Pokey Starships?

[Trebuchet]

Has anyone looked closely at how incredibly (and absurdly) slow the spacecraft in Star Hero and its supplements actually are. Here are a few examples:

 

Merchant Ship (SH) 60" x4 NCM, SPD 3 = 432 kph, or 268 mph. World War Two propeller driven aircraft were almost twice as fast.

 

Fighter (SH) 30" X4 NCM, SPD 4 = 288 kph, or 178 mph. Production sports cars go faster.

 

Star Ravager (TUV) 30" x 32 NCM, SPD 3 = 1728 kph, or 1073 mph. It would take the Star Ravager over 9 days to travel the 384400 kilometers from the Earth to the moon, or three times as long as an Apollo spacecraft hauling a Lunar Lander back in the early 1970's.

 

What's wrong with this picture? The small starship I designed for an upcoming Champions adventure can hit a full third of light speed using Megascaled movement. But even its "atmospheric maneuvering" drive can punch it up to 18000 kph, which required 30" of Flight X250 NCM, SPD 4.

 

Somehow it just doesn't feel much like Star Wars when a guy in a P-51 Mustang can blow the doors off Darth Vader's Tie Fighter.

[tgrandjean]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Well, look at the old dogfight rules.

That should give you a hint.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Lucas expressly disallowed propellor driven aircraft of any kind in any of the Star Wars movies because he was afraid their blatant superiority would take away from the movie magic of antigrav vehicles.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I think the implication is that the ships use the acceleration rules.

 

Granted, hero system vehicle rules/stats suck.

[Talon]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

The rules aren't terrible, but not much attention was paid to those stats in Star Hero other than for comparison purposes (ship A is faster/slower than ship . It's been a goal of mine to actually do some straightforward ship to ship combat playtesting to come up with some coherent suggestions...someday, someday.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Well, yeah, comparison wise, it works. It just means any actual ship-to-ship combat has to be more or less finessed without following rules precisely.

 

Oh, and the missile writeups desperately need reworking. 20d6 is way too big for megaton range warheads, while any missiles past ATRI 10 should really have much further range than 1000 kilometers.

[Talon]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Yeah. I definitely feel that if you're going to list starship stats, they should mean something. Specifically: you should be able to conduct Phase by Phase combats with the ships in a balanced manner. I haven't tried it with the SH/TE ships, but I don't get the impression it would work too well.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I think the implication is that the ships use the acceleration rules.

 

Granted, hero system vehicle rules/stats suck.

I might buy that, except that Constant Acceleration is supposedly an Advantage. And one, I might add, which none of the Star Hero ships have paid for.

 

I agree that the vehicle rules are one of Hero's weakest links. It's not a big factor in Champions where vehicles are generally mere plot devices to get the heroes to the scene, but I think it would be a real pain in a pulp fiction or space opera game.

[Trebuchet]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Well, yeah, comparison wise, it works. It just means any actual ship-to-ship combat has to be more or less finessed without following rules precisely.

 

Oh, and the missile writeups desperately need reworking. 20d6 is way too big for megaton range warheads, while any missiles past ATRI 10 should really have much further range than 1000 kilometers.

IMO 20d6 is really too small for plausible megaton range nukes. A 20d6 Killing Attack won't even vaporize a tank at Ground Zero, which is something a kiloton-yield weapon is capable of. 20d6 should be the lower threshold for tactical nukes; a big megaton-range H-bomb should be 30d6 or more.

 

And since we real-world humans are now about ATRI 7 or 8 in 2004 AD and already have cruise missiles with greater range, I totally agree with your point about the missile ranges. Look at the starship missiles in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. They hit .9 C at almost 100000 Gs and have ranges of 20 or 30 million kilometers. 1000 klicks might make sense for a close-in defense missile or orbital planetary bombardment; it's woefully inadequate for combat at the types of ranges actually found in space.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I agree on the space combat missiles having way too short a range, but I also dont go to the extreme ranges you see in the Honorverse.

 

I use something closer to Traveller and GURPS

 

Small Missile Bay: RKA 8d6, Explosion (+1/2), 250 Charges (Recovers Under Limited Circumstances; requies base or tender to reload; +1/2), MegaScale (1" = 10,000 km; +1 1/4), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+1/4), Autofire (10 shots; +2) (660 Active Points); OIF Immobile (-1 1/2), Extra Time (1 Turn (Post-Segment 12), -1 1/4), Crew-Served ([3-4] people; -1/2), Limited Arc Of Fire (60 degrees; -1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4)

 

This is my version of a 50 ton missile bay, the missiles are a HEAP Warhead instead of nukes. I figure on using the defensive rollback method. especially when you have several bays firing at once

 

Light Missile Rack: RKA 6 1/2d6, Explosion (+1/2), 64 Charges (+1/2), Autofire (3 shots; +1 1/4), MegaScale (1" = 10,000 km; +1 1/4), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+1/4) (475 Active Points); OIF Immobile (-1 1/2), Custom Modifier (must have a viable target lock to fire; -1/2), Crew-Served ([3-4] people; 2 batteries with 2 crew per battery; -1/2), Can Be Missile Deflected (-1/4), Real Weapon (-1/4)

 

Standard space combat missile, can be mounted 3 to a turret.

 

The turret missile mounts a 150mm HEAP Warhead

The Bay Missile mounts a 250mm HEAP Warhead

[TheImperialKhan]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I agree that the vehicle rules are one of Hero's weakest links. It's not a big factor in Champions where vehicles are generally mere plot devices to get the heroes to the scene' date=' but I think it would be a real pain in a pulp fiction or space opera game.[/quote']

 

I definately agree with you on this. I should add though the old vehicle rules from JI worked great. I ran the big aerial dogfight from Allston's Trail of the Gold Spike and had no problems at all.

 

I think that the trouble with the current rules is not enough basic thought and too many "crunchy bits", I mean after a while they just become grit in the machinery and then everything grinds to a halt.

 

But about the starship speeds, is it possible that there was supposed to be a megascale advantage in there that they just forgot to put in?

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I use the traveller system, so ships have anywhere from 1-6G of maneuver rating/flight speed.

 

I know its outdated anymore, but I am too much of a stick in the mud to change that much I guess

]

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

IMO 20d6 is really too small for plausible megaton range nukes. A 20d6 Killing Attack won't even vaporize a tank at Ground Zero, which is something a kiloton-yield weapon is capable of. 20d6 should be the lower threshold for tactical nukes; a big megaton-range H-bomb should be 30d6 or more.

 

Um, yes it will. 20 defense leaves 50 Body, which is well over 2*19.

 

And the problem is, kiloton range nukes are established at 12d6. There is no way its that big a difference between kiloton and megaton.

 

Besides, 15d6 RKA still averages 52 Body, which isn't that far from tank vaporizing.

 

And since we real-world humans are now about ATRI 7 or 8 in 2004 AD and already have cruise missiles with greater range, I totally agree with your point about the missile ranges. Look at the starship missiles in David Weber's Honor Harrington series. They hit .9 C at almost 100000 Gs and have ranges of 20 or 30 million kilometers. 1000 klicks might make sense for a close-in defense missile or orbital planetary bombardment; it's woefully inadequate for combat at the types of ranges actually found in space.

 

Yep. I don't even wanna think about trying to stat up Weberverse type ships.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

traveller has detonation laser nukes, I dont remember how I wrote them up though, I'd probably go with a 12D6 RKA AP, maybe an autofire for the seperate beams

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Yeah, I'd go with autofire for sure. It happens quite regularly that a ship gets hit with more than one beam.

 

Thats another thing that really ought to be reworked: the point defense writeups. As they currently exist, there is a strong incentive to just detonate your missiles outside the point defense radius, since you only sacrifice a little over 3 dice of damage, and avoid the point defense gauntlet entirely.

[Koshka]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Merchant Ship (SH) 60" x4 NCM, SPD 3 = 432 kph, or 268 mph. World War Two propeller driven aircraft were almost twice as fast.

 

WWII fighters were faster, yes -- but they didn't have range. IIRC, a Messerschmidt 109 could only spend 20 minutes over Britain or it would run out of fuel on the way home. Merchant vessels don't need speed, but do need to cover long distances.

 

Besides, any merchant captain worthy of the name would engage the FTL drive (slot 2 of that MP) for long hauls.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

I use the traveller system, so ships have anywhere from 1-6G of maneuver rating/flight speed.

 

I know its outdated anymore, but I am too much of a stick in the mud to change that much I guess

]

 

Actually, Traveller's starship construction systems and combat hardly seem "outdated" to me. While Book 2 had definite issues, Book 5 rocked. Sure, they didn't have all of the "crunchy bits" of later systems (especially FFS), their simplicity allowed the creation and play of a variety of ships in a short time (compare to the steps needed in MT or FFS). And we'd be hard-pressed to create a space vehicle now that is capable of even 1 G of sustained thrust (the best we've got are ion engines that give about 1/100 that).

 

As to the "speed" of spaceships, I really believe that few people have any real grasp as to just how large the solar system is. Most people also forget about inertia, and allow "turning on a dime" and stopping almost instantly. And most people have trouble with the concepts of speed vs acceleration.

 

On p. 125 of Alien Wars, it is mentioned that the ships can attain speeds of up to 180" per turn before ways of canceling out Gs is needed. Given this guideline, it means that Alien Wars vehicles will have some difficulty keeping up with typical freeway speeds (180"/Turn=108kph=67.5mph). Of course, once they hit this cruising speed, there would be no discernable G effects, since the engines wouldn't have to be on to maintain it (in the absence of another force). Now, if you take this "speed" to be acceleration, I think what they were after was actually about 3Gs. This is generally the cutoff listed in GURPS and FFS for requiring acceleration compensation. By the way, none of these ships could achieve escape velocity as written without assuming that it's acceleration.

 

Now, I believe that the nuclear-pumped x-ray laser missiles were actually a product of Traveller: 2300 (aka 2300 and 2300AD), not Traveller as such. The missiles themselves were fitted with little stutterwarp engines. Traveller didn't need them, because TL13 lasers were effectively x-ray already.

 

JoeG

 

Now Playing: Tron OST

[megaplayboy]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

My suggestion would be to convert 1"=10km, since the nuke and a/m missiles all have that as their range increment for damage...

so a 30" speed every 3 seconds equals 100km/second or about 360,000kph...which is pretty fast for combat maneuvering.

 

there are a lot of questionable aspects to the starship writeups:

beam weapons do too little damage compared to defenses

defenses way too high compared to beam weapons

body stats sometimes blatantly ridiculous(250 BODY? really? More BODY than a planet?)

star fighters equipped with enough firepower to destroy a continent(4x a/m missiles, each doing 25d6 RKA X megascale(1"=10km))

etc

 

oh well, it's only a game, we can always change the writeups to our own tastes...

[Trebuchet]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

WWII fighters were faster' date=' yes -- but they didn't have range. IIRC, a Messerschmidt 109 could only spend 20 minutes over Britain or it would run out of fuel on the way home. Merchant vessels don't [i']need[/i] speed, but do need to cover long distances.

 

Besides, any merchant captain worthy of the name would engage the FTL drive (slot 2 of that MP) for long hauls.

That still doesn't explain the Fighter doing only 178 MPH (30" X4 NCM, SPD 4 = 288 kph, or 178 mph). That's not even fast enough to enter a stable near-Earth orbit. And does it make any sense for the aforementioned Merchant ship to be able to outrun a fighter in normal space? When was the last time you watched a tramp freighter outrun an F-14 Tomcat? Heck, or even a World War Two vintage P-38 Lightning? (Not to mention that FTL flight would be absolutely lousy for maneuvering in a star system.)

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Re: continent busting missiles- I don't doubt that at ATRI 11, such things exist, but fighters shouldn't have them by default. My inclination is to ramp down normal missile damage down to 18-20d6 for ATRI 11 antimatter weapons. Trade those points for range and better electronics.

 

As for the beam weapons, in Terran Empire, they don't seem too bad. Yeah, you need lots of hits to kill targets, but 8-12d6 AP RKA isn't anything to complain about.

 

Plasma weapons, OTOH, such badly. Too. Damn. Little. Range.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Don't get me started on the starship writeups in Terran Empire.

 

I don't own the book but a friend of mine let me take it home and read to see if I wanted to purchase it.

 

My god, those starships are unbalanced and I rarely say that about anything.

 

These things have weapons doing 8D6 to 12D6 killing. Some weapons may hit the 20D6 killing range.

 

Meanwhile they have a base defense of 20+

Armor of 20+

Ablative armor of 20+

Force Field of 20+ Multiple layers in some cases.

 

Some of the starships in TE have total defenses in excess of 100DEF!

 

How the hell do you conduct ship to ship combat when the ships simply cannot destroy one another?

 

has anyone ever tried to conduct ship to ship combat using the stats in Terran Empire?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

To get back on topic (Pokey starships and all)

 

What I like to do when I'm designing my ships is decide how fast they go in real world terms ( Kph or Kps or whatever) then go backwords and figure out how many inches per phase the ship can travel. Sure, you get ships that can move 100"+ per phase, but in many cases this is reasonable.

 

I don't like to use Megascale for normal movement. To me, Megascale movement is a good way to represent Sublight speeds. As far as I'm concerned, if it moves slower than Mach 10, I want to write it up in normal movement rules.

 

I save Megascale for Star Wars Sublight or Star Trek's Impulse.

[Metaphysician]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

Don't get me started on the starship writeups in Terran Empire.

 

I don't own the book but a friend of mine let me take it home and read to see if I wanted to purchase it.

 

My god, those starships are unbalanced and I rarely say that about anything.

 

These things have weapons doing 8D6 to 12D6 killing. Some weapons may hit the 20D6 killing range.

 

Meanwhile they have a base defense of 20+

Armor of 20+

Ablative armor of 20+

Force Field of 20+ Multiple layers in some cases.

 

Some of the starships in TE have total defenses in excess of 100DEF!

 

How the hell do you conduct ship to ship combat when the ships simply cannot destroy one another?

 

has anyone ever tried to conduct ship to ship combat using the stats in Terran Empire?

 

 

Easy: most of that defense is ablative. Hence, the first several hits knock down force fields and burn off armor. *THEN* you start inflicting damage.

 

Also, only a small fraction of the defense is Hardened, so those AP beams really cut through quickly. . .

[Trebuchet]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

To get back on topic (Pokey starships and all)

 

What I like to do when I'm designing my ships is decide how fast they go in real world terms ( Kph or Kps or whatever) then go backwords and figure out how many inches per phase the ship can travel. Sure, you get ships that can move 100"+ per phase, but in many cases this is reasonable.

 

I don't like to use Megascale for normal movement. To me, Megascale movement is a good way to represent Sublight speeds. As far as I'm concerned, if it moves slower than Mach 10, I want to write it up in normal movement rules.

 

I save Megascale for Star Wars Sublight or Star Trek's Impulse.

I'm following the same basic method for my ship design. A large NCM multiplier to represent atmospheric flight (Mach 15, in this particular case) and another slot with Megascaled movement to hit high sub-light speeds (.33 C). Tack on FTL flight (4 LY/hour) to move between systems with a Limitation "Not in gravitational field" and you get the best setrup for role-playing: A fast ship which still has to fly in normal space for several hours to get far enough from the star to enter hyperspace. (Just as a purely arbitrary number, I picked one light-hour out from the star as the "hyperspace limit") That gives plenty of time for space pirates or enemy warships to pursue the heroes' ship, but still lets the ship escape into hyperspace after the exciting chase through the asteroid belt.

[Talon]

Re: Pokey Starships?

 

A longer response.

 

First, here's the rule I suggested (and plan to use in my games) for realistic flight acceleration in Star Hero. (This is from an "Orbital Mechanics HERO" article I've shelved because most of it is just too darn complex. )

 

Limitation: Realistic Space Flight (-0).

 

This Limitation, applied to any Movement Power (usually Flight), simulates the effects of gravity and of frictionless environments (i.e., outer space). While within a gravitational field, a character or vehicle using this movement is automatically accelerated toward the gravity source each Phase (see the Gravity and Acceleration sidebar). This acceleration can be countered by accelerating in the opposite direction, but such acceleration counts against the maximum acceleration limit. Any other rules for gaining or losing altitude (such as powered dives, or the '2” for 1” of upward movement' rule on page 240 of the 5th Edition rulebook) do not apply.

 

In a frictionless environment (starting at around 50-75 miles altitude for Earth), a character or vehicle using movement with this Limitation has no upper limit (other than the speed of light) on its movement rate. Effectively, the movement power receives an infinite number of Improved Noncombat Movement adders. At these speeds, the character or vehicle has no Turn Mode (it may be able to rotate without affecting its velocity, however). Only by applying thrust in different directions can the character or vehicle turn or decelerate (See Realistic Movement on page ??? of Star Hero).

 

Movement powers bought with this Limitation should not also have the Improved Acceleration/Deceleration Advantage, except when representing very advanced technologies (as deemed appropriate by the GM) such as an inertialess drive.

 

Realistic Space Movement is a -0 Limitation – the benefits of space travel are balanced by the effects of gravity.

 

To me, this does a better job of simulating how movement works in space. To that, you add the fact that the Star Hero rule of 1G = 60" / Turn is not an accurate representation. As another playtester pointed out during the SH playtest, 1G acceleration is going to vary based on the vehicles SPD:

 

Vehicle SPD / Acceleration per Phase

1: 720”

2: 180”

3: 80”

4: 45”

5: 29”

6: 20”

7: 15”

8: 11”

9: 9”

10: 7”

11: 6”

12: 5”

 

(The formula for this is 720 / SPD^2)

 

If you assume that 1G = 60", a lot of the starship speeds make a little more sense -- even though when you translate them into actual speeds, not using any sort of realistic thrust rules, they are silly. If you use realistic thrust rules /and/ translate the speeds into actual G accelerations (for example, a SPD 3 ship goes to 80" per Phase for each 60" per Turn in the book), things get much better.