Warships on AAA

Basic Combat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 1: Basic Combat

Science fiction movies, books, and games are filled with thrilling combat scenes between space-going dreadnoughts and star fighters. A big space battle might include dozens or hundreds of ships on a side, but for now we’ll concentrate on the classic duels between a handful of ships on each side. In this chapter, we’ll present a starship combat system adaptable to a variety of technologies, tactics, and situations.

Advanced Combat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 2: Advanced Combat

In this chapter, we’ll present a number of optional rules sets that can be added on to the rules in Chapter 1: Basic Combat to customize your space combat game. Each set of rules you add increases the complexity and the time required to play out a ship-to-ship battle, but provides an additional level of detail for the game. The advanced rules include an expanded Sequence of Play, Power phase, sensor phase, expanded maneuvering rules, fire modes for shipboard weapons, a detailed damage system, special orders, and rules for ships fighting in the Fusion Age or Matter Age. None of the rules contradict each other, but you may want to try them out one or two at a time instead of wrestling with all the detailed rules systems at once. In order of detail, we recommend the following: a. Fire Modes b. System Damage c. Maneuver Checks d. Sensor Checks e. Power Distribution f. Varying game scales

Narrative Combat

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 3: Narrative Combat

So far, we’ve discussed ship combat as a combat simulation played out on a mapsheet of hexes. Now we’re going to shift our focus over to combat from a player character’s point of view.

Heroes In Combat

In the previous two chapters, we’ve used the term “crew check” as a catch-all for any kind of skill check that the hundreds or thousands of nameless crewmembers on board a major warship might make in the course of a space combat. Player-controlled characters may make skill checks against their own skills at key battle positions instead of relying on the crew’s general ability. In general, you can ignore the normal action check procedure for characters in combat for a combat using the systems presented in Chapter 1: Basic Combat and Chapter 2: Advanced Combat. While the ALTERNITY action round conists of four 3-second phases, characters who are manning stations on a major warship don’t get to take three or four or five actions every game round. They make skill checks in place of attack rolls, sensor checks, tactics checks, and so on, but their individual action checks just aren’t significant in the overall course of the battle. If this feels like it denigrates the characters’ role in the fight, look at it this way. Manning a weapon station or a helm station during a battle presents the character with a complex skill check that must be solved to maneuver the ship, fire a weapon, repair damage, or whatever. A character at the ship’s main weapons console isn’t just pushing the button as fast as she can. She’s constantly computing fire control solutions, monitoring weapon recharge or reload procedures, compensating for shipboard damage that might knock down some of the weapon mounts under her control, choosing sensor input sources that give her the best view of the battle for her job, and trying to pay attention to any new firing orders that might be issued. She’s performing a number of small tasks to make that one attack roll with that weapon or battery.

Flight Dynamics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 4: The Cold Hard Facts

Space travel isn’t as easy as many science fiction books and movies make it appear. In the classic space opera, ships perform maneuvers that are frankly impossible in any kind of realistic sense. Diving fighters somehow create screaming shrieks in vacuum. Massive cruisers roll and bank like stunt planes at a county fair. And no one worries about things like how much acceleration a human body can tolerate, relativistic effects, and other intrusions of real science into the fiction at hand. In this chapter we’ll take a look at a few “real-world” issues that affect spacegoing craft and warfare in the future. You don’t have to pay attention to any of this; there’s a lot of outstanding science fiction that chooses not to pay attention to the cold hard grasp of reality. But if you prefer a game where the impossible is simply ruled out, read on.

Stations and Bases

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Chapter 6: Stations And Bases

Spaceships aren’t the only platforms for weapons, sensors, docking facilities, and other such tasks that exist in a science fiction setting. Space stations and ground bases often have many of the same missions and capabilities, and are even more commonplace than large warships or commercial ships. A space station is basically a ship without engines—and, to extend the analogy, a ground base is a ship without engines or life support (although that depends on the local conditions). Note: This final chapter of Warships was not completed before the cancellation of the product line. However, we include these sections as originally written, along with TABLE 6-1 below, to serve as a good starting point for you to use to develop your own stations and bases.