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

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.

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.

Valamir wrote:
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.

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.

Hi Jake,

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

Jake Norwood wrote:
-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'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

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

contracycle wrote:

Valamir wrote:
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?

Valamir wrote: 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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

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

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

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

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

Mike Holmes wrote: 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).

Mike Holmes wrote: 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)

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.

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.

gobi wrote: 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.

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.

Mike Holmes wrote: 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."

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.

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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

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

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

Jake Norwood wrote: 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.

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

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.

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.

So this has inspired an idea, although this is something that has really arisen out of considering battles systems rather than duelling systems, rather than fighter combat per se. But at first glance... well you tell me.

A big part of this idea is the thought that initiative is often the decider; that is an initiative system can often be a resolution system. This was an insight that occurred during a counter strike game when someone correctly observed that CS was almost entirely about who walked up behind whom. Also, the computerised version of the Renegade Legion space fighter game used strictly alternating sequencing of movement order to great effect.

So, I have made the initiative system the central mechanic, and also, basically random. The point (another lesson from CS) is that half the battle is *not missing the opportunity*. Opportunities arise because of the chaos, the trick is capitalising on them before the enemy does.

So, here I have a sort of tabletop mechanic for a dogfight based on these principles. I believe it can be used to incorporate other crew and cap ships with any luck.

We have three props.

Firstly, the table space is not "the board" it is "the radar". It is not meant to be primarily descriptive, only loosely. On the table go "blips", like poker chips, strongly coloured and identical for each team. One blip per ship for fighters.

Secondly, we have a set of cards. In the most basic conception, we have one card per pilot. These are what makes initiative the fundamental mechanic.

Thirdly, we have dice for resolution purposes. The dice will resolve two things: the success or failure of a manoeuvre and the success or failure of a fire attempt. The latter should be a much smaller range than the former, a ratio of something 1-20 and 1-6. These will be Test A and Test B.

Basic concepts
A manoeuvre. When a player/pilot acts, they manoeuvre, and almost always describes positioning for an attack run. Importantly though, a successful attack/manoeuvre is also a defensive measure, in that your manoeuvre difficulty acts as your defence against being hit too. However the real intent is to describe the action with all the funky manoeuvres and flashing lights. It is resolved as a Test A.

An attack: After a manoeuvre for position has completed, the difference between the attackers manoeuvre difficulty and the targets defence determines the range of Test B. If successful, the attack hits and does damage. Insert extra mechanism here.

Order of Play
For a round of play, all cards are gathered into a deck and shuffled. Then they are placed face down to one side of the blips. The top card is turned over and the player who owns that pilot takes their action. When they do, they describe their manoeuvring and move the blips accordingly on the radar. The moving player can manoeuvre to attack against any enemy blip. Once the manoeuvre and its difficulty are determined, the player rolls a Test A against it to get a fire opportunity. If they fail, their difficulty is recorded as their new passive defence. If they succeed, they may make a test B later in the turn to fire. Once the payer has moved, their fire test difficulty has been noted, and their card set down, the next card is turned and the controlling player of that pilot takes their move. Once all moves have been completed in one phase, all fire attempts are resolved in a second phase. That’s a whole turn.

Moving
An attacker can manoeuvre (Test A) for a shot (Test B). They do so by citing “manoeuvres” that have difficulty ratings attached – the attacker must pass a test against this difficulty to get the opportunity to shoot. The moving player describes the closing run and what sort of weapons are being used etc. The probability of the shot itself will be determined by the extent to which the accumulated difficulty of the attack run exceeds the defence of the target, in the range of Test B. A moving player can attack any blip they like, whether or not they have already moved. The Test A to see if the move is successful, and the pilot keeps control of the vessel at the end of the manoeuvre to shoot, is made here and now. A blip that successfully manoeuvres to fire is marked with a fire marker joining its blip to the target blip. Blips that fail to fire are just moved according to their described course and its manoeuvre TN is noted in case they are attacked.

Chains
A moving blip may manoeuvre to attack a blip that has already moved. Under these circumstances, the target blips own manoeuvre TN replaces the passive defence of the target blip. This generally makes attacking blips that have already moved much harder, but there may be good reason for doing so. The target blip may already have achieved a fire opportunity on a friendly blip, and so the moving blip may hope to destroy it before it can do so and thus rescue their ally. In this scenario we have a Blip A, the friendly, under fire from blip B, the target, blip, which blip C, the moving blip, is manoeuvring to attack, a chain is said to exist between them. Blip A is the first link, blip B the second etc. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent a Blip D from joining the end of the chain and attempting to rescue Blip B from Blip C. The only consequence is that the TN to attack the end of the chain steadily climbs to unachievable numbers. Chains are thus self limiting, and only the best pilots will be able to join the end of a long chain. It is not possible to join a chain anywhere but the end.

Firing
The main concern is order of fire. There is no particular need to resolve the order of fire for un-chained blips, and they can be rolled at the discretion of the players. In a chained fire attempt, however, the order of fire is from the last link in the chain to the first. Thus, in the sample chain above, Blip D, if it successfully joined the chain, would fire on Blip C first. Obviously, if destroyed, Blip C will never get its opportunity to fire on Blip B. This process is cascaded down to the first link in the chain.

Loops
What happens if the first blip in the chain, Blip A, has NOT yet moved? In this case, Blip A may well choose to turn and fire on the blip at the end of its own chain, blip D, or any other hostile blip. That’s fine; when moving blips on the board, the chain follows blip A. Blip A can attack as any other blip; that is, it has all the freedom any other moving blip would have. The only and entirely natural constraint is that by definition, if Blip D is a member of a chain it must have a manoeuvre difficulty which blip A will have to overcome to fire. On the other hand, blip A is also a member of the chain in its own right, and takes its fire opportunity in appropriate order. In effect, Blip A loops the chain. If this occurred in the sample chain, the order of fire would be Blip A on Blip D, blip D on C, C on B, B on A. The only benefit to joining a hcin that blip A does not get is modifying their defensive TN; the success of blip B’s manoeuvre has already been established.

Consequences
These systems are intended to create the following tension:

It is hard to get on the end of a chain, and the longer the chain the harder it is. But it’s good to BE on the end of a long chain for exactly that reason. Therefore, I expect play to breakdown into several chains, a couple of independent furballs going on. When an established chain becomes un-joinable, I expect a new chain to form. Some blips will be disconnected, by virtue of the plot having failed a fire manoeuvre roll. But each turn, the whole thing will readjust and the blips will twist into new and different chains. Hopefully, the effect will be one of roiling, fast action as the blips are shuffled about. The only break in this flow is the round structure and the strictly ordered resolution of fire all in one phase. But the manoeuvre phase should have invested the fire phase with danger and opportunity, and so tension should be maintained.

Also, its important that the concept “the radar” replaces “the map”. The radar is not definitive, only representative. Players must feel liberated to move extravagantly on the radar.


Development and Complications
The looping business is a little broken – I have contradictory statements about whether a chain starts with a target that has moved or not. Also, I say that a chain can be joined only at the end, but I don’t think this is actually necessary. Loops and chains will get more complicated and harder to describe without diagrams, though.

Not chains but bars. If blip A is attacked by blip B, and blip C is allied with Blip B and ALSO attacks Blip A, do the fire attempts of B + C get resolved together, or amplified, or what?

Tests A and B are not strongly specified. They can be monkeyed with or folded out to any degree of complexity. The only thing that is significant is the fact that they accumulate and their proportional ranges.

Cards 1: The deck constitutes on card per pilot. Maybe, more skilled pilots can have more than one card so that they get more than one action. That’s quite a bennie to have. Also, we can put more crew in the deck than there are blips and play games with sequencing. Maybe, a backseater has to come out first and be heal in readiness before a pilot can make a certain kind of fire action. Stuff like that. Also, cap blips can be represented by multiple cards for crew or departments or what have you.

Cards 2: some cards could be dedicated to technologies or other benefits or hindrances. Having the right to add a card to the deck would be quite a significant character development action. Maybe, for SW type situations where a flight of one ship type fights another homogenous flight, each ships type can have cards added as opportunities to the players by default.

Cards 3: this all works with normal playing cards with suits corresponding to flights. A normal deck could handle a four-faction fight of 12 blips to a faction, plus extra cards for special effects.

Digesting that is going to take a while. I think that there's elements here that I'd like to see in what I'm doing, though as a whole it's not what I'm looking for.

OTOH it does look like fun. I'd love to see this in another project.

Jake

I do like the randomized Initiative, though i'm not sure if that interests Jake for this or not...

Thomas

Actually the idea of a randomized environment--represented, frex, by initiative, is a good thing here. The manevuering around is really an attempt to seize initiative or positional advantage. Randomness can add a lot of tension to all of that.

In some ways it's a race to get the initiative first, and only then to steal it or protect it. Can we do this without (a) unbridled randomness or (b) loads of charts?

Jake

I suggest looking at Mongrel's system for regulating turn order (from Ron's Sim essay) which I've shameless stolen for Robots & Rapiers.

Its decidedly non random, but it wouldn't be hard to incorporate a random element as the base and then use the action points to represent pilot quality and the ability to steal initiative etc.

OK. randomised environement rather than initiative.

Still using normal cards, 'cos I have a thing for them at the moment, we change the random element to the type of task that must be accomplished.

Pilots/ships have ratings organised by card suit. These categories need some sort of action of behaviour or bonus source rationalised for each.

To act, each player draws a card. If they call an action that is of the same suit, they get to add their rating to the face value of the card and like roll below it or something. If they don't, they don't get the card bonus which will be really significant, ranging ass it does from 1 to 10 or 13.

This should mean that the environment appears external to the players: they are compelled to perform tasks in a category they may not be strong in. Furthermore, they may have to think on their feet to manipulate the kind of task they must complete to have some bearing on the conflict as a whole. This will hopefiully lend the experience a frisson of real tension and surprise.

I'm a late arrival to the discussion, I know.

However, GODLIKE has a kick-butt dogfighting mechanic that would be a good model to base your space opera shennanigans off of. Especially considering it's already "pre-loaded with WWII charm and plenty of vitamin violence".

Rules are available free online:

http://www.arcdream.com/pdf/airplanes.pdf

or, just buy Will to Power and support a cool RPG.

Yet more late arrivals...

An element getting dropped out of the discussion here, some, is the idea of the dogtail. If you're on someone's tail, you can try to line up shots on them. If you're not, you're trying to get (a) out from under their tail on you, and then (b) onto their tail.

Everything else is special cases.

I had a Star Wars (WEG d6) GM who used this to extremely good effect in our game at one point. House rules, obviously, but very simple.

Every round, every pilot announces who he's trying to get on the tail of (or escape). You're always trying to obtain or break the basic condition of being on your opponent's tail. They then all made a piloting roll and compared that to their immediate opponent's result; if their opponent was paying attention to someone else, then you automatically win the roll.

If you beat your opponent's roll, you went from disengaged to dogtail, or from tailed to disengaged, or preserved your tail and could fire. If you didn't, you didn't. The one exception was that when starting from disengaged (neither one on the tail of the other, standard start for the battle), if the two rolls were within X points of one another, then you were incoming head-to-head, and (a) could both try to fire, but (b) might want to save your energies for the piloting roll to avoid colliding with your foe.

That was about it. A couple of tricks like redirecting your shields forward, back, or neutral again, but basically everything else came down to the interplay above. Because you essentially couldn't risk ignoring an opponent, it automatically came down to one-on-one dogfights, plus X extra TIE fighers over the PCs' total which the GM would sometimes assign in as surplus attackers and sometimes keep out of the action until we'd dispatched one of his fellows, as best served the tension of the battle.

Worked like a charm.

I suspect, from this lesson, that any maneuvering that is not one of those two alterations - from being tailed to disengaged, from disengaged to tailing your guy - is probably waste overhead, if you want abstract positioning. Think back to the movies, with "coming in to save your buddy" being parsed as the free tail you acquire because the TIE is busy tailing Wedge and not you.

In those terms, also, it might be interesting to drive this with a variant on Dance of Steel. Make this mapping:
- Hearts (Advances in DoS) -> Entering a firing pass. This will generate a tail in your favor if your opponent is disengaged, but do nothing if he's tailing you already. [Optionally, under some condition - Hearts of value within two points of each other? - we end up head-to-head. I'd say at the end of next round we collide if this is still true.]
- Diamonds (Retreats in DoS) -> Pulling away. This will shake a tail off your back [or break out of a head-to-head collision course!], or else represent just some swooping around in space if you're already disengaged.
- Clubs (Parries in DoS) -> Evasive maneuvering. Will negate a Spades (Firing) card of equal or lower value, and mitigate the harm done by (or accuracy of, if this is supplemented with dice) a Spade of higher value.
- Spades (Attacks in DoS) -> Firing on your foe. If, and only if, you're in a tail position, then you hit (or roll to hit) and inflict damage. Otherwise you had planned to fire but have no shot.

It lacks a little bit of the interplay DoS possesses, in that you can't rely on your opponent's Advance to close the range, you need your own. But I think it is still worthwhile to consider as an engine, if you want something pretty abstract.

IMO the major problem you'll have with any TROS conversion has to do with the initiative... unless you choose to have initiative represent the tail position, in which case it needs to key to something a little more complex than "winner of last exchange" since having this position shift back and forth too frequently is visualization-breaking for a dogfight situation.

Just some .02 (Canadian, so worth about one-and-a-half Yankee cents).

- Eric

I've got nothing particularly new to add, but I want to mention how much I like the more duel-like attitude of Harlequin's rules than even my own suggestions. The dogtail maneuvering is fairly simple and seems like a lot of good ol' fun.

I also liked Harlequin's dogtail idea, but here's another anyway.

A post above abstracted maneuvering to the following limited options: A behind B, B behind A, head-on and A and B to the "side" (there was also A and B disengaging, but that doesn't seem like combat so I'm omitting it). So maneuvering from one position to another is a matter of opposed skill checks by the pilots, with +/- depending on which position one starts in (in other words, it's easier to move from "side" position to behind position than head-on to behind, etc).

Ships are made up of vital systems: engineering, weapons, command, etc. Each of these correspond to a hit location a la TROS. So hitting a ship in the command center (ie head) might be more crippling than hitting a ship in engineering (ie left leg). The rub is that ships are designed to protect their vitals, so the difficulty of hitting the "head" vs the "left leg" depends primarily on your position.

So combats proceed with the better pilot slowly climbing toward the optimal firing position (ie on the enemy's tail), with both ships exchanging fire at the vital systems exposed by their current position. For instance, while pilot A moves from head-on to side to behind pilot B, he can fire at increasingly more vital systems. Pilot B finds his potential targets decreasing as A gets into position.

Once position is determined, the exchange takes place. The attack is the power of the weapon being used, plus any skill by the operator, versus any "armor". The damage that gets through is applied to the vital system and the ship's effectiveness (ie stats) are decreased. So a hit to life support might reduce the effectiveness of the pilot, which might allow his opponent to get behind him, which allows a shot at the bridge, which if it penetrates armor disables the ship/kills the crew, etc.

For more variety, ship weapons could have effectiveness based on position: a guided missile can be fired at a target in any position except head-on, but a turret can be fired at only targets to the side (top, down, etc). So the combat is not only about trying to get and keep dominant position through pilot skill, but also moving into positions that allow you to use your best weapons. Or if you take damage to your ship, positions that allow you to use functional weapons.

The above probably works best if there are more than 4 positions... if being behind the bad guy is optimal, several levels of behind are probably best, as you lock in and really line him up. But the combats become pilot duels where both ships take superficial damage to non-essential systems until one pilot gets an advantage or enough damage accumulates to weaken a ship. Then the loser goes up in a ball of photons.

A good point on dogtailing. However, i'm not sure if we have addressed whether we're working with a Newtonian physics model or somethine more like Star Wars. If we're going Newtonian then you could simply pivot around, while traveling the same direction, and shoot back. Less cinematic that way...

Thomas

Oh, as stated above in this thread, space opera only. Newtonian physics will only be invented in a galaxy far, far away, a long, long time from now.

Of course Newtonian physics skews things. Free plug for an indie board/war game of space duels using true and absolute Newtonian physics (but no hard math!), on which I've consulted/co-authored - Attack Vector: Tactics goes to print soon. It's a totally different game as soon as you include all that, but it's not what Jake is looking for.

- Eric

Allright, something DoS-like.

Our suits are now Evade, Boost, Chase and Attack. Players get cards in their hand by sundry mechanism. Each round they get top play a trick out of their hand that corresponds to a manoeuvre which exists as its own prop - a big book of attack pattern diagrams as were used for pilot training.

Hmm, Google is with me, check out this barrel roll attack:
http://www.faip.favg.org/acm/barrelroll_attack.asp

If that does not work go here: http://www.faip.favg.org/
and click Air Combat Maneuvers on the left. Theres some text stufff in the musketeers lectures.

Back to the cards and the barrel roll. Say we represent the barrel roll as a Boost - Boost -Chase - Attack, then a player would have to play cards of those suits at whatever rating they have to attempt that manoeuvre.

This idea was camne from thinking about space sims I have played that are this sort of fuzzy part SF part WW2 mixture. There is a big difference in the feel of these depending on whether you have a booster or throttle. For a throttle model, the suits would need to be tuned to accelerations and decelarations. In the barrel roll attack, the attacking plane is ditching momentum at the end to make the turn, and so the cards could be accelerate, accelerate, brake, attack.

The pips on the cards could be used to test whether or not a player succeeds in carrying off that component of the proposed manoeuvre, or accumulated to a value used at the end. Obviously, face cards allow the opportunity for Specials. I'd expect a player to have a fair sized hand per round, so probably each player should have their own deck.

Some external mechanism would have to govern who can attack whom when and where. The main point of the exercise is to concretize the manoeuvre into something imaginable and intentional, and to place limits on this imagination to create tension. This is imposed through the requirement to play a pre-constructed trick, to match a set, from an external and random resource. This requires the player adapt to their situation. I grant though that players could easily depart from pre-constructed tricks and extemporise once they have a grip on the principles. Nevertheless, they will be held to the cards actually in their hand, not those they would wish to have.

And I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I've got an interesting setting built to provide Attack Vector: Tactical (which Eric is a co-author on), and just stumbled across Riddle of Steel as a game engine, which I've praised a few times elsewhere on this board.

I'm looking for a good RPG engine that can be adapted to a fairly physically plausible SF RPG setting...

And to throw some kindling on the fire:

First, if you want really cool space combat dogfighting, I can recommend Hard Vacuum and Science Gone Mad, from Fat Messiah Games. (I have copies of them in inventory if you want to buy them, even). It's definitely got the feel you're looking for (WW 2 air combat in space, weapons that go ZAP! and POW!) and would be a better engine to recreate the Star Wars combats than AV:T is.

Do you want your space combat dogfighting game to be airplanes in space, or do you want some of the aspects of space combat to filter in?

(In other words, do you want banking X wings or gymballing Starfuries?)

Do you want 3-D to be important, and if so, how? (This isn't a trick question -- I know a good way to make 3-D work for a wargame)

An easy way to eliminate seeking weapons is to say that lasers cycle quickly enough and produce enough energy that, well, unless it's shielded like a fighter, the computerized targetins system makes them evaporate at Really Long Ranges.

On the other hand, seeking weapons give a reason to maneuver, which is why they're in SFB. There are ways to handle seeking weapons without counters on the map -- one of Eric's major breakthrough contributions to my game was a solution that makes seekers work for in 3-D.

Here's the line of reasoning that makes space combat favor capital ships rather than dogfights with pom pom guns. Note that I'm not dissing your design concept or saying my way is better...but these are things that need to be addressed in the handwavium department.

1) Detection in space is (if using real physics) very easy. Any drive that will give you interplanetary travel in RPG-scale time frames will be VERY easy to detect. (By "very easy", I mean "is the brightest star in the night sky, and has visible proper motion" when the ship is a month or so away.) This means that stealth is hard to accomplish. It's something you'll either ignore or address with handwavium alloys. :)

2) Lasers (rather than blasters) never miss. There may be some jitter in the firing platform. Even really really skimpy lasers (like the ones in AV:T) have point blank ranges in the realm of 200 km. That's not exactly dogfight distance...though we get a lot of interesting 3-D vector dogfighting in AV:T. (Eric can tell you what it's like tring to hit James in a maneuverable ship with seekers)

3) Ships need to be able to handle long duration voyages. (Ever wonder how the hell Luke went to the bathroom when flying from Hoth to Dagobah? Or SHAVED?). They also need mass to protect the crews from the radiation environment in space (or from the drive being used...)

4) Unlike an air environment, a fighter doesn't inherently get to go faster than its carrier. It may (and almost certainly does) have higher thrust, but its top speed isn't any higher. Thrust is useful for juking out of the way of seekers (if you have them). It doesn't do you any good at avoiding speed of light weapons.

All four of these factors favor ships with mass to them -- mass to let them do long voyages. Since you can't dodge a laser, your only alternative is to armor up so you don't get fried by it. As you armor mass increases, your thrust drops, and your fuel requirements go up...and eventually, your space fighter turns into a PT boat.

The way to get around this (and to make fighters in space work again) is to go the other way:

Lasers never delivered on their promise as battlefield weapons. They were big, bulky, fragile, expensive, and took too much energy. Everyone just fires guided rockets at each other.

Now, if you have a fuel source that's energy dense enough (we call them Highly Concentrated Black Magic drives in my neck of the woods), you make self propelled rockets that have high thrust and are capable of Unthinkable Delta V(tm).

As a handy rule of thumb, an object hitting at 3 km/sec delivers KE equal to its mass in TNT. Divide rate of closure in km/sec by 3, square the result, and look at TNT equivilants. In short, you probably don't need nukes. Flechetting crowbars closing at 10 km/sec will do quite nicely.

This gives you small ships carrying sledgehammers, and it gives you an air-to-air combat feel -- you're juking around trying to evade the engagement cones of the missiles, and hoping you have one left when the other guy runs out of go juice or missiles to throw at you.

Suddenly, you have your dogfighting back with some semblance of real physics underneath it. Ships send fighter screens to engage other fighter screens (or other ships if they get past), and it only takes 2-3 fighters with full loads of missiles getting by to kill an enemy carrier. Your carrier has a constant thrust fusion drive of some sort, which is low thrust, but high delta V. The carriers match velocities and send fighter strikes off (and try to do a pass a deux to get to where the fighers will need to be after their fuel runs out).

If you want a not-quite physically impossible form of Highly Concentrated Black Magic, use metallic metastable hydrogen or metallic metastable helium. Having a fleet train that scoops hydrogen and processes it into either reactor fuel (deuterium and tritium) or fighter fuel (metallic metastable hydrogen) gives a reason for Bespin, or having specialized ships the carrier has to defend that refuel it.

Ken Burnside

Hmm, not sure I agree with the conclusion although I agree with much/all of the argument. The reason is simple: why engage at only 3km/sec relative when you had to achieve at least 5km/sec delta V to get to Earth from Mars, or vice versa? In fact, why not keep the pedal to the metal and arrive at 10 or 15 km/sec and fire your flechette crowbars from there? If your target accelerates toward you, closing vectors might be in the order of 20 or 30 km/sec.

And of course, if you acquired 10 or 15 or so km/sec leaving mars orbit and entering a transfer to earth, you would not need to keep your engines burning; thus the problem with detection is somewhat obviated by simply coasting in on very high relative velocities and using the drives only to manoeuvre once you arrive, or to enter an attack run only a few hundred or thousand klicks out.

But all of this works against a dogfighting dynamic; these are firing platforms sliding past each other at huge velocities and likely to enter and exit each others sensor envelopes very quickly. Even a sensor radius of 1000km would be entirely crossed in a little over a minute and a half at 20km/sec relative. OTOH, this brings back the gattling gun, because this sort of battle will prompt design toward maximum output in the shortest possible time. Furthermore, accelerating the platform also accelerates the ordnance, which is nice and easy and you have to do it anyway (OK, so you still have to pay for pushing the mass as you always do). And, you don't even need to keep your missile ordnance in a bay while you coast in, you can launch it beforehand and have them coasting alongside you as you close so they can all be locked and fired at once.

Dogfighting this aint, but I think it has its own dramatic appeal of riding in on a torch at ridiculous speeds.

Another late comer. I'm really much more concerned with the "fluff" than the system. An Aurthurian space setting is cool and seems to me like it demands a distinct lack of capital ships.

Can they just be prohibitively expensive? (I'm not coming up with a way to make it plausible.) Or maybe as in Steven King's Dark Tower books (to mix genre) the world has moved on and monolithic ships used to work (which adds even more cool setting to explore) but they just don't any more. Or even, the weapon known as The Little Doctor in Card's Ender's Game books makes mass work against you.

Anyway, I'm envisioning small groups and singleton long-range fighters pilotted by knights occassionally bumping up against larger groups of poorly (by comparison) equipped and trained rabble. Is that what we're all seeing?

Chris (who had more to say when he started)

My solution for keeping capitol ships out of a space setting is making them either severly Jump-impaired, or just to big for any sort of jump whatsoever. (insert tech jargon about exponentially more energy required for higher mass jumps, etc.)

Hmm, not sure I agree with the conclusion although I agree with much/all of the argument. The reason is simple: why engage at only 3km/sec relative when you had to achieve at least 5km/sec delta V to get to Earth from Mars, or vice versa? In fact, why not keep the pedal to the metal and arrive at 10 or 15 km/sec and fire your flechette crowbars from there? If your target accelerates toward you, closing vectors might be in the order of 20 or 30 km/sec.

And of course, if you acquired 10 or 15 or so km/sec leaving mars orbit and entering a transfer to earth, you would not need to keep your engines burning; thus the problem with detection is somewhat obviated by simply coasting in on very high relative velocities and using the drives only to manoeuvre once you arrive, or to enter an attack run only a few hundred or thousand klicks out.

Dogfighting this aint, but I think it has its own dramatic appeal of riding in on a torch at ridiculous speeds.

Again, I have no major nits to pick with the above. I agree its OT and not to the original spec, but I'm not getting any feedback on my latest suggestion so what the hell. One day I'd love to see a hard science game that isn't a top down boardgame.

So it seems to me we know what we want: Fun Dogfights. IMO the only important topic is how to make that work; all the rationalising and technobable should be constructed after we have a mechanical system. Any more candidates for driving the actual play action?

Ah, now here's somewhere where I feel that I can intelligently contribute, instead of going "rah rah team!"

The technobable had gone over my wee head, but actual play and setting/premise I all understand and encourage.

Re: Arthur and Spaceships

A huge part of this entire idea is going to be space-age fuedalism. This will affect a lot of things, including the idea of capital ships. Why?

1) Nobody wants someone else's capital ship in their territory. Such a maneuver is the same as building a fort on someone else's land, and therefore an act of war. Fear of such could even lead to a cold-war style stand down where everyone agrees not to build them and gangs up on anyone that does.

2) Capital ships require a lot of full-time manpower with military training--in essence, a standing army. One of the characteristics of the feudal period was the lack of substantial standing armies. Each lord has his own retinue and then levy, but no one lord is willing to give up his personal power for the "good of the monarch." Not only does history show this, but the Arthurian myth is based around the idea that Arthur managed to unite the britons only during his lifetime. Thus non-military labor to build such ships or fortresses is feasable, but not to crew them. Make sense?

3) The jump-gates that only fit smaller vessels has a lot of potential, too, I think. After all, real space travel, even at light speed, is just too slow. Therefore a capital ship that had no jump-capablity is simply doesn't make sense except as a defensive measure.

Jake

I can see what you mean, but at the same time the idea of Camelot as a giant space ship (rather than a stationary castle) is pretty darn cool. At least an orbiting space station in geosynchronous orbit man!

As a final note on the realism train before we break back to on-topic: Star Wars isn't, in more ways than just the one. As the same GM I referenced earlier said, "Yes, but you see, in Star Wars they have hyperdrives - but not laptops, or VGA graphics. This is because the first movie was made in the seventies." But he's right - any assumptions about detection or anything else get derailed by the fact that if you're trying to stick to movie emulation, your tech parameters have to be based on their (apparently very very bad) computation base, among other issues.

[In the SWRPG, IIRC, the basic time requirement for entering hyperspace involves working out the math, which takes periods of tens of seconds or minutes. And can conceivably be done by a smart, skilled navigator, by hand (!), in comparable time. Think about the computer that implies. Doesn't it frighten you that the Death Star's laser was probably controlled by something with the basic capabilities of a Koko III?]

Dogfighting-wise, I had a TROS-esque thought on it, helping me to get past my objections to the inclusion of initiative in the system. The thought was that I can see, even in a classic dogtail situation, cases where either starfighter could be 'leading' - with that word used as in formal dance. If the pursuer is calling time, then he is in control enough of the situation that when the defender moves to dodge, he compensates easily (as he has a smaller angle to move through). If the pursued ship is calling time, this means that his evasions and the like have the attacker in the situation where, although he's nominally on the opponent's tail, his target is swinging back and forth too quickly on his screen to pin down, and he has no decent shot.

Put that way, I say go TROS all the way. But re-parse the physical situation into the ruleset, because if you look at it this way, most of the use of "evasive maneuvers" per the movies is to give the defender initiative; that's it. Keeping the initiative, as the pursued party, means that you are already dodging enough that he hasn't yet had a chance to fire - try to keep it that way.

One way to handle this would be with a version of my "Push" house rule for TROS (posted to those boards awhile back)... where in addition to rolling dice for maneuvering, either player can also spend dice directly toward the initiative. For this version, drop the activation cost; when either player wishes to enact a maneuver, let them spend additional dice to "Jink" (if being tailed or disengaged) or "Lock" (if tailing someone - identical other than in name, unless we choose to differentiate). Successes on the maneuver, plus the dice on spent Jinking/Locking, become your initiative total (instead of just maneuver successes as in base TROS). This would give a nice balance between "trying to establish control over the pacing" versus "trying to accomplish X." It's been working like a charm in my swordfighting game, and I think would be even better here.

Combine this with the "you're either tailing, being tailed, or disengaged" and you get three sets of maneuvers, kind of like proficiencies in TROS. In fact, tracking proficiencies in the three areas separately (with a -2 default or something so you can just buy a specialty if you like) would be quite cool.

Disengaged Maneuvers:
(Offensive)
Long-Range Fire [Activation cost 2, roll an attack]
Firing Pass [Next Exchange you both can Fire and Evade ala Block and Strike, no activation cost for you; your net successes on this roll are an Activation Cost for his shot, if any, during the pass.]
Tail [Activation cost 1, gains dogtail position if successful]
Relocate [Used if there's terrain or large ships nearby, to move the dogfight into or near to that fixed point. Opponent need not follow. MOS indicates how deeply into that terrain (asteroids, for example) you get.]
(Defensive)
Evasion [Basic dodge]
Break Off [Flee the fight]
Roll And Close [As Firing Pass, but used defensively with an activation cost and/or higher TN]
Pursue ["Defends" against Relocate - distinct from Evasion partly in intent, and partly see ship stats and STN/MTN, below.]
Full Evasion [As in TROS]

'Tail' Maneuvers:
(Offensive)
Lock In Sights [Net Successes roll into dice on next shot]
Fire [Yup, you guessed it]
Relocate [Breaks off your tail and lets you go elsewhere - useful against defenders trying to smash you on asteroids. I say we wait 'em out.]
(Defensive)
Evasion [Y-Wings shoot backwards, turrets shoot from the ground, etc]
Full Evasion [As normal, but note that this loses your tail status]
Follow Through [Defends against Breakout, Hotshot, and like maneuvers, see below]
Follow Around [As above, but loses you the Tail status, although net successes on this maneuver do turn into bonus dice on a Tail attempt next exchange.]
Pursue [As above]

'Dog' Maneuvers:
(Offensive)
Breakout [Disengages the tail]
Turret Fire [Ships with rear-facing weapons only]
Reversal [One of several maneuvers - Immelmanns etc, sudden stop-and-start tricks - which turns you from the 'Dog' into the 'Tail'. High TN and/or Act. Cost.]
Relocate [Moves the dogfight toward some terrain or large ship, or away from same. The nice thing about being the 'Dog' is that you get to decide where we go, or he drops the tail. If near usable terrain already, then:]
Hotshot [Turn 90 degrees and go between two pillars, or through an asteroid tunnel, or whatever. Pursuer may either Full Evade and lose his tail for sure, or use one of the Follow actions. If you win, net successes indicate damage to the pursuing ship.]
(Defensive)
Evasion [You'll use this a lot.]
Evade and Break [Higher TN and/or Act. Cost, breaks the Tail status as well.]
Evade and Reversal [TN nine; dodges the shot, and puts you in the tail position if successful.]
Full Evasion [From the 'Dog' position, this does NOT break combat; instead, it allows the pursuing ship to move the action further from, or closer to, any terrain present, and the tail stays.]
Pursue [Activation Cost 3 when done from this position - if the Tail wants to leave, it's hard to catch up.]

I'm using terrain here a couple of ways. In an asteroid field or tunnel system, I'd have a Terrain roll as in TROS, failure means taking damage. You don't need to be in this confined a space to use the Hotshot maneuver, though; you just need something solid and interesting to be nearby. Hotshot probably uses the terrain TN as its TN, with a minimum of four or so. "Nearby" is deliberately left undefined; the various Relocate actions put your ship, and the duel if the other guy wants to come with you, "nearby" to any available object (or not "nearby" anything at all, which is almost always an option).

Phew! That was longer than planned, but it holds together nicely, once you parse it like this. As a final note, I could see starships having an ATN (used for firing), an "MTN" (Mobility TN, used as the DTN and also for actions like Tail, Reversal, and Hotshot), and a "STN" (Speed TN, used for Relocate, Break Off, Breakout, etc.). That plus the damage your weapons do, and the ship's toughness, would give us a nice five-stat detail range for any starfighter.

A fairly typical set of sequences might be: Tail 5d/Evade 1d(Jink 3d) - Tail is established but the 'Dog' has initiative. Relocate 5d/Pursue 2d(Lock 2d) - the 'Dog' pulls the fight into the asteroids, but the 'Tail' gets the initiative. Fire/Evasion, Hotshot/Follow, and so on. Yum... I want to try this, now.

- Eric

Mmm - terminology change for the above. Not "Offensive" and "Defensive" maneuvers - even in TROS that's not strictly true and here it's actually misleading. "Proactive" and "Reactive" instead. Whoever has the initiative is the one taking Proactive actions from the appropriate list.

That should help...

- Eric

I'm not sure that I get your point about the computers? Are you just pointing out another unrealistic thing (because I could go off on a loooong list on that tangent if I were of a mind to). Or are you saying that info-technology isn't being taken into account in the model at this time? If so, are you saying it should be, or that, like inertial movement, that we should just continue to ignore it?

Jake, do you want to consider the effects of electronics and such in terms of the model, or should we just sweep that under the rug? The simplest thing to do, IMO, is to say that all ships are created equally in terms of these things and that its the human edge that's making the difference.

Mike

I'm saying that the tech assumption is basically that computers are about as useful as a calculator is today, and that if we're trying to be faithful we should model that. Yes, it's unrealistic, but more to the point it's a genre thing which we should preserve - which in turn makes many of the other unrealisms work just fine.

Certainly we might want to occasionally model a ship with better or worse targeting characteristics - both from aids like the "targeting computer" in Luke's cockpit, and perhaps from more accurate weapons or something. In keeping with the Arthurian model, one of the things I found when GMing Pendragon is that knights (in any remotely gamist CA) care about their gear, and the fine details thereof. Straight out of Shakespeare (Henry V) - "My horse is the fastest horse in all the kingdom." "Your horse, yes, but I have the finest armour." Not a direct quote but the sense is there. Give "Arthurian" starfighter pilots half a chance to distinguish between their vessels in any little way, and they'll go for it. Having different ATNs in the above post is exactly an example of this.

So I'm not quite suggesting we ignore computation entirely - but it falls by the wayside and can entirely be compensated for with an edge in skill or luck. The genre demands this.

- Eric

Mike Holmes wrote: Jake, do you want to consider the effects of electronics and such in terms of the model, or should we just sweep that under the rug? The simplest thing to do, IMO, is to say that all ships are created equally in terms of these things and that its the human edge that's making the difference.

Mike

I like Harlequins proposal a lot, I could really see that working in first person play. I agree the technology aspect is going to be heavily rationalised, but this could well be an opportunity. Also, the one major issue of concern in my mind - multiple opponents - is going to require some rationalisation too.

I don't think its too hard to make computers go *poof*. The red queen principle of eternally self-levelling competetion can be cited to abstract computers to some field other than immediate consideration in the resolution. Perhaps before launching each ship downloads the latest to-the-nanosecond patches and updates and revisions, so the important thing is not the specifics of the software but how old your batch is. This could even be exploited as a sort of timer mechanic to govern long term stretches of play, in that if you've been wandering the wilderness and you come up against a fresh-launched patrol, they have a real edge, your software is ancient by comparison.

Mark Rein Hagen wrote a space game which never saw print to the best of my knowledge, but the document was huge. One of its features which sticks in the memory was the way you would set up default messages that your ship broadcast every time you encountered another ship or entered a system or exited a jump or whatever. Identity was an important theme, he had also rationalised huge runes on the sides of ships, so this would also include affiliations and missions statements. The beautifully ironic thing about the status broadcast was the default setting "Declaration of Friendly Intent" which nobody ever changed.

I think this is good inspiration for using information systems as heraldry and as personal expression. The medieval inspiration can be drawn from fanfares and so forth, and from naughtical flag conventions too. So perhaps you would really arrive to discover a station broadcasting a message equivalent to flying a flag at half mast across a whole system.

Some rationalisation for not the obligation but the necessity of personal insignia. Computers and intelligent agenst being so good, and so reliable, patterns of user behaviour and detectable and identifiable. Thus, your software could watch an enemy vessel and, by comparing against the known characteristics of that vessels software, predict which pilot is in command. And if you can't hide it, you might as well flaunt it.

Public encryption keys as Heraldry. Cool.

I think that all the points at which you have to create BS explanations are opportunities. Once you have a bunch of BS rolling, it starts to take on a life of it's own, and some of the setting comes from abstractions based on the convergence of your BS facts.

I'm looking forward to that pointin this design. Often this is the point at which some designers allow problems to creep into their scheme rather than fix them. Personally I vote that we try to make the BS as internally consistent as possible in the end. Even if that means going back and forth at times (which really bothers some people).

One point needs some "plausibilizing." That's the lack of crew. The problem in Medieval times in creating a large standing army had to do with the fact that your agrarian economy teetered constantly on the verge of collapse. You just needed a large proportion of your populace to feed everyone. In an advanced culture that has to be replaced by something, otherwise your scarcity of manpower for crews becomes hard to buy.

While thinking about this, it occurs to me that an odd way of handling this would be to say that everyone has laws that prevent you from conscripting, and that the populace really doesn't like the idea of fighting for these lords. So, basically, there are very few volunteers to fight. Would need a little work to be really plausible, but it could turn things on it's ear in a neat way if worked out correctly.

Mike

Funny - that aspect doesn't bother me at all. If we're looking at a world where the starfighter is very much a manual tool, with a lot of hands-on skill involved, and a high price tag, then you get two reasons for lack of proliferation of crew. It must take a real gift to fly a starship purely by hand, and that can't be common. And the high price tag means that maintaining a huge standing army isn't economically feasible, compared to keeping a small flight of fighter craft. So you end up with a situation comparable to the Arthurian model.

Interestingly, there may be meat in looking at the discrepancy: in the medieval analogy, it was the lords themselves who had horses and armour. You didn't take your strongest and most agile farmhand, even if he could nominally have been better than you, and give them to him. A lot of this (apart from pride and preconceptions) was because you had spent your life training for this role. Moreover, the required expense produced small passels of knights supported by individual lords. So rather than the "Rebel Alliance" model shown in Star Wars, modeled on modern armies, one might see a given contributor (a nation, a planet, a star system) able to support only a small number of fighter craft - single digits, up to double digits for wealthy systems, etc - and having a caste of some sort which trains for this job from birth. The methodology of choosing that caste could vary greatly... inheritance on one world (this is the Prince's Starfighter, you dolt, it'll never be yours), meritocracy or selection for genetic traits on another, no doubt selection by omen on another.

This would give the "heraldry" a lot more punch, if you could reasonably expect that (a) anyone flying a starfighter is a Pilot, capital P, and (b) there are so few of them that know can expect to recognize many, and learn others quite quickly when brought together.

In fact, if we wanted to strain the analogy, it strikes me that in a world without the computation to build truly faithful simulators, one could really justify "tourneys" of friendly starfighters with (for example) the lasers turned down in intensity until they were basically markers, judged by watching passenger ships of the peerage. It's a conceit, perhaps, but it's one that generates a lot of play potential, all of the betrayal/intrigue/competition made possible by the tourney format - running Pendragon I often found that tourneys were some of the most memorable sessions.

Oh, and with regards to my above list of maneuvers et al, I think we can rationalize the list somewhat and fill in one or two missing items, mostly fleshing out the distribution of "do it via superior speed" vs. "do it via superior maneuverablity." If there's consensus that this would be a good way to do the job, then I'm inclined to suggest that we open a new thread for specific system discussion and start hammering that into shape. Any takers?

- Eric

Hmm, gonna have to disagree with Harlequin a bit. Perhaps it's just the orientation of my training, but I balk at anything remotely SF that does NOT have computers. Too much of the space math requires stuff that humans just cannot do in their heads reliably enough to build a social system on without computation.

But, that does not mean that computers have to be significant in play in any meaningful sense. Tied in with setting rationalisation, it can be done I think.

Now it has to be said, my Disbelief meter generally goes *sproing* every time I see some sort of ancient society in space. In my view, material conditions determine the political format. But that said, a particular formation can be duplicated by working backwards top construct an artificial society that duplicates those points.

For this reason, I would be inclined to shoot for something pretty far out, with serious questions about the humanity of the characters. Perhaps Dune is an inspiration here, and we assume some sort of drug-like dependancy that, say, makes the superhuman reflexes necessary for space combat available. Alternatively, genetic modifiation and cybernetics can be called on to explain unusual social paramaters for a highly technical society.

I think there must be something specific and rare that makes these systems work, so that the feudal lords can maintain their monopoly on violence. If populated planets, I assume, will be the equivalents of fiefs and cities, then something must be introduced to prevent those populations of millions or billions from being able to take up arms themselves. The tech that drives the fighters and the capships must be localised and controlled (as in the controlled substance sense). I fully agree with Harlequins proposal that the fighters occur in small numbers and that the pilots are high in a caste system. This also obviates my concerns about squad on squad combat, in that numebrs will be low enough for players to plausibly engage in small skirmishes. I also think the capships will need to have some sort of doomsday device that can and do present a real threat to the populated planets subordinate to the lords.

Which raises another interesting point. The castle/ships must be dependant on those populations too for something, must be a required resource of something that justifies conflict between lords over territories.

In response to contracycle's point re: motivating a feudal system.

You don't have to look too far before you can find a simple reason such a political system might arise.

Megatrav explained it all away simply (and believably) by making jump travel not fast enough to allow centralized government. This gave rise to a "systemic governor" set-up. Although most of these lords were nominally loyal to the throne, they all had their own separate agendas, etc.

Where Megatrav differs from the (apparent) intent of this project is that the throne (emperor, king, whatever) has a standing fleet (Imperial Navy) with which to enforce its will. This of course is always stretched too thin, dealing with foes from outside, etc.

Long and the short of it: the King can't be everywhere at once, and has to rely on his lords to govern his kingdom for him. They micro-manage, he attempts to macro-manage.

Back on the mechanics side, we've done a tiny bit of actual play - an inconclusive X-Wing versus TIE Fighter duel - using a slight tweak on my TROSesque mechanic above. (Or insert equivalent "all around solid ship" versus "cheap unshielded maneuverable ship" for setting of choice... Destrier-Class Knightship versus Blackguard-Class Mercenary Fighter?)

The results can be found in this thread so that we can stay on the setting issue here.

And contracycle (is it Jason, or am I misremembering?), I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. In SF, I totally 165% agree with you - I'm the staff physicist for Attack Vector, I know how impossible noncomputational space flight should be. But something about seeing spacecraft "bank and turn" in space opera makes me quite open to accepting mostly-manual flight in the same environment - I mean, it really is awfully similar to WWII aircraft. So that aspect fails to break suspension of disbelief for me, and in fact enhances it slightly. If the "Knights" analogy continues, I think it's also a useful way to think. Whether it's that they don't have computer support, or they have it but it is unable to remove the enormous element of reflex and skill that makes the Pilot Caste important, doesn't matter to me. Maybe the "swoosh" actually makes things vastly harder, and their SOTA computation is part of what controls maneuverability in this situation? Whatever.

- Eric

What I was getting at more, was making infotech invisible through ubiquity, rather than conspicuous by its absence. I very much agree that this has to be strongly pilot driven (flown?).

I'd like to ask for more from Jake on the Arthurian theme. Is this Pendragon ins space? Does this game have a metaplot that follows the arthurian pattern? How extravagantly powerful do you want the stations weapons systems to be, or do they not have offensive capacity? Are you thinking multiple systems with FTL travel? Do you have any thoughts on what kind of FTL? Am I correct in thinking the allusion to gates earlier means gates INSIDE the stations for the fighters to use? What about aliens? What about megascale engineering like ringworlds or Dyson spheres and the like? Beanstalks?

How baseline human do you want the viewpoint characters to be? In ballpark terms, are we talking about a handful of stations or hundreds or thousands? How about numbers of fighters and "knights"? Obviously I donlt want to pin you down to serius numbers, just some indication of the total scale of this society and the proportion that is this military elite.

The "Pendragon in Space" is hard to resist, since I'm a massive Pendragon fan. However, I'm going to. I think that Arthur is the model in which we will build the game, and that we can take/learn a lot from Pendragon, but I'm not seeing this as a multi-generational game, nor one that's neccessarily based around the kinds of traits/passions that KAP is. Therefore, I say no metaplot but rather a directive to follow the Arthurian spirit (including an eventual downfall) is the way to go on this.

As for the rest...I'm as open to ideas as anyone. I really see this as a group project, not "my" project.

Jake

Jake, it's your project in that if we don't have a leader on the project with whom the buck stops, nothing will ever get decided. Instead you'll get a mishmash of ideas that don't gel into anything playable. So, you're not a dictator, you're just the guy who says "Yeah, that sounds good." Do it for the good of the project.

If people want to go in a different direction from what you decide, they can and will start their own threads. So there's no problem with having a leader.

Mike

Jake Norwood wrote: Therefore, I say no metaplot but rather a directive to follow the Arthurian spirit (including an eventual downfall) is the way to go on this.

Furious D wrote:
Heh, you say that now, after I've already had thoughts of the ancient dreadnaught "Excalibur" sleeping, hidden, in the sol asteroid belt. Waiting for a boy with certain genetic keys to wake it, and with it the authority (and the firepower) to unite the disparate colonies of human space under a single ruler :P.

Still, you've just about inspired me to dig up and retype the rules I once wrote for the Riddle of the Force (luckily I did print them for when I playtested it, last year, so the hard-drive failure I had since then wasn't a total disaster on that point).

In terms of setting models, actually, I was thinking that we could do worse than to use Arthurian mores and structures, but a Prince John / Richard the Lionheart social setup. Or an "after the disappearance of Arthur" timepoint, though I prefer the (comparatively) more immediate possibility of return a la Lionheart.

Something like: True king unites the squabbling systems and sentient species of the galaxy; there is a period of prosperity. There is an enemy, and a reason to go far, far away to strike at his heart... perhaps an AI/berzerker incursion from a second galaxy (and our FTL sucks for intergalaxy travel). Three incursions are beaten back and the true king takes a force of heroes to rid us of the menace forever. He appoints a regent, no, make that the Regent. The Regent is not your friend. He is a tyrant, who keeps his power by spending the great wealth of our period of prosperity on (gasp) mercenaries. The Pilot caste is naturally offended by the presumption that just by paying for a ship and paying a nobody to fly it, you can assert force; even more so when that force is directed at them and their estates.

A rebellion therefore exists. It's mishmash and motley-race, moral in tone, and exists overlaid upon the classic baronial structure. Most barons are more or less loyal to the Regent, some are secretly disloyal, and some become openly rebellious. It's not an easy choice; the code of honour of the "default" (the Logres to this game's Britain) homeland is pretty serious about loyalty to your liege, even in the face of horror and tyranny.

The King's army is long gone; nobody knows (a) how long it'll take them to get to their destination, (b) how long it'll take them to finish their task, (c) whether they're still alive, or (d) when they'll be back. He's almost forgotten in day-to-day life. And he took most of the eldest sons, and family's best starfighters, with him - the younger son with the family's/planet's second-best fighter is an archetype here. These second sons, either on behalf of a family which wishes to remain apparently loyal, or on their own account (and to their family's possible dishonour!), tend to form small squadrons (roughly the size needed to deal with a flight of mercs) with which to range about righting wrongs and dealing with tyranny.

In terms of the mercenaries, craftsmanship and quality is less important to the Regent (both with respect to their ships, and their persons) than quantity. Tyranny requires many hands, and (as in TROS) numbers really do make a huge difference in a given fight. So we get our TIE Fighter analogue, cheap and poorly defended ships appearing in greater numbers than the players, as another archetype.

Either because the True King's reach never extended that far (the Pictish lands), or because treaties made with the True King are being broken (the Saxons if Arthur were to disappear), or simply because the galaxy is a wild, strange, and sometimes only thinly inhabited place (the Foret Sauvage), there are other enemies than just the Regent and his men. Whatever enemy the True King went off to fight may still be an influence, either active (incursions continue - what does this mean about our King?) or remnant (pockets of AI drones, waiting on orders never triggered). I'm all for monsters, though as a note the dogfight engine is very tailored toward ships of roughly comparable size and mobility, moving at pretty comparable speeds. So it'll take some careful handling to manage anything "dragonlike"... hm.

Perhaps the AI drones tend to be very specialized, such that you build a "dragon" opponent by having a big flame-blaster drone, a command drone, a long-range sensor drone, two winglike Gate drones, two smaller offensive drones, and three armour-creaking shield drones. That would actually be a neat match against 3-4 PCs, if we put very careful attention into the many-on-one rules... I love TROS's rules for this, but they do break down sometimes (A rolls to only have to face B and not C, C rolls to only have to face A and not D) without careful GM management. However, there are only three in the list above who can actually hurt the PCs, so there are three opponents trying to chase/tail/shoot them, while the others mostly just want to avoid fighting, and the shield drones want to use a version of the many-on-one to get themselves between the PCs and the crucial bits. Fighting a dragon would then be as it should be - maneuvering to stay out of the way of the claws and flame, and trying to scrape together enough effort above what you're using for survival to get past the defenses and strike the heart. By making the attackers and the defenses and the heart all separate foes, but not giving them the capabilities of truly separate attackers, we bring out those elements directly. That could really work.

Anyway. Just brainstorming at this point - the core idea is the Regent giving us an excuse to have an, ahem, Rebel Alliance of noble houses and noble sons, and the absent king to give us Arthur or the Lionheart and some loyalty to the throne.

- Eric

Edit: Crossposted with Jake. Just wanted to add that I love the idea of the Metahook and having one of them be Arthur every time. IMO that makes early-Arthurian quite as compelling as the scenario above. Or we can of course combine them. Hmm - I'm thinking that "who is the heir?" might overlap with MLwM-style "trigger conditions" somehow. Just a germ of a seed of a thought.

Jake,

I hereby volunteer my services as lead writer with the following precondition: I will not do this alone. As long as there is active discussion and support, people making suggestions and you ok-ing them i will continue work. I've got some preliminary stuff down already. It's time to start making some decisions.

Metahook? Yes, no?

Thomas

While reflecting on the experience of asteroids in computer games for the mechanics thread I got to thinking of the way Homeworld and Freelancer use clouds of gas to beautiful effect, creating stunning sort of “sunsets” and colour shadings in the various systems. So one colour thought is “it should be full of stars”, and we can set this when the Big Bang was young, and the universe was dense, and all of it was like a stellar nursery, like this: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021102.html This lends a mythic resonance, ostentatiously abandons any pretensions to being a prediction of the present human future, and gives us clouds of gas to manoeuvre ships around in sneakily, plus some misty ‘forests’ and fog-shrouded badlands.

Ooh - that's pretty. Possible name: Stardust?

A brief desciption of the setting (protosetting?) to a friend yielded a couple more gems:

- If there exists a weapon which kills the pilot but not the ship, then Raubritten or the classic "black knight at the ford" image is feasible; bandit-knights who build their strength by conquest until they're finally rooted out (primarily due to their poor skill - usually - compared to true Pilot caste) could be a serious threat to impoverished systems.

- Looking for the equivalent of Saxon Raiders, we talked about the hyperdrive... how the normal ship is independently hyperdrive-capable, but maybe the mercenaries or other cheap ships might need some kind of carrier (not to steal too much from Star Wars or anything). And this prompted his suggestion: raiders who arrive in a hypercarrier which doesn't have the fuel to get home again; conquer or die. Between tourneys with friendly pilots, enmity between rivals and/or loyalists/rebels, possible mercenary scum, Lions and Tigers and Bears of AI dronecraft, I'm not sure we need more nasties... but it's all Pendragon in spirit, and might help create the feel of the "embattled realm" in their variety and strength.

- Eric

A few Homeworld screenies for those ont familiar with the look:

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/hw2/shots/HW2_07_corvettes01.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/hw2/shots/HW2_15_strafing02.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/hw2/shots/HW2_05_asteroid%20sunset.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/hw2/shots/HW2_02_Cruiser_Under_Fire_2.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/shots/shota188.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/shots/shota497.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/shots/shota505.jpg

http://www.strategyplanet.com/hwshots/shots/shota837.jpg

Some freelancer screenies, well wortha look as they show more fighters and better space environemnts: http://www.gamershell.com/hellzone_Space_Sim_Freelancer.shtml


All of which, incidentally, suggests that graphics might be relatively easy to come by.

This does become interesting. I like the idea on setting and color, and it does provide some easy art. It will also be different since most RPG books use a lot of hand-drawn art and we're discussing the use of Hubble photos. I also think it would be nice to do ships and stuff with CG.

Over in the mechanics thread the idea of monsters as clusters of AI controlled ships has been brought up. I think it's a pretty cool idea, from a setting standpoint is this something that we want to do?

Also, considering the Metahook idea, are we thinking of Excalibur being a fighter that only works for the "Chosen" or whatever?

From the mechanics thread: the idea of capital ships has been tossed around a few times, what if any role do we want them to have. We've already established that we want knights in starfighters, does this mean that capital ships are either not FTL-capable or unarmed? Maybe they don't even exist...

Thomas

I'd like capital ships or armed starbases to exist, simply because we have such excellent mechanics to handle their presence in a fight. And heck, we need castles to besiege. (Grin.) CG ships would also be a really nice effect, artwise (though how much colour art can we honestly price-point?).

- Eric

Ok, captital ships that are unable to make it into FTL? Or perhaps the idea that a capital ship has enough power to propel it's mass through FTL or power weapons and targetting clusters?

Art: As stated Hubbles stuff is (i believe) public domain. So that stuff is good. I'm really not sure how much CG art would cost, but i would figure that it would be pretty close to traditional art...

Thomas

Or they're stationary entirely - not even able to move about the system, much less Jump. Any of those would work, by me, for the needed purpose.

And I was worried about printing the art...

- Eric

Capships could be fairly easily incoporated into this feudal structure, it seems to me. Obviously, a lone knight flies a single ship; perhaps quite naturally a larger lord puts their whole retinue in one bigger ship. In effect, each lord would led their own 'battle' incarnated in a physical vessel.

The downside to this is I'm not sure being 3rd technician on a capship is an attractive prospect for a knight with their own fighter. Alo, if there is not some major limitation to the size bands, there is nor reason that capships couldn't have a tremendous range of sizes that might make the fighters useless.

OTOH, capships seens as carrier bases are not a million AU away from a castle. OK so they are mobile, but they are still exercising the primary function of providing a safe base for the striking arm, the knights. The only downside to this is that in this structure the carrier is usually quite vulnerable itself, whereas a castle is necessarily not.

- If there exists a weapon which kills the pilot but not the ship, then Raubritten or the classic "black knight at the ford" image is feasible

Incidentally, I just converted one of the above HW images to greyscale, and not a huge amount appears to be lost. That would still be a major pity, IMO, but then I'm known to favour high gloss products. Lets have that conversation later, anyway - we're talking quite an innovative approach and if it ends up being really something new, perhaps a flashy approach would be worthwhile.

A couple of things. One on printing and one on the world.

If money were no object (or if the cost is even remotely reasonable) i would advocate the use of a high-gloss printing with full color art. I have no idea how much this would cost, but i know that similar books of around 150 pages (Illustrated Brief History of Time specifically,) are not signifigantly more expensive with the pretty diagrams and such than other books in their category.

As to the game world. We may want to reconsider our definition of the term "Fighter." If FTL travel is instantaneous and operation independent of a base of operations is incredibly rare then the "one man in a cockpit" works fine. But if FTL travel take time on the Star Wars level (multiple hours, possibly days,) or operation away from a base of operations is prevalent it becomes more problematic. Confinement to a cockpit for long periods of time can become detrimental (remember the Air Force still uses amphetamines for long missions.) The solution would be to treat it as a feature (i.e. if you don't rest between FTL "hops" it is similar to making a forced march, you get very tired,) or to expand the size of a "fighter" to something larger (the Falcon from Star Wars or the corvettes from the PC game Independence War.)

I don't really have a preference, and we may not even have to address the issue if the first set of assumptions is in place. I just thought i'd mention it.

Thomas

As a related issue, though, we also need to look at the possibility of a two-person fighter, one with a turret for example, and how that skews the standard on things. In the "joust," for example, it would be "unchivalrous" to use a gunner whilst your opponent fired his own; moreover, even in down-and-dirty mercenary killin', it's going to be tricky not to give a huge mechanical advantage to a two-person ship over one. The size of the life support setup is one possible angle on why (a) they're uncommon, and (b) they're not overpowered.

[Also mechanically, it strikes me that both the pilot and the gunner are always involved in taking down enemies, especially if we disallow "turrets" (the guns are too big - think X-Wing lasers - for this) and simply have forward-firing or backward-firing weapons on everything. I'd rule then that the pilot and the gunner both roll to hit, allocating equal dice, and we use the higher total successes. The pilot aims the ship, the gunner watches for his chance and fires - it's a cooperative effort. An advantage, but not an overwhelming one, is warranted. If the pilot didn't need to spend dice firing, it'd be overpowering.]

[Corollary to the above: Or, turret weapons exist, but are small in comparison to what you can mount fixed. This lets the gunner use his dice pool when the pilot is too busy, but not to any great effect.]

None of which directly impacts the "how big is it?" issue, but it's worth considering in the mix. My $0.015 is that the cockpit be big enough to stretch out in, and sleep on the reclined seat (perhaps while parked in a bywater, no autopilots, both for Pilotly thematics and because the "while you sleep under a tree" is good Arthurian story-opportunity), but little else. Make 'em stop at friendly cantinae, fortresses, or simply uninhabited planets if they don't want to force-march themselves into the Noble Order of the Cramping Knee... helps reduce the "fly through all this junk and get to where I'm going" factor sometimes present in SF, to make journey-stories more feasible.

- Eric

Eric,

Let me see if i understand your position. A) FTL travel is not instantaneous. B) Star Wars (roughly) sized fighters. C) It is a "good idea" to stop and stretch on a long journey.

I like all of this.

Assuming those things the following question presents itself: Do we want to deal with Fuel? Do you have to refill every so often with a refined fuel(meaning finding a planet with a suffecient tech-base?) Maybe some sort of naturally occurring fuel (find a gas giant or a star or something?) Or something that is relatively unlimited (this here reactor will run for 30 years assuming you don't get it shot.)

Thomas

Hmm - not picky. I'd say wait and see what's warranted as the rest of the setting expands itself. More important in my mind, does a carrier-ship exist? Can you bring a "wagon" for longer trips, and is it common, unusual, or unheard-of? Does it actually serve as a carrier, or is this simply a case of bringing a passenger vessel along at the same time? I like the latter, from the point of view of it being a "viewing stand" where your lady-love can wait and watch the jousting at the ford, yadda yadda. Which means that the solo flight becomes more closely analogous to a knight "errant" in the classic sense - alone, perhaps even sans squire, riding long distances in armour while on quest. And really needing a bathroom break, any time now...

Which in turn brings up another question: gender. Classic Arthurian gender roles have their charm, frankly, but at the same time if they're not handled well they do offend. The Seventh Sea approach is kind of a compromise, where women have a far greater role than in history yet are far from equals. Or full equality, where women are considered altogether the equal of men, in which case we need some other way to establish Romance and an analogue to the "fairer sex" if we want to preserve those mores. [All of this is of course system- or culture-linked, esp. if we have varied races involved, but I'd guess that a certain amount of default/monolithy is good for the health of our analogy.]

Interestingly, painting the Scientist/Technician as the "fairer profession" would be a really fascinating analogue there. Delicate, hapless, but essential to the true Pilot's life. Have an assumption that this is traditionally a romantic relationship between Pilot and Technician, but not necessarily male/female in that order. That would be a funky meld of gender-equality with romantic-bigotry, IMO...

- Eric

Interesting thoughts on Romance... I'll give it some thought. It's intriguing, but so far out of my own experience that my initial reaction is paniced disagreement.

I also like the idea of a "wagon" being a passenger vessel. You can tow your fighter behind it, but getting into it is much like donning armor. If you're under attack you just don't have enough time. I also like the idea of a squire having an inferior ship with part of it's bulk used for carrying extra ammunition and/or fuel for the Pilot.

Thomas

On further consideration i've found that i greatly approve of the idea of a Pilot/Technician split. It perpetuates some of the interesting themes that we want (in my opinion) to keep. More than that it also implies a level of technical ignorance among the Pilot caste which i think is very cool. The idea that the "weaker sex" is the one with information and training advantages in technical fields.

So, yes, i give it my stamp of approval.

Thomas

I had annother thought on the overall imagery here. I dislike the rebellion theme outlined previously because knights, by definition, are inside the tent pissing out rather than on the outside pissing in.

So heres and alternate thesis. What we are looking at is a sort of Berserker/Hawks model. The Big Ships, perhaps, are something akin to the mothership on Independance Day... really, really immense. Planet-stripping or something equivalent is indeed the mode of production (something which could be termed a 'Locust' rather than a Hawks mode).

This means that the kingdom is the ship. I would think there should be several kingdoms, and thus several ships, locked in a permanent hot-again/cold-again war as they migrate through the young universe looking for suitable planets to strip. This is an entirely space based society in which nobody, arguably, even has a conception of planet-bound existance anymore.

Advantages: we have a military or similar role for knights, unleashed en mass by the main vessel or carriers. We certainly have a vast, imposing piece of megascale engineering for the Kewl factor. We have a society boxed in and enclosed in a tense social dynamic with absolute carrying capacity limits. We get some possible overpopulation dynamics as per the late middle ages.

Disadvantages: this prima facie shifts the action to inside rather than outside the big ship. We'd need to construct external somethings to fight over else the big vessels are in a stand off.

Anyway, the idea here is Camelot meets Independance Day meets Battlestar Galactica.

Thats a great idea Gareth. I don't know that you'd need any more justification for knights to fight over than Battle Tech has. When you think about it, landing giant robots on a planet to brawl with each other is pretty pointless...but it holds the interest.

I like it. As for justification, how about this? (Stolen from one of Timothy Zahn's old books.) FTL travel can only happen with the assistance of a "gate" of some sort. Essentially the device that initiates FTL travel can not go through itself. Fighters can simply use the huge gates built into the mother ship, but motherships must construct monstrously large gates in deep space if they wish to move. This provides a large and vulnerable target. If we also decide that the tech base available makes it difficult to produce gates (i.e. years) then stealing components for your own operations would be good. This also allows us to do away with fuel, instead each Fighter can carry a number of small deployable gates (or perhaps be trailed by a ship that does. This would also give us a good reason for a fuedel system (at least in terms of nobility) because you would swear allegience to whoever could provide you with more gates.

Thomas

Excuse my laziness for possibly bringing up something probably mentioned already..(since I'm too lazy to read through 80+ posts)
I particularly like the gating and the motherships and all of that; along with these immensely huge motherships should also be smaller support ships capable of FTL.. not just a huge gigantic mess of fighters like on ID4. These support ships can be responsible for gate those gigantic gates for the motherships. Maybe something the size of a Battlestar from Battlestar Galactica(the original or the recent series)((think the recent ones are smaller)).
For fighters: boost vulnerability(stealing this from Star wars, etc) by making the fighters sub-light so that the bigger ships have to stick around for them..

I'm just trying to make sure we don't end up with thousand ship battles and shit. Imagine the resources needed to build all of that, and then realize the resources and time it would take to play that out. Granted, you could group 10's or 100's of ships together.. in an attempt to speed up play.
-Ingenious

Discussion of the project has slowed. I'll be pretty busy until after the holidays at which point i'll probably toss up a new thread and see if we can keep this going...

Thomas

Have you considered an organic ship model? The first two things that come to mind are the sci-fi shows LEX and Farscape, but there are many examples in science fiction literature.

-Chris

Reading this post got me inspired. I dreamed up a system I call "Faces of Aces". Thinking on it further, it hit me that by using regular playing cards would add to the 'fluff' of the Arthurian theme since they have 'court' cards, maybe thats useful to ya'll.

You can take a preview of Faces of Aces here.