me at the table.  This made interactions very natural in some ways.  The other players would actually turn to the Science Officer and ask him for information.  i.e. The Helm Officer would fire, and they would wonder about what damage they did.  Without me doing anything as GM, they would ask the Science Officer to find out what happened.  

There is a bit of a loss in that this meant that his main ability was automatic and thus not really based on his skill.  However, the setup made for good division-of-labor and a cool inter-player dynamic.

[Mike Holmes]

Like what John is describing, and sounding a lot like what Ralph describes was the Star Trek (III?) Combat Simulator game. Often considered a poor-man's substitute for SFB (in terms of complexity), it did include this nifty set of layouts that sat in front of each player, tailored to their position. Thus you could set up a room with TV tables or something, and be arrayed just like the Trek Crew. Just thought it was worth mentioning with all the similar references.


Jake, what's this for? If we had an idea of what the background rationales are for things, it would help. That is, the idea of "fighters" in space is pretty ridiculous unless you assume a lot of interesting BS explanations (like why it makes more sense to put smaller weapons on smaller platforms as opposed to larger ones). Sans those explanations, any result we give you is likely to be flawed in the context in which it occurs.

OTOH, if you have no context, then we can design a system, and reverse-engineer the BS explanations to cover. So which approach do you prefer?

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

Context? Frankly? Star-wars space opera, man. I want *my* starwars game. Maybe for a TROS game eventually (which would mean TROS-style mechanics, so let's skip that approach for now). I just love the idea of space dogfighting, regardless of how functional it would really be.

And I'd love to put a system together right here on the board. That could be a lot of fun. As for the BS of "why," I'm part of the "if you don't explain your BS, you're more likely to get away with it" camp. Compare the Force-as-religion to the Force-as-midichlorian-count and you get the idea. You need a really solid explanation for this sort of thing to make it plausable. Midichlorians won't cut it. :)

In-game I want players (perhaps multiple players) to be in any number of fighters and to get a dynamic, dog-fighting feel. Lots of dodging and maneuvering, not much D&D-style trading of blows.

If we're trying to put together something original (never a bad thing), then we should develop a context and premise that allows for Space-opera. We need dogfights, sneaking onto enemy cruisers, and away teams to planetside. Any magic, like the force, should be added in later, as it's not a natural addition to the setting. That makes it more powerful.

I see a space-version of king arthur and the round table suddenly beating me on the brow. Has that been done before? If not, we should do *that*. Okay, now I've excited myself.

So that's the proposed project. Le Morte D'artur, in space, with dogfighting. This precedes all else above. (That probably means I should edit, but stream-of-consciousness can help you see where I'm thrusting to.)

Jake

[LordSmerf]

Ok, if you want to go forward with this some question need to be answered.

1. Time scale (in game).  Do battles take seconds, minutes, hours to complete?  Star Wars ran stuff around the minutes scale where range closes quickly and all weapons are short range enough for long range maneuvers to be pretty much useless.  Same thing with Star Trek.  However, i've seen longer range stuff executed well.  I get the impression that you would prefer a minutes scale, i just want to clarify.

2. How important is equipment?  The split between numerical advantage of equipment and of skill needs to be established... 50/50? 30/70?  Whatever...

As an aside, i'd also be interested in putting this together...

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

Cool, no-explanation-neccessary-space-opera it is.

The thing is that you're asking for a slight contradiction. That is, you want tactics in an inherently unrealistic universe. It's much easier to come up with the mechanics for swordfighting tactics because it exists in the real world. It's been said of Star Wars that the universe works the way it does because Lucas needs it to work that way in order to support the plot. What that would argue for is a system based solely on dramatics. Think like TROS SAs and nothing else in the dogfight.

But you want more. So what we have to do is to build a tactical model from what little we do "know" about how such things work. Let's start with the observations:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[b_bankhead]

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