GURPS Spaceships: Murphies, their fixes and alternatives

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That part of it isn't, though it has some peculiarities.

The part where the acceleration you need to use is proportional to the distance scale over the square of the time scale, however, is.

Ah. Yeah, that's pretty dumb. The acceleration required to dodge shouldn't change with time (though it should change with distance), only the amount of delta-V.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Langy

Ah. Yeah, that's pretty dumb. The acceleration required to dodge shouldn't change with time (though it should change with distance), only the amount of delta-V.

Why should it change with distance? That's the distance scale of the combat model, not the size of the ship or anything else real.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Also, I will repeat my question from the other thread: would you play Spaceships 3D if such a software aid were available? (Not just cmdicey, the question is addressed to everyone.)

Nope. 3D combat adds nothing but complexity. Combatants can move in 3-D but they almost never gain any advantage by doing so.

The more problematic thing about Spaceships comabt is that at any scale at which I have tried to set up battles during the playtests there were never situations when there was any advantage to be gained by maneuvering.

This might be so becaue it is realistic. In all but a very small number of cases. If you want to have spaceships maneuver like WWII fighters you need to have their speeds be in the same ratio to lightspeed weapons as WWII fighters are to machine gun bullets. That will be very fast indeed.

So the situation becomes, ships miove into range and begin firing at each other. Lethal results occur long before they can move enough for it to matter in terms of where tehir counters are on the mapboard.

Again, this is very likely to be realistic.

Another findamental problem possibly related to realism is that armor does not keep up with weapons well.

Unless, perhaps ships are so undergunned that they can not penetrate their own armor at all. One of the example ships was like this (I think it was Ares-class and may only be in Designer's notes). It mounted nothing better than a Secondary Battery and had 3 armor systems on its' front hull. With a Main Battery much less a Spinal Mount that armor could be penetrated easily.

This is particularly the case for high-V kinetic strikes. As long as their launching ship starts from Mars TL8 ASATs will make hash out of a SM+14 Gibralter battlestation.

Sadly, this is realistic too and it's why I don't set up my Space campaigns so that combatants have the opportunity to accelrate for long times with Newtonian drives. The opportunity for small objects to create big booms whiel giving the defender mere seconds to react makes space stations and other "fixed" targets almost indefensible.

I'm not sure it's a Murphy to say "Because of its' comitment to realism Gurps Spaceships makes many common adventure situations untenable". but it's so.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I'm not sure it's a Murphy to say "Because of its' comitment to realism Gurps Spaceships makes many common adventure situations untenable". but it's so.

The only problem with that is that there is no reasonably simple solution that allows emulating, say, SW or ST.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The only problem with that is that there is no reasonably simple solution that allows emulating, say, SW or ST.

For those you use the Hyperdynamic rules even if you have to drop back to 3e. You still need to have movemnt high compared to weapons range.

This is why I suggested in the playtest that you set the defualt Hyper factor to 100 since the that was the range multiplier for X-ray lasers in space in 3e. That way 2 fighter armed with such weapons going at it in atmosphere or space were dealing with basically the same combat situation.

Since 4e doesn't increase weapons ranges in space the way 3e did, probably no range modifier would be necessary. You'd set the hyper factor isntead to give you the same "move into range, move out of range" you got in atmospheric combat.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The only problem with that is that there is no reasonably simple solution that allows emulating, say, SW or ST.

I found Star Trek exceedingly easy to emulate.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I found Star Trek exceedingly easy to emulate.

The few bits of ST space combat I can recall offhand were pretty simple. Sure, the bridge crew was saying lots of stuff, the the visuals presented had nothing complicated going on (stand there and trade shots until someone is disabled/explodes), the fights were either static or moving but with a constant distance between combatants. I imagine you would only need to adjust shield values and weapon damage to get the right feel. Is that what you did? Or something else?

[Langy]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Why should it change with distance? That's the distance scale of the combat model, not the size of the ship or anything else real.

Specifically, it should scale with distance-between-targets. Basically, it should scale with how much time it takes for an enemy salvo to arrive. A salvo launched from closer in should require more acceleration to dodge.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Langy

Specifically, it should scale with distance-between-targets. Basically, it should scale with how much time it takes for an enemy salvo to arrive. A salvo launched from closer in should require more acceleration to dodge.

That would be scaling inversely with range, and basically unrelated to the hex size/combat scale. Insofar as those things are related, that would be the opposite of the way the rules as written have it scale.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

3D-izing Spaceships isn't exactly problematic from a rules-adaptation PoV. It is somewhat difficult from the playing PoV (you need a software aid, which, while trivial to make from a scripting PoV, will scare off many people).

No, you don't need a software aid. You just need to steal the 3D tracking aids from Squadron Strike (or Attack Vector: Tactical, since the relevant bits are largely the same -- the AVID and the tilt stands), which aren't computerized.

You do need to make some rules adaptations (for one thing, you probably want 6 rather than 3 "sections" for Spaceships -- front/center/rear is wonky to start with but not the most problematic thing in the 2D setup, in 3D front/rear/top/bottom/left/right makes a lot more sense.)

You might need to have a software aid to deal with quaternions if you wanted to handle rotation in detail, but you can handle on the same level that Spaceships does, generalized to 3D, without any special additional aid. And even much heavier systems like AV:T don't try to deal with multi-axis rotation (AV:T does go beyond Squadron Strike and GURPS Spaceships by dealing with angular acceleration in one axis, but I wouldn't bother with even that in 3D generalization of GURPS Spaceships; I'd aim to be a little lighter than Squadron Strike, not heavier.)

It also might be problematic from the balance PoV: Guns suddenly become less useful due to the enemies having many more [3D] 'hexes' to use.

Well, yes, that's one of the many ways in which the 2D nature of Spaceships "tactical" combat fails to model what it is supposed to model, i.e., combat-in-space. Basic Space Combat is less complex, and at least as good of a model of space combat as 2D tactical combat.