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 warboss wrote:
I've been rewatching the Expanse (highly recommend it for those who haven't seen it already!) and my vector space combat wargame itch started acting up again. I was going to post a new thread until I vaguely remembered asking the same thing years ago so here I am necro'ing an old thread to periodically ask the same thing.

Have any of the more recent space combat games like Star Wars Armada or Dropfleet Commander used vector based movement? Any other new major games or indie titles use it that have come out in the intervening years? Just curious yet again!

No to both - though Armadas movement system is... different and is almost vector-like if you squint. In reality, I think its meant to simulate the idea of momentum, as large ships take longer to change direction, etc.and theres almost an element of built in "drift" to how the ships actually end up being positioned from turn to turn, but that kinda just works out to being newtonian vector movement with extra steps.

Sadly, there has been very little activity in the space battle (but especially Capital ship scale) work in the past few years.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 warboss wrote:
I've been rewatching the Expanse (highly recommend it for those who haven't seen it already!) and my vector space combat wargame itch started acting up again. I was going to post a new thread until I vaguely remembered asking the same thing years ago so here I am necro'ing an old thread to periodically ask the same thing.

Have any of the more recent space combat games like Star Wars Armada or Dropfleet Commander used vector based movement? Any other new major games or indie titles use it that have come out in the intervening years? Just curious yet again!

No to both - though Armadas movement system is... different and is almost vector-like if you squint. In reality, I think its meant to simulate the idea of momentum, as large ships take longer to change direction, etc.and theres almost an element of built in "drift" to how the ships actually end up being positioned from turn to turn, but that kinda just works out to being newtonian vector movement with extra steps.

Thanks. I took a look at a youtube video last night to check it out and it does seem like an interesting take with the snaking rod templates and I do like having to preplan movements via stacking actions for larger ships (assuming that I understood that correctly in that you initially place more than one but can only activate one per turn). I don't recall ever playing preplanned for several turns actions in a space game personally before (my only real experience with it was via orders in historical games) and am curious as to how that "feels" in actual play. I don't know if that would make big ships feel too lumbering in tabletop play despite being authentic to the cinematic feel.


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 Easy E wrote:
Sadly, there has been very little activity in the space battle (but especially Capital ship scale) work in the past few years.

It seems like the genre goes in fits and spurts. For the longest time, there were only a few games in the genre that mainly quietly chugged along with a 50/50 mix of venerable legacy games (like Full Thrust and SFB) interspersed with games with only a couple years of history like Firestorm Armada... and then about five years ago there was a big bang in the genre. I don't know if that was as a result of the massive success of x-wing during its initial first years but the change was very noticeable. Firestorm Armada got a new edition, Dropfleet came out, Halo Fleet was released, BSG got a fighter game, X-wing got a new edition, etc. And that's not including whatever came out via crowdfunding that I may not be aware of. Maybe something will re-ignite the genre in another couple of years. After all, one of those franchises put it best in that "all of this has happened before. and all of this will happen again".

Yeah, so in Armada each ship has a number of command dials associated with it, a small ship might have 1 a larger ship 2, 3, etc. The command dial has 4 actions associated with it:

-Navigate - Increase/Decrease speed by 1 (i.e. speed up or slow down, otherwise your movement rate remains constant at whatever speed you started at from turn to turn) or increase the yaw value of 1 joint by 1 for the current maneuver (this allows you to make tighter maneuvers than you would be able to do normally).

-Squadron - Activate a number of squadrons up to your ships squadron value (some ships are just 1 or 2, carrier type ships might have 3, 4 or 5, etc.) - you can move and attack with those squadrons immediately. If you don't use a squadron command, you are limited to either moving OR attacking with each of your squadrons during the squadron phase.

-Repair - Gain a number of engineering points equal to the ships engineering value, the points are spent on repairs, such as moving a shield point from 1 hull zone to another, recovering a shield lost earlier in the game, or discarding a damage card dealt to the hull.

-Concentrate Fire - Add an additional die to the attack pool.

At the start of the game you set the dials and place them in a stack for each ship (i.e. individual stacks per ship, not 1 big stack).

During the ship phase, when you activate a ship you reveal the top dial in that ships stack and can choose to resolve the effect indicated or you can "bank" it and take a corresponding command token which lets you resolve a lesser version of the effect in a later turn (ex - a repair command token gives you a number of engineering points equal to HALF (rounding up) of the ships engineering value, a navigate token lets you adjust speed but not yaw, a concentrate fire token lets you reroll 1 die instead of adding a die, a squadron token lets you activate 1 squadron to move and attack instead of a number equal to your squdron value, etc.). Then, during the command phase, you assign a new command to the revealed dial (it can be the same as the command you just resolved if you want), and then place that dial at the bottom of its respective stack.

For a small ship with command 1 like a CR90, this means you are able to operate fully reactively, as you are basically resolving that command dial immediately after you set it. For a larger ship with command 3 like an Imperial Star Destroyer, you need to think a few turns ahead and try to forecast your needs in terms of what you need to do - this is aided by your ability to bank tokens, as you can usually get away with banking a couple tokens in your first couple turns instead of resolving them immediately.

This does produce the feeling that larger vessels are "lumbering" - principally due to the nature of the navigate command, as that means your ships can't stop, accelerate, or change direction on a dime. I like to imagine it as though you're giving the order to maneuver now, and then having to wait as your engines and maneuvering thrusters slowly overcome your existing momentum to bring you to a new heading or change your speed. BUT, that being said, even if you forecast your command needs incorrectly, your ship always still gets to move and attack during its activation - your movements will be constrained to your current speed setting and the range of yaw limited to the ships movement profile, and your attacks for larger ships will only be marginally less effective (when you're chucking 12 dice on your attacks baseline, 1 extra die doesn't necessarily change much, a smaller ship that only has a baseline attack of 2 die might feel a bit differently). You should consider the commands less about what you're able to do and more about what you're able to do efficiently/optimally. Being able to operate more efficiently than your opponent does will make a difference, but it won't necessarily dictate the outcome in and of itself.

With regards to the maneuver template, the snaking nature of it is a bit unintuitive as you like to imagine that as the path that the ship travels, but in practice when you actually place the ship at its end location you find that your maneuvers don't really correspond to that and your ship is moving in a different manner alltogether. An image is worth a thousand words:

chaos0xomega wrote:

During the ship phase, when you activate a ship you reveal the top dial in that ships stack and can choose to resolve the effect indicated or you can "bank" it and take a corresponding command token which lets you resolve a lesser version of the effect in a later turn (ex - a repair command token gives you a number of engineering points equal to HALF (rounding up) of the ships engineering value, a navigate token lets you adjust speed but not yaw, a concentrate fire token lets you reroll 1 die instead of adding a die, a squadron token lets you activate 1 squadron to move and attack instead of a number equal to your squdron value, etc.). Then, during the command phase, you assign a new command to the revealed dial (it can be the same as the command you just resolved if you want), and then place that dial at the bottom of its respective stack.

That sounds reasonable and at least lets a player not feel like a turn's worth of commands was completely wasted. So each command on the dial has a specific lesser command token that you bank for later if not used as opposed to converting them all to a generic universal "command token" that can be later redeemed for any effect, correct? I'm 99% sure given your post but figured I'd ask just in case. I actually like that system as it represents not just the physical lumbering nature of a gigantic ship but also the more complicated chain of command and delays potentially associated with that.

that being said, even if you forecast your command needs incorrectly, your ship always still gets to move and attack during its activation - your movements will be constrained to your current speed setting and the range of yaw limited to the ships movement profile, and your attacks for larger ships will only be marginally less effective (when you're chucking 12 dice on your attacks baseline, 1 extra die doesn't necessarily change much, a smaller ship that only has a baseline attack of 2 die might feel a bit differently). You should consider the commands less about what you're able to do and more about what you're able to do efficiently/optimally. Being able to operate more efficiently than your opponent does will make a difference, but it won't necessarily dictate the outcome in and of itself.

Another good point... and something I like potentially. How many "setup" turns does a game typically have with a normal map size in Armada before you're reliably in the thick of combat?

With regards to the maneuver template, the snaking nature of it is a bit unintuitive as you like to imagine that as the path that the ship travels, but in practice when you actually place the ship at its end location you find that your maneuvers don't really correspond to that and your ship is moving in a different manner alltogether. An image is worth a thousand words:

This part I did actually notice myself yesterday when watching the video explaining movement. The narrator showed the ship faux "sliding" along the ruler before locking it into it's correct final place and I realized that the indicated turns didn't really mesh well with the final effect/position. With movement, you don't preplan the exact sequence of turns but rather just the speed and potentially the navigate command to further fine tune it which then limit your actual on the spot turn options based on your ship card, correct? I'm a bit less enthusiastic about that part but I fully admit that preplanning the exact sequence of multiple moves might bog down the game too much. Can you premeasure with the stick or do you have to decide all the twists and turns before placing it down on the table?

Ultimately, if I were to come up with my own system (let's call it Jovian Lightning's Strike Chronicles 3rd edition in honor of Albertorius) I'd still prefer real vectors but I'd in theory like to add the preplanning as well. I think the combo would necessarily limit the model count of the potential ruleset due to complexity though.

edit: I downloaded the armada rules off of the FFG website. It looks like their might be a lighter demo and more complex full sets just flipping quickly through the pdfs.

if you can find it GDWs "Battle Rider" is reasonably decent (it makes the mistake of assuming instantaneous acceleration though to simplify things)

fleet combat, works reasonably well with minimal paper records, object has a present position and a "next position" and a previous position marker to show the movement vector - you apply thrust to change the "next position" marker

its purely 2D though, but has a few other quite nice ideas, like the admirals command rating governing the number of ships able to coordinate as a single "thing", has sensor ghosts etc by default - you know there is something but not what and have to take care to determine if you have spotted everything in an object etc

few downsides - the counters really need to be off map (they have the stats on the back) mostly

leopard wrote:
if you can find it GDWs "Battle Rider" is reasonably decent (it makes the mistake of assuming instantaneous acceleration though to simplify things)

fleet combat, works reasonably well with minimal paper records, object has a present position and a "next position" and a previous position marker to show the movement vector - you apply thrust to change the "next position" marker

its purely 2D though, but has a few other quite nice ideas, like the admirals command rating governing the number of ships able to coordinate as a single "thing", has sensor ghosts etc by default - you know there is something but not what and have to take care to determine if you have spotted everything in an object etc

few downsides - the counters really need to be off map (they have the stats on the back) mostly

While I'm not familiar with it (even by name surprisingly), I'll take a look so thanks for mentioning it. I like that it has sensor ghosts as well; a friend who was modifying Full Thrust years ago added them in (along with unknown contacts until you sensor locked) and it definitely added to the game not knowing if that bogey heading towards you was a ghost, a light corvette, or a giant battleship.

The previously mentioned Jovian Chronicles used a similar system where you have your miniature and then a token on the board that indicates your next turn's position if you don't apply any thrust. It works for for ship skirmish model counts but the double number of items on the table does clutter up the map more quickly than you think. Regardless, I do find it personally the most intuitive though. Alternatively, if you're using a hex grid, the game also had a less intuitive +/- XYZ system for 2D (not 3D as the Z axis would imply) recording thrust. While it most definitely works, it suffered a bit from being unintuitive (i.e. the Z axis being on the same plane as XY) though you do quickly get used to it. Additionally, the amounts you record don't immediately at a glance indicate where you'll end up similar to the snaking sticks of Armada and how the turns you make may mislead you in regards to your exact final position/heading.

yes the shesor ghost stuff was good, you had a number of blips basically, each included a "sensor ghost" or whatever, forget the name, this had a stat line - you detected it and knew there was nothing further in the blip

you detected the easiest thing to detect first, basically you worked out your positive modifiers, drew a card to get the result then the defender worked out if you saw anything and revealed it if you did

ahh yes cards, another good thing. the game was 2d6 based, however doing say seven or eight things needing 2d6 was awkward, so you have a deck of cards with the results on and deal that, they showed a success or fail, for normal, elite and green crews, had a d6 number for things that wanted a d6 roll. made multiple actions fast

also used a "draw token from a bag" system for critical damage, since counters like "fire control out" accumulated you gradually got more and more chance a hit would be a reactor detonation etc

there is also Brilliant Lances which was more complex in the same Traveller universe, aimed more for smaller numbers of ships

 warboss wrote:
So each command on the dial has a specific lesser command token that you bank for later if not used as opposed to converting them all to a generic universal "command token" that can be later redeemed for any effect, correct?

Correct, it's a lesser token correlating to a specific command rather than a generic universal token.

How many "setup" turns does a game typically have with a normal map size in Armada before you're reliably in the thick of combat?

Depends on scenario, lists, and opponents, but I'd say most games you're in it round 2.

With movement, you don't preplan the exact sequence of turns but rather just the speed and potentially the navigate command to further fine tune it which then limit your actual on the spot turn options based on your ship card, correct?

Yeah. If your ship starts the game at spd 2 then you're at spd 2 until you use a command dial to change it. You aren't stuck moving straight but your maneuvers are limited to what's allowed by your ship card, whereas the command dial let's you exceed it. Been a while since I played byt I believe you're allowed to premature your moves before committing to it.

edit: I downloaded the armada rules off of the FFG website. It looks like their might be a lighter demo and more complex full sets just flipping quickly through the pdfs.

Yeah the rules come in a quick start guide and a rules reference, the quick start gets you playing, the rules reference covers all the corner cases and specifics of rules interaction

Funny thing is the OP is literally asking for the classic B5 wars skirmish game. we still play it because it has been converted into just about every scifi setting-wing commander, battlestar galactica, star wars, star trek etc... the latter we use star trek attack wing and star wars armada ships for minis. as long as you can find minis all the rules and such are free.

http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/

 aphyon wrote:
Funny thing is the OP is literally asking for the classic B5 wars skirmish game. we still play it because it has been converted into just about every scifi setting-wing commander, battlestar galactica, star wars, star trek etc... the latter we use star trek attack wing and star wars armada ships for minis. as long as you can find minis all the rules and such are free.

http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/

Thanks for the link as I wasn't aware of that site. I actually played B5 Wars back in the day (still regret selling my Poseidon super carrier!) but we admittedly quickly moved to Fleet Action once that became available due to the increased model count. I don't recall it being actual vector based but I'll take a look at the rules there.

edit: Yeah, it's kind of a simulated hex map momentum conserved system. You keep your speed but when you turn your movement turns with you; they do fudge it a bit by making turning costs proportional to the speed to simulate some of the thrust changes though. Regardless, thanks again for the resource!

There is also the matter of mass, you can roll, pivot and slip ships with applied thrust, but turning or rather turning to fast related to velocity can damage a ships primary structure.

I have a copy of Starship! by Flagship Games, which is a 3-D ship combat game, where you can create any ships you can imagine.

It includes a basic “vector” system based on Velocity and Thrust, with those interacting with the Ship’s Stress Number to determine what turns might cause damage.

They also talk about ease of play and playability, and “eliminates complicated mathematics” around movement, no plotting, etc. Movement rules are 5 pages with lots of white space.

BGG summary and one review. I think this has been waaay out of print for some time. There is not even a publication date on the version I have (same as BGG version)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30578/starship-3d-miniature-space-combat

Thanks! I'll take a look tonight. It looks like there is a pdf version from 2019 that from the preview just looks like a homemade (due to some pages slightly askew) scan of the phsyical book's pages so likely is the same thing and not necessarily a new edition. The preview at the link has the first ten pages if you'd like to double check that they're the same.

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/296736/Starship-3D-Miniature-Space-Combat

That’s the one! Nice find! Somehow my google-fu failed me there.

Holy thread necromancy Batman. Glad I found this when it was relatively current.

Just a couple things.
1. I love Armada, and the weird movement template and such actually makes it feel a LOT like the battles in Star Wars, specifically Return of the Jedi. I have had some great games with amazing cinematic feel. That said, it is Star Wars, so real vector movement is not really it's think.
2. Check out Renegade Legion Leviathans. I never played any of the other Renegade Legion games, but Leviathan was the capital ship game. Fighters were used in Squadrons, Flights, and Wings. Ship were even multi-hex and it had vector movement and turn modes. While not 3D, you could roll your ship too. I was working out some updated rules, but the project kind of petered out.

Attack Vector is still about the most realistic space combat game, but it pretty hard core. I am hoping someone might make an Expanse based ship game, but I have not hear anything.
Thanks,
Duncan

At the legitimate risk of sounding like Goldilocks, I've looked at Attack Vector and it was a bit too hard core for me as well. I too was hoping for some news in this thread's topic due to a rewatch of the first three seasons of the Expanse.

Some more news over the past couple days just came out from Corvus Belli. Over on the Beasts of War/OnTableTop youtube channel, they announced they're coming out with a vector based ship combat game sometime in the future with another company. No concrete info or previews though.

Thats not particularly new, they announced thatmonths ago (maybe even last year) and did a few very small teasers/previews already.

Acheron's Fall (the games title) was initially described as a "board game" but its unclear if that was a mistranslation.Supposed to be a d12 system, 1-3 ships per side.