Help me love Spaceships

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Finally what about a combat with those little ships and huge ones together (like the final battle against the second Black Star in Star Wars VI)?

Black Star? Is that really what it's called in the French version? I'd say that's lame but...no, Death Star is really pretty lame, too. :)



As a veteran wargamer, there's always a cutoff point between large-numbers fighter or small ship combat vs large-scale capital ship combat. Pretty much every system I've looked at tends to fall on the side of favoring capital ships. There may be flimsy 'realism' rationalizations for this, but what it boils down to is that most wargames want you to have to make meaningful decisions for your ships and have a chance at success. If fighters or small ship tactics work too well, swarm tactics dominate and the game (supposedly) becomes boring.

GURPS Spaceships isn't a wargame, but it has a similar issue. You're looking at a system that is meant to be interesting for players. The most common scenario is the entire party crewing a ship--which immediately assumes larger ships--and so you have more rules on secondary tasks to do during combat. Even if players are each piloting a fighter, then you're looking at just a single squadron that isn't going to do much without plot protection or a severely limited enemy in terms of firepower.

I'm a huge fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, and I like the idea of massive battles like those in the Halo universe filling up my RPGs. But those would be nightmarish to try to make work with a consistent, detailed, and generic system.