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bigdamnhero

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  1. Like
    bigdamnhero got a reaction from input.jack in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
     
    Something just made my brain click onto this exchange from a con game a few months back.
     
    As we go into the final battle, the Master Villain is revealed to be... my character's Evil Twin Brother! Naturally, we square off. As we close to HtH range:
     
    Brother: "Dad always thought you were better than me!"
    Me: "Dad was right!"
     
    After which, he crit'ed me across the room, and I spent the next couple turns digging myself out of the wall
     
     
    bigdamnhero
    "When someone asks if you're a God, you say Yes!"
  2. Like
    bigdamnhero got a reaction from death tribble in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
     
    Something just made my brain click onto this exchange from a con game a few months back.
     
    As we go into the final battle, the Master Villain is revealed to be... my character's Evil Twin Brother! Naturally, we square off. As we close to HtH range:
     
    Brother: "Dad always thought you were better than me!"
    Me: "Dad was right!"
     
    After which, he crit'ed me across the room, and I spent the next couple turns digging myself out of the wall
     
     
    bigdamnhero
    "When someone asks if you're a God, you say Yes!"
  3. Like
    bigdamnhero reacted to CrosshairCollie in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
     

     
    It's for times like these, that I carry an old, losing lottery ticket in my pocket for a prop when I roll a six on the Stun Multiplier die.
     
    "I WON THE STUN LOTTO!!"
  4. Like
    bigdamnhero reacted to Kraven Kor in It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat   
    Re: It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat
     
    I'm definitely thinking of some kind of manuevers system. Here is what I have so far, I say we work out a good system that adjusts CV in a way that tries to reflect what the manuever will do.
     
    Atmospheric Dogfighting Manuevers
    Manuever......OCV....DCV....Phase....Notes
    Jink..............N/A.....+3......1/2.......Dodge vs. All attacks, abort
    You manuever side-to-side to avoid fire
    Juke.............N/A.....+5......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, Dodge vs. all, abort
    You rapidly and erratically manuever to avoid fire
    Roll...............+1......+2......1/2.......+1 Piloting roll
    A simple sideways roll
    Barrell Roll.......0.......+1......1/2.......+1 Piloting roll, can reverse tail, stall
    AKA "Emmelman", you fly upwards and loop around behind your tail
    Reverse B.R. ..+1......+2......1..........-2 Piloting roll, can reverse tail, stall
    A more advanced manuever, you fly downwards and loop upwards
    Overtake........+1......-1......1/2.......+1 Piloting roll
    Full speed ahead
    Undertake......+2......+1......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, can reverse tail, stall
    You slow down and let your tail pass you
    Sideways S ...-1......+3.......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, can reverse tail
    An advanced manuever, you roll to the side then fly up and down behind
    your tail
    Dive .............+1.....+1.......1/2.......-1 Piloting roll, stall
    You dive down from above towards your target
    Feint Roll........-1.....+1.......1/2.......
    You fake a roll and slow down to reverse tail
    Corkscrew ......-1.....+2.......1/2.......-1 Piloting roll
    You spin while diving or climbing, making for a harder target
    Zero-G Dogfighting Manuevers
    Manuever......OCV....DCV....Phase....Notes
    Jink..............N/A.....+3......1/2.......Dodge vs. All attacks, abort
    You manuever side-to-side to avoid fire
    Juke.............N/A.....+5......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, Dodge vs. all, abort
    You rapidly and erratically manuever to avoid fire
    Roll...............+1......+2......1/2........Manuever
    A simple sideways roll
    Barrell Roll.......0.......+1......1/2.......+1 Piloting roll, can reverse tail
    AKA "Emmelman", you fly upwards and loop around behind your tail
    Overtake........+1......-1......1/2.......+1 Piloting roll
    Full speed ahead
    Undertake......+2......+1......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, can reverse tail
    You slow down and let your tail pass you
    Sideways S ...-1......+3.......1/2.......-2 Piloting roll, can reverse tail
    An advanced manuever, you roll to the side then fly up and down behind
    your tail
    Feint Roll........-1.....+1.......1/2.......
    You fake a roll and slow down to reverse tail
    Strafe...........+2.......0.......1/2........-1 Piloting roll
    You retain speed in one direction while facing/firing another
    Orbit.............+1......+1......1/2.......Must be 2x speed of target to retain
    You rotate around a slower-moving target
     
     
     
    Manuevers adjust your OCV, DCV, and/or apply a bonus to piloting rolls made. These work just like normal Combat Manuevers -- any bonuses granted remain until you perform a different manuever.
     
    Piloting Rolls: These manuevers use a modified version of the HERO Dogfighting Rules. Every phase pilots make a Combat Piloting roll. If they are engaged in a dogfight, this is a skill vs. skill roll. These rolls are made after the pilot declares his actions for the round. If he succeeds, he performs his action as normal. If he fails, he loses any CV adjustment from the manuever, and anyone attempting to tail this pilot succeeds (so long as they succeeded their skill check.) In atmospheric flight, the craft can even stall (GM's option) on some manuevers. A stalled craft is out of control, and falls at its maximum movement speed until a piloting roll succeeds (or it hits the ground and takes falling damage.) The piloting roll is adjusted by conditional modifiers (which I am looking for rules or a table covering these.)
     
    In a skill vs. skill roll, both pilots can succeed, however the one who succeeds by the most gains the advantage. The winner of the roll automatically gains tail (is attacking from the target's rear) so long as they were intending to do so. Tail is broken if the winner was trying to do so. Tail is reversed if the winner was tailed and performed a manuever capable of doing so.
     
     
    Well, I think I have a good idea, but I need serious help writing it up in any sensible way.

  5. Like
    bigdamnhero reacted to Ben Seeman in It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat   
    Re: It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat
     

    I think if you look through TE and STK you'll find that ship weapon systems don't have range modifiers. That's left up to the targetting system that is purchased for the vessel. I believe in TE the standard targetting systems are written up as +4, +8 and +12 vs. Range Modifier but, of course, you can make them whatever you want.
     
    As I understand it, the scale is 1" to 1", so a Dreadnaught wouldn't even fit on your standard battle mat. However, how much maneuvering and jinking is one of those ships going to do during a fight? Is it important to have them on the map at all? Capital ship to capital ship battles are basically slugfest where they hurl as much of their battery at each other as they can. range isn't really a factor considering the DCV penalties for size as well as the targetting system PSLs.
     
    Obviously, fighter combat works better on a battle mat. Given the average SPDs and Flight of most fighters from TE, you can very easily dogfight at the 1" to 1" scale, or at least make it a 2 for 1.
  6. Like
    bigdamnhero reacted to Jaxom in It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat   
    Re: It's almost 5AM and I'm thinking about Space Combat
     
    As I don't subscribe to DH, I cannot comment on Ben's article there but I can comment on the posts of Kraven Kor and bigdamnhero...
     
    A lot of what is possible is going to depend on how you care to design your ships. The best approximation of this that I ever saw was the "Spacemaster" system from Iron Crown which was so detailed that it was practically unplayable. Even then it ignored some fundamental issues like where can you direct thrust. If you're going to attempt to correctly represent zero-G combat then thrust is the end-all-be-all of combat. All motion is inertial which means once you start moving you move that way always. To change that motion you have to point the ship (and hence the weapons) in such a way that you can provide new acceleration that counters the existing motion. This leads to all sorts of fun things like the ability to fly one direction and fire an alpha-strike salvo in any direction you want as long as you are not accelerating.
     
    In short, tailing is a non-existent concept in zero-G combat because it implies that you cannot turn weapons to face a target while fleeing which is flat out wrong.
     
    The only time this might matter is if you feared a boarding action but then you have a simple question to answer... If they try to fly through your front arc and board then either they are so heavily armored that you are not hurting them anyway or they are doing exactly what you want them to because it means crawling up and giving you point-blank fire all the way.
     
    This leads to one of two reactions from players. Either they miss the romantic dogfight that they envision from old Errol Flynn movies and they hate it or they relish the chance to think and learn something new. If your players fall into the former category then forget that this is zero-G, adopt the dogfighting rules and go for cinematic (See Star Wars for a classic example). If your players fall into the latter category then good luck because I have never seen a system that has correctly reflected this and you're on your own. Be ready to do a lot of vector calculus and remember that you can solve everything exactly because it really is as simple as vector addition and maybe some polar coordinates if you want to deal with weapon arcs. (Which reminds me... I *really* need to write a simple program to handle that.)
  7. Like
    bigdamnhero got a reaction from death tribble in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
     
    "Are you now or have you ever owned a VW van?"
     
    I could explain the content, but it would lose something in translation.
     
     
    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."
  8. Like
    bigdamnhero got a reaction from Era Scarecrow in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
     
    I forgot this one from a couple weeks ago. A player new to Champions (but not to gaming) had thrown herself on a grenade to protect nearby civilians. After finding out her force field was strong enough to not only save her life, but prevent any serious wounding:
     
    "That's all the damage I take? Being a superhero is cool!"
     
     
    bigdamnhero
    “The grave opens up before me like a...big hole in the ground.â€
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