XXVc Notebook: (Not So) Great Space Battles

I've been test running space combat during downtime between games, just to get the hang of it. It's pretty straightforward, but there are a couple of odd bits to it. One was the amorphous combat round wherein everyone rolls initiative then moves and/or attacks until their Speed points have been used up. Having done that everyone's Speed points reset, unless reduced by damage to the engine and hull. Repeat until dead. Maybe I'm just not used to it, but it seemed kind of mushy to me. This after just one playtest, though.

Another other odd thing was damage to weapons. Every section of a rocketship has a number of points damage it can sustain before becoming useless except for weapons. According to the rules, any hit on a weapon will destroy it. Maybe I missed something, but that's the way I read it. Here's the line from page 78 of the C&C book-

"Weapon hit: One of the ship's weapons, determined randomly, is destroyed."

There it is. Randomly roll an '8' on the hit location table and you can blast even the biggest of weapons right off the hull of the enemy's ship. That can really suck in a Krait vs Starfire dogfight where each only has one weapon. In fact, that's exactly what happened- I rolled an 8 and effectively ended the combat with one shot.

What my player suggested was to use the damage score of each respective weapon as their hit points. This would mean the mighty k-cannon could take 100 points of damage before being destroyed. I might go one further and say that the damage the weapon can do and the hits it can take are the same thing- so a Missile Mount that took 10 points of damage could only deal 30 points. We'll see how that goes.

In any case, kudos to Ettin of Hexen (who logs webs at Duster Bones, see link to the right) for coming up with such a simple, nifty solution.

Then there are the weapons. You don't roll for damage as you normally would. Each has a set amount of damage that it does. I guess the idea is to keep the action moving. Those that want a more random element to it could convert the damage numbers to die rolls easily enough. All ship's weapons do damage in multiples of 10. We may have to try it that way at some point.

Anyway, showtime is quickly approaching. Time to prepare for the game.