My group are new to RT and to be honest have not yet had a single space battle, so my opinion is probably pretty biased. However, I've had a pretty extensive RPG experience behind my back.

That said, I looked through space combat rules and noticed that the crit table is boring and poorly written. Also microbattery overpoweredness was pretty obvious, so we are intending to try the -12 armor, resolve each hit individually test rule.

Now here is what I am proposing as the bases of a new crit table plus some additional supplemental rules

Hull just got useful!! New rules for active benefits of high hull:

Hull rating is now used to contest critical hits, Whenever a spaceship suffers a critical hit the captain or other high ranking officer in the command deck may roll a Challenging(+0) unmodified (current hull rating) roll. If even a single degree of success is achieved the critical hit is nulified, although it still inflicts hull damage as normal. This makes big ships and undamaged ships more resistant to first hit critical hits. Ships that reach hull 0 follow the normal rules for Crippling and obviously cannot roll to prevent critical hits.

New extended action:

Fortify hull: An explorer may try to rally the crew into fortifying certain weak spots along the ship hull and protect critical components. He rolls Challenging(+0) Tech-Use skill. Each degree of success adds 3 points to any roll to nulify critical hits for one component for the current strategy turn.

Emergency repair rule change: Attempting to repair Damaged components is at -10 penalty.

New component destruction rules: A damaged component that becomes damaged again is instead destroyed!

New critical hit rules: Enemy ships never fire blindly at each other. When firing at an enemy vessel you always target a component (you can still target only components of which you are aware of). You must decide which component do you target before rolling the dice to hit Certain key components have added layers of protection against critical hits because of their importance:

Supplemental components generally have protection of 0, or 1 if they are a weapon, or 2 if they are in danger of exploding if damaged.. Sensors have protection 1. Thrusters have protection 2. Engines have protection 3. Command deck has protection 4. Plasma generators have protection 5. Warp engine (if any) has protection 6.

When resolving a critical hit against a component deduce it's protection rating from the damage inflicted to it. Any remaining damage causes the following:

1. Depressurized 2.Unpowered 3. Damaged 4, On fire

Essential components are more important for the ship functions. Check out how to resolve damage against those below:

If a component is damaged while a character is working on that component/located there for whatever reason that character takes an automatic hit that inflicts 1d10+6 damage with 0 armor penetration.

Sensors
Unpowered or Damaged - roll 1d10. If less then 7 decrease detection by -20, if 8+ ship cannot detect anything past immediate engagement range. Both of these effects can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty.

Thrusters
Unpowered or Damaged - roll 1d10. If less then 7 Maneuverability decreased by -20, if 8+ ship cannot turn at all. Both of these effects can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty.

Engines
Unpowered or Damaged - roll 1d10. If less then 7 move at half speed, if 8+ ship cannot move at all. Both of these effects can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty.

Command Deck
Unpowered or Damaged - roll 110. If less then 7 the ship takes -20 penalty on all checks (except repair checks). If 8+ ship cannot take any actions until repaired. Both of these effects can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty.

Plasma Drive
Unpowered - ship immediately shuts down. This effect can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty.
Damaged - drive core malfunctions and explodes dealing 1d10 crew and 1d10 morale damage and immediately shuts down, but it can be repaired at an additional -10 penalty. Destroyed - drive core is destroyed in a massive explosion dealing 1d10+10 crew and 1d10+10 morale damage, ship no longer able to function until new plasma drive is installed.

Warp Drive
Unpowered - ship unable to enter the warp
Damaged - warp core explodes dealing 1d10+10 crew and morale damage. Additional complications and decision if damage can be repaired up to the GM
Destroyed - ship is massively damaged or destroyed (GM decision), but in any case a giant gaping hole to the warp is created centered at the warp drive. Terrible warp creatures may spawn and attack everyone. Destroying a ship's Warp Drive is considered a crime worthy of the worst punishments available to the Imperium.

Please tell me what you think of these rules. How badly are they broken, if any?

No one to comment?

We need some time to review, at least for me : it's better to understand something well before criticizing, right ?
I don't see anything broken per se. I like the hull rule against crits.
For the components, thought, with your scale up to 6, I do think that might be a bit high, too granular and complex. it will slow down more space combat…
What's your opinion on armoured bridge with your rules ?
What should be the interaction between Auxillary Plasma Banks & a shut down Plasma Drive ?
How do you distinguish between a Plasma Drive & Engines crit as it is the same component who both power the ship and allow it to move ? The same for thrusters ?

Overall your rules look decent.

Your hull integrity nullifying crits will hurt lance weapons somewhat, whose purpose is to crit. To address that I would change the rule that says "all crits do minimum 1 damage" to 10 damage (in fact, that might be a pretty good change regardless!).

If I understand how your crits work: when firing a weapon you first choose a component to fire at, then see how much damage you do. If it's not a crit, you do normal damage to opponent's hull integrity. If it is a crit (through a lucky roll or because their H.I. is 0) then you subtract the "protection" and if say 2 was left over you would unpower it.

First off, it doesn't really work with the flavor of macrobatteries, which fill space with volley rather than target components. Also something I'm noticing is that you have no result for destroying a component outright, no matter how high the damage is. Maybe you should make it 4-5 on fire, 6 or more is destroyed. Also, I dont see how you are distingishing between depressurized and unpowered?

I think the "protection" should really boil down to where it is installed (on the surface or in the middle of the ship) and not what type of system it is. Maybe: lance/novacannon: 0, battery: 1, sensors: 0, torpedo tubes: 1, bridge: 1, warp/plasma drive: 6, maneuvering thrusters: 2 ? Something to be careful of is whatever turns out to be the best value to target (meaning the least protection with the most impact if it is hit) will the component your players will always target. So unless there is something built into your system which makes some things situationally better to target, they will have the same action every time. My guess is they will always target the enemy's weapons, once those are offline they will have to flee or surrender.

Why are you adding -10 to all repairs?

Have you played out a sample combat (say against yourself) to test all this out? These are interesting rules, let us know how it goes when you get your game running.

Don't get too impatient on responses, this part of the message board doesn't get a ton of traffic

I'd say all crits do a minimum of 1d10 damage is good.

You guessed correctly how the system works. 6+ destroyed sounds reasonable.

I've given resistance roughly based on how important the component is for the ship. Macrobattery flavor is something I am willing to sacrifice as it's not such a major issue - you still aim them, it's not like you are shooting at random,

Naturally, important components would be better armored, would they not? Originally I had weapons at 0 but realized they are too important so they shouldn't be so vulnerable

Added -10 to define the difference between Unpowered and Damaged. I guess some minor damage could be added to the destroyed condition as well - something like 1d3 pop and 1d3 morale

I wanted to test the normal rules first and we just did that yesterday - and i was correct that they don't work well. Wanted some forum feedback to fix any major issues before testing them out.

I thought that the rules worked reasonably well once you are using the -12 armor rule. While I do like your rules also, I wouldn't say the existing rules need to be overhauled. Of course how you want to play is totally up to you, and if you end up using/modifying your system let us know how it goes in case others want to try something similar.

Best of luck!