Quote:
Originally Posted by weevis
As I was working out some test combats I drew a flowchart for Pilot Move. To me, this was the hardest part to grok and remember. Here is the flowchart:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y_3...ew?usp=sharing
Now I see from Fred Brackin that maneuvers may not be that important! But maybe this will help someone else in my position. Let me know if you notice any errors! |
Okay, I would probably re-order the options slightly, because it took me a couple of tries to figure out your chart. From the top, I would do: Uncontrolled Drift, Controlled Drift, Hold Course, Retreat, Evasive Action, Closing. And then I would swap the order of conditions for Evasive/Closing and Retreat. Then the +s would still descend from left to right, but there wouldn't be that gap between Evasive and Closing.
Maneuvers don't matter as much as they could because:
1) Missiles are much too powerful.
2) Beam weapon damage is too high relative to the HP of large ships.
3) point defense is all or nothing
Based on my sample combats, Spaceship combats is an exchange of beam weapons until a ship loses point defense, and then a barrage of missiles destroys it. In theory, you can overwhelm a ship's PD with missiles, but that's a strict design and force structure question: does your fleet have more missile launchers than your target has PD shots? If you do, your target dies, and if not, you wasted all your missiles.
But the first two sample combats I did were between small spaceships (SM+5 to SM+6), primarily armed with beam weapons, with enough PD that PD couldn't be overwhelmed until the spaceship was damaged. At that point, maneuvering mattered a lot to get good range for their beam weapons.
But well-designed Spaceships are missile and PD batteries, and a fleet engagement involves single ships blowing up on each side until one fleet lacks enough launchers to blow up a ship on the other side, at which point that fleet is destroyed. Which is possibly realistic but not particularly fun.