going to resolve by SFB any ship combat that occurs in my games personally. cards and die rolls take away from the flavor.

By Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (Schoon) on Sunday, May 05, 2002 - 10:44 pm: Edit

Dwight: Personally, I agree with you entirely, but it's always nice to have alternatives, particularly if time is a factor or you have players that don't necessarily care for SFB (heresy, I know).

I can't claim to even be passingly familiar with the GURPS Space Opera system, and thus cannot comment on its suitability.

Perhaps some other kind soul with such experience could chime in...

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, May 11, 2002 - 01:41 am: Edit

One of the great things about using SFB to work out combat situations is that the role playing can continue and adapt to the situation.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Saturday, May 11, 2002 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Randy and Sean, no problems. I guess I wasn't very clear. Even for a campaign on a strategic scale I don't see SFBF being useful (I've on rare occasions played campaigns with strategic overtones, so I do know they exist). The fleet aspect is not a problem then, I agree. But the game has several other problematic aspects. I suppose that in a strategic type campaign, SFBF could be adjusted to work (or the campaign designed to use SFBF). But even then, I don't see it involving more than one player and the GM.

I guess my comment was that I really don't see SFBF working at all in most campaigns (those with at most tactical combat). In strategic campaigns, I still don't think it is a very good fit (and will almost certainly require campaign specific adaptions). Since the latter are rare campaign wise, I don't see it being worth the effort to try to formally adapt SFBF. In a strategic campaign, I'd be much more likely to use F&E (or a derirvative of it) for combat (not all of F&E, but its combat engine)--that allows even the largest battle (100+ ships per side) to be played in a couple of hours (and much less for most battles).

By Randy Buttram (Peregrine) on Sunday, May 12, 2002 - 04:38 pm: Edit

David:

Good points. I'd say, though, that F&E's combat engine is too low in granularity unless the PCs are fighting the whole war at the national command level (in which case you already have an F&E campaign).

I've seen commentary somewhere about a 'squadron-level' game with simplified energy allocation which would speed things up enough that a fleet action could be fought in a moderate amount of time while retaining some of the tactical options of SFB. (I forget if it was on these boards or in print.) Something like that would work wonders for those games involving PCs who are of appropriate rank (e.g. each of the PCs is a starship captain in the same task force).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 05:55 pm: Edit

I need your comments on the rule below for GPD:

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 05:55 pm: Edit

USING SFB AS A SPACE COMBAT SYSTEM
Those groups who want to use Star Fleet Battles to resolve space combat can do so with these rules. First, assign each character a job on the ship. The jobs to be done include:

1. Captain: decides where the ship will go, what it will shoot at, and assigns tasks.
2. Weapons Officer: controls all weapon die rolls.
3. Navigator: controls turn mode, sideslip mode, high energy turns.
4. Engineer: controls all power-generating systems, damage control, and the tractor beams.
5. Science Officer: controls all laboratory rolls, electronic warfare, and all tactical intelligence rolls.
6. Marine Officer: controls boarding party die rolls. He also controls the transporters and shuttles.
7. Communications Officer: controls sending and receiving messages, eavesdropping on the enemy.

If your group has fewer than seven members, people will have to double up but will have a –1 penalty on their secondary job. (The Captain will have no penalty on his secondary job.) Anyone with three jobs will have a –2 penalty on the third (and any other) jobs. If your group has more than seven members, divide the weapons or engineering job between two people. Players could agree to divide up the jobs in other ways, for example, giving Fred control of the left-bearing weapons, tractors, and electronic warfare.
Each officer on a starship with a large NPC crew can conduct three actions in a given impulse (e.g., fire weapons at three targets, adjust electronic warfare levels, tractor a drone). A subsequent action in the same impulse has a penalty of two applied; this doubles for every subsequent action in the same impulse. If the PCs (and NPCs they control) are the entire crew of the ship, then each can conduct as many actions in an SFB impulse as he can in a GURPS combat turn.
The enemy starship or monster can be controlled by the GM, or by an SFB player the GM recruits for this task.

Captain
The captain decides on maneuvers (e.g., "helmsman, turn left!") and weapons (e.g., Gunner, shoot at that fighter!"). Each impulse of SFB, the captain can give no more than three such commands. To get more done with those commands, he might give sweeping authority to an officer (e.g., "Gunner, don’t let those drones hit us!") and hope that the Gunner uses the available weapons wisely. GURPS skills don’t really apply here; he either tells the gunner to shoot or he doesn’t.

Weapons Officer
The basic skill for a professional military officer firing a starship weapon is 12. For skill levels above and below this point, die roll modifiers are used as per the chart below. Each target engaged is one action.

Navigator
This character actually steers the ship, which uses up all of his actions on any given impulse (i.e., he cannot do anything else without a penalty for "too many actions at once"). When he tries to turn or perform some other movement function, roll a Quick Contest for the relevant skill. Success means the ship performs the normal SFB maneuver, but failure means that the maneuver will be delayed to the next impulse and critical failure means the order is cancelled and the Captain will have to issue a new order later.

Engineer
A starship engineer needs a skill of 12. For every point less than 12, he must roll a Quick Contest of Skill at the start of each impulse; fail and the ship has one power-producing SSD box that just doesn’t produce any power this turn. If his skill is 15 or more, the engineer can coax one extra point of power out of the warp engines each turn. If his skill is less than 10, the ship has one less point in the first track box damage control; if his skill is 15 or more, it has one extra point in that box. Monitoring the engines takes up all of his time, but he can handle one tractor beam and any reserve power decisions at the same time.

Science Officer
This officer makes the die rolls for lab information, identifying drones (as well as plasmas, shuttles, etc.), and tracking cloaked ships. See the die roll modifiers for skill below. This officer also controls electronic warfare. If his skill is less than 10, the ship can only use five points of combined ECM and ECCM; if his skill is 15 or more, it can use seven total points.

Marine Officer
This officer makes the die rolls for boarding party combat and for hit-and-run raids, with bonuses and/or penalties based on his skill as per the rules below. If using the advanced system, this player also controls the deployment and movement of boarding parties between the areas of the ship. Transporter operation involves a Quick Contest of skills. This officer must win a Quick Contest of skills to change the mission of any shuttle.

Communications Officer
This officer uses a Quick Contest of skills to communicate with other starships, bases, planets, etc. This Character also uses his Cryptography skill to try to intercept and decode enemy communications.

Basic Die Roll Modifier Chart
Skill Level Effect
16+ Bonus of 2
13-15 Bonus of 1
12 Roll normally
10-11 Penalty of 1
7-9 Penalty of 2
4-6 Penalty of 3
1-3 Penalty of 4

Whether a given bonus is plus or minus depends on the chart in question. In SFB, low die rolls are generally good and higher ones are bad. So a skillful weapons officer with a "bonus of 1" would get a –1 when firing a phaser.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 07:00 pm: Edit

SVC. Some suggestions:

GPD ratings in order to be considered "Legendary"

Perhaps allow the Captain to coordinate NPC units (other ships, fighters, etc.); with high skill/good roll, they do exactly what he needs. Perhaps let the length of each command be longer at high skill levels (he doesn't necessarily use more words, but he uses the right words).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 07:15 pm: Edit

Legendary is handled in a different rules section, so it's already done.

I'm not sure about coordinating NPCs. The rules already pretty much have him giving commands to the department heads. I do think, however, that we might need a fighter squadron commander and perhaps an XO to handle any NPCs worth noting.

By Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (Schoon) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 07:27 pm: Edit

My only suggested modification would be to have the Captain's commands for maneuver be more broad, such as "Move to overrun" or "Get us out of here." Then leave the actual implementation up to the Navigator, as in choosing what maneuvers to use and when.

Otherwise, the Navigator would seem to become a glorified counter-pusher (other than the skill rolls).

By Nick Blank (Nickb) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 08:26 pm: Edit

Under Engineer:

"For every point less than 12, he must roll a Quick Contest of Skill at the start of each impulse; fail and the ship has one power-producing SSD box that just doesn’t produce any power this turn."

I assume the rolls of Quick Contest are supposed to be done at the start of every turn, not every impulse? The way it is written does not make sense. If your skill is 10, then at the start of each turn you make two rolls against your skill, with a potential for two lost points of power if you fail both rolls.

Nick

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Another suggestion:

As it stands, the navigator is reduced to moving the counter on the board, needless to say an extremely boring task. "I built up my character for THIS?" His most exciting task would probably be rolling for breakdown. If I was part of a group that was going to be using SFB to resolve starship battles, there's no way I'd take the navigator.

In the series, we often saw Chekov firing photorps. Might I suggest that weapons firing is divided between navigation and the weaps officer? Heavy weapons -- at least photorps, probably not FX-arc disruptors or PPDs -- could be controlled by the navigator, which kind of makes sense: the ship would have to be oriented to bring those weapons to bear. The weapons officer would have his hands full managing drone loadouts and determining which and how many phasers to lay and traverse onto which enemy, based on the captain's orders.

Or just give it as an option for people using SFB. Just a suggestion. =)

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 09:29 pm: Edit

I should also point out that having the navigator roll every impulse for every maneuver is also going to get tiring and boring. Might I suggest that he only be required to roll for HETs and EMs. To give the navigator player more to do, see my above post, and I would also recommend that the navigator, who is presumably knowledgable about the maneuverability and statistics of enemy ships and weapons systems, work with the science officer to work on tactical intelligence.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 09:40 pm: Edit

Yes, every turn for power .... darn typos.

The Captain and Navigator can work out between them how broad or specific his orders need to be.

The rules I posted ALREADY allow the group to assign the photons to the navigator if they want to. Try reading them.

The navigator rolls for every MANEUVER not every impulse. Moving ahead he doesn't roll. TURNING he rolls. Changing speed he rolls.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 09:41 pm: Edit

AND I QUOTE: Players could agree to divide up the jobs in other ways, for example, giving Fred control of the left-bearing
weapons, tractors, and electronic warfare.

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Monday, May 13, 2002 - 11:54 pm: Edit

SVC: I did read the rule. I don't think I interpreted it quite the way you intended, though, in which case, mea culpa. Okay, no problems, comments retracted. =)

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 02:29 am: Edit

Unfortuantely, on a real ship at war, be it wet navy or our hypothetical starships, during combat, the Captain gives all the orders and the rest of the people on the bridge say "Aye, aye, Sir" a lot. There really aren't a lot of ways to work around this.

To be perfectly honest, when TNG first came on the air and Riker started giving orders like "Raise Shields" and "Red Alert", I was doubly shocked: that he ursurped the Captain's authority, and that Picard didn't bust him down to Cadet Fifth Class for doing it. But then I remembered Gene Roddenbury was a Buddhist with no military experience...

An armyish example would be the XO telling their artillery unit to shift targets, with the CO right next to him. Unless the CO was out of it, anyone with military experience can tell you how much of a no-no that is!

Anyhow, the point I'm getting around to is that during combat situations, the guy in the center seat is The Boss, and everyone else isn't going to be exerting a lot of initiative. And there isn't a lot that can be done about it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 10:23 am: Edit

Seems to me Roddenberry was a bomber pilot in WW2.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 10:25 am: Edit

Jonathan: No, you were right and I was wrong. The way I wrote the navigator rule, he couldn't do anything but fly. I'll "relax" that to let him do one action per impulse.

As Gary noted, the captain is the boss, but he cannot tell everyone every single action to take. They all have to do their thing within the limits of policy. Thus, he could use his three commands to say "kill drones A, C, and F" or he could use one command to say "don't let those drones on the port side hit us". Trying to limit what the Captain can do gives the others some flexibility in fulfilling "objective oriented orders".

By John Sickels (Johnsickels) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 11:04 am: Edit

Yeah, Gene was a bomber pilot. After the war, he flew for an airline in South America. Then he was a cop in LA and started doing TV writing on the side under an alias.

I think the reason that TOS is more "militaristic" than TNG and its successors is because Gene himself was more military-minded at the time. He was always idealistic (obviously) but while he later claimed that Star Fleet was not a military organization, I think that was revisionism on his part, designed to appeal to idealistic fandom in the 70s and 80s. Star Fleet in TOS certainly was military.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 12:31 pm: Edit

I don't know anything about Gene Roddenbury being a bomber pilot, or what his religious preferences were in the 60's, but both he and Majel were actively Buddhists by the time TNG rolled around.

SVC: who controls the shields? Or is that under power management?

By John Sickels (Johnsickels) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Gene and Majel got married in a Buddhist ceremony sometime during the run of the original series, so he was a Buddhist even back then. But to say that he doesn't know anything about the military isn't accurate...he was in it. So was Gene Coon IIRC.

Most of the people who wrote and produced TOS were in the military at one time or another, since they would have been drafted for WW2 or Korea.

By John Sickels (Johnsickels) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 12:57 pm: Edit

Snippet about Roddenberry's pre-writing career, from a biography I found on the internet:

********

At Los Angeles City College Gene took classes in police studies and learned to fly, getting his pilot’s license in September, 1940, less than a month after his 19th birthday.

Knowing war was eminent, he and several friends joined the Army Air Corps in July, 1941, but Gene was allowed to continue civilian life until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - December 7, 1941. He was called to active duty a few days later.

Sent to Kelly Field in Texas Gene trained as a bomber pilot, being commissioned a Second Lieutenant at graduation in 1942. He married his high school sweetheart, Eileen Rexroat, had a short honeymoon and was assigned to the South Pacific. Gene flew nearly a hundred combat missions winning the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal and promotion to Captain with his own plane and crew.

Rotated back to the US Gene spent the remainder of the war investigating plane crashes. At war’s end he joined Pan American World Airways as a co-pilot, flying routes across the Atlantic, to South Africa, and the Karachi-New York run. In 1947 his Lockheed Constellation lost two engines and crashed in the Syrian desert. As the surviving officer Gene supervised the crash scene and rescue efforts in spite of two broken ribs. Almost as a statement about life, Gene got Eileen pregnant with their first child, Darleen Anita, within days of returning home to New Jersey.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 06:00 pm: Edit

Seems to me that the skill levels for weapon fire are very tightly-spaced, and rather too easy. I'd expect something more like

23+ Bonus of 2
17-22 Bonus of 1
13-16 Roll normally
10-12 Penalty of 1
7-9 Penalty of 2
4-6 Penalty of 3
1-3 Penalty of 4

After all, starship crews are "excellent" (G21.0). 12 is merely professional competence. So to get a bonus (as for an outstanding crew or legendary officer) suggests a very high skill, and a +2 bonus should be truly extraordinary.

By Davyd Atwood (Blackelf) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 07:19 pm: Edit

Don't know anything about the numbers, as I don't know much about GURPS, but on the whole it looks more or less like something I tried to work up for myself a while back.

I wouldn't penealise the group for being short a character, though. Presumably the ship does have all the needed crew members, just not all of them are PCs. Let NPCs fill in those roles, and have the XO, or the Cap'n, or whoever feels like it make their roles.