Space Combat Revisited

Ok, it's late at night and maybe I should have waited until I had more time to read this post and edit it a bit, but I'm impatient to throw the subject into the pits and see how people tear it apart. I want a new space combat system. The original isn't bad, well, except for the broken parts, and there's plenty of those. But, the general flow is pretty good. There's just some really unsatisfying parts that I want addressed. Somewhere in the mix I also want some simplification, to address multi-ship combat.

I want to stay true to the 6 original “special orders” while permitting as much player-character modification of those orders without actually changing them. So let’s start by revisiting those orders.

1. Before those 6 orders is the default order. This permits you to move a full move or a half move and fire your weapons at full. Weapons firing at full were modified by range, target size, and target movement. FFG didn’t include target size and movement into their calculations and I have to agree with that assessment. Target size seems a minor issue when the target is already thousands of miles away, and while movement might be an issue it seems like an unnecessary complication. That leaves only range. FFG included it and I propose to keep it. Now I will discuss the special orders. The problem I have with some of the FFG changes is that they permit too many things to happen at once. I’m sure they had in mind to engage all the player characters in every possible strategic round, and I agree with that reasoning, but I think all characters can have a role every turn without every ship being able to perform every action every turn.

2. Next let’s consider All Ahead Full orders. The original rules state that power is redirected to the engines, so weapons fire is halved and no turning is allowed. FFG changed this in two ways that produced very unsubtle effects. Your pilot could increase the speed of the ship with an Adjust Speed Maneuver, and your Enginseer Prime could bump that up with Flank Speed . This could be done simultaneously, and I’m sure we’ve all had those characters in our campaigns that could reliably double, and sometimes triple the ship’s speed nearly every round. And this would never affect weapons fire and only rarely affect turning. That’s not a desirable outcome. There was that outside chance of crippling one’s own engines. I did like that touch, though it disappeared when the Explorator had a few ranks. I propose that pushing the engines to greater speeds negates the ability to turn, and has a negative effect on weapons fire. I further propose that the weapons fire is affected differently depending on the weapon type. Energy-based weapons, such as sunsears or lances, would have their damage lessened due to the power drain (this is very efficacious when using Math-hammer-style armor rules), while macrocannons broadsides and other kinetic broadsides are lessened in STR, and macrocannon batteries and other kinetic batteries have their BS check penalized, representing the increased difficulty in bringing them to bear accurately.

3. Next let’s consider Come to New Heading . Originally, this order automatically permitted 2 turns at the cost of halving weapons fire. FFG changed that to a Difficult Piloting check, and the penalty to weapons fire is -20 to BS. It’s ambiguous whether that penalty still applies in the case of a failed piloting check. The original rules stated that the ship sacrificed firing opportunities to turn more sharply. I’m not sure what that means, so I’m going with power redirected to the maneuvering thrusters. I don’t think the 2 turns should be dependent on a piloting check. Ships 1-3 miles long aren’t going to turn faster due to deft handling of the helm. They are going to turn faster because of the power applied. The penalties to weapons fire would be the same as those mentioned above under All Ahead Full orders.

4. That brings us to Burn Retros orders. The original rules were a bit contradictory here. The maneuver was made possible by redirecting power, as the above orders, but it said that not only would the ship slow, but that it could be turned more sharply, yet they still only permitted one turn per strategic round. I propose that weapons fire is reduced as the above orders, that the amount of forward momentum arrested is decided by a piloting check, and that a good piloting check might permit an extra turn beyond the first.

5. Lock On orders probably received the biggest nerf. In BFG it virtually doubled a ship’s firepower, permitting a re-roll on all misses, and I see no problem with that as it stands. Re-rolls don’t permit any more hits than possible, but will affect that more hits are scored. I think this will be particularly effective with NPC ships, which becomes important when trying to providing a challenge when the player-characters get up in ranks. The question, then, is how to simulate that when hits are tallied using DoS. The original orders did not permit any turning, and I think that should still apply. That skilled pilot still isn’t going to turn a miles-long ship when all available power is being poured into the weapons systems.

6. The comes Reload Ordnance . FFG decided this could happen while other things were going on. I agree with them. I think the BFG rules got it wrong. Then again, I haven’t play-tested not using these orders with BFG. It might be a balancing issue, which might help explain why small craft are too powerful using FFG’s rules.

7. Lastly is the Brace For Impact orders. FFG ignored this entirely. I can understand that, given that it happens during the opponent’s turn. Still, I like the idea of a defensive action, and Evasive Maneuvers didn’t really rock my world. In fact, I find the idea of a 3-mile long ship dancing around a bit preposterous. In the original rules this gave the targeted ship a 50/50 saving throw against every hit, and that’s extremely powerful. The ship that used these orders could only perform the default orders in their next turn, and all weapons fire was halved in addition to that. I’m curious what other people think of this.

So using these types of orders, how do all characters get involved? Well, the captain issues the orders, and gives someone else a +10 bonus to perform their task, so that’s one person that’s absolutely involved every turn. An Enginseer Prime is doing all the re-routing of power, and with good skill checks could lessen the penalties of the chosen orders, representing the efficient use of power, and selectively underpowering sections of the ship that weren’t in dire need at the moment. So that’s another person that’s involved every turn. Regardless the order, if speed changes were modified by piloting checks, that would involved yet another person every turn, and provide something more than just 3 speeds per ship. In fact, I think that every role on the ship can be slightly tweaked to be engaged every turn.

I’ve written quite a bit more on the subject, and I’m keeping notes and constantly re-tweaking my thoughts. I decided to write this post and see what others think about ship combat. We’ve all talked about it before. I’m not one for holding my breath until RT 2.0 comes out. What are your thoughts?

If you want to go by the base BFG rules, then the game needs further tweaking before that can be done. I.e., cruiser weapons need to be longer ranged, enemy facing and your relative position must affect difficulty of shooting, etc.

As for the question of getting everyone involved, that is really up to the background of each character. But from a purely rules perspective, Navigators and Astropaths have really nothing to do besides their unique shipboard actions (unless the situation places them in more command-style positions), Enginseers and Rogue Traders have their things to do, Missionaries would be most appropriate for things like Brace for Impact and other such emboldening actions, Seneschals... well I dunno, they could handle the Lock-On stuff I guess since they have good perception, though why a moneyman knows how to use a sensory array is beyond me, leaving Void-Masters and Arch-Militants to do shooting and other stuff as necessary.

And lastly, for multi-ship combat, I personally just use the squadron mechanic from BFK. It works fine for my games, and really speeds up most combats.

Yes, I mentioned in #1 above the shooting modifiers. What you refer to as relative position is target movement in my post. They amount to the same thing. The actual words used are more like closing, moving away, and moving abeam, but it's all the same thing. And FFG chose to ignore those and for various reasons I agree with them. It unnecessarily complicates things. Even more is the issue of target size. BFG has differences between shooting at capital ships and escorts. I just don't think that's enough difference to matter. The 1 mile lonjg ship shouldn't be that much more difficult to hit than the 3-mile long ship at a distance of 40,000 miles. I know that's contrary to contemporary art, and with all due respect to 40k artists (I love their work), these ships aren't engaging each other from 8 miles away.

My main point to make about character actions is that I think there are ways to engage every character every turn without unduly unbalancing the RT ship-full of wonder-buddies, which the current rules do.

Here's how my group limits character actions. Generally speaking, the ship only gets one maneuver action and one shooting action (but can fire all available weapons) as per the rules. But this means that two characters can't do Flank Speed, or Adjust Speed, or Adjust Bearing, or Adjust Speed and Bearing, or Come to a New Heading. If the ship is doing one of those actions, it automatically negates the others because the ship only gets one maneuver action. However, multiple characters can assist the Pilot or Enginseer Prime in doing these actions. All characters, except the Lord-Captain, only get one Extended Action they can take per Turn; the Lord-Captain, if he's on the Bridge and is able to command, gets as many actions that involve Command as there are people in his Retinue, but in our rules it's rare I've ever personally had to do more than two. The Captain should be barking orders. However, if he does something like Piloting or Assisting another Character doing an action, that's the only one he gets.

None of us have played BFG, but we'd like to if only to see how the changes affected the overall game. We did adopt the some House Rules from here, particularly with regard to broadsides. And we tweeked armour values for every ship because these combats can take forever; even with AP, a combat against two similar vessels can take along time before anyone penetrates enough to cause some real damage. Of course, when I and the other GM in our group run starship combat, we tend to take a lot of other things into account. It's not too uncommon for a pirate raider to break off combat the instant he starts taking a Critical Hit because they usually have a harder time repairing such damage than Rogue Traders. Orks are pretty much the only enemy that will fight to the death almost all the time, but we've tempered that for Freebooters lately. As much as they like to fight, we think the Ork Freebooters have enough sense to know when to give up when they're getting their asses kicked. We haven't run across any Tyranids or Necrons yet, mainly because we don't have any stats for their ships.

Our big questions came down to the Teleportarium; just what can we teleport in one Hit-and-Run? I have this on my ship, and my players have one on theirs, and we've been grinding our teeth about this. Can we teleport a vehicle or three? How many troops can go in one teleport? Does this depend on the size of the ship? I'm commanding a Star Galleon, and my own players are in charge of a Frigate. We had this notion that maybe a Cruiser-sized ship may have the Teleportarium next to a Main Cargo Hold that enables vehicles to move into it, or to move bulk freight. We do use the rules in Into The Storm for Teleportariums, but there are a lot of questions about it we'd like some official answers to.

Once, I teleported an Atomic weapon into a Rak'Gol ship, and my GM didn't know how to properly address this. So he wiped out the entire ship as soon as it went off. We were bothered by it because it felt cheap; was there any way for the target ship to somehow defuse the weapon as soon as it manifested? In a similar instance, I wanted to teleport explosives into the target ship in order to disable certain components, so it would make it easier to take the ship relatively intact instead of obliterating it outright. He ran that, I thought, okay, but it did make us question if the Teleportarium is OP.

We did come up with some defenses against such attacks, but they involve the Psyker and his Choir to cloud the Teleportarium operators so they can't get a solid teleport. This was an impromptu rule we came up on the fly. Of course, that requires a Focused Auger check to determine if the ship even has a Teleportarium so that the Psyker knows about it before calamity can ensue.

Flank Speed is not a Maneuver Action. It is an Extended Action and may be performed simultaneously with Adjust Speed.

Your other problems are the same problems we have all run into. Hit and Run, and boarding actions in general, are broken, but not to the extent some other things are. Teleportariums are just one of the factors in that equation.

Atomics probably never should have been.

Flank Speed is not a Maneuver Action. It is an Extended Action and may be performed simultaneously with Adjust Speed.

We thought it should be. By what we understood, Flank Speed was meant to be able to push the ship faster than its maximum rated Speed. If the Pilot is attempting to Adjust the ship's Speed either faster or slower, that's canceled out by whatever the Enginseer has in mind since he's in control of the engines and maneuvering systems. At least that was our interpretation. So it makes coordination a bit more important.

I've given movement and weapons range thought, too, SCKoNi. In general, and for this purpose I'm only going to reference Imperial ships, since all would have to be completely redone, here's what I think movement rates should be. And let me say that the reason I've reduced them all so drastically is to make the tabletop larger. Whether you play with a battlemat or your monitor (roll20), you've had to run into those situations where the table just isn't big eough for your battle. So I reduced both movement and range to BFG constants. Here's what I got.

Movement

Battleships 3

Grand cruisers, battlecruisers, and cruisers 4

Light cruisers 4-5

Frigates 5

Destroyers 6

Raiders 6-7

Furies 6

Starhawks 4

Sharks 6

The basic weapons ranges are 6, 9, and 12, absolute, nothing is doubled. Anything 3 or less is close range and anything over 6 is long range. Individual weapon systems can very, of course.

I feel you there with the movement issues, which I myself have dealt with changing the standard value of one VU from 10,000 kilometers to 5,000. This allows planets and other celestial objects to dominate a space battle map and lets me increase the scale of the map to whatever I need it to be.

Your movement rates seem fitting so far, however are you then also changing the way the Manouevre's work? Since now the bonuses from Flank Speed/Adjust Speed apply a lot more since everything is slower. Also Components that affect speed would also be more valuable now, although that is a smaller evil.

The weapon ranges seem a bit harsh, if I am understand them correctly. Everything beyond 6 is long range? Is this to mean that all weapons would get the same range, or that this is to be a new "universal point" at which all shooting in void suffers a -10 due to range? Also, does this apply to both Macros and Lances? Further explanation there would be good.

For my own campaign, I use a similar system of Mathhammer with the change to weapons being that I upped the range on all Broadsides by 2 to showcase their increased size, simple yes but it has served well so far. Beyond that, the range system in the core rules may be simplistic (as ****) but it serves it purpose imo.

As for the question of Teleportariums, the way I have handled it in my games is by applying the "Gate of Eternity" principle to it. (Check OW psychic powers Telekinesis)

This means that only what the system can project a protective field around can be transported, which if we look to Tabletop is only ever man-sized (**** off Dreadknights). In regards to large non-living objects (i.e. Atomics, Torpedoes, Macroshells, etc.), I would personally be against it because of how the warp interacts with unwarded physical matter, and vehicles would be right out. Remember that it takes incredibly powerful systems to even transport SM Terminators because of their size. Anything beyond Size (5), in other words more than 2m in all directions, should really be outside the scope of a Teleportarium.

changing the standard value of one VU from 10,000 kilometers to 5,000... allows planets and other celestial objects to dominate a space battle map

Really? The diameter of the Earth is still only two VU in that case (12, 472km).

As for upping the range of broadsides... they're still exactly the same guns, there are just more of them.

Yeah, I'm American so I threw km out the window on day 1 anyway. I just don't think in km. My VUs are 10,000 miles when they have any value. For the most part I just ignore distance. It's just a VU, nothing else. Most planets are going to take up a single square on the battle board. Gas giants might have a radius anywhere from 2-12+

And yes, movement being so low, modifying it has to be in smaller increments. I did mention I didn't like the way Flank Speed or Adjust Speed worked.

In BFG, long range got a table shift for macrocannons. Lances were unaffected. I propose the same concept. Penalize macrocannon accuracy (-10 to hit).

The weapon ranges I've used in ratio to movement are exactly what BFG used. Their movement of 15cm is my movement of 3 (BBs). Their weapon range of 30cm is my weapon range of 6. Broadsides have no extra bonus to range, though many broadside weapons are longer ranged, but that's a different issue altogether. That's the difference between Mars, Sunsears, and Hecutors. And of course there are many other other weapon systems to reinterpret.

changing the standard value of one VU from 10,000 kilometers to 5,000... allows planets and other celestial objects to dominate a space battle map

Really? The diameter of the Earth is still only two VU in that case (12, 472km).

As for upping the range of broadsides... they're still exactly the same guns, there are just more of them.

For the first point, yeah the Earth would not dominate **** on a map. Then again, the most common planets are Gas Giants, which have several VUs to them (Neptune a relatively small Gas Giant is 10 VUs in diameter). Also plasma clouds, nebulae's and so on can be made larger (I know they don't really exist irl, but some suspension of disbelief is to be expected).

As for the second, that is something I implemented to make Cruisers feel more like artillery pieces. My logic was that their weapons are longer-barreled and are situated on a more stable firing platform (i.e. not turrets like Dorsal weapons) and this grants them more range. Should also note that I decrease the Strength of all weapons on ships of Frigate size or smaller that have 2 Dorsal slots, shouldn't be able to fit that many guns on a small ship's back anyway imo.

I also have to wonder if weapon damages shouldn't be increased considerably. Maybe FFG wanted to draw out the drama of spaceship combat, but I often hear complaints of these taking too much time, not the other way around. Converting weapons damage from BFG to RT would mean that the average "hit" in RT spaceship combat would do

2d10 + (average armor value)

It is probably worth noting that FFG added considerably to an escort's ability to absorb punishment. By BFG standards all escorts, and most transports, would only have around 10 hull integrity. I have to agree with FFGs choice to make the escorts more robust. But this still adds to the length of starship combat.

I'm also trying to come up with a new critical dynamic. I originally though that armor value could be variable, like 1d5 or 1d10, and that when someone rolled minimally for armor value, that would indicate a critical, but I haven't really thought this through.

Round 2.

Desired Outcomes/Concepts:

• Simple general orders with penalties to anything not related to that order

• ways for characters to modify the penalties of general orders

• new shooting rules more dependent on crew rating to hit with each STR rolling a separate die (d10) - shooting modifiers +1 at close range (3 or less), -1 at long range (greater than 6), -1 when shooting at ordnance

  • Elite 5+

  • Veteran 6+

  • Professional 7+

  • Competent 8+

  • Incompetent 9+

• Weapon hits do 10 damage + BS bonus of firing officer

• Modify weapons damage to reflect “halved effect” of movement

• variable armor (0, 1d5, 1d10), armor is always rolled (even armor 0), with a roll of 1 indicating a critical hit

• Firing - it takes a fire director to target an opposing vessel, so while a single character can direct the fire of any number of weapons against a single ship, it takes 2 characters to target 2 completely different ships on the same turn.

Yeah, it's late. I've worked consecutive 13-hr. days, so there's bound to be mistakes with a couple glaring holes, but these ideas have been eating a hole in my brain and I have to throw them to the dogs, so feast. I'll give them a day or two to ferment and come back to visit them...

General Orders

Luff the Engines

Speed - half speed (rounded up) -1 per 2 DoS

Turns - 1 automatically, 2 with piloting check (-10 per speed)

Weapons - damage -5 per hit, additional -1 per speed slowed

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 damage to weapons +1 per DoS

Battle Stations

Speed - half speed (rounded up), +1 for success on piloting check, +1/DoS

Turns - 1

Weapons - normal

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 speed or +1 weapon and +1 speed or weapon damage per DoS

Ramming Speed

Speed - full speed, +1 for success on piloting check, +1/DoS

Turns - 0

Weapons - damage -5 per hit, additional -1 per speed enhanced

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 damage to weapons +1 per DoS

Prime Weapons

Speed - half speed (rounded up) +/-1 per 2 DoS on piloting check

Turns - 0

Weapons - all misses are re-rolled

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 damage to weapons +1 per DoS

Come About

Speed - half speed (rounded up) +/-1 per 2 DoS on piloting check

Turns - 2

Weapons - damage -5 per hit, additional -1 per speed slowed/enhanced

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 damage to weapons +1 per DoS

Brace for Impact (declared during the enemy's turn)

Speed - half speed (rounded up) +/-1 per 2 DoS on piloting check

Turns - 1

Weapons - damage -5 per hit, additional -1 per speed slowed/enhanced

Power - Tech Use check permits +1 damage to weapons +1 per DoS

I may be in a minority but I actually prefer space battles to last a long time. The Age-of-Sail battles they are echoing went on for hours, with cannon blasting away at hulls that could take a vast amount of punishment. I took pains to have the rules down pat before we played and my group's first space combat lasted less than half an hour of real time; I really wouldn't want it any shorter.

Each to their own though.

I don't know about that LoneK. Few battles involved ships blasting away at each other for hours. The few that did made them memorable battles, but the exception and not the rule. Now while they might have spent hours, even days maneuvering for position, the ensuing action often ended brutally, lopsidedly, and quickly. Naval battles were actually pretty rare. The War of 1812 only saw about 40 and most of those were 2-ship duels. The entirety of the Napoleonic Wars had fewer than 100, and only a few of those were fleet engagements. I think the Seven Years' War had more fleet engagements. A single fleet engagement usually decided the naval portion of any war, Trafalgar is a good example of that. Most "battles" involving pirates and merchants involved getting close enough to the merchant to demonstrate that the merchant wasn't escaping, followed by the merchant surrendering. Most "battles" between pirates and men-of-war involved the man-of-war blowing the crap out of a drunken crew. Of course, none of this is condusive to an exciting RPG, so let's ignore real history.

I don't want to remove the detail of 2-ship duels. That's not my intention. I want to streamline the rules to allow for larger engagements without that battle taking multiple sessions. I've run a 20-ship battle in a single session, but from all I've heard on this forum that was the exception and not the rule. I also want to leave in the influence that characters have to influence the tide of battle.

Let's take a look at the effects of FFG rules on 40k naval battles.

• The greatest change, and it's one that changes the entire dynamic of sector fleets, is that escorts can slug it out with capital ships mono-a-mono. Many of the other rules problems leads to this problem.
• Maybe the second biggest change is the effect of characters. In BFG, leadership plays a role. Captains can give special orders and admirals can permit re-rolls. While important, these are still limited. RT PCs completely dominate FFG rules, and they should influence the outcome. But they should not make every battle a predetermined blowout, even when the PCs do everything wrong, and that's currently the case.
• Most of use have house-ruled macrocannon batteries because they make all other choices into non-choices.
• Even when macrocannons don't get chosen lances rarely get chosen.
• Macrocannons get further modified because they make broadside batteries less than optimal, and completely destroy their usefulness in NPC capital ships.
• Armor doesn't have any real effect
• Critical hits don't happen as often, especially for NPC ships - this is a big one to me, as this is detail, and detail is good in RPGs
• I won't even go into the small craft, as I've carried on about their broken-ness in too many threads already.
• torpedoes were done as an afterthought and the rules still reflect that

What did FFG add that was positive?

• crew casualties
• crew morale
• crew rating, but as it stands it makes NPC ships ineffective except at the highest levels, and even those trail behind Rank 3 PC ships, so this improvement is a bit of a null improvement
• varying macro-weapon effects - detail is good as long as it doesn't slow down game-play and they did this well

I'm probably forgetting a few for each list, but it's obvious which list has more weight to it.

Hey, if you're good with the rules as they stand with just some house rules added on, I get it. I've particiapted one way or the other in 4 campaigns now and still always had fun. I equally admit the fun decreased as the starship combat challenge decreased. I'm just exercising my mind here. I'm wondering if there's a yet better way to adjudicate this particular challenge, and it strikes me that there must be a better way.

I wish there were some ultra-quick rules.

When you say ultra-quick, Egyptoid, do mean even faster than BFG? I ask because many people, maybe most, prefer more detail than a minis game where RPGs are concerned. Some people might prefer a simple challenge test but I'm thinking they are in the minority. Are you in that group?

Personally, I'd love to see an abstract method that uses a battle board instead of a grid. It would still allow for stratagems, but would abrogate the need for all the maneuvering that adds so much time to the adjudication without adding that much value to the battle resolution. Plus, all that maneuvering does actually involve tactics on the part of the player(s), especially where multiple-ship squadrons are concerned, which means that their character(s) tactics skill mean little.

I like your work Errant, and since I have liberated quite a significant amount of it for my games I would like to assist you in this endeavor, however misguided I might believe it is. As you know, I'm all for the KISS method; however, the space combat system is broken in RT and I would like to see it improved. With all this said, I'm currently in the finals weeks of my classes, and will work on this on and off a little bit till I have more time. Interesting work so far though.

I've toyed with the idea of making starship combat a variant of personal combat where a starship has strength, dexterity, toughness (and a toughness bonus) and the like and these stats were derived from crew skills, components and players could make orders to boost the stats (temporarily). I even had ideas of breaking the ship up into locations like the players are (head becoming bridge, arms becoming weapons systems etc...) so that crew could be harmed in some areas but unharmed in others.

It never really got off the drawing board though.

I'm super busy at work right now, and that's a good thing. It gives me time away from this latest project, to let the ideas sit and simmer. When I get back to it I think I might go a whole new direction, or at least I hope I do. Sometimes I need to remind myself what I've said in the past, or someone else does. Abstraction is my friend. I should pay the friend a visit.

You are right, Nameless. That was an ill-considered thought of mine. I was all prepared to replace a system that didn't have enough playtesting with yet another system that wouldn't have enough playtesting. I thought it would be like reinventing the wheel, which is bad enough, but it's really more like reinventing a broken wheel, which is absurd.

So now I'm working on an abstract system. It will be able to take the place of the system in place in its entirety, but it's specifically designed to deal with squadrons in a large engagement. You can still use the link above if you care to see it progress. Feel free to leave comments here. Without the input I've already received I'd be going down a long road to nowhere, so thanks already.

Okay, I've come up with an abstract system I'm happy with. I'll be trying it out in the next combat in my current campaign. I'll let the players decide if they like it and whether it needs tweaked. It's short, less than 2 pages.

Adjudicating Initiative remains the same, but is checked every turn.

Turn Sequence

1. Ship Captain (or Squadron Commander) with Initiative chooses to increase, decrease, or maintain range. Disengage can also be chosen, but the range must be long or greater.

   1. Opposing Captain (or Squadron Commander) chooses whether to permit this, oppose this, or augment it (i.e. increase or decrease range even more). If the action is permitted then apply the results and this action is over. If the action is augmented then apply the results (x2) and this action is over. If the action is opposed then the two make an Opposed Command check (opposed Tactica Imperialis if one of the leaders is in command of a squadron). This Opposed check is modified by +5 per speed difference for the leader with the faster ship/squadron. The winner’s choice is applied and this action is over.

   2. Combat Range(s) = point blank - short - medium - long - very long - distant

2. Helmsmen attempt to orient their ship so that batteries can come to bear. They make a Piloting (Spaceship) + Maneuverability -20 per facing they are trying to bring to bear (i.e. if they are only trying to bring their starboard facing to bear, then the check has no penalty, but if they are trying to bring both their starboard and front facings to bear, then the check is at -20). Absurdities are not allowed and should be apparent (e.g. you can’t fire both your broadsides at the same ship, though you could fire both broadsides at different targets, even if those targets are in the same squadron [e.g. cutting the line]. Apply additional penalties as you see fit).

3. Shooting takes place.

   1. Macrocannon of all sorts are penalized by -10 BS at long and very long ranges (no shooting is permitted at distant range). Macrocannon of all sorts receive a bonus of +10 BS at point blank range.

   2. Weapon Ranges - If the old range is <4, then the new range is short ​​​. If the old range is 4-6, then the new range is medium . If the old range is 7-9, then the new range is long . If the old range is 10+, then the new range is very long .

4. Ordnance (torpedoes and small craft) do not always attack immediately. If the range is point blank or short , then the attack takes place immediately. If the range is medium or long , then the ordnance takes 2 turns to reach its target (i.e. it attacks next turn). Recovery time is also 2 turns. If the range is very long or distant , then the ordnance takes 3 turns to reach its target. Recovery time is also 3 turns

5. Extended Actions take place at any point during the turn. These remain largely the same with the following changes.

   1. Hit & Run must take place at point blank range

   2. Active Augury has a range of very long . A single DoS extends this to distant . Each DoS also negates an opponent's Silent Running modifer of -10, so a ship that is distant and has -20 to detect due to Silent Running would require 3 DoS to detect with this Action.

   3. Actions that benefit speed, maneuverability, and/or shooting (i.e. Aid the Machine Spirit, Flank Speed, Lock on Target, and Put Your Backs Into It) should probably be mutually exclusive unless they are all used for the same effect.

I would add another range increment of "Obscured" or something similar to this. Reasons for this is

1) Nova cannons should be able to fire at "distant targets" or less, but with a modifier; however, they cannot fire at point blank targets.

2) Ships should be able to disengage at distant which a check, and at "Obscure" with a +30 or automatically. That is, if you allow for the "Silent Running" science of 40k.

This is just what I noticed after 10 mins of thought. Will get back to you and this awesome concept after finals. Congrats on a very simplified approach to a broken system.

Guessing damage and everything is based on the Mathhammer concept?

Didn't think about the nova cannon, but you're right. There does need to be another range increment. I like obscured , since nova cannons fire at a range beyond which it is reasonable to detect ships on silent running. The rules never specified the absolute range of detection, just the range to detect ships on silent running, which is 20 VUs + 5 VUs/DoS on an Active Augur action. That's always been a problem. Perhaps there even needs to be a range beyond obscured called detection . Perhaps that's where all battles start that don't have ships on silent running, or ships hiding behind planets, within a solar glare, etc.

That means finding a ship on silent running at the range of obscured needs to be ruled, probably with DoS on the Active Augury, followed by a contested check of some sort. I'll have to consider the problem.

I allowed for Disengage at long distance or greater, as the original rules allowed for it to happen at pretty close ranges. But yes, distance should give a bonus the further the ship going on silent running is from its pursuer. Maybe this is another contested action. I'll have to look that up since if I recall correctly Disengage and Silent Running are almost synonymous.

And yes, I'd be using all my normal house rules for this system, which are modified Math-hammer rules.