Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So as mentioned in another thread I am now/will soon be the proud owner of Quadrillions of dime store space ships.





Which means I'm writing a quick and dirty rule set for them.

I yoinked a lot from Battlefleet Gothic and 40k for the mechanics.

My basic idea is ships have 2 action points to move/shoot/launch/raise shields/do special stuff.

Ships have an armor save and a second invulnerable shield save if they raised them. But shields don't stop fighters or missiles, only energy weapons.



For weapons after much thinking and gnashing of teeth I decided to give them ranges, my hand wave being that distances are 1000s of kilometers and everyone is assumed to be using super ECMs so that once you're outside a ship's range you can still fire and the laser still travels but it's .001% off and that's enough to miss.

Otherwise the game just becomes set up/shoot/next game.

But once you're in range, should there be a roll to hit? Or should it be automatic? Or some sort of contested roll?

The next wrinkle is fighters, torpedoes and small ships. They have to be launched, they get an invulnerable save (dodging, small targets) and very short range guns. Their job is to get in close, inside shields and put the hurt on. The defense against them are your own fighters and defense turrets.

So my questions are:
How do people feel about ranges in space?
Should weapons automatically hit?
Is there a simple or elegant way to do a hit/range rules that doesn't require charts?

Wrong forum?

I think ranges are still relevant. As you say, being a fraction of a degree off target is multiplied immensely over distance. Depending a lot on what “science” you are using for your sci-fi, you can go a lot of different ways for the whys. But from a practical, game POV, I think it works well.

I’m not a fan of auto-hit. Given the choice of an active roll to hit, or an active defensive roll, I’d prefer the former. That said, if you want to have a larger scale fleet game, you need to reduce the number of rolls per interaction. If you are rolling to hit, and then an armor and a invuln save, that’s 3 rolls per shot. Boggs things down in fleet actions.

Depending on what you consider a chart. Is listing a short/medium/long range more then you want? If not, you can do a straight to-hit roll at medium, with +/- 1 for short/long respectively. If that’s more then you want, you could do something like +1 to-hit at half of the gun’s max range.

yep wrong forum, easily fixed.

Give different weapons different dice and modifiers. I.e Mega Beam is a D10, Mini Beam is a D6. To hit, you need to roll equal or below the range in inches.

Well, if i were you I would pop over to the Free Wargames Wikia and see if someone else has all ready built what you want.

If not, I would then decide how much maneuver I wanted in the game vs. shooting. The longer the weapon ranges, the less maneuver you will have, and the more movement your ships can move the more maneuver.

When it comes to shooting, contested rolls are always better. Basically it would be Detection vs ECM gear. Each ship could get a bonus or number of dice to roll. Whoever rolls higher wins. Perhaps even the better the roll over your opponent the more damage done?

What scale is this game? is it tactical, fleet, strategic?

Kilkrazy wrote:Give different weapons different dice and modifiers. I.e Mega Beam is a D10, Mini Beam is a D6. To hit, you need to roll equal or below the range in inches.

I like that idea a lot. I'd probably go with d6s and link it to the ship rather than the weapon though. But I like that idea a lot.

Easy E wrote:Well, if i were you I would pop over to the Free Wargames Wikia and see if someone else has all ready built what you want.

If not, I would then decide how much maneuver I wanted in the game vs. shooting. The longer the weapon ranges, the less maneuver you will have, and the more movement your ships can move the more maneuver.

When it comes to shooting, contested rolls are always better. Basically it would be Detection vs ECM gear. Each ship could get a bonus or number of dice to roll. Whoever rolls higher wins. Perhaps even the better the roll over your opponent the more damage done?

What scale is this game? is it tactical, fleet, strategic?

I'm thinking fleet scale since one thing I do have is a lot of ships (and more on the way). And I'm thinking something like 4'x4' board where most ships move 6" and weapon ranges are 12". There are advantages to hitting from the side and from behind as well.

Like BFG it's assumed your ship is just a microscopic point in the center of the base so that planets etc can be used as terrain.

I'm thinking also that missions are very important or everything becomes line up and shoot.

One scenario uses another 40k mechanic deep strike. Basically my logic is there are certain jump zones in every star system where ships can easily enter and leave hyperspace. So to keep control of a system you park your ships and stations there. The jumps tend to cause gravity waves so the zones are full of dust clouds and asteroids. So the defender deploys anywhere, and the attacker jumps into the center scattering 3d6. Nice and unpredicatable mission where the attacker is either trying to secure the zone or get off the board.

Another would be a rescue/recover mission with both sides trying to get the life pods/courier ship/artifact etc.

Yet another would require the attacker to make planetfall and then recover their ships.

Before you get to scenarios, let's hammer down the rules.

A 2:1 ratio is a good one for maneuver and shoot. Since this is fleet scale, that means you don;t want to mess around with individual ship stats too much. You will want to paint with a relatively broad brush.

Do you see your game more like WWII Naval in space, or something a bit more swoosh? BFG tends to be more WWII Naval in space.

The only naval game I really played was Star Fleet Battles so my first thought is NOTHING LIKE STAR FLEET BATTLES, which take all the fun of Star Trek and turns it into something less fun than doing my taxes.

Also played Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles (what a terrible generic name) and that was suitably abstract and easy

I defnitely want a game of maneuver, no something more tactical than a skirmish game, facings should matter, movement should be very important.

For shooting it goes:
Fire weapon
Roll for shields (if they're up)
Roll for armor (-1 for sides, -2 for rear)
Roll damage effect

1-2 Stunned (may only use one action next turn)
3-4 Damaged (no actions next turn, +1 future rolls)
5 Crippled (no actions next turn, +1 future rolls, reroll next turn)
6 Destroyed, place life boats
7+ Boom, all hands lost

There's a thread lower down that has some suggestions for fleet level games.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/688994.page

If facings matter, than you will need to add fire arcs tot eh weapons/ships. That keeps them from firing all around any which way.

Why would anyone have their shields down? Is it a choice? I.e. to fire you need to have shields down?

For fun, I always thought it would be fun to do a Silent Death style approach where your facing did not necessarily indicate your direction of movement.

Also, as a side note, I really, really hate AP. People use them to make resource management a thing, but I hate keeping track of them.

Give each ship thruster points each turn.

A ship moves as fast as it was moving last turn, + or - any thruster points you wish to spend.

They use X points to turn.

This means that you can reach ridiculous speeds but you need to plan ahead if you want to slow down/maneuver.

Damage charts can take out a ships ability to turn, accelerate or decelerate.

Easy E wrote:If facings matter, than you will need to add fire arcs tot eh weapons/ships. That keeps them from firing all around any which way.

Why would anyone have their shields down? Is it a choice? I.e. to fire you need to have shields down?

For fun, I always thought it would be fun to do a Silent Death style approach where your facing did not necessarily indicate your direction of movement.

Also, as a side note, I really, really hate AP. People use them to make resource management a thing, but I hate keeping track of them.

My thought was with only 2 action points it becomes a real choice, do you raise shields and shoot, move and shoot, move and launch, shoot and raise sheilds etc... Think of it like going to ground in 40k, more defence means less mobility or less offence.

My rationale is that shields must use up a lot of energy so you have to divert from somewhere.

Yes some super ships will be able to do everything at once, but they'd be rare.

=Angel= wrote:Give each ship thruster points each turn.

A ship moves as fast as it was moving last turn, + or - any thruster points you wish to spend.

They use X points to turn.

This means that you can reach ridiculous speeds but you need to plan ahead if you want to slow down/maneuver.

Damage charts can take out a ships ability to turn, accelerate or decelerate.

Basically realistic space acceleration... hmm. maybe.

Be careful. Once you start shuffling energy around you might end up at SFB EA forms.

And if you need to do it per ship, it puts a cap on how big each side can be.

If you want a little bit of the flavor, you could go with more of an order system. BFG had this with dice IIRC. You could do something simple like have each ship choose one option:

Power to shields
Power to guns
Power to engines
Damage control

So it’s not like to are ever going to have your shields down, per se. But thy might be on low power, rather then high.

If you are doing directions and facing, you could also do things like shield allocation. Balanced, double front/half back, etc.

@Easy E I thought silent death had normal movement. I do think I played a game with vectored movement before though. Interceptor?

While more realistic in terms of real physics, you need to be careful about how much reality you need in your space opera. Down that path lies David Webber novels... (Reading all the math in his battles is about as much fun as doing your physics homework)

 Nevelon wrote:

@Easy E I thought silent death had normal movement. I do think I played a game with vectored movement before though. Interceptor?

While more realistic in terms of real physics, you need to be careful about how much reality you need in your space opera. Down that path lies David Webber novels... (Reading all the math in his battles is about as much fun as doing your physics homework)

Could be. it has been a LONG time since I played it once or twice.

To be honest, BFG is a good system to start from, and it has basically everything you mentioned.