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Loren, I'm afraid there isn't really a "sample". There's about 2 pages on Legendary Officers and about 6 essential pages that would directly affect statistical combat. However, statistical combat is also affected by R&D and an empire's special rules.

Basically, a ship's Attack Factors and Defense Factors are determined by a formula. Adjustments are applied for ship type, class, and other "stuff". There is a chart that references Battle Intensity with a d6 roll and that reveals the amount of damage. A ship/squadron/fleet will usually have a point at which it would disengage. A simple battle would take minutes to resolve.

1. Look up BPV.
2. Apply AF/DF formula.
3. Apply modifiers.

ISC FF (BPV = 73) encounters a Gorn BFF (BPV = 60), but our heroes (a Gorn Diamond Team) are on board, so the GM asks the group which Legendary Officer Type they will choose to operate as. They choose to act as a Legendary Engineer, fixing 4 DF/round of combat.

11 AF/8 DF ISC FF
9 AF/ 6 DF Gorn FF.

The GM knows the ISC's BI is set for charge, the DI for 25%.

The Gorns choose charge and 55%

4. Roll dice.

The ISC rolls a 3, does 25% damage or 3 points of damage.

The Gorns roll a 5, do 18% damage or 2 points of damage.

5. Resolve combat; announce any disegagement.

The ISC is now 11/5, take a look at the fact that the Gorn ship is not having ANY difficulty (and they have reached their DI level), and announce they will scat, but they have to fight one more round.

The Gorns repair their damage and are at 9/6. They know they can take whatever comes at them, so stick around.

The ISC rolls a 4, does another 3 points of damage to the Gorn ship (which gets repaired).

The Gorns roll a 3, do 3 more points of damage to the ISC ship (which can only do half damage from this point forward, now that half of its DF is gone), and let the ISC ship limp away.

Had our Gorn group not been on that ship, the Gorn ship would been doing half damage the second turn (50% of DF gone) and then crippled (less than 25% of their DF left).

Had our group included a Legendary Captain and a Legendary Doctor in addition to an LE, then the FF would have been a 13/11 ship and would have done 3 damage the first round, forcing the ISC to announce its disengagement (and done 3 more damage to the ISC ship in the next round of combat)

(And next time, the ISC might well send a CA after the first version of this ship, hoping to take it out in one fell swoop. If they had done so this time, then with the same rolls on the first turn, it would have done 7 points of damage to the Brave Little Frigate that Could, and the frigate would have gone boom.)

All of this fiddling around took about 15 minutes with no prep. A good GM would have had the encounter written up before the game, leaving only the Gorn ship to figure up.

Does that help?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, June 07, 2009 - 12:18 pm: Edit

Yes. Perhaps the next time I have so ADB pay coming my way I'll pick up the GCRB. It looks like the basic statistical fomula is more or less official enough and would provide the basic background a RPG GM could use. Indeed, the GC process might be used very nicely for background NPC stuff while player battles just proceed from the statistical data point.

I think that to really play out RPG space combat the GM needs a few things that the GCRB and G3 lack, and that is data on crews, sick bay capacities etc.

I think I have a pretty good vision of what would be useful as a starship combat book for Prime Directive. Seriously, I'm brewing up some really good ideas I think.

By Sean O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, June 08, 2009 - 12:14 am: Edit

I think a lot depends on whether the GM is trying to resolve the whole battle, or just determine what happens to the PCs in the battle. The GM can "script" the "big picture" of the battle to happen as he wants it to happen, but let the PCs' skills and decisions affect how the PCs do in the overall drama.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, June 08, 2009 - 02:46 am: Edit

If that what the GM wants to do then there is pretty good info already. But for others, a good book could set the stage a little better.

I think the book could include a few bridges plans for each race (per size class).

By Marshall N. Bishop (Lordbishop) on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 - 05:49 pm: Edit

From my point of view Starship combat should be done using SFB or Fed Com. The captain should make final decisions. And each player should roll the dice or move the counters that fall under their duties. The players then should make skill rolls for all of the things done by the ship. Each roll’s result is determined by how much higher or lower his roll was from what he needed. Then the GM uses his judgment or his own charts to determine the outcome.

For example tactical officer fires at the enemy ship and fails the roll by a small margin he then rolls on his GMs minor failure chart and the result states his fire is delayed by one impulse. The sensor officer makes his roll by a great margin for tactical Intel. He rolls on his GM’S significant success chart and it determines that he moves up one the tactical Intel chart than he would normally.

Also many things that are not normally seen in SFB can be done. The captain makes a leadership roll to determine crew morale. He succeeds but is not greater or higher than the roll he needed. There are no modifiers. Or the Captain makes a Tactics roll against his opponent to try and predict his opponent’s next move. His opponent rolls the lowest possible number while the captain rolls the highest possible. The GM decides that for the next turn his opponent must operate under preploted movement.

The reason why I prefer this kind of system is because we promote currently existing products as well as put the power of your game into your own hands. Also if Amarillo decided to support this system it would not require an entirely new supplement but would be a couple pages of “suggested charts” which could be used in any game system.

Note: I do apologize if anyone else posted somthing similiar to this, but the archives seem extensive and the posts are long and I do have limited time.