Starpunk Update

For those that have been following my blog, I have been working on a sci-fi setting called Starpunk. It's kind of like Daring Tales of the Space Lanes but with an actual setting (and I'm leaning more toward a comedic bent). One of the biggest hurdles has been generating starships because the Sci-Fi Companion generator never sat right with me, and I have worked on a lot of Starship generator ideas. Here's what I have discovered:

a) I shouldn't need a starship generator ruleset. The point of the game is to play, not munchkin the ruleset to see what cool combo can be built.
b) The more complicated the starship builds get, the easier it is to introduce overpowered ships and weapons.
c) The more complicated the system, the less F!F!F! it got.

Well I finally have something worked out, at least for capital scale ships. It borrows concepts from a variety of sources but also required me to change my thinking process.

In every rpg that involves large starships, they have always treated them the same way as they treated smaller vessels: listing each individual weapon and its damage. If you ended up with two capital ships fighting each other, then you were expected to roll for each gun to hit, roll damage for each hit, etc. This takes too long, but thankfully it is rarely ever used since the players don't command these type of vessels in an rpg. What GMs should be concerned about is what affect all of those guns have on our hero's stock light freighter.

Here's my solution:
Don't sweat the details. Worry about the overall effect.

Capital ships have three weapon entries: Port Batteries, Starboard Batteries, and CIDS (Close In Defense Systems).

CIDS are what capital ships would use against small craft. It's treated as a single weapon, but with a RoF. The bigger the ship, the bigger its RoF (rated 2-4). A capital ship can make a single CIDS attack against each enemy fighter or missile per round.

If I do want to run two capital ships duking it out, the the Capital ships fire their batteries at each other. Each battery is considered a single attack roll. A starship can only attack with one side Battery per target unless they draw a face Card, and Ace, or a Joker for their action card. If they do, then the ship has maneuvered in a way to bring both side Batteries to fire on a single target.

Of course, if I'm going to involve more capital ships and fighters, then I would just bring out the Mass combat rules.

My Mad Quest for a Starship Design System.

Whew....where do I start?

First, I came up with a list of things I didn't like about the way the Sci-Fi Companion handled starships. Here were my issues.

1) Buckets o'dice: I don't like them and feel they slow down the game when you have a player who isn't good at math.

2) Buckets o' weapons: I don't want to spend a long time rolling a hit for each of a Battleship's weapons if possible.

3) Do I need a ship design system? Once there is a system, I found there was a desire to break it or munchkin it, even on my end. I don't want players designing their own ship, and if I intend to keep my prep down, there is no reason I should either.

4) A balance between weapons damage and ship Toughness that doesn't make things either an insta-kill or impossible to kill. Looking at the math, the Sci-Fi Companion tends to be one or the other as the scales get bigger.

So what I did was go through ships from a variety of settings and compared them to the weapons available to those settings to find the "sweet spot" or the balance point between damage and Toughness that Pinnacle designs toward. Here's what I found out.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH!

It's all over the place! There is no sweet spot that they design for!

Okay, deep breaths. I'll just have to make one for myself. I created charts of all the various dice combinations (2-6 dice, d4-d12 with explosions accounted for) And decided to place my sweet spot at about 75% chance to get a Shaken result and about 50% chance of Scoring one wound.

Then I recorded the resulting sweet spot Toughnesses. And guess what? They were nearly identical to the vehicle design rules in the Sci-Fi Toolkit. Those figures were also used in Daring Tales of the Space Lanes: Starships of the Galaxy. Wiggy had already dialed into what I wanted.

DTotSL also had a bunch of other rules I intended to copy for starship combat, like Shield Pods and Batteries. Since a there were already a good spread of Starships pre-designed in the book... okay there was no point in reinventing the wheel. I decided to save myself from my growing headache and just use the Daring Tales of the Spacelanes rules. By the way, this is a conclusion it took me 2 months to arrive at. 2 Months of math, study, re-concept, and return.

I considered applying to make Starpunk an official setting, and even asked Wiggy for permissions to use some of his rules. He never got back to me. It's just as well. I think Starpunk should just be a fan setting adaptation for Daring Tales of the Space Lanes, if that's okay with him. So from here on out, everything this site produces related to Starpunk will use DTotSL.

I bow before your skillz, Wiggy!

Sci Fi Companion Ship/ Vehicle Sheets

There was a request on the Pinnacle Boards for one. Truth to tell, I haven't had much to show off or talk about recently so this makes for a good post. Here they are.

More on Chases and Vehicle Combat

I've been delving more into Vehicle Chases and Combat, mainly because I want to keep them abstract and not need tabletop miniatures. I've done some personal hacks during game to keep things running F!F!F! but I want to codify my house rules so they aren't constantly changing in game (due to my forgetful nature). Here's what I have so far.

Chases

Honestly, I'm going back to the Explorer's Edition for Chase rules. It handles range and catching your opponent better (imho) than the SWDEX rules. So...

Determine the chase duration. I'd go with 5-10 increments. Pursuers start at 0. Prey start at 1 increment per range of head start (1 short, 2 medium, 3 long, 4 extreme). The goal for the Prey is to reach the end of the chase without being stopped, at which point they escape. The goal of the Pursuer is to stop the Prey before they get there.

In a chase, each vehicle is dealt an initiative card and its occupants act on that card (in the event of a foot chase, each individual character is considered a vehicle and gets their own initiative card). At the beginning of their turn, each vehicle makes a Piloting roll (Driving for cars, Agility for running, etc.) with + 1 if their vehicle is faster than their Prey or Pursuer, +2 if their speed is double their Prey or Pursuer). A success moves the vehicle forward 1 range increment. A raise moves them forward an additional range increment (additional raises do not move the vehicle further).

As always, a draw of a club for an initiative card indicates an Obstacle that must be avoided with a driving roll or the vehicle suffers damage (I'm lifting the modifiers from Daring Tales of the Space Lanes).

Obstacle Table
Card              Modifier
Deuce                -6
3-4                     -4
5-6                     -2
7-10                   -1
Jack-Ace            0

Attacking
The range of the attack is determined by how many range increments there are between Pursuer and Prey. Each range increment counts as a level of combat range (if Prey is one range increment ahead, the range is Short, 2 is Medium range, 3 is Long, 4 is Extreme). When in a fast paced chase, you don't need to worry about exact inches or weapon variables.

Pursuers may fire forward-fixed weapons at their targets. Prey cannot fire forward-fixed weapons at their Pursuers.

Turret Weapons from any vehicle (Pursuer or Prey) may always attack at a -2 Unstable Platform penalty. Passengers in a vehicle that wish to fire personal weapons in a chase count as turrets.

Dogfights

To me, a dogfight is a close combat affair (dare I say melee?). All dogfights occur at Short range so their are no range modifiers to worry about.

To initiate a dogfight, an attacker must pilot their vehicle to close range (0 range increment if it's a Chase) to his target and declare that he is initiating a dogfight.  Other vehicles within Short Range may join this dogfight with a successful Piloting roll, providing a Gang Up Bonus.

Attacking
A dogfight is rapid movement affair best captured in abstract. However, due to such intimate ranges, vehicles are harder to hit. When in a dogfight, attackers must roll against the target's Evasion (Pilot skill + the vehicle's Handling)/2 +2 ). Gang Up bonuses apply.

Turret weapons may always attack, with the -2 Unstable Platform penalty.

Fixed Forward weapons may only be used when the attacker's Initiative card is a 10 or higher. Yes the means that there will be times where both sides are attacking each other in the same turn. It simply represents the furious movement as they dodge each other or fly at each other in a dogfight.

Escaping a Dogfight
Vehicles that wish to flee a dogfight or break the tangle of close combat must succeed a Piloting roll with a raise.

That's my design so far. Any thoughts?

Chase Rules Ranges Fix

Last night a ran a game for friends and a chase came up. This is the first time I've ever had to run a chase using the new SWDEX rules. Before I just did narration and a few die rolls.

Well the common complaint came up: "Why, in the same round, am I shooting at long range and my target is shooting back at short?" It's a valid concern and it does break some verisimilitude in game.

My fix? Why it is Trappings, of course.

In this instance it was a car chase through crowded city streets. The odds of a fire fight at long range were very unlikely given the cluttered terrain, so I kept all combat in Short Range. I didn't change the modifiers from the cards at all. Instead of using them as range modifiers, I described them as circumstance modifiers; "You don't have a clean shot from your vantage point", "The car is too unstable for accuracy", "Your line of sight is obscured by the vegetable cart your driver ran through".

This worked fine for my players, Just be mindful of the type of environment where the chase takes place. Open space makes for a boring chase and really just boils down to who has the faster ship. I wouldn't use the chase rules for that (I would for a dogfight), but a Chase through an asteroid belt or mine field...

Before running a chase, make some notes of the type of obstacles that would interfere with a character's aim.

Edit: I should mention that according to the rules a vehicles can only attack lower cards, but I treat passengers with guns as turrets, meaning that they can always shoot with the unstable platform modifier and having a lower card already imposes a larger penalty on them.

Bristling Guns! Or Maybe Not.

Still hammering on my vehicle system, but I had a brain burst regarding weaponry (especially for larger ships). Many starships like those found in the Sci-Fi Companion are designed around a naval or air force analog. Battleships are bristling with guns. Even Starfighters are armed with multiple, forward-facing cannons. Star Wars did it too and there's nothing wrong with that, as it is. After all, I am going for space pulp so realism is optional.

But Star Trek started floating through my mind. The Enterprise wasn't bristling with guns. In fact, in  each series you never saw more than two phaser arrays firing at once. It's not something you get much in RPGs anymore, so it appeals to me.

It also has the added bonus of cutting down the number of rolls you have to make when large ships get into combat. And lastly, big ships firing on smaller ships already have a big advantage of higher damage. Adding multiple guns increases the amounting of pounding they can dish out.

Again, nothing wrong with that. But I would like starship combat with a different feel.

Old Battleships of WWI and WWII needed a lot of guns because of how often they might miss their target. The best option was to saturate an area with shells and pray. Also, since they were firing shells there wasn't any drawback to adding more and bigger guns except the danger of the power of volleys to capsize the boat (and weight cutting down on ship speed).

But in spacecraft that use beam weapons, the only real limiting factor to the cannon's damage is the amount of power you pump through it. There really is no point in having smaller cannons mounted on a larger ship if you can just attenuate the amount of power put through the weapon. At least that's the concept I am going with in this weapon design.

So here is what I've got.


Ships can have as many "Emitters" as they want. However, they can only fire one emitter per round at full power. If they want to attack multiple targets by firing multiple emitters, there is a -2 penalty to damage for every extra emitter fired. So if the HMS Guardsman wants to fire three different emitters in one round, each weapon will deal -4 damage. Of course, it has to have at least three emitters installed.

I like it. It's different and makes you think about how many vessels you are willing to target per round.

Damage OUCH! On A Grand Scale

I'm going to get a little mathematical, so bear with me.

Let me preface this with "This is not another thread about how the Wild Die or Exploding Dice make the math wonky".  I'm fine with Savage Worlds at character level. My issue is when it starts to get into Vehicles and higher damage die pools. Here's a chart that shows the percentage chances of rolling a wound on your damage at character level with some fairly basic weapons from the Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition. Anything that represented below a 1% was rounded down to -. These values include dice acing.

Savage Worlds Character Damage To Wound

Target	2d4	2d6	2d8	2d10	3d6
5	25%	38%	56%	72%	75%
6	19%	31%	47%	64%	66%
7	14%	25%	39%	55%	57%
8	12%	21%	32%	47%	49%
9	9%	17%	26%	40%	42%
10	6%	13%	21%	33%	36%
11	3%	10%	18%	28%	30%
12	2%	8%	15%	23%	25%
13	2%	6%	13%	19%	21%
14	1%	5%	10%	16%	17%
15	-	4%	8%	13%	14%
16	-	3%	6%	12%	11%
17	-	2%	5%	10%	9%
18	-	1%	4%	8%	8%
19	-	-	3%	7%	6%
20	-	-	3%	6%	5%

It's a nice spread. No one has a 100% chance to wound and there is a smooth progression between damage and Target Toughness.

Now here is a chart of the Sci-Fi Companion's Starship damages. Note that this is without any additional armor to the frame and ignores Starship Shields as they just ablate anyway. These values include dice acing.

Sci Fi Companion (Lasers) To Wound

Target	2d10(5)	3d10(10)	4d10(15)	6d10(25)	8d10(40)	10d10(50)
20(5)	13%	42%	74%	99%	100%	100%
25(6)	7%	24%	53%	94%	100%	100%
35(8)	2%	7%	21%	70%	96%	100%
45(10)	-	2%	7%	38%	80%	97%
50(11)	-	-	4%	26%	67%	93%
55(13)	-	-	4%	19%	57%	88%
60(15)	-	-	3%	13%	47%	82%
70(20)	-	-	-	7%	32%	69%
80(25)	-	-	-	3%	20%	54%

Sci Fi Companion (Mass Drivers) To Wound

Target	3d12	4d12	6d12	8d12	10d12	12d12	14d12	16d12	20d12
20(5)	33%	66%	96%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
25(6)	17%	44%	90%	99%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
35(8)	4%	14%	60%	92%	99%	100%	100%	100%	100%
45(10)	-	4%	28%	71%	97%	99%	100%	100%	100%
50(11)	-	2%	17%	56%	88%	98%	100%	100%	100%
55(13)	-	-	10%	41%	78%	96%	100%	100%	100%
60(15)	-	-	6%	28%	66%	91%	99%	100%	100%
70(20)	-	-	2%	12%	40%	74%	93%	99%	100%
80(25)	-	-	-	4%	20%	50%	80%	95%	100%

Sci Fi Companion (Missiles) To Wound

Target	6d6(8)	8d6(15)	8d12(40)	10d12(80)
20(5)	80%	98%	100%	100%
25(6)	58%	91%	100%	100%
35(8)	22%	59%	100%	100%
45(10)	4%	26%	100%	99%
50(11)	1%	16%	100%	98%
55(13)	-	10%	99%	97%
60(15)	-	6%	98%	94%
70(20)	-	1%	93%	88%
80(25)	-	-	86%	78%

Notice a difference? The more dice added, the greater the chance of guaranteeing that 1st wound. Also, many percentages have a very steep drop. 

Besides the starship complexity, this is one of the biggest issues I have with the Sci-Fi Companion. Honestly, the rest of it is awesome. But starship combat is not only lethal, it lacks the elegance of personal combat. I've tried working around it, upside down of it, left and right of it, and I've found that more dice are just a huge issue. Especially since, while the damage potential increases, you still only need to score 4 over the vehicle's Toughness just to cause a wound.

 I may not totally agree with making vehicles exactly the same as characters, but the damage systems should be. I'm thinking again about a tiered damage scale system, where damage is multiplied when used against a smaller scale.

By the way, special thanks to Any Dice for giving me a tool to run these numbers.