Alex changed the chart this morning to something close to what was posted.

Good thought about short characters.

By Andy Palmer (Andypalmer) on Tuesday, May 14, 2002 - 10:51 pm: Edit

Any thoughts on allowing the "captain's orders" to be longer, based upon skill. That way, its actually worth while developing Leadership skills.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 12:42 am: Edit

Andy, how much can you say in a given number of seconds? That is specified in GURPS and was used as a basis for how many orders you can give in a Turn.

Not that I'm shooting your idea down, just saying that the rules are years old and not subject to revision.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 02:36 am: Edit

Might want a rule that if the captain's appropriate skill (command? Leadership? Sex appeal?) is 16+, he gets an extra command. If less than 12, he only gets two.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 11:51 am: Edit

That would be reasonable.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 12:55 pm: Edit

It isn't mentioned, but does the weapons officer control munitions in fligth (drones and plasma torps)? The navigator?

Apart from rolling for power, it isn't indicated who performs EA (Engineer?, Captain?) or if it is a joint process. Some of the actions (eg controlling EW) are primarily EA actions and many others are defined by the use of reserve power. Thus while the job is nominally assigned to another officer, it seems that the Engineer becomes the the actual controlling player (ie the Science officer can't go changing EW levels if the Engineer doesn't release the reserve power). Also, there is no indication of the number of commands the Captain can give during EA.

I assume the marine officer controls manned shuttles while they're in flight, but that isn't clear (the line about changing shuttle's missions is confusing).

Might I suggest limiting the Captain's ability to give specific future commands (as in the order must be vague if more than 2 impulses ahead)? I would also suggest that orders cannot contain conditionals. With 96 commands per turn and rarely more than 25-40 actual activities (there are only so many weapons/systems on a ship), it becomes quite easy to apply complete control by issuing future orders. For example, the Captain could set up the drone defense over 4 or 5 impulses before it actually has to occur. Or he could give much of the maneuvering over 8 impulses before the key action.

It might be worthwile to add a comment to the Communications officer that "enemy information discovered is at the GM's discretion, but might in include parts of a ship's EA or the commands to subordinate units."

I'd suggest maybe adding something like "with their characters as officers" to the first sentence of the rule. I've used very different appraoches for such activities with groups that worked very well. In particular, I just have the group run the ship as a concensus process (with additions such as "the confused navigation computer when straight" if disuptes seem to be taking too long to resolve) and the individual characters adjusting rolls where appropriate/relelvant.

I'd add a note to the effect that "yes, the Captain has almost complete control, but that is how military organizations work (to be successful in combat). We suggest rotating the captain's position among players."

By Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (Schoon) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 02:43 pm: Edit

Re: Orders -

I like the idea that the number of commands for the captain varies according to his leadership.

Trying to do something with the length of the commands opens up a complicated mess IMO.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 06:39 pm: Edit

"I'd add a note ... "We suggest rotating the captain's position among players." "

I wouldn't be caught dead adding such a line.

Beyond which, you seem to have not grasped the idea that the captain may give an order but the players may ignore it or interpret it. I'll leave to the players how to handle insubordination.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 06:44 pm: Edit

ok, here is the latest version of the guidelines....

Using SFB as Your 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 Captain, Weapons Officer, Navigator, Engineer, Science Officer, Marine Officer, Communications Officer, Fighter Squadron Leader, and First Officer.
If your group has fewer members, you could use an NPC or players 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 players, 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. Players might agree that each job is assigned to one primary officer and one backup; conducting a backup job action would have a –1 penalty while conducting an action not part of your assigned job would have a –2 penalty.
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!”). He does Energy Allocation each turn after listening to each office request power. Each impulse of SFB, the captain can give no more than three 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. Of course, the other officers might act on their own initiative without orders, or disobey orders. The Captain may have to roll a quick contest (Leadership vs the other officer’s Will) to force an officer to obey. If the Captain has a Leadership or Command skill of 16 or more, he can use four commands. If this skill is 11 or less, he can use only two. In the place of one of his orders each impulse, the captain may attempt to encourage one of his officers with leadership (or threats). The Captain makes a Leadership roll; if successful, the officer adds one to his skills (not his SFB die rolls) for that impulse.

Weapons Officer
This officer fires the weapons and controls seeking weapons in flight. 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 two of his actions on any given impulse (i.e., he cannot do more than one other thing without a penalty for “too many actions at once”). When he tries to turn or perform some other movement function (other than moving straight ahead), roll against Piloting 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 ignored (but can be re-issued).

Engineer
A starship engineer needs a skill of 12. For every point less than 12, he must roll against his Skill at the start of each turn during Energy Allocation; fail and the ship has one power-producing SSD box that just doesn’t produce any power this turn (critical failure loses two points of power). 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. This officer is also in charge of damage control.

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 modifiers below. This officer also controls electronic warfare. If his skill is less than 10, the ship’s limit on combined ECM and ECCM is reduced by one; if his skill is 15 or more, it is increased by one.

Marine Officer
This officer makes the die rolls for boarding party combat and hit-and-run raids, with bonuses and/or penalties based on his skill as 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 rolling against Electronics Operation (transporter). This officer controls manned shuttles in flight and must roll against his Shuttle Operations skill to change the mission of any shuttle in the bay.

Communications Officer
This officer rolls against his Electronics Operation (communications) skill to communicate with other starships, bases, planets, etc. This character uses his Cryptography skill to try to intercept and decode enemy communications. (The GM decides what information is learned.)

Fighter Squadron Leader
This officer controls all of the fighters, using his own Piloting or Gunnery skill as needed.

First Officer
This officer controls any Non-Player Characters who are part of the crew and deserve special notice. Alternatively, assign NPCs to the relevant department head above. NPCs use their own stats and skills for their actions.

Basic Die Roll Modifier Chart
Skill Level Effect
20+ Bonus of 2
16-19 Bonus of 1
12-15 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 Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 07:35 pm: Edit

Shouldn't the captain be using Tactics skill somewhere? It's a fairly fundamental part of the normal GURPS Space combat (at least in v1).

Perhaps a Quick Contest of Tactics against the opposing captain/admiral to determine who gets to give a single 'me too' command, up to once per impulse, not in addition to those he's already given.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 08:25 pm: Edit

Specific Skills for Specific Jobs

Weapons Officer: Theis would be Gunnery as appropiate for the weapon being fired.

Engineer: This would be Engineering (Starship).

Science Officer: This will, generally, be Electronics Operations (Sensors), though the GM call call for diffrent skills for particular actions.

Marine Officer: I don't recall there being a Shuttle Operations skill. It should be what skill is used by deck crews (which utterly escapes my brain at the moment).

The others have the needed skills already noted

By Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (Schoon) on Wednesday, May 15, 2002 - 08:43 pm: Edit

Each impulse of SFB, the captain can give no more than three commands.

This is misleading considering the Leadership addition later in the paragraph. I would change it to something like: "Each impulse of SFB, the captain can give a number of commands based upon his leadership."

The basic skill for a professional military officer firing a starship weapon is 12.

Personally, I feel that basic professional skill, should be in the middle of the "no mod" range, in this case 13.

It also seems like the Navigator is going to be making a lot of skill rolls for simple things, where many of the other officers have their skills translate directly into modifications of SFB die rolls. Eventually the law of averages says that he'll blow a roll doing something trivial. Perhaps if a competent Navigator only had to roll for non-standard maneuvers (HET, Tac, Quick Reverse, etc.), like Poor crews from G21.

...fail and the ship has one power-producing SSD box that just doesn’t produce any power this turn...

Is it that the box "doesn't produce power" or that "the power is wasted" due to inefficiency?

Basic Die Roll Modifier Chart

Looking through G21, I think that this chart may be a bit extreme in its effects. Poor crews tend to modify their rolls by 1, as do Outstanding crews.

Perhaps something along the lines of:

20+ Bonus of 2
16-19 Bonus of 1
11-15 No Mod (Skill 13 median)
6-10 Penalty of 1
1-5 Penalty of 2
0 Penalty of 4

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 04:00 pm: Edit

Added captain quick tactics contest to resolve "you first situations".

Moved the sentence giving the captain more or fewer commands to be a parenthetical right after the line about he has 3 commands.

12 is right, we want the minimum qualification to be just that, the minimum qualification.

"doesn't product power" vs "power is wasted"
Please show me what the difference would be.

I think the bonus/penalty chart works as is.

By Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (Schoon) on Friday, May 17, 2002 - 05:13 pm: Edit

re: Power

No difference at all in effect, just symantics . In other words, it's just other words .

By David Kass (Dkass) on Monday, May 20, 2002 - 02:44 am: Edit

There would be a difference between doesn't produce power and power wasted if using tactical intelligence. In one case it would be detected as generated power and in the other case not. I doubt its worth worrying about (Given what the GM knows, I don't see tactical intelligence working too well:-).

Does having a seeking weapon in flight count as one of a weapon officer's actions? My guess is no, but I can also see yes (it explains why a Kzinti has a drone officer as a specific bridge position).

I noticed that the engineer gets to roll to see if less power is produced (if a low skill) but automatically produces the extra power (if a high skill). Would it be good to change that to a roll for producing extra power?

I assume the Marine Officer is also in charge of assigning (and releasing) guards.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 20, 2002 - 10:08 am: Edit

Good points I will add.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, March 18, 2006 - 09:40 pm: Edit

SVC:

Could I commend that you have someone double check the GPD rules ( with reguard to using GPD character in SFB combat ) and see if the application to FC needs any changes and if so make a document listing those changes.
Some people may prefer to use FC as their ship to ship combat mechanism.

By Dwight Lillibridge (Nostromo) on Monday, March 20, 2006 - 06:22 am: Edit

now if there was a way to make gurps vehicles designed ships or traveller ships work inside SFB rules..........

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, March 20, 2006 - 05:02 pm: Edit

You're talking Lower Urdu to me, Michael. One of the other guys around here (Matthew Francois or Gary Plana) might be able to converse with you on those issues. I don't understand to mechanics.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, March 20, 2006 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Sorry, I wasn't trying to converse directly with you.
Just get you to get one of the guys conversant in both GPD and FC ( I'm not ) to double check and make sure the rules to cover GPD characters interacting in SFB can be transerfered over so that characters can interact in FC as well.

Basically if you've got the original GPD book handy, the rules in section 8.3 should be gone through to make sure they are applicible to Federation Commander rather than just SFB. But it should be the fourth edition GPD and someone conversant in both GPD & FC.

By Jonathan Lang (Dataweaver) on Friday, March 24, 2006 - 09:16 pm: Edit

GURPS 4e has a very nice vehicle combat system in the core rules; in order to use it, all you need to do is to convert the vehicles in question (in this case, starships) to Vehicle Statistics as given on page 462 of GURPS Campaigns.

ST and HP are determined by the vehicle's mass: 50 * cube root of mass (in tons).

Handling could be derived from a starship's turn mode and presence or absence of Nimble status. Something like:

Turn Mode Handling
AA +1
A 0
B -1
C -2
D -3
E -4
(Nimble) (+1)

Stability Rating could be derived from Breakdown:

Breakdown SR
1-6 1
2-6 2
3-6 3
4-6 4
5-6 5

HT would represent the amount of "ruggedization" that the design underwent; put it at 13 for military designs and 12 for civilian designs, with -2 HT if the design in question was hacked (frex, most of the old WYN defense fleet). I'm pretty sure that SFU starships qualify as being explosive.

Move: This is where every version of GURPS combat falls short, as none of them have Warp Speed combat. That, and GURPS combat generally doesn't mess with energy allocation as written, which is crucial when determining SFB tactical speeds. Falling back on GURPS Vehicle Design (which finished playtest a little over a week ago) won't really help matters, because while it will introduce the possibility of energy allocation, there is no guarantee that the numbers will even come close to matching up with SFB's numbers. I'd recommend stating that a starship's Move is "30c/Warp xx", with a note that the split is between tactical and non-tactical warp.

Loaded Weight, Load, and SM: as far as I can tell, these are details which SFB doesn't cover most of the time; the closest you come are the Size Class and Docking Points from the Master Ship Chart. They are the primary reason why one might want to use something like IW's starship design or the upcoming Vehicle Design System: to establish exactly how massive a starship ought to be. That said, you might be better off assigning "arbitrary" masses (both empty and loaded) to each ship, guided by the original source material when possible, and by the ship's Size Class when not.

Occupancy comes straight from the Crew and Boarding Parties on the Master Ship Chart, plus whatever deck crews a carrier might have.

DR should be based on the ship's deflector screens, and should be noted as being an ablative force screen.

Cost: Like Loaded Weight, this is the other thing that a starship design system might be useful for; that said, it's also something that won't matter unless the characters are involved in the purchasing or construction of starships.

Locations: the Location codes will need to be updated to allow for segmented bodies and warp nacelles.

Notes: this is where weaponry, sensor capabilities, communications, labs, etc. would get noted.

---

Not everything here is perfect; but with a little fleshing out, it should suffice for most groups' needs.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Thursday, March 30, 2006 - 06:13 pm: Edit

I'm assuming that this conversion uses SFB stats? For those who still have the original GPD, there were stats for a number of ships, from which a good bit of relevant information can be gleaned, such as Size Modifier, cHPs and whatnot.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, April 01, 2006 - 04:44 pm: Edit

ATTENTION, LISTEN UP, PAY HEED.....

Obviously, GPD needs a ship combat system.

The simple and obvious one (just use modifiers for playing SFB or FC) is done (or near enough).

What is needed is a complete system that GURPS players can comprehend. We (sort of) had one in GPD3e based on GV3e and GS3e. Since GURPS is now G4e those no longer really work.

I recently got three emails, more or less as follows:

Dwight Lillibridge: (I would quote him, but frankly, I didn't understand anything he asked. I sent the message to Gary Plana who said....)

Gary Plana: (more or less) the changes in G4e made doing SFU combat in all but impossible, it would be easier to invent our own new rules than use theirs. [I asked Gary if he wanted the job and he said maybe he'd think about it. Later, I thought that Fed Commander should actually do this pretty well, even if we did some new "even bigger scale" ship cards for the teeny-tiny ships used by typical adventure parties.]

Steve Jackson: (In response to an email from me, SJ said, more or less) I don't have time to prove their "it's impossible" theory to be wrong. I would suggest you find somebody who can write your space combat system inside established GURPS rules, but I won't force you to do so.

So, what I want (which isn't what I wanted last time I talked to Gary, sorry about that) is....

1. I'll find some time to look at an "adventure scale" version of FC.

2. We need to find a way to do SFU space combat using existing or soon to be released GURPS rules.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, April 01, 2006 - 08:42 pm: Edit

So theoretically we could just do our own GURPSy spaceship combat rules, and publish them in a book along with gobs of relevant ship stats of all races, and call it GURPS Prime Directive: Starships! or somesuch... which would be your #2 above.

And then perhaps in the same book a page or three could be devoted to how GURPS character stats/skills affect SFB/FC rules, similar to what we did before... which would be your #1 above.

It would be interesting to try. I wonder what could be done by just adapting/expanding the existing basic vehicle combat rules from GURPS Basic Set...

By Darren Kehrer (Kehrer1701) on Saturday, April 01, 2006 - 10:23 pm: Edit

Gurps Space just got released. From posting that on this board in another place, I got a response to the effect that there are no contstruction rules, but I am not sure there are combat rules either. My guess is that they might be saving that for the next edition of Gurps vehicles. It seems that, as mentioned, we will be needing a starship combat/construction system that can be used to resolve "rpg" starship combat, right? Well, not only will we need one for GPD, but PD20 and PDd6. Is it possible to create a universal or adapt current FC rules to cover that with "translations" differing from each system?? Do you use a FC type of system or a RPG system...depends on the situation. If you are roleplaying a bridge scene...use the built in RPG rules, if you are just pitting ship vs ship, use the "translated" FC system. This problably isn't making much sense as I am just brainstorming and writing. But, who knows. When PD d6 gets done, there is already a generic starship combat system in place, it will just need to be modified to fit the SFU.