02-09-2019, 08:12 PM | #41 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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While I was a strong advocate, in the day, for using rapid fire rules for massed volleys and salvoes from ships, etc., in retrospect using them for this, while consistent and apparently elegant, doesn't give great results.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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02-09-2019, 08:18 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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02-09-2019, 08:18 PM | #43 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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Yes, I know it does work that well, but it's consistent with the rest of the basic combat rules. I might not if it came up today, though I don't have a good fix that doesn't require a silly number of rolls. My first stage in fixing things would be to make proximity attacks vs military ships less or not useful. Say giving them a (0.5) penetration modifier. This also makes hardening military ships actually do something other than make proximity attacks the only worthwhile ones.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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02-09-2019, 08:21 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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02-09-2019, 09:20 PM | #45 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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If proximity attacks have a (0.5), then even hardened armour is penetrated better with a contact attack. So, what I was saying is what you are saying. I just said it in a way that was possibly confusing.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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02-09-2019, 10:44 PM | #46 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
FWIW my take on GURPS Spaceships is less harsh than Ulzgoroth's. If you care about realism Spaceships gives you options far superior to the vast majority of sci-fi RPGs. Ken Burnside's games exist, but those are more wargames, and leave a lot to be desired in terms of the ship design system. (Attack Vector: Tactical forces you to use pre-designed ships, while Squadron Strike's system requires a big spreadsheet and is not remotely straightforward.) Unfortunately, "ability to replicate a wide variety of sci-fi settings" seems to have taken precedence over coherence. The wide variety of scale choices, for example, seems to have been necessary to accommodate drives ranging from miligees to hundreds of gees, but they give wildly inconsistent results.
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02-10-2019, 12:18 AM | #47 |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
Why not just use the average number of hits you would have gotten if you rolled for it? For really large number of attacks, that will almost certainly give a result close to what you would have gotten.
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02-10-2019, 02:52 AM | #48 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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I was thinking that maybe averaged results, based on Skill-10, and then having a single roll per massed attack with the margin of success shifting the number of hits by a percentage. The larger the number of attacks, the smaller the percentage shift.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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02-10-2019, 07:03 AM | #49 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
Skill-10 per turret without a roll would probably make mass combat more manageable. In that case, a spacecraft with gunners/gunner program with an average skill 12 and RoF 2,000 (TL10 VRF Improved Lasers over a 3-minute turn) would have an effective point-defense skill of 20+(target SM), allowing them to neutralize an average of thirteen missiles per turret over a 3-minute turn. In the case of the drone screen in 3-minute turns, the 900 drones would be effective against 46,800 SM+0 missiles. A slightly less generous scenario would be skill-12 per turret, meaning that the drone screen would only annihilate 39,600 SM+0 missiles.
With the velocities given for missiles and shells, this is actually realistic for point defense using laser weapons. Point-defense range is 100 miles and, since lasers travel at the speed of light, a point defense gunner/gunner program could change targets every four seconds as they confirmed target destruction. With a 20-second turn, they could potentially have five separate targets. With a 3-minute turn, forty-five separate targets. In any case, there is an argument to be made that point defense with laser weapons makes larger kinetic weapons useless. In that case, combat doctrines would evolve away from large missiles. Capital spacecraft would have a couple of major batteries, a hanger full of point defense drones, and a hanger full of missile drones. A wing of 300 missile drones could launch 6,000 16cm missiles during a 3-minute turn. A wing of 300 point defense drones can kill 12,000 16cm missiles per 3-minute turn. The capital ships would either focus on killing their opponent's point defense drones until enough of their opponent's point defense drones die to allow the missile barrage to work or focus on beating each other to scrap from long distance. |
02-10-2019, 09:36 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?
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There was a significant amount of "We played Spaceships last Friday and everybody had a great time and the rules seemed to work fine!'. Posts like that are why I don't care so much about putting the "play" in playtesting. I didn't try anything with massed combatants myself. The closest I came was 10 TL11^ SM+13 "Rebel Cruisers" v. 1 SM+15 "Imperial Dreadnaught." and that was mostly about testing what differences in SM were still viable. There was very little in the way of maneuvering due to the relative balances of weapon range and damage (X-ray lasers) v. accelerations (single Gs of reactionless thrusters). Once they came into range the units invovled could kill each other much more quickly than they could achieve singificant changes in their relative positions. If you were going to use masses of small fighters you'd have to group them together somehow just as a matter of practicality. Gurps ahs one mechnic for lumping multiple shots into one die roll. I'm not hugely fond of it myself but it's canonical.
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Fred Brackin |
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