Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

I am currently putting together a 'hellboy meets pirates of the Caribbean' style game, and one of the factors that I was thinking about was;

'I really don't want to bog this game down with detailed stats for the ships'.

Quite frankly I want the actions of the PCs to directly determine if they win/loose and how badly they get bruised up when engaging in vehicular combat (rather than the statistics of the vehicle itself).

This is very common in fiction; it does not matter if the enterprise is utterly outclassed by its foe, the quick thinking of the crew allows them to defeat the evil aliens; further there is somewhat horrifying concept that all 'ship damage' should be transferred to crew injury and death while leaving the ship at full health, assuming that someone can whip up enough fervor and have the charismatic leadership required to get the crew past their demoralizing loss somehow they can pull the thing together and re-enter the fray.

The following are my experimental rules for this- it is NOT intended to be anything even approaching realistic, but is meant to allow the sort of setting where a skilled pilot in a tie-fighter CAN in fact take out a capital ship.

I am very open to suggestions on how to refine this and improve it, also feel free to point out any faults in my concept.

The basic idea behind it is that the ships will have VERY minimal stats, and the 'action' stats are merely bonuses/penalty to skill- it will come down to 'commanders' at 'stations' making leadership and control rolls to make things happen.

If people are interested I can post a few worked examples of what I think a ship should look like under this system; right now everything is 'age of sail' flavored, but it's a pretty simple name swap to make it for almost any other setting.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

Engineer (Ship) is the wrong skill. You want Mechanic (Sailing Ship), or even Carpentry for simple repairs.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

Well I was not thinking 'simple' repairs, but I think your right, mechanic (ship) would be preferable, perhaps carpentry/engineer at -3 if you have those skills significantly higher.

I'll make an edit to the first post.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

The primary purpose of chain-shot (and bar-shot) was to bring down masts and tear apart rigging (though it was still highly lethal to fleshy targets). I would try to incorporate that by giving a penalty to the target ship's Sailing rolls and decreasing its Speed after being hit.

The current description you have for "Chain Shot" sounds more like grapeshot, which has a wider spread to hit more people but has less penetration vs. the ship's hull.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

One suggestion I'd make that will be particularly relevant for the TIE Fighter vs Capital Ship example - allow (or require) player characters to purchase Vitality Reserves, and allow them to attempt to "soak" the damage of an attack with those. This would require a relevant roll - Pilot (Sailing) for the pilot, Leadership for the commander, etc - and on a success some fraction of the damage is only taken by that character, and only to his/her Vitality Reserve (leftover damage hits the ship/crew normally). I'd say 10% comes off VR with MoS 0; for higher successes, multiply MoS by 20%, to a maximum of 100% at MoS 5+.

I'd also suggest that, rather than using straight MoV for determining damage, you have some sort of weapons ratings for each ship. This would basically be a multiplier to MoV to determine damage. You'll also need to determine what happens on a tie - I'd lean toward treating it as victory for the defender, but half the damage of MoV 1 would also be appropriate. This should prevent a swarm of TIE fighters from doing the same damage as a fleet of Super Star Destroyers. Might not be necessary for Age of Sail, although I'd probably still use it for the various Ships of the Line rates - a first rate ship should have a higher damage multiplier than a fourth rate.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

Good point, I have changed what chain shot does, and added grape shot.

Chain shot now works more as a 'cannon feint' as it penalizes dodge, and kills crew.

Re: Abstracting vehicle combat.
 

A few things about TIE Fighter vs Star Destroyer combat that should be noted, IMO:

1) TIEs, X-Wings, B5 Star Furies, etc. are small and maneuverable enough to evade mounted guns/turrets. While this part can be the Hnd bonus on SM +4 to SM +6 craft being added to their Dodge scores, the ability to score a hit on an SM +4 starfighter from an SM +18 (1 mile long) Star Destroyer can possibly be treated as a -14 to hit from the SM differential.

2) Small craft aren't normally targeting the Main Body of a ship; they're commonly targeting vulnerable systems: deflector screen emitters, engines, the bridge, hangar bays. This means they're not attacking the larger ship's incredibly high dST/dHP (3,000 dHP average for an SM +18 ship, using Spaceships's progresssion). The Death Star Trench Run was "evade the point defense guns designed to hit targets ten times your size, target a vulnerable location, and make sure the enemy doesn't shoot up your rear tail pipe with fighters of their own before you can get your shot off."

3. One common tactic in movies is to fly into a hangar bay and start shooting, bypassing the DR. (This makes sense against carriers, as it renders them unable to launch ships of their own; oBSG had Cylons doing this A LOT. Pretty sure they got it from the Japanese who ran their fighters into American flight decks during the Pacific campaign in WWII.) Ships under construction (*coughdeathstartwocough*) can let you fly into the superstructure, bypassing armor. Combine this with #2, above, and you end up flying into a ship to target a vulnerable location that lacks DR - like a reactor system.

Suffice to say, flying TIEs against capital ships takes a bit of strategy, not just "swarm and whittle down".