Delta Vector Spaceship Game 2.0: Making Decisions

The game has also been plagued by my indecision.  It's time to bite the bullet and nail some things down.  In this post I listed some choices that need to be made - now I'm going to make them so I can move forward.   I think I kept it "open" to gaming generic games like Star Wars/Star Trek but they have popular games for them specifically now.  So I'm going to focus on my interests and inspirations - EvE Online and Lost Fleet - with secondary influences from Dread Empire's Fall, 2300AD, and Risen Empire.  I mean, I'm not even sure if anyone else will ever play this, so why not make it something I'm really interested in?

Fighters, Missiles & Drones
Single fighter per stand, or 4-12 per stand fleet-scale style?
Fighter/drone/missile movement - use same token system as ships, a simplified version or abstract it more?   How to make them useful without overpowering them; maybe add ace pilots/squadrons?  
Drones - how should they work - maybe a range radius limit from the mothership?  Should fighters track fuel (make a fuel roll each time they use afterburners/dogfight; a fail roll = impossible to initiative dogfight or afternburners, if attacked in dogfight, have low fuel penalty) vs record keeping.  How to missiles intercept and impact targets?
I've decided no fighters.  There may be unmanned drones which operate a distance from the carrier.   No vector tokens, nor fuel tracking.  Drones have a velocity that is capped at their thrust.  Drones would be in swarms of 4-6 and not individual.  Drone crew quality is the same as the controlling parent ship.  I'll begin work on drone rules.  Missile rules are already solid, but I'm going to tweak them to differentiate them from unguided AoE bombs.  (Allow missile markers to be placed anywhere within thrust range i.e. 6-12" away from the vector marker, instead of being centred on the vector marker).

Velocity/Thrust Caps
How fast do I want ships moving/changing direction? Very important when compared to weapon ranges.  Since thrust impacts effective velocity (speed) what is 'normal' thrust? Movement should be high compared to weapon ranges, emphasizing ship maneuver.  Should I have a maximum velocity over which engagements are impractical? How many 20" moves can you make on a table anyway?
I'm going to use "lightspeed" to put a hard limit on top speed and weapon ranges.  For the moment, I'm going to say it's 20" but I may reduce it.  No ships can go faster than 20"/move. No weapons can be fired at targets beyond 20".   This has other implications - ships who are moving towards each other at a combined speed of 20"+ (i.e. ships approaching head on, one doing 12", the other doing 9") cannot fire at each other.   Ships targeting ships moving .5 light (10") or closing at a combined speed of 10"+ suffer a penalty to hit (say +2 or +3 defence bonus).

For "usual thrust"  I'm going 1-2" thrust for capital ships and 3-4" thrust for escorts.   When playtesting I noticed ships tended to move at a velocity = to 2x thrust. I.e. a 4-thrust escort would move around 8" on average - this varied depending on terrain/asteroids (I used  fair bit.)   Weapon ranges were = to dice ranges (i.e. d12 = 12") but tended to be around half that in practice. 

Detection
This adds a layer of complexity and decisions (good) but takes time (bad)
If each unit detects individually, that is a LOT of detection rolls or simply range measuring etc
Maybe units that are far away or in cover in an asteroid field simply receive a initiative 'tactical' advantage instead; i.e they cannot be forced to move by an opponent with the initiative or a ship must be really close to force them to move  Is it possible to be stealthy in space anyway? vs cloaking devices/stealth ships are in nearly all movies
I'm going to give a qualified "no" to stealth/detection. I'd like to avoid detection rolls.  Also, it seems pretty hard to hide something in space. It's not like you need radar when you can see them twice as easily. I may add in small "stealth ships" but they will be the exception rather than the rule.  I'm going to make the assumption everyone sees everyone, but EW/relativity means it isn't easy to lock/hit them.  Ships hiding in asteroids or in the shadow of a planet may perhaps be replaced by a marker until they power up or move into line of sight.   Or perhaps they can't be forced to move when another player has the initiative.  Either way, I'd like to minimise spotting rolls.  This can be put on the backburner until I want specific stealth ships. 

Combat Mechanics
Do we go the Warmachine 2d6 route? (familiar, hard to give points cost, use d10s (easy to do costs) or multiple dice types (not everyone is a D&D nerd).  Do we have set ranges per weapon (i.e. 0-5" short range, 6-10" long range) or graduated ranges (6+ to hit at 6" range, 7+ to hit at 7" range). How can we represent different ship types whilst ditching hitboxes etc. How do you show a big but poorly armoured ship vs a small but heavily protected one?  How will damage be applied?  Will it be as a ratio attack vs defence, like General Quarters or a Skyful of Ships?  Beat a threshold (like Firestorm Armada; will your to hit die x the attack like in Heavy Gear?  Do we have simple criticals (that could be recorded with a micro d6 beside the ship) or generic ones (propulsion or weapons/systems halved)  or eschew them altogether?
This is being worked on. At the moment I favour systems damage. Weapons fire by batteries and beat a TN to score hits. At the moment I am using a range of dice (d6-d12) a la Savage Worlds/Ambush Alley. 

Shields
Is this another thing to track? Having directional shields is good (increases tactics, maneuver), but how to do it without book keeping? Maybe BFG blast markers? Would they recharge in a turn or over the course of the battle?
Yes - but still investigating. Are the tradeoffs worth it? Can it be kept simple?

"Suppression/Shaken"
Maybe some sort of suppression effect that represents crew being thrown around by explosions.
Yes. BFG-esque blast markers will add terrain in a pleasing manner and enhance gameplay.  These work whether I use shields or not.

Ammunition/Heat Buildup
Heat management was cool in Battletech. This could also discourage spam of ammo-based weapons.  Do we track this, and how? Is it more trouble than it's worth?
Ammo will be a simple yes/no on the ship data card.  No heat management as we already will have a form of energy management elsewhere and it seems like a bit of a double-up. 

Power Allocation
SFB was a nightmare but a simple Homeworld system where you can slightly boost offence, or defence or speed would be workable I think i.e.  Double thrust or fire energy weapons twice in an activation or overloard/recharge shields.
Qualified yes.  I'll work this into other rules.  Already you can trade thrust for defensive bonuses.  I'll look at ways to allow swapping between shields (once I finalise how they work) and thrust. Not sure if I'll include beam weapons in that.

Repair
How much in a turn?  How damaged is a ship before it is beyond the on-board crew's ability to fix it?
With the system-focussed damage system, a crew check to repair 1 system per turn seems reasonable. An additional penalty to repair systems who have take a second hit (and they can never be then repaired back to pristine condition as it'd be beyond the abilities of shipboard damage parties.)

Jumpgates and Jumpdrives
 Jumpgates focus combat and give exit/entry to battlefield.  Jumpdrives are needed cos they appear in so much sci fi on TV. Jumpdrives will need to be regulated, within a min-max range from a gravity well or beacon (i.e. ships arrive stationary, between 10-120" from gravity well, facing the gravity well; and can only reaction fire in the first turn?); they need time to spool up/pass CQ checks?  Jumpdrives could be abused easily as a tactical combat aid...
Ships cannot warp in and out at will.  Ships will jump in or out of space near jump beacons/jumpgates which will focus combat. Some special ships will be fitted with their own jumpdrive (aka mobile jumpgate) but these will be lumbering slow behemoths who will need to be protected and may provide a focal point for task forces.

Generic vs Specific
Do I want to keep my generic 'works with any TV show' rules in favour of more specific ones?
I'm going to cease to bother to regard TV shows and movies.  There's official games for them anyway - if you want to play them, go play those rules. 

Weapon Variety
Enough to be interesting and simulate all TV shows, few enough to be remembered by everyone without consulting charts.
Since I've decided to ignore the two big elephants in the room, I'm reducing it to missiles, kinetics and lasers.  No weird graviton beams or improbably slowly moving plasma balls.


Orders
The BFG order system gave great flavour and a new level of tactical choice.  Maybe something similar (6 choices shown on microdice) here, or merge this with power allocation?  Maybe excess thrust can be spent on "Evasive Action" - penalties to incoming fire caused by zigzagging/thrust adjustments along general course. 
No.  This is already being incorporated elsewhere - you perform crews checks to react in various ways. I may add some "orders"  but I don't think a specific system is needed to be added.  The BFG orders system is suited to its Gothic WW1-in-space background but is less applicable to normal space games where computers abound. 

Ship Types
Most space games have small ships with a lifespan of the first 1-2 turns as they act as ablative armour for the larger ships.  Although ships in the future may be similar, for gameplay sake giving ships defined roles (and all ships survivability) is important. A good example is EvE Online (the MMORPG) where small ships are almost impossible to hit by bigger ships and can jam enemies jump drives to stop them escaping.    Non battleship types must have useful roles and decent survivability.
This is being addressed but also needs to be tackled through ship creation/ship building.

Delta Vector Space Game: Task Forces & Small Ships 2.0

I've revised my ambitions from WW2/WW1 scale battles with 12-24 or so per side to smaller forces of 4-8 per side.   I'm modelling them more on modern naval task forces.  These will typically include 1-3 large ships, and 2-6 smaller ships.

Capital Ships
Like a modern task group, the large ships will tend to be more specialised, e.g.

Fleet Carrier (cross between drone carrier and PT-boat tender)
Jumpship (creates its own jump point)
Missile Cruiser (spams powerful missiles)
Bombardment Cruiser (powerful spinal mount railcannon and lasers)
Assault Carrier (carries marines, atmospheric drones, assault boats and planetary bombardment weapons)

They will also tend to be slow - 1 or 2 thrust means they need to keep to low velocities, and have very predictable movement.  

Escorts
The much maligned "escorts" will act like jack-of-all trades rather like modern destroyers and frigates.   They will be much faster - averaging 3-5 thrust. As thrust can be traded for defensive modifiers (a +4 defensive bonus vs d10 is significant) they are mobile and survivable.    They will be mobile and largely capable of avoiding contact with bigger ships/mitigating damage.  That said, if they park alongside a heavier ship and go toe-to-toe they WILL get messed up.

Escorts will have a few roles - a few idea are:

Interdictor (block warp with emp bombs/ion beams or slow with tractors)
Bomber (unguided nuke/EMP)
Destroyer (lots of light weapons for fighting light vessels, drones etc)
Hunter-Killer (massive spinal mount for taking on capital ships)
Scout (double command & sensor range; can "relay" command bonuses)
Active EW (buff friendlies, debuff enemies 'to hit')

Their high speed allows them to perform roles like interdiction and scouting, and line up unguided weapons with precision. 

It may be a bit unrealistic to make smaller ships faster, when in space all ships are governed by the same thrust/weight ratio (a Star Destroyer, with better engines/size could potentially outrun an X-Wing) but it's a gameplay choice I'm making. 

Problems
My main concern is giving small ships a "too hit" bonus encourages them to engage from further away. I'll need to make it that powerful capital ship weapons will discourage long range duels.   

Delta Vector Space Game: The Shield Conundrum 2.0

I'd like to have shields.  Directional, preferably.  It would add an aspect of resource management and also reward positioning/facing your spaceship.  However, if it adds too much complexity, the trade isn't worth it.

These "shield arcs" show when shields are hit/down.  I could use different colours, but I'll probably only use arcs when shields are DOWN.  I.e. you presume shields are up until shown otherwise, and only add the shield markers IF they are down.  That way you don't use shield markers as much.

Pics taken on my phone:

I made the marker with transparent plastic from a folder.  I traced the shape using a 50mm base and a starship hex base (the usual EM4 ones).

You could use different colours of shields to show shields full / failing / down.... but that's a bit complex for my tastes...

I'm going to use a simple shields are up/ down I think.  I only add the marker if the shield is DOWN - otherwise you can assume the shield is functioning normally.  This reduces the number of shield markers in play.

How might this work in practice?  Here's a few examples:

The "Battlefleet Gothic" Method
The shield absorbs a set amount of hits from each volley - say 3 hits. Any amount less than that means there is no effect - the shield shrugs off the hits and remains at full strength.  If it takes 3+ hits in a single attack, the shield is down for the rest of the turn and all later shots though that arc impact directly on the ship.  Has the benefit of simplicity, although I might as well use blast markers like the original game.

The More Convoluted Method i.e. Some go through, some don't.   
From the damage rules in the last post, a attack dice (say d8) is compared to a defence target number based on the hull/armour of the ship (let's say 4).  The shields (if up) add a defensive bonus - let's say +2.

So the ship has a basic defence of 4, but 6 counting the shields.

Now, any rolls of 7 or 8 will go straight through and damage the ship - they exceed the hull and shields combined.   Any rolls of 4 or less have no effect - the hull would resist them anyway.  But rolls of 5 to 6 WOULD have damaged the ship if it wasn't for the shield bonus.  If the amount of 5 & 6 rolls equals the shield bonus (2) then the shields are down.  Any further shots would hit on 4+ as the shield bonus is now gone.

Example:  A ship has a defence of 4, with 2 shields - 6 defence total.    An attack is rolled and 3 damage rolls are made - for 7, 5 and 3.  The '7' exceeds the total defence and hits anyway.  The '5' hits the shields - which remain up for the next attack.  The '3' has no effect.  

If the rolls had been 6, 5, 3 for example - no shots would have gone through, but the 6 and 5 would have collapsed the shields.

That's just one example. I don't really mind how the shields work, but I don't want any record keeping except shields up/down.  No shield boxes to cross out a la Starfleet Battles/Colonial Battlefleet - ugh!

Why shields?
Besides being a sci fi staple, they add more resource management and decisions to gameplay.  I.e. you can attack the side of the enemy ship with shields down - or manoeuvre to position your own damaged shields away from the enemy. Perhaps passing a crew skill roll would enable you to channel power to shields - i.e. a ship with rear shields down but full frontal shields could pass a crew check, and swap them so the frontal arc was down but the rear was up.  Or shields could be restored on a crew roll, at the expense of no thrust/energy beams next turn.    You can focus attacks to overwhelm shields, and you may use a fully shielded ship to block fire aimed at an unshielded one.  Shields add lots of decision making options. However.....

Shields - Counting the Cost
The problem is how much complexity is desirable or acceptable?  Although desirable, I originally avoided shields altogether as I thought the complexity/recording would be too high.

However one thing I DON'T want is having to tick off then rub out shield boxes.  I don't want any record keeping except maybe a marker like I've shown. That's a price I'm not willing to pay - I'll forgo shields completely rather than add more recording.

Delta Vector Space Game - Damage System 2.0

For those interested, here are some proposed changes I've made to damage rules for my homebrew space game. Most of rules are "general" rather  than specific as I'm just looking at the feel of the rules, rather than precise balance etc. 

Weapons

I want only a few types of weapons, in order to make it easier to balance. But I want them to act quite differently.  Most notably, ranges are measured in different ways.  

LASERS.  The benchmark weapon.  The firer measures from the closest its course comes to the target ship. Loses effectiveness at range.  Varieties: pew-pew, and continuous beam

KINETICS.  These are measured from the closest the firer comes to the target’s vector marker (future location.)   Easily dodged by agile ships. Varieties:  pew-pew, continuous fire (minigun-style), and shotgun

MISSILES.  These are launched from the firer’s vector marker (future location) and attack enemy ships within/moving though a certain radius.  This means missiles act a bit like hostile terrain that should be avoided.  Varieties: multirole, swarm, torpedo, mine

Click on the photo to enlarge.  It shows how kinetic and laser weapons measure range differently. 

 

This shows how missiles work. Ships (a) and (b) can be attacked as they either start within or pass through the missile attack radius. Missiles will work this way (or similar fashion) to provide area "terrain"  and also emphasize the important of vector movement. 

Damage System 2.0

To hit:  A dice is compared against a target number.  If it exceeds the target number (ship size/agility), it does that many hits. (Capped at a maximum of 3 or so)    Example:  A laser battery fires.  It rolls a dice (d10) against a target number (let’s say 4).  A 6 is rolled, resulting in 2 hits.  

To damage:  A dice is compared to a target number. If it exceeds the target number (defence), it does that much damage.   Example:  The two laser hits are rolled.  Perhaps they are small lasers and use a d6.  Anyway, the TN to beat is 4 again.   The dice come up 3, and 6.  The 3 has no effect.  The 6 results in 2 damage rolls.

Damage Chart (“Systems Only Damage”)

I’m not sure if I’ll use this, or a d8 or d10 to allow more locations.  Basically each ship data card will have one and it describes the location and effect of a hit. 

Example: We roll two d6 rolls for our laser hit and consult the chart.  A ‘2’ and a ‘5’ is rolled. The boxes are ticked off.  The next turn the ship must choose to halve shields or thrust, and halves its turreted weapons.    If the roll was two ‘2’s – both hits on the same location - the second hit would mean the ship could not use its turrets at all. 

Roll	First hit	Second hit
1	Thrusters hit – halve thrust	No thrust
2	Turrets hit – halve firepower	No shooting from turrets – also roll d6 – ‘6’ ship explodes from capacitor hit
3	Weapon Bay hit – halve missile firepower	No missiles – also roll d6 – ‘6’ ship explodes from magazine hit
4	Hull Breach – penalty to all crew rolls	Hull breaks up – ship destroyed – also roll d6 – ‘6’ ship explodes from reactor breach
5	Hull (Power Grid) – halve thrust or shields	No shields, thrust reduced to 1
6	Sensors – halve detection/command range	No offensive reactions; penalty to command rolls – any special systems are knocked out

This is just an example chart and is by no means my final decision.  I quite like the “systems damage only” because each hit is meaningful. 

This is a bit more complex than my original idea.  This had only two possible locations, and didn’t need an extra “hit location” roll (I just looked to see if the original to hit roll was odds or evens).

Roll	First hit	Second hit
Odds	Weapons halved	Weapons out
Evens	Thrusters halved	Thrusters out

A third hit to any location destroyed the ship.

 

Since I’ve decided to halve the amount of ships, I think I might go the “grittier” approach, as it isn’t really more to remember (effects are explained as you tick it off on the card) and it’s still less recording than Full Thrust and about as complex as Warmachine (which was my design goal). 

I don't like more complication, but with less ships, I'd like to make them more individually interesting.

Delta Vector - Homebrew Spaceship Rules

A long time ago (2012?) in a galaxy far far away, I had a rant about spaceship games.  "WW2 Wet Navy in Space"  "Billions of Hitboxes" were terms used.  I suggested (and still do) spaceship war-games rules haven't advanced since the early 90s compared to the innovative ideas in say, skirmish war-gaming.    My more energetic and child-free self actually got off his butt and constructed a skeletal set of rules, inspired by games like Tomorrow's War rather than SFB or Full Thrust.   

The basic draft rules were collected here and the original why-all-spaceship-games-are-bad rant is here as well.  

If you're still interested, read on.  I found my old play test notes, and it's kinda inspired me to have a go at redoing these rules, as certainly nothing noteworthy has appeared in the meantime (ignoring the ludicrously expensive Star Wars clix).  I've typed the play test notes into a more readable format.  

What Worked 

The vector system is the simplest and best I’ve come across. I’m not being immodest - I simply translated concepts from the boardgame Triplanetary, sans hexes and greaseproof pencils.  It gave a space feel, and navigating an asteroid field actually took a bit of skill and commonsense.

The initiative system also was interesting – basically a side can retain the initiative by passing command rolls, Warmaster-style, and you can opt to force an opponent to move instead of activating your own forces.   Units activating close to enemies would face an opposed roll if your opponent wished to wrest the initiative from you.  When the vectors of space ships are so predictable, who goes first is quite important.

What Didn't Work (i.e. everything else)

Tokens = Mess

The vector movement system used a token for each ship to show the heading/velocity of each ship.  This can be a bit messy and confusing as there are lots of tokens lying about.   This was a bit of a problem. As I refuse to change the vector system (the best aspect of the rules), other changes had to be made.  The simplest solution – reduce the amount of ships.  The initial aim was 12+ ships per side.  Vector tokens are more manageable at 4-8 per side.  This had a few repercussions.

There were also damage tokens.  There were 4 different colours – for weapons damaged/destroyed; and hull damaged/crippled.   This was originally part of my plan to avoid SFB-style SDS charts completely and have 0 recording.  However as you have to record the ship’s statssomewhere, the tokens were a bit superfluous.  Warmachinehas shown the way with neat, simple data cards; if I copied this approach I could get rid of more tokens.

The Damage System

I was never happy with it. In fact it is the reason this project has sat in limbo for years.  The results were too unpredictable and could result in a ship shrugging off a hit or being blown away outright.  Fine for a space fighter game, but I wanted spaceships to be more durable. I was also trying to make a single dice roll do the to-hit, damage effect and damage location. Again, this was a reaction from the dice chugging of Firestorm Armada but perhaps it was trying to do a bit much.  

There are three methods I’m considering

(a) hull damage  (light/heavy/crippled) + systems hits (traditional)

(b) hull damage only (with reductions in firepower etc for each level)

(c)  systems hits only

If I’m using data cards, I can use method (c ) which is the most interesting, and non-traditional. 

Reactions are Slow

Reaction systems are great.  They allow lots of decisions and player involvement for little added complexity. However they do slow the game down.  This was a further reason to scale back the amount of ships involved to a maximum of 4-8  per side or so – i.e. about the same amount of units in a reaction-based game like Tomorrow’s War or Infinity, rather than the 12-20 or so I originally envisioned.  

More terrain needed!

Terrain adds interest, tactics and depth to wargames, and space is no different.  I see a lot of space games played on a near-empty table – it’s like playing a PC game in 2D when 3D is available.  Whilst some may point to the fact space is indeed largely empty, I’d counter with “if that part of space is empty, why the hell are spaceships fighting over it?” 

Besides the fact I need quick-playing, effective rules for terrain like asteroids, space junk, nebulae, planets and rings, I want to make more terrain in the gameplay sense. 

Whilst playing with aeronef rules I revived the old BFG blast-marker concept – it simultaneously denotes a hit and provides terrain to block/degrade fire. Modelling cotton-wool ball explosions also means it looks good on the table.

Another method is using lots of Area of Effect (AoE) weapons.  For example, a missile token is placed on the table, and it can attack any ships who pass within a 6” radius.  The missile “attack radius” effectively produces a 12” wide circle of “terrain” to be avoided. 

I want shields

I tried a few systems and wasn’t happy with any.  Having directional shields would further make facing/maneuver important and avoid “push everything into the middle and chug dice” a la Firestorm Armada.

I’m not sure how to best implement this.  I have made a shield marker which can be placed around the ship’s base which I think has interesting possibilities.

Small Ships Need Love

I hate how in most space games,  “escorts” or smaller ships tend to act only as ablative armor for the bigger ships and/or throwaway glass cannons.   I want little ships to be useful AND survivable.  I’m going to give small ships much higher thrust and allow them to trade that thrust for defensive die roll modifiers (i.e. zig-zagging/tumbling along their vector).  This has nothing to do with realism and everything to do with gameplay.  I’m also going to give them important jobs (interdictor beams to stop ships warping off, EW etc).   Two small ships should be just as deadly as a large ship, and more flexible too boot.

To recap, changes needed were

+ Add shields

+ Reduce number of ships (reduce tokens, and reactions)

+ Change damage resolution

+ Add simple data cards (no more complex than Warmachine)

+ Add more terrain/blast markers/AoE weapons

+ Allow trading of mobility/defence (benefits small ships)

Anyway, I may revisit this project as I have a week's holidays (well, I have planning for work, but as I'm at home I'll have time to faff about I hope)

EDIT: Here's some new draft Damage rules if you are interested.