Spaceship combat without Spaceships

[Stormcrow]

Let us suppose that I am running a game of GURPS without the Spaceships rules. The basic vehicle rules seem to cover the most general cases one finds in vehicle combat, even for spaceships. Provided you already have the statistics for your ships, how well does combat play out?

For instance, say we have two star freighters as given on page B465. If you play out a combat turn-by-turn, approximately how long will it take to finish the combat? How many choices will the players have to make? Is it any good?

I have never run a vehicle-based combat in GURPS, especially not one centered around spaceships, so what I am looking for is a general impression that ignores the Spaceships rules, as if they didn't exist—no comparisons to those rules. (I would try it out myself, but I am at work right now, and they might frown on that sort of diversion. I can get away with Web forums.)

[Gigermann]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Let us suppose that I am running a game of GURPS without the Spaceships rules. The basic vehicle rules seem to cover the most general cases one finds in vehicle combat, even for spaceships. Provided you already have the statistics for your ships, how well does combat play out?

For instance, say we have two star freighters as given on page B465. If you play out a combat turn-by-turn, approximately how long will it take to finish the combat? How many choices will the players have to make? Is it any good?

I have never run a vehicle-based combat in GURPS, especially not one centered around spaceships, so what I am looking for is a general impression that ignores the Spaceships rules, as if they didn't exist—no comparisons to those rules. (I would try it out myself, but I am at work right now, and they might frown on that sort of diversion. I can get away with Web forums.)

I ran a pre-Spaceships space-fight a long time ago; 2 ships' boats in an orbital chase, shooting at each other, using the basic (and only, at the time) vehicle mechanics. Worked well enough, and wasn't too hard on anyone.

[Stormcrow]

Here is a followup question. Given a free choice between using only the vehicle rules from the Basic Set and using the Spaceships rules, who here would choose the standard vehicle rules? What makes you choose this?

[Langy]

I definitely wouldn't choose to use the regular Vehicle rules. This is because in the normal Vehicle rules, the only people who get to do anything are the pilot and the gunner - there's nothing for the captain, navigator, sensor operator, comm operator, engineer, or anyone else to do, or at best the rules for them are extremely abstract (so much so that you pretty much need to make them up as you go).