Mass Starship Combat

[Ereinion]

I'm working on a sci-fi setting and I'm trying to come up with some rules for Mass combat in space. I want the PC's to be able to control large numbers of ships without tracking them individually. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas

[Fox1]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

I'm working on a sci-fi setting and I'm trying to come up with some rules for Mass combat in space. I want the PC's to be able to control large numbers of ships without tracking them individually. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas

 

If you not tracking the ships individually, the players aren't controlling them.

 

So settle it with opposed skill rolls. Add in modifiers for who has the better ships, etc.

[austenandrews]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

Use the Mass Combat rules for characters, only with ships.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

have each group of ships function as 1 ship for purposes of combat, i know OnyxClaw has good ideas for a starship combat system that would be more realistic, not sure if they'd scale up well

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

I have been meaning to propose an idea to work on some upgrades/updates to the Starship combat rules... now that Traveller Hero is out

 

I wrote a revised set of damage/critical hit tables for GURPS space that appeared in Pyramid online... I would definately be up for working on something for Star Hero

 

heres what I have directly handy for reference material that I can pull ideas from

 

all 4 current versions of traveller and Gurps Traveller/Space

Star Hero/TUV

Silent Death

Spacemaster/Starstrike

Battlefleet Gothic

Full Thrust/More Thrust and both fleet books

Babylon 5 Wars[both editions]

Brilliant Lances/Battlerider

BattleSpace/Aerotech

Shatterzone

Star Wars[D6]

 

if were going to do something with fleet actions, I think maybe we should look at something quick and brutal, to keep things from bogging down too much

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

Starfire is probably the best fast and brutal one that I've played. Avoid the more esoteric, high-TL systems and blast away. You could combine multiple ships into one big combined stat line if you want, or just have each ship represent the stats of several.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

The problem with not tracking ships is that the more abstract you get the less room there is for tactics, and therefore less room for the players to make decisions that influence the outcome. You could maybe get some mileage by tracking squadrons instead of ships similar to the way the FH mass combat rules track units instead of individuals.

 

My suggestion is to just grab some simple SF miniatures rules and adapt them to your universe. My recomendation is Full Thrust - plays very fast once you've got the ships built (kinda like Hero ) and is easily adaptable to your own setting. It can do fighters/no fighters, big ships/little ships, missiles/phasers/whatever. It's also fairly quick to learn. (If you've seen the ship combat rules in the Babylon 5 RPG and in the Traveller Power Projection books, they're based on Full Thrust.)

 

And... Ground Zero Games has just made the rules available as a free download at http://www.gzg.com

 

 

bigdamnhero

"You do know you're talking to a man with live ammunition? You know that? Okay, good, just checking. Now go on with your bull$#!& story."

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

I second the vote on Full Thrust/More Thrust etc

 

wouldnt be hard to write some add ons for Hero stuff I would think

[Flames]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

I haven't used this system but it sounds promising: http://thanesgames.com/battleshift/bsmain.htm

[Brother Jim]

Re: Mass Starship Combat

 

there's also mj12games.com 's "starmada" rules. the yahoo group has conversions fron B5, star trek, battlefleet gothic and i think it has star wars as well.

 

 

the link is http://www.mj12games.com