Starship combat in RPGs

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My problem with most vehicle rules tends to be that they tie too much of the mechanics into the ship, and the character who is piloting it doesn't tend to matter that much.

For some reason, we are OK with "HP" being abstract, but having a more skilled pilot give more "HP" to a starship they are piloting for the same reason that we are ok with a person having higher HP due to skill at fighting and that just disappears.

Idk, I want a starship ace to be able to jump into any ship and start absolutely wrecking. Yes the ship should matter, but like, going into mecha: if Heero Yuy jumps into a standard Leo, he should still be trashing enemies.

That or you end up with a system where vehicle combat just feels like the standard combat. I prefer if there are some differences. (I was messing with a cortex prime mecha system a while back, and this would apply to starships too, in which the way damage is done to a person is different than to a vehicle, as in, people get stress, which is more generic damage, while starships take damage to stats, as in a starship could take damage to the engines, but it wouldn't affect the guns, etc.)
 
I am surprised nobody mentioned Star Trek the Roleplaying Game. It had by far the best RPG starship combat system out there. The secret is that every player had something to do.

Was this in the first edition box set, second edition, or one of the standalone tactical combat expansions?
 
Last time I did was in the early 90s, using GURPS for the game system in a limited session SF scenario. What I used for combat was an extremely stripped Star Fleet Battles pastiche. More recently, I ran Firefly using GURPS about 15 years ago, but while the party had a decommissioned gunboat as their ship (with a half-dozen illegally obtained warshots), they didn't get into ship-to-ship combat.
 
Sure, basically it plays out like this -

Players tend to be either Pilots, manning the gun stations, or operating the shields. Some can be on standby to attempt ship repairs when damaged.

Range is classified as Long, Medium, and Close. Ships always enter combat at long range

First, each pilot declares what they are attempting to do that round,
If both pilots want to close, the range is reduced by one
If both pilots want to withdraw, the range is increased by one (if it exceeeds Long range, the combat is over(
If one pilot tries to close and the other withdraw, , both roll based on their ship's Speed rating. The winner determines the effect - range reduced or increased by one.

After the range has been determined for the round, players can fire, evade using their piloting skill, and/or use shields

  • Firing uses the Gunnery skill plus the ship's fire control code, and is treated the same as an attack in combat, with Damage applied to the ship's Hull rating.
  • Missiles are a special type of attack that don't use the gunnery skill, but are only effective at short-range and completely ineffective against Shields
  • Evasion uses the Piloting skill, and is handled the same as a Dodge in melee combat - increasing the difficulty of a hit
  • A player operating the Shields can make a roll to deflect an attack, the difficulty depending on the range between opponents. A successful shield roll absorbs the attack Damage, but the Shield rating is degraded
There's a few other wrinkles, but that's pretty much it IIRC - it's overall handled much the same as hand-to-hand combat and played fast and loose.

If you run a Star Wars game where the entire crew is in a YT-1300 freighter, that system works. But in my Star wars game in the 00's I had to account for Player characters in X-wings and A-wings vs Ties and Interceptor as well. That system will not allow for the way to run dogfights.

So I made my own system. One day maybe i'll make a proper game of it, but for now I'll give a simplified explanation.

Image you have two stacks of markers, one is yours, the other is your enemys. The worse your position is, the less markers you have and the better your position is, the more markers.
By rolling your pilot skill, for every point you beat the difficulty with you can add markers to your own pile, and/or remove markers from your opponents. Your enemy pilot does the same (both get to roll before you go into resolving any attacks, so theres no initiative)

Once you get 10 markers, the enemy is dead ahead and your fixed forward mounted guns can shoot. The more markers the enemy have, the harder it is for you to hit him.

The best possible solution will of course be if you manage to get 10 markers of your own while the enemy has 0, as that means your dead on his tail, and he is toast. Likewise, if you yourself end up with 0 and the opponent 10, that means its HE who is right behind YOU.

If both manage to end up with 10, that means you both get to do a head on pass like two jousting knights. Just hope none of you fail your next pilot roll because that would mean a collision next round.
 
Dream Park, while being a mediocre game, had a fantastic system for chases and dogfights that could easily be swiped for other systems.

Basically, opposed rolls give the relative positions that planes, ships, subs or whatever, are in on that particular turn. Appropriate actions can be taken amd combat continues.

The first edition of Torg had a similar rule, where in aerial combat opposed piloting checks were made, and whoever had the higher total got to pick where they were in relation to their opponent.

After several of the writers for Torg: Eternity mocked first edition for its complexity I found it hilarious that vehicle combat was one of several areas they made more complex than first edition.
 
I always wanted to try and adapt Silent Death ship combat to RPG play since it allowed for pilot skills to make a difference. But it would really only be suitable for smaller ships with one or two PCs per ship or something.
 
How have you handled it? What systems do it well, and more importantly, how do they do it well?

A little background: the first game I ever ran was a Savage Worlds space opera game. For the first few sessions, I would include a starship combat encounter, but I always felt like those encounters kinda sucked and weren't much fun. Pretty soon I gave up on starship combat and the PCs' ship became essentially a taxi that ferried them from Adventure Planet of the Week to Adventure Planet of the Week.

By the way, I don't think this was necessarily a failure of the Savage Worlds system: very likely the problem was just me having no effing clue what I was doing.

So, please give me your takes on making starship combat fun!
I did use the Savage Worlds system for my pirate game and ship to ship combat did not work, or like you feared, I just wasn't doing it right. The players were privateers in a small frigate, and when they encountered a French man-o-war that was suppose to be a plot device to get them to stir clear of some islands, they instead blew the hell out of it. They thought, "wow! that was a lucky shot!!" But no, it was not luck, they tore it to shreds when they shouldn't have been able to (or it was actually made out of paper mâché and no one told me).

I'm the same way in that I'd like a good ship combat system whether it's in space or on the high seas, so I'll take a look at some of these in the thread.
 
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The discussion here seems to be all about the mechanics. I would have figured the primary issue would be 'putting all your eggs in one basket', so to speak. That without any sort of plot armor (ick!) starship combat is risking a TPK... moreso than other sorts of conflict. So the question would be how/whether to nerf that angle, or discourage the activity altogether.
 
I always wanted to try and adapt Silent Death ship combat to RPG play since it allowed for pilot skills to make a difference. But it would really only be suitable for smaller ships with one or two PCs per ship or something.
I offered to write a Silent Death rpg for ICE but Bruce declined. So I wrote Incandescent. I don't think I even have a copy of the original Incandescent. Metal Express was planning to do one, but BlackWidow pilot's wife got cancer and died so the project fell off the radar for a while.

Honestly, I'm afraid a more abstract narrative approach works best for rpg starship combat. Roll piloting to gain advantage, roll to hit, GURPS Lensman Space Opera Combat System. Though, it's basically how I ran it with Mechanoid Invasion and it's basically how Spacemaster Privateers does.
 
I ended up doing my own RPG scale starship combat rules years ago because they either didn't do the ship side well or the character side well. We're talking over a decade ago so maybe something is out there.
Some guiding principles for me is the combat sequence and mechanics need to provide the opportunity and ability for character skill to modify the situation preferably after a successful roll...after all the drama of players rolling dice for advantage helps keep it engaging..

Crew roles that should mesh with the ship combat rules for me include, in no particular order:

(1) Captain (who would be one or more of a tactician, strategist, and moral provider)
(2) Pilot
(3) Navigator (more limited in my view to specific situations as in setting certain routes (better navigation roll makes it easier for a pilot to execute), or emergency jump/warp, etc.)
(4) Sensors & Scanners (have a role both up-front pre-engagement and during combat)
(5) Science (to discover weakness, understand alien craft)
(7) Gunner(s)
(8) Engineer (for both damage control and also getting the most out of systems)
(9) Medical (for another kind of damage control, perhaps moral, and in Traveller for reviving the ole Frozen Watch)
(10) Muscle/Marines (for boarding actions and in case one is boarded)
(11) Psionics* clearly setting dependent, but blame David Brin for me having to have this.

This is of course for starship combat where it is not one shot-one kill, but a more grinding thing when not greatly outmatched.
 
One thing I should mention about Silent Death, the Warhounds supplements covers escort class ships with larger crews. They get little stick men on their damage track to show crew casualties.
 
In the last few years I've had three spaceship to spaceship conflicts in my SF game (uses GURPS). In two of them the players decided they didn't like the odds and/or didn't think the returns merited the risk, so they fled. In one case the enemy got a shot off before the PC's ship got into jump (it missed). The other case (actually the first of the three), they did get into a shooting match, and won due to high PC skills as much as superior firepower, but the couple of hits their ship took cost so much in time and treasure to repair that they determined that avoidable fights should be, well, avoided unless the rewards for fighting were very large.

I use GURPS Spaceships' space combat rules, as I find they're a good balance between detail and simplicity, and do give most of the crew of a small ship something to do. They have some issues with large numbers of missiles vs point defence, but for small ship vs small ship combat that's not important.
 
Was this in the first edition box set, second edition, or one of the standalone tactical combat expansions?
It never really changed but it was presented best as far as a RPG combat system in first edition. If read 1e you can easily use the later editions of the tactical combat system. And with computer software make the later versions sheets look more like the 1e version.
 
I like the Mongoose Traveller 2 system. To simplify running it for my players I made a cheat sheet/flow sheet for each position: Capt, Nav, Sensors, Comms, Gunners, Eng, Mech, Medic, Marine etc. It had boxes for them to fill in skills and successes on rolls and what would add to another skill roll in task chains. After the first run through it clicked and we could run combat very quickly with all PCs engaged. Did this pre Expanse and we captured that feel somewhat, especially as MgT2 space cat is quite deadly and the suspense as the missiles approached and were whittled down was good.
 
I've had satisfactory experience with Savage Worlds, but one day I would like to try using the Space Cadets dice game
 
The discussion here seems to be all about the mechanics. I would have figured the primary issue would be 'putting all your eggs in one basket', so to speak. That without any sort of plot armor (ick!) starship combat is risking a TPK... moreso than other sorts of conflict. So the question would be how/whether to nerf that angle, or discourage the activity altogether.

I’ve ranted about that in other threads hers, so I was afraid of repeating myself on the topic. Starfinder and Esper Genesis were horrible experiences as a player and GM when it came to PC survivability in space combat, with both leaving me to wonder if any actual playtesting of space combat was done for either.

I ended up avoiding anything published for Starfinder with a whiff of space combat, and Esper’s published scenario path turned into a TPK-fest, in space or out.

I think Rogue Trader had a somewhat good space combat system, marred by published books where PC opposition was min-maxed for combat while PC ships had to be generalized by default, and NPCs whose ships lacked disadvantages for certain things unlike PCs because they were GMPCs.
 
The "PC lethality problem" can be limited by postulating escape pods or some other emergency mechanism. Obviously it depends on setting, tech level and ship type, but honestly, unless we're talking space pioneers going on rust buckets held together by duct tape, having some kind of escape capsule just makes sense given the lethality of space.
 
One common pre space combat task to vacc-suit up and go to pressure safe quarters always struck me as odd. As in some systems it was stated that the ships would de pressurise to vacuum in order to prevent explosive decompression when hit. This seems OK at first glance but where does the internal atmosphere go? You can't vent it to space as where would the o2 and gasses come from to re pressurise and if you 'sucked' the atmosphere into some cylinders for example you still then have a pretty explosive component even if this is buried deep in the ship somewhere.
 
One common pre space combat task to vacc-suit up and go to pressure safe quarters always struck me as odd. As in some systems it was stated that the ships would de pressurise to vacuum in order to prevent explosive decompression when hit. This seems OK at first glance but where does the internal atmosphere go? You can't vent it to space as where would the o2 and gasses come from to re pressurise and if you 'sucked' the atmosphere into some cylinders for example you still then have a pretty explosive component even if this is buried deep in the ship somewhere.
I usually turn to Séadna Séadna for all my space horror information. Any thoughts on this one, Seadna?
 
One common pre space combat task to vacc-suit up and go to pressure safe quarters always struck me as odd. As in some systems it was stated that the ships would de pressurise to vacuum in order to prevent explosive decompression when hit. This seems OK at first glance but where does the internal atmosphere go? You can't vent it to space as where would the o2 and gasses come from to re pressurise and if you 'sucked' the atmosphere into some cylinders for example you still then have a pretty explosive component even if this is buried deep in the ship somewhere.
Err there are dozens of systems that are very bad things to puncture. However where the crew is stationed at depressurizing the hull space and storing into high PSI tanks is a lot less risky. The volume of storage tanks is far less than the evacuated crew spaces. Just one less thing to worry about in battle.

Also key in mind a theme of future tech is that the vital component get smaller and more efficient. So the amount of inhabitable volume grows to a larger proportion of the ship's volume. An Apollo Command module is a small part of the Saturn V stack even after several staging. A USS Enterprise has far more internal crew spaces. Even a working ship like the Nostromo has a lot of internal crew space.

I think the Expanse handled this part of ship design the best as you can see in the deck plans of the Roci.

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Also, explosive decompression of a volume if the ship is harmful to the occupants even if they are in vacc suits. Explosive decompression of a compressed air tank may damage the area around it, but not necessarily any worse than any other hit on the ship (imagine a hit on your Traveller LHyd tanks...).
 
The "PC lethality problem" can be limited by postulating escape pods or some other emergency mechanism. Obviously it depends on setting, tech level and ship type, but honestly, unless we're talking space pioneers going on rust buckets held together by duct tape, having some kind of escape capsule just makes sense given the lethality of space.

Orks do love that kind of thing for target practice.

‘Nids love them for the chewy prize inside the metal container.
 
Orks do love that kind of thing for target practice.

‘Nids love them for the chewy prize inside the metal container.

Yeah, but depending on setting, not every conflict needs to be "total genocidal warfare".
 
Reading alll the different systems you guys know and discuss gives me a weird perspective on my own participation in personal combat threads...:shock:
 
One common pre space combat task to vacc-suit up and go to pressure safe quarters always struck me as odd. As in some systems it was stated that the ships would de pressurise to vacuum in order to prevent explosive decompression when hit. This seems OK at first glance but where does the internal atmosphere go? You can't vent it to space as where would the o2 and gasses come from to re pressurise and if you 'sucked' the atmosphere into some cylinders for example you still then have a pretty explosive component even if this is buried deep in the ship somewhere.

You can probably minimize the target size of your oxygen supply by compressing it but yeah, then you lose it all in one hit. I think compartmentalization is important. You still want to suit up and strap in. Holes happen and if you're lucky enough to not be part of the hole you might want a sealed suit with an oxygen supply. I generally go with crew uniforms that convert into an emergency space suit by pulling a hood and gloves out of the collar and cuffs.
 
You can probably minimize the target size of your oxygen supply by compressing it but yeah, then you lose it all in one hit. I think compartmentalization is important. You still want to suit up and strap in. Holes happen and if you're lucky enough to not be part of the hole you might want a sealed suit with an oxygen supply. I generally go with crew uniforms that convert into an emergency space suit by pulling a hood and gloves out of the collar and cuffs.
With each compartment being capable of individual pressurization (pretty much a mandatory concept) you can just depressurize into storage in each compartment, not necessarily into a central point. For instance, a typical luxury stateroom from Traveller (3mx4.5mx3m pressurized space, or 40.5m^3) would compress down into a relatively small 1m^3 at 40.5 atmospheres (4102 kPa), which is barely above the "low pressure" range of gas compression (~34 atm). Then you could depressurize by compartment as well, which might be useful for certain boarding actions.
 
I usually turn to Séadna Séadna for all my space horror information. Any thoughts on this one, Seadna?
For maximum efficiency of volume, the air would probably be seperated* into oxygen and nitrogen and then stored in compressed form as liquids or Bose-Einstein like states. In this form the atmosphere required for a human crew could be stored in a volume ten or so thousand times smaller than when they're being used for breathing. So minimal risk of being hit.

The technology to do this is well below what's on the Nostromo say, so it's not super-tech or anything. Same goes for the tech to re-expand it.

*It takes different tech to compress oxygen and nitrogen

Regarding the actual thread I find ALIEN and MongTrav's space combat rules plus standard drama you can rip from stuff like the Expanse always keeps players engaged. Both, though especially Alien, are lethal enough to strongly discourage it. Especially use hits to vital locations to encourage space walks or similar from the crew for mid-fight repairs.

I always try to present it in a very tense possible TPK way like the Expanse. It's a big part of the appeal of Hard SciFi.
 
You can probably minimize the target size of your oxygen supply by compressing it but yeah, then you lose it all in one hit. I think compartmentalization is important. You still want to suit up and strap in. Holes happen and if you're lucky enough to not be part of the hole you might want a sealed suit with an oxygen supply. I generally go with crew uniforms that convert into an emergency space suit by pulling a hood and gloves out of the collar and cuffs.
If you want a reason to NOT decompress before combat, consider what removing the air does to the electronics. If they're normally within an atmosphere, they're almost certainly designed with using it for cooling as a feature - it's just too convenient not to. So if you decompress for combat, all the electronics that were being at least partially cooled via air convection now have to be completely cooled by different systems. That means special cooling systems involving gas or liquid pumps and/or fairly heavy copper/aluminium heat sinks and pipes and so on. Easier to just leave the air in.
 
If you want a reason to NOT decompress before combat, consider what removing the air does to the electronics. If they're normally within an atmosphere, they're almost certainly designed with using it for cooling as a feature - it's just too convenient not to. So if you decompress for combat, all the electronics that were being at least partially cooled via air convection now have to be completely cooled by different systems. That means special cooling systems involving gas or liquid pumps and/or fairly heavy copper/aluminium heat sinks and pipes and so on. Easier to just leave the air in.
But if you're operating under the assumption that it MIGHT be exposed to hard vacuum, it would be better to have the redundancy of enabling it to operate in that capacity rather than have to replace all the electronics in a given compartment in the event that it IS exposed. And cooling considerations can be discounted by decreasing the current; below a certain density (depending on the materials being used) the electron heat transfer is significantly reduced (making a fine justification for those huge Traveller computers, incidentally, although it doesn't require the level of increase they represent).
 
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I only just realised how little of the ship is actually engine and fuel.
Well that because it has an ISP of around 1,100,000.

Here the breakdown


As far as this part of the thread goes this is the relevant section.


The 250 ton Rocinante needs to first be filled with 30.75 tons of fusion fuel. A 1:2 mix of Deuterium (205kg/m^3) and Helium-3 (59kg/m^3; it won't freeze) has an average density of 107.6kg/m^3, so this amount of fuel occupies 285m^3. It represents about 4.9% of the spaceship’s 12x12x40 m internal volume.

And now the ‘boost’ mode. 5g of acceleration while the spaceships gets lighter as propellant is being expended means that thrust decreases and exhaust velocity increases gradually over the course of the engine burn. The propellant load can to be solved iteratively... on a spreadsheet.

Using 0.25 ton steps for water loaded onto the Rocinante, it can be worked out that an initial mass of 352 tons is required. This represents an additional 57 tons of water and 17.25 tons of fuel.

The full load is therefore 57 tons of water in 57m^3, and 48 tons of fusion fuel in 446m^3. Together, they fill up 8.7% of the Rocinante’s internal volume.

The thrust level during the acceleration to 1800km/s varies between 13.77MN and 17.27MN. It takes just over 10 hours to use up all the water.

Boosting to 12g would require that this thrust be increased further, between 33.05MN and 41.44MN. However, it could only be sustained for 106 minutes, until 751km/s is reached.

In ‘cruise’ mode and with no water loaded, the Rocinante would have 3320km/s of deltaV and can cross the distance between Earth and Saturn in 10 to 12 days at any time of the year.

At 12g, it can sprint out to a distance of 21.2 thousand kilometres in about 10 minutes, and 0.76 million kilometres in an hour.

The big problem as noted in is the heat generated. The writer has an elegant solution to this although the books and show handwaves it away.
 
Well that because it has an ISP of around 1,100,000.

Here the breakdown


As far as this part of the thread goes this is the relevant section.




The big problem as noted in is the heat generated. The writer has an elegant solution to this although the books and show handwaves it away.
I've always liked that description, and while it goes a long way to defining the technology, unfortunately the visuals don't support that interpretation. There's multiple scenes were the Razorback and Roci are unevenly aligned with the Razor further forward during cruising, which would negatively impact the magnetic bottling of the Roci right at its reactor line in that version.

Additionally, the minimum safe distance from ANY structure or other ship would be measured in thousands of km (per normal Torchship concepts, also on AR) and there's lots of times when ships are seen boosting away from a near station or other ship without regard for their "downrange" threat. The showrunners have a perfectly reasonable reason for having them in, they provide great visuals and are critical for the graphical storytelling, but with those considerations we're left with the knowledge that the Epstein drive is really just a slightly more explained version of the drives in Babylon 5; to which I mean just sci-fi handwavium.
 
If you want a reason to NOT decompress before combat, consider what removing the air does to the electronics. If they're normally within an atmosphere, they're almost certainly designed with using it for cooling as a feature - it's just too convenient not to. So if you decompress for combat, all the electronics that were being at least partially cooled via air convection now have to be completely cooled by different systems. That means special cooling systems involving gas or liquid pumps and/or fairly heavy copper/aluminium heat sinks and pipes and so on. Easier to just leave the air in.
And now you know why Traveller computers are so big... :-)
 
But why do they use reel to reel tape drives?

I saw Captain America The Winter Soldier with a trio of computer security guys. They thought Arnim Zola was pretty funny.
 
But why do they use reel to reel tape drives?

I saw Captain America The Winter Soldier with a trio of computer security guys. They thought Arnim Zola was pretty funny.

Eh, and no doubt the computer security guys from forty years from now will point and laugh at today's technology.
 
It was the idea that you could store a human mind on a system with less power than a flip phone that had them going.
 
It was the idea that you could store a human mind on a system with less power than a flip phone that had them going.

They may die laughing at the adventure in Feng Shui 2’s rulebook, where we learn a 90s zip drive is just the right size to hold a mind.
 
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