Looking for starship design and combat rules you can adapt to BRP?

[The Tweaker]

Originally Posted by soltakss

I've always wanted to treat Starship Combat very simply.

(...)

I'd treat Starship combat the same as normal combat.

Starships have locations, AP and HP. They have weapons that do damage. They have forcefields that absorb damage.

(...)

But, when it comes down to it, you have someone with 60% Pilot Starship, someone with 55% Starship Blaster, a Blaster doing 1D10 damage and a Starship with 6 point Hull and 10 HP in every location. The opponent can't dodge a Blaster but can dodge a Quantum Torpedo using his Pilot Starship. Some Starships might have modifiers, one might be Manouverable and give +20% to Pilot Starship for dodges, another might be Tough and have extra APs, another might have resealable skin or whatever.

Anything a lot more complicated than that is going way too far, in my opinion.

I know most gamers like to have specialized systems for doing this kind of things, but - more or less - that's how I was planning doing it. Call it parallel thinking.

I'd probably steal some critical hit tables from other games, but that's about it.

[Charles Green]

There will be vehicle design and combat rules in Fractured Hopes.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Charles Green

There will be vehicle design and combat rules in Fractured Hopes.

My apologies if you mentioned this elsewhere, but could you tell us what that is?

[Charles Green]

Fractured Hopes is a space fantasy book for BRP. It's in the early stages of composition, and should be ready some time in 2008.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I think you are right. But one thing you forgot IMO: sensors. To "see" another ship or not is a matter of life and death in some space opera settings. This could be modelled like spot hidden skill or on the resistance table. (eg. sensor power 23 vs. ECM 20 or so)

Sure, there are a lot of things I didn't include. Sensors are one of them.

It's easily covered by having a Sensors skill and resolving against a Stealth skill using whatever method is best.

Crew Quality could gives a boost/penalty to certain activities, individual crew members could have skills to use (The Communications Officer uses Sensors, the Weapons Officer uses Blaster, the Engineer controls Manouver, the Medical Officer controls Life Support and so on), High-Tech equipment could give boosts to certain skills as would the presence of AIs, Alien technology could give boosts as well.

You can make it as complicated as you want, to cover many eventualities, but it basically boils down to "Shoot, Dodge, Absorb Hit".

Ship design is more complicated. I'd treat ships as PCs, whether they are alive/intelligent or not. So, give ships SIZ, CON, INT (?), DEX, POW (?). I'm not sure if they need STR or CHA, but they might be useful, STR might indicate how much cargo a ship can carry. You could have a series of templates showing typical ships of certain classes and base your ship design on one of those or make up a new one. AP/HP might be called Hull Quality/Spaceworthiness, but you'd need something like this. Weapons, propulsion systems, power sources, battery stores, cargo holds, shuttlecraft and so on need to be included as well, so you'd need some way of limiting the number of things you can include in a ship, possibly based on SIZ. You'd need rules or guidelines on how to incorporate extra systems, alien technology, system upgrades and so on. But, it is easy enough to do and keeps well within the BRP ethos.

I'd hope to see something similar in any BRP SciFi/Space System.

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by soltakss

You can make it as complicated as you want, to cover many eventualities, but it basically boils down to "Shoot, Dodge, Absorb Hit"...

Only at such an abstract level that you lose any setting specific colour from including starship combat in the first place: in which case, why bother?

Star Trek space battles involve large damage control crews rushing about the ship, and critical command decisions about angling deflectors (or shields) in particular directions, energy allocation and involve primarily beam weapons: it feels rather like naval warfare of the late nineteenth century. Babylon 5 space combat on the other hand has predominantly projectile based weaponry (with preposterously short ranges, but that's a separate topic), and no forcefields / shields (on earthforce ships at least), plus small fighter craft providing screens for the larger capital ships: it feels like WWII mixed naval and air engagements (BSG goes even further and explicitly models Naval aircraft carriers directly).

If it's worth the effort of including Starship design and Combat in the game with rules, then those rule sshould surely capture the distinctive features of the Starships in the setting that make them interesting? One of (few) things they got right in the Serenity RPG was the extent to which Ships have personalities. But the same rules would be entirely inappropriate for say a B5 game, where ships are treated as technological tools. And rules that would work for B5 or Serenity would struggle to represent starships from Blake's 7 or Dune.

Starships need a bespoke solution, tied to the setting IMO: a BRP Space book would need, as the core book does with "powers", to provide several different but easily adaptable example systems that all build on the core BRP systems but address some of the different archetypes of Starships from SF. A Star wars/Babylon 5/BSG "small fighters, dog fighting combat" type setting, a Star Trek / Honour Harrington "navies of sail in Space" feel, a CJ Cherryh-esque "Jump-riders and FTL distortion universe", a Niven / Reynold's style NOT FTL universe and maybe a Dune style "starships never fight" set up should cover it...

So, who wants to write it then?

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[soltakss]

Absolutely.

One setting's mile-long-starship is not the same as another's.

You wouldn't want the same things on every starship in every game. Each would have different systems, different technology and so on.

But, the core rules should be the same for everything.

So, you'd have a rule for Hull Quality (AP) and another rule for Shields. Shields could be by location or cover the whole ship. They'd have energy costs and would absorb damage. Shields in Star Trek are not the same as Shields in other systems (can't think of one, off-hand, but I've seen one film/series where shields work until they break and another where shields protect a bit and let a bit through). You'd reflect this with rules for different types of shields.

Similarly, a good well-equipped crew will increase your damage control chance, this would apply in most settings. Star Trek uses big Starships with large crews, but other settings have much smaller crews but other ways of handling damage control. Look at Starship Troopers - space combat is deadly in that with chunks getting blown off spaceships left, right and centre, so damage control wouldn't be as important.

So, yes, rules would be added for certain eventualities and there will be a lot of them. But, people will still say "What about the so-and-so spaceships in such-and-such file/series? The rules don't cover Black-Hole_Imploder-Missiles." or whatever.

I'd like to see good BRP Spaceship rules.

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by soltakss

...I'd like to see good BRP Spaceship rules.

I think everybody posting in the thread would - at one point in one of the BRP yahoo groups we kicked several ideas around for a while as well IIRC.

I must dig out my notes on adapting the RQIII ship rules - they weren't particularly brilliant but they'd be a start...

Nick Middleton

[Enpeze]

I think you could create adequate space combat rules if you have first a look at the vehicle combat rules of CoC. Instead of cars, use some smaller space ship designs instead. Throw in space weapon systems, shields, sensors and additional crew skills. (every member of a crew - PCs - should be occupied in space combat with some tasks).
Just an idea...

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I think you could create adequate space combat rules if you have first a look at the vehicle combat rules of CoC. Instead of cars, use some smaller space ship designs instead. Throw in space weapon systems, shields, sensors and additional crew skills. (every member of a crew - PCs - should be occupied in space combat with some tasks).
Just an idea...

It would be a start - but bear in mind that Call of Cthulhu doesn't actually have vehicle combat rules, it has car chase rules. IIRC Jason's included a more generic version in the new book for "vehicle" based pursuits. I'll have a look in my copy of the playtest files when I get a chance...

Cheers,

Nick Middleton.