How to make space combat more survivable?

[DaosusLeghki]

I'm sure this answer is boring, but how about finding the things that are too lethal and reducing the amount of damage they do? I understand there is physics at play, but the in-game explanation almost doesn't matter.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Another thing to consider is not having space combat. Even when survivable, it's generally pretty boring.

It's one of the things that works okay in movies and TV because it affords spectacle, but is difficult to make effective in an essentially verbal medium. Unfortunately doing without it cuts you off from a couple of very popular franchises and maybe from the great bulk of space opera. I stick very largely to planetary romance instead, so perhaps the most helpful thing I have to say is that the great majority of source material features spaceships, spaceship movement, spaceships weapons, spaceship defences, and tough crew that are very much unlike any plausible model. If genre emulation is your goal the key is to ignore physics completely and mainline the nonsenseoleum.

[Almenac]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I strongly recommend use of an exotic drive tech that simply makes kinetic missiles less effective. It can be particularly useful if drives generate a warp field of some sort, because then you can tune its properties for whatever else you want to go on, such as boarding actions (two examples of this are Drive Field in Spaceships 31, and Exophase Drives per SS7:22, but plenty of other options exist). A lot of SF is best handled as a Hyperdynamic Cosmos (SS7:26).

Thanks a lot! I'll need to look into these. May I ask what's Spaceships 31 you're referring to? I thought the SS line doesn't go beyond single digits.

Another thing to consider is not having space combat. Even when survivable, it's generally pretty boring.

Yes, that's of course an option. But space combat is also such a staple in science fiction/space opera/science fantasy that just ignoring it might feel a bit dull. Especially if the campaign is Traveller-esque and centers around the ship that the PCs own.

I mean, the players WILL want to upgrade bigger plasma cannons, better armor etc. for their ship at some point. I wouldn't want to disappoint them by saying the hey guys, you can do that, but that's not actually going to make any difference since we're handwaving all the space combat stuff.

But at the same time I wouldn't want that every space engagement is likely to end the whole campaign.

[Almenac]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

It's one of the things that works okay in movies and TV because it affords spectacle, but is difficult to make effective in an essentially verbal medium. Unfortunately doing without it cuts you off from a couple of very popular franchises and maybe from the great bulk of space opera. I stick very largely to planetary romance instead, so perhaps the most helpful thing I have to say is that the great majority of source material features spaceships, spaceship movement, spaceships weapons, spaceship defences, and tough crew that are very much unlike any plausible model. If genre emulation is your goal the key is to ignore physics completely and mainline the nonsenseoleum.

Yes, that's the core of the problem I think. I'm willing to largely ignore physics to achieve more cinematic space combat. Problem is that in GURPS there are little worked examples of this, at least that I know of.

[Almenac]

Originally Posted by DaosusLeghki

I'm sure this answer is boring, but how about finding the things that are too lethal and reducing the amount of damage they do? I understand there is physics at play, but the in-game explanation almost doesn't matter.

That's the ultimate goal of course. Problem is that I'm not familiar enough with the system to do all this myself. There's also the issue of time, since testing and converting all the weapon systems in the supplements would be a huge undertaking. I'm mainly asking if there's a good general guideline or worked examples for more starwarsey space combat.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Almenac

May I ask what's Spaceships 31 you're referring to? I thought the SS line doesn't go beyond single digits.

"Drive Field" is in Spaceships (SS 1, though it's actually unnumbered), page 31.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Almenac

That's the ultimate goal of course. Problem is that I'm not familiar enough with the system to do all this myself. There's also the issue of time, since testing and converting all the weapon systems in the supplements would be a huge undertaking. I'm mainly asking if there's a good general guideline or worked examples for more starwarsey space combat.

I'd suggest a similar approach to what I took for Harpyias (which in its most nascent stage was a setting for d20 Star Wars) - ignore the current weapon, drive, and possibly power plant systems, and make your own that work for your purposes. Star Wars and similar space opera give their vessels performance comparable to WWII fighters (but with short-range seeker missiles), so do the same here (and optionally use second-by-second turns rather than the Spaceships rules, at least for dogfighting). For Harpyias, I opted for high-energy reactionless drives (for fighters) to have Move 10/50* per drive in combat. Meanwhile, the low-energy semi-reactionless drives (for capital ships) have Move 1/10 per drive in combat. And yes, that's Move in yards per second. Note this results in vessels with markedly better acceleration but roughly comparable top speeds to WWII fighters (the two in HT - the German Fw 190A-6 Würger and American P-51D Mustang - have Move 3/204 and Move 3/218, respectively, for comparable top speeds to 4-drive fighters in Harpyias, which would have Move 40/200) For Harpyias, outside of atmosphere and interdiction (combat), they drives have incredible pseudovelocity, to allow for travel within a system; this may be a useful paradigm for you, so that, say, an X-Wing can leave the surface of Yavin IV and reach the Death Star in a timely fashion.

The above gets rid of hypervelocity kinetic kill weapons. Next you build blasters however you feel they should work (which for some people is as simple as "treat as particle accelerators"), and probably give them rather short range compared to normal Spaceships weapons (since they'll be used at WWII distances and speeds). I'd suggest having their damage follow the scaling of beam weapons in SS1. For shields, work out how many hits you want a fighter to be able to take from a comparable fighter to set dDR, and then if you want the option to lay low for a bit to recharge to set how rapidly the shields regenerate (SS default is 10% per second, or fully recharged by the next turn, since the shortest turns are 20 seconds long). Optionally, to let the ship's actual armor make a difference, allow its dDR (or some fraction of it) to apply before the shield's ablative dDR (you can explain this as the shield being tuned to actually let through damage that the vessel's armor can absorb, thus conserving the shield longer).

*I'll probably reduce the acceleration here; having high-performance fighters regularly accelerate at 4G's+ is probably a bit excessive.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Almenac

That's the ultimate goal of course. Problem is that I'm not familiar enough with the system to do all this myself. There's also the issue of time, since testing and converting all the weapon systems in the supplements would be a huge undertaking. I'm mainly asking if there's a good general guideline or worked examples for more starwarsey space combat.

I wonder whether there is a suitable WWII naval combat game that could be re-skinned as Star Wars space combat and have a GURPS character interface screwed on. Star Fleet Battles, perhaps.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I wonder whether there is a suitable WWII naval combat game that could be re-skinned as Star Wars space combat and have a GURPS character interface screwed on. Star Fleet Battles, perhaps.

There's the space opera combat system from 3e.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I wonder whether there is a suitable WWII naval combat game that could be re-skinned as Star Wars space combat and have a GURPS character interface screwed on. Star Fleet Battles, perhaps.

WWII naval combat had quite a lot of hammers and eggshells going on, though. World War One might be a better model of attritional damage, aside from those embarrassments the RN had at Jutland.