Mass Space Combat System Needed

[Ascension]

I'm GMing a Star Wars Saga Edition game, play-by-post, on these very forums, and it's beginning to look like a massive space battle (or two... or three...) is inevitable at some point down the line... it's only a matter of time. Now ordinarily this wouldn't be too much of a problem... just a matter of focusing the PCs attention on a small slice of the battle and letting their success in that micro-battle determine the outcome of the whole shebang... the problem is, it's kind of hard to do that when one of your PCs commands an entire fleet. I shouldn't have allowed him to get in such a position of power in the first place, but now that I've done it, I can't casually revoke it, and I doubt he'd be happy with me deciding the fate of his fleet purely by GM fiat.

So the upshot of all this is that I'm looking for a fleet-level space combat system, one that can be adapted for Star Wars use (ie I need rules for carriers and fighters, not just battleships), one that can be run in PbP (though I'd be happy to create maps for it, so a miniature-based combat system could still work), one with fairly easy-to-pick-up rules, and preferably one that's free (or pretty darn cheap). I know I'm asking a lot, but do any of you know of something that might fit the bill?

[elliott20]

one way you can do it is by using the Burning Empires system. But even then that takes time to convert. I suggest you can emulate the basic process though, as it emulates the messiness of warfare without having to go deep into a ridiculous amount of rolling.

[Learnedguy]

I'd homebrew something very simplistic, otherwise the whole thing might drag on forever (you got this many ships in this combat group, he got this many. Roll these dices. Alright, now you got this many ships in this combat group, and he got this many). Also, remember, you can't neglect the other players either. They should be a deciding factor as well.

[Altima]

Battlefleet Gothic is pretty much what you need. The have rules for fighters, deep space barrages, special orders, and even ramming.

Alternatively, you could run it like a d20 system, but instead of characters, you have ships.

[bosssmiley]

Adapt GW's "Battlefleet Gothic" (which had simple rules but also featured carriers) to your needs. We used it for a one-off fleet battle in an old "Fading Suns" campaign.

[elliott20]

the way I would do it is not actually to play it out by ships as the primary counter, but by "disposition". All of this, by the way, I grabbed from Burning Empires.

The best way to think of disposition is basically your forces tactical and strategic and plot hit points. When you run out of disposition, your side loses. This doesn't mean they are automatically destroyed and scattered to the four winds. It means your side has lost their objective. (That is, the thing you're fighting over)

Here's how I would do it.

1. set up the objective. What are the goals of each side? You only need one. Now, something like "destroy the opposing force" is redundant. Something like "capture the fort", however, is concrete enough to work.

2. set up disposition. This gets tricky as a lot of it depends upon extraneous factors like army size, soldier morale, discipline, etc.

3. set up the map, with each tactical position giving you some kind of bonus disposition.

4. resolve the battle (more on that later)

5. first side to have their disposition hit 0 loses their objective, but it doesn't mean the winner gets EVERYTHING they want either. If the winner lost a large portion of their disposition, there needs to be a compromise of some sort between GM and Player. i.e. maybe instead of capturing the entire planet, he only gains control of the major cities, but has pockets of resistance that he must deal with later on the planet. Or maybe, he captures the fort decisively, but at great cost. This is something you can work out with the player after the battle.

[Mando Knight]

PC who's theoretically in control of the fleet, here...
Personally, so long as I know the numbers and classes of the ships that I've got, as well as a coordinate system to position them, I'd be fine with controlling up to around 20 or so ships...

I would need definite victory conditions, though. Blow stuff up, capture shipyards, whatever.

[hamishspence]

Realms of Inisfail had BFG versions of various Star Wars ships.

[Partysan]

Well, a system that I sometimes use when I need mass combat on-the-fly is merging several ships/soldiers etc to "units", that can be controlled like single entities.
They have HP (representing how many of the ships are left and how tough they are), damage (reduced when HP get low), a movement rate, and an "AC"(/Reflex Defense in SWSE terms) (based on their size and maneuverability).
If you want it more detailed and complex you could add DR (for big ships like Star Destroyers or Death Stars), special abilities (torpedoes (auto-hit) and counter-measures, mines, shields (that in the simple system would just add HP), Rate of Fire (giving more attacks to faster weapons), concealment (behind bigger ships or asteroids), pilot skill (attack/defense bonus) etc...
I'd for example give a light fighter squadron of 30 ships (Tie-fighters or equivalent) give 30 HP, two attacks with damage=HP, a high movement rate and about 12/13 AC, a destroyer squadron of 3 ships had about 300 HP (100 each), one attack with 50 damage and three with 10, AC 4 and low movement, etc, all made up on the fly while writing.
It's just intuitive.

[Tacoma]

Alternatively, you could run it like a d20 system, but instead of characters, you have ships.

Don't enter the Death Star's threatened squares!

Wait wait, let me do it again ...

Alternatively, you could run it like a d20 system, but instead of characters, you have ships.

Han Solo: I DECLARE MY DODGE ON YOU

[Mando Knight]

Complication:

Most normal suggestions won't work, as they usually don't have data for KOTOR-era ships.

The Death Star, hopefully, will not make an appearance. However, with the (modified) setting placing Revan in control of nearly the entire Republic, who knows?

[Mercenary Pen]

I'd for example give a light fighter squadron of 30 ships (Tie-fighters or equivalent) give 30 HP, two attacks with damage=HP, a high movement rate and about 12/13 AC, a destroyer squadron of 3 ships had about 300 HP (100 each), one attack with 50 damage and three with 10, AC 4 and low movement, etc, all made up on the fly while writing.
It's just intuitive.

Star Wars fighter squadrons are generally 12 fighters strong...

Capital ship groupings are more complex- but you can use the combat groupings common to the imperial navy (which can be found here) with wholesale substitutions of ship designs/capabilities to make it period appropriate.

Also, give the battles a massive lead-up where appropriate. The player should have to decide how much of his/her task force to commit to other requests for assistance before he/she gets hit by the task force you're setting up for. This sort of strategy should fit just about any setting you care to mention because although some people would say Thrawn invented it, he merely added the unnatural degree of precision to it that made-it campaign-breaking... Your player can choose to take the easy win by keeping all of his ships on station, but might end up sacrificing a few planets/moons/space stations to do so.

[Ascension]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll take this all into consideration.

And what sounds best to you, Mando Knight? I'd like something with a greater degree of abstraction than just running it via standard rules... that would get... kind of messy.

[Altima]

I'd find it rather odd if an entire fleet were commanded by PCs who had no idea about the friggin' system. They'd need to definitely be more skilled than admirals with decades of experience.

On the other hand, most tactics in Star Wars (for the 'good' guys anyway) seems to be getting as close as possible to the bad guys and then slugging it out.

I suggest you run some 'simulated' battles, perhaps with one of the players, to bash out any holes in your system. Clearly, you'll want to premake your ships (to cut down on cheese).

Things to consider when designing your system:
Crew experience/moral: Having a battle hardened crew gives one a significant advantage over an entirely green vessel. Likewise, a fleet/squadron that has drilled together has an even greater advantage over one that was thrown together. Jedi battle meditation is useful for this.

Movement: Each class of ship should have different movement speed. However, in many cases, a larger military ship is faster than a smaller class (example: Millenium Falcon getting run down by Star Destroyers in normal space). Likewise, ship size also should affect turning rate.

Damage: Shields absorb and/or deflect damage. However, once shields are down, lasers, missiles, and whatnot actually start doing damage to the hull. In the crucible of combat, a huge ship could shrug off a blast or that same blast could tear through the hull and take out weapons, cause emergency containment, etc. Heck, a freak hit could take out the reactor control and cause a massive ship to explode (Example: random fighter pilot crashing into the bridge of a super star destroyer in Return of the Jedi after a freak hit fried its bridge shield).

Fighters: Unlike in many scifi genres, it seems in the SW universe that all capital ships carry fighters. Whether to damage other ships (Y-wing) or defend against enemy fighters (TIE Interceptor), they usually have a role. If the game takes place in the original trilogy (or shortly afterwards), Imperial TIE fighters aren't shielded, while the rebels are. Likewise, in the prequel trilogy as well as the KotOR era, the 'bad guy' fighters also seem to lack shields...for some reason.

Weapons: The weapons themselves are fairly explanatory, but you must include firing arcs. A weapon pointed forward can't fire at a target from behind. Likewise, Republic Cruisers (from Revenge of the Sith) seem to favor broadside tactics, so all the laser cannons on the far side of the ship can't shoot at the vessel across from the cruiser.

[hamishspence]

BFG does a lot of this. it may not be as good at giving all the options you can think of (fighters are squadrons, not individual ships) but its fairly easy to pick up rules, while still making movement and positioning important.

(I'm told Star Fleet Battles is also good but much more bookkeeping-heavy.)

[Mando Knight]

I'd find it rather odd if an entire fleet were commanded by PCs who had no idea about the friggin' system. They'd need to definitely be more skilled than admirals with decades of experience.

The character in charge is more experienced than most Star Destroyer officers, despite lacking any Officer levels, having 8 heroic levels rather than being nonheroic 4/heroic 4 and an extra point of Intelligence (knocking it up to a +2 modifier rather than a +1). He's the same level as Jan Dodonna in the Force Unleashed campaign guide, and that of Admiral Thrawn in the same book. Thrawn still edges out on Tactics checks (by 6, most of that coming from Skill Focus), but a +11 is still decently high.

[Ascension]

I think he's meaning knowledge of the game system used. And that's why I requested something easy to pick up and preferably cheap-to-free (so it wouldn't be hard for the PCs... and me... to acquire and learn to the point of playability).

[Mando Knight]

I think he's meaning knowledge of the game system used. And that's why I requested something easy to pick up and preferably cheap-to-free (so it wouldn't be hard for the PCs... and me... to acquire and learn to the point of playability).

Ah. Cheap-as-free and easy to pick up. The second bit doesn't matter as much to me, since I can pick up systems fairly easily, but the first one does.

[elliott20]

well, like I said, I can pull together a mass combat system out of the burning empires system fairly quickly if you need it. the problem is that it's not as intuitive as d20 or WH since it takes a lot of things into abstraction and it's fairly drastically different on how they resolve conflicts.

basically, instead of each side taking turn moving pieces, you issue one command, your opponent issues one command, and instead of resolving them independently and in order, you resolve them at the same time. Sometimes, this means the actions you take will have direct effect on each other. i.e. if you both take direct fire, you just both doing whatever damage you can to each other. But if you were to take direct fire while your opponent takes close combat, you would get to deal your damage first before they can even close in on you.

it means that you have to read your opponent's actions before deciding it, and at some level, it also makes warfare far messier because you're not sure how your opponent is going to move.