Sins of a solar empire

[shadow_archmagi]

How would one go about running a sins of a solar empire campaign? What sort of system, how to stat the races...

[LordVader]

It'd have to center around space combat, wouldn't it? And at the capital-ship level.


Incidentally, the new expansion pack looks awesome.

[shadow_archmagi]

It'd have to center around space combat, wouldn't it? And at the capital-ship level.


Incidentally, the new expansion pack looks awesome.

Not necessarily. Could be running about in ships, shooting the captain and hijacking the controls.

[LordVader]

True, but the Sins universe gives us absolutely no idea about the physical characteristics and abilities of two of the three races, or even infantry combat tech level.

Your best bet might be a human on human pirate-type thing at first.

[shadow_archmagi]

True, but the Sins universe gives us absolutely no idea about the physical characteristics and abilities of two of the three races, or even infantry combat tech level.

Your best bet might be a human on human pirate-type thing at first.

Hmm. The starwars RPG appears to be regular D20 with starwars names attached.

[TSGames]

How would one go about running a sins of a solar empire campaign? What sort of system, how to stat the races...

This would be difficult... you'd have have to use a system that made combat needlessly long and unsatisfying, in addition to oversimplifying important things like tech or government interactions, while simultaneously containing many almost useless mechanics for culture and exploration and allowing for absolutely no ship customization.

FATAL, maybe?

[shadow_archmagi]

I was not referring to recreating the RTS element, dear troll.

I meant only the idea of a race of psionics from a desert planet, a trader empire, and a vicious alien empire fleeing in terror all colliding in one galaxy.

[warty goblin]

This would be difficult... you'd have have to use a system that made combat needlessly long and unsatisfying, in addition to oversimplifying important things like tech or government interactions, while simultaneously containing many almost useless mechanics for culture and exploration and allowing for absolutely no ship customization.

FATAL, maybe?

You know some of us actually like combat that doesn't happen at the speed of an ADHD hummingbird on crack. Also kilometer long warships shooting at each other shouldn't be fast (and even the frigates are about 1km, the capital ships are...huge).

As to how to run a campaign on it, I'd go for an entirely space based approach. Infantry combat seems basically non-existant in the SoSE universe, you either shoot ships with ships or planets with ships. I'd shoot for a relatively small number of players, say 2-3, and make them the command staff of a capital ship. As they fought, the ship as a whole would gain experience, which the command staff would use as they saw fit (eg, upgrade weapons, shields, armor, fighter capacity, etc). Have the ship start out as a (relatively) minor part of a major fleet, then flagship of a small frigate task force sent to combat piracy, then flag of a major fleet and so on.

Another idea, albeit one that is likely to result in a somewhat shorter campaign (if it stays true to the gameplay that is) is to make the players pilots in a strikecraft wing. Given what usually happens to my strikecraft at least however, they'd be lucky to make it through one battle.

Also yes, the mini-expansions are looking great. I've always loved building defenses, the idea of a massive defensive structure is a seriously appealing one, as are turret upgrades. Hopefully one of them is some sort of anti-fighter upgrade, since as it is planetary defenses can get absolutely raped by fighters/bombers.

Also the Advent have been growing on me of late. Mostly because I liked the TEC ship designs and the Vaseri economy of force (all your phase lanes are belong to us), but an entire fleet lighting up under a criss-cross of Illuminator beams while a regular plasma storm fills the void just has it's own appeal. Plus they have that one Cap ship that looks sort of like a Star Destroyer- but a Star Destroyer crewed entirely by hot communist space psycics.

[Stormthorn]

This would be difficult... you'd have have to use a system that made combat needlessly long and unsatisfying, in addition to oversimplifying important things like tech or government interactions, while simultaneously containing many almost useless mechanics for culture and exploration and allowing for absolutely no ship customization.

FATAL, maybe?

Ignore him. He wasnt raised properly or something so he feels the need to insult random peoples interests and hobbies.

And FATAL isnt really suited for space combat.

Why dont you homebrew something?

Incidently, the lack of troop-level detail is messing with my plans to write a short story set in that universe centering on the crew of a single ship.

[shadow_archmagi]

Ignore him. He wasnt raised properly or something so he feels the need to insult random peoples interests and hobbies.

And FATAL isnt really suited for space combat.

Why dont you homebrew something?

Incidently, the lack of troop-level detail is messing with my plans to write a short story set in that universe centering on the crew of a single ship.

Homebrew an entire system?

Hmmm.

[Stormthorn]

Perhaps the gravity well of a plantet is a hexgrid map in a large circle? Allowing unit stacking in the spaces to simulate the 3d nature of the battlefield. Make the capitol ships 2 or three hex's long and make it cost some of their move to turn (or course, some capitol ships have weapons that they fire off of the left or right side). Dont bother to make units for fighter/bomber squads. Bombers have X attacks ot make until they get shot down and Fighters have 1/2X, but they decrease the number of attacks Bombers make before they die.

[warty goblin]

Hmm yeah, for combat I like the hex grid with capital ships being three long, cruisers two, and frigates/strikecraft occupying one. One thing I'd impliment is acceleration, give each ship a delta V, so the players have to decide how long and hard to burn in order to engage the target with maximum efficiency. To keep things simple I'd ignore ship rotation for this, although for actual combat facing would be quite important. Each cap ship would then have it's mulitple weapons banks, facing off in whatever direction, which could engage targets in a cone in front of them.

[Kane]

Are you suggesting actually hex-grid turn based gameplay, or what? I assume it would be possible to implement that in it's RTS form, but...

Also, It would probably not fly; they'd want to dumb down the delta V to absolute minimum.

[warty goblin]

Are you suggesting actually hex-grid turn based gameplay, or what? I assume it would be possible to implement that in it's RTS form, but...

Also, It would probably not fly; they'd want to dumb down the delta V to absolute minimum.

Well it would be turn based, which makes things significantly easier to keep track of. At the beginning of a turn you apply your delta V, then move the ship. All anybody has to do is to keep it written down on a piece of paper somewhere. Just have a player be the navigator and lay courses, stuff like that.

Here's roughly how the movement would work if I were to design the system. I'd use a simple one dimensional acceleration model and a three phase move as follows.
1) Set heading. This allows the navigator to change the direction the ship is facing, and hence the direction it moves. Ships would have a max rotation amount, depending on their size.
2) Accelerate. Allows the navigator to fire the engines, either to increase or decrease the ship's velocity along the heading.
3) Move. The ship now moves it's velocity along it's heading.

So for example the players are running a Kol battleship across a grav well to thrash it out with a bunch of pirates who are moving on the planet. The planet say thirty hexes away, the pirates another fourty beyond that. The navigator decides to accelerate the ship at +2 hexs/turn for 3 turns, giving a closing velocity of 12 hexs/turn, turn a point away from the planet, coast for two turns, turn a point back towards the planet, and then decelerate at -2 hexs/turn for another three turns, bringing the battleship to rest after nine turns and a total movement of exactly 42, which puts the Kol safely between the planet and the attackers and having gone safely around the planet.

Actually I'm having fun with this, so here's how I'd handle weapons as well. On a capital ship, there would be weapons on the front and middle hexes, but not on the rear (which is pretty much the case in game). Front weapons would be able to fire straight ahead, and into hexes to either side, while middle hex weapons would fire broadside, or one hex off of broadside to the front or rear. Weapons would have short, medium or long ranges and, against non-strike craft a base damage dice (since in game all weapons always hit). Certain weapons would be better against certain ship types, and so for example a Kol's beam guns would get an extra damage dice against heavy armored targets. Note that weapons would be broken up by how many targets they could engage, not by number of mounts, so a Kodiak cruiser could only shoot at one target, despite having three guns, whereas an Illuminator could engage three if it could get all of them into it's firing arcs.

[Kane]

The navigator decides to accelerate the ship at +2 hexs/turn for 3 turns, giving a closing velocity of 12 hexs/turn, turn a point away from the planet, coast for two turns, turn a point back towards the planet, and then decelerate at -2 hexs/turn for another three turns, bringing the battleship to rest after nine turns and a total movement of exactly 42, which puts the Kol safely between the planet and the attackers and having gone safely around the planet.


+2 a turn for 3 turns... wouldn't that equal 6H/T?

[warty goblin]

+2 a turn for 3 turns... wouldn't that equal 6H/T?

Yep. Goes to show what trying to do math at 12:30 AM gets a person...Anyway, I still think the system is pretty decent all in all, as it keeps movement relatively tactical, but not overly complicated.

[shadow_archmagi]

I like it. So all I have to do is set acceleration and maximum speed for every ship, thats just two numbers based on ingame performance, pretty easy.

Weapon damage and HP could be tricky; ingame combat with even smaller ships can take many, many volleys.

[warty goblin]

I like it. So all I have to do is set acceleration and maximum speed for every ship, thats just two numbers based on ingame performance, pretty easy.

Weapon damage and HP could be tricky; ingame combat with even smaller ships can take many, many volleys.

Yeah, good point on the weapon damage. One possible solution would be to just have the combat round represent a longer time, although this could lead to problems with movement. The other, and more attractive option, at least to me, is to simply speed things up in terms of damage and so forth.

[Brother Oni]

With regard to fleet combat, have you considered Battlefleet Gothic rules for the larger ships and homebrewing rules for strike craft and ship stats?

Surprisingly for a Games Workshop product, the entire games system is free to download - Link (http://www.specialist-games.com/battlefleetgothic/rulebook.asp).