Air vehicle combat

[MarkB]

Here's a possible rationalisation on the ship-armour issue, purely for a non-Traveller setting:

These aliens' jump drives have no gravity-well limitations - they can essentially jump from one point in a solar system to another, without having to do long-distance, high-speed travel in between, so they don't need to be built with such rigours in mind. Their only limitation is that planets with a strong magnetosphere play havoc with the jump-drive system, so they need to jump in somehwere beyond the moon's orbit, and then fly down from there.

Off the top of my head, a dogfight is a one on one combat and thought of melee grappling. Perhaps a simple combatant A vs combatant B opposing roll (with a bunch of DM's, of course). When successful, instead of grabbing a person as in grappling, you have the other combatant "in your sights".

Star Wars Saga Edition uses a system like this for dogfighting. The core mechanic is opposed Pilot checks on each pilot's turn, which determine whether the pilot will be able to take a shot that round, and whether any gunners on board will take a penalty to their attacks.