Dog Fight vs. Space Combat

[vladthemad]

Why the time scale shift? More to the point, why wouldn't thrust and damage change by a like shift? Possibly most importantly, why does it reference the character scale combat rules and how does that play into the dogfight rules?

I understand some of the combat rules are abstracted, but I have a real problem when things stop making sense :/

 

[MongooseMatt]

The best way to look at it is probably that long-ranged space combat is like submarine warfare - you are tracking plots, making predictions and everything works in a claustrophobic but steady pace.

When you are in visual range, everything is seat of the pants hotdogging. It becomes Top Gun (or, perhaps better, Star Wars).

Thus, in the former, you have time to get down to engineering and start doing weird things with power plants. You just do not have time to do much more than react when the enemy is right down your throat.

 

[FederationUnitedNews]

Yea I feel like the dogfight rules are very confusing and unnecessary.

Like using these rules you can shoot about 10 times as many times as you would if you weren't dog fighting? Why is that? Do my lasers magically increase their rate of fire when they detect that we're close to the enemy? Does the gunner simply fire more often? Why doesn't the gunner hammer the pew pew button this often when he's further away?

Also the rules for getting an advantageous firing position on your enemies is just weird. I see that it's trying to simulate a real world dog fight, but real world dogfights take place in earths atmosphere where generally speaking your jets direction of travel is the same as the front of your jet. This is not the case in the cold vacuum of space where aerodynamics don't really matter, in space you can spin your whole ship on any axis you want (try that in an F-22).

And another head scratch-er, what happens if my buddies scout ship is locked in a dogfight with a filthy pirate and I'm at far range away? Can I shoot into their dogfight? Can the pirate shoot at me? How often can the pirate shoot at me? Every 6 second or every 6 minutes? If it's one of those than why not the other?

 

[vladthemad]

The best way to look at it is probably that long-ranged space combat is like submarine warfare - you are tracking plots, making predictions and everything works in a claustrophobic but steady pace.

When you are in visual range, everything is seat of the pants hotdogging. It becomes Top Gun (or, perhaps better, Star Wars).

Thus, in the former, you have time to get down to engineering and start doing weird things with power plants. You just do not have time to do much more than react when the enemy is right down your throat.

While that analogy is useful, I think a better one would be two warships vs. subs. Subs tend to be stealthy and sneaky sneak, which isn't within the rules system. Going with a warship analogy, the ships don't change suddenly just because they are closer, nor should time scale and weapon fire rate. You might be firing almost to the horizon at a warship in the distance in your first example, but when they steam straight at each other and get close they are still the same ships, slugging away with the same weapons, firing and maneuvering at the same speeds. So why the time scale shift, without corresponding changes to acceleration and rate of fire? Not to mention the fact that this doesn't even take into account current velocity before the shift. If anything, I should fly right past the other craft, needing to slow down at a distance, circle around, accelerate, and come back for another pass.

While it's an interesting cinematic idea, it just doesn't fit the mechanics nor can I think of a way to make it very workable without a completely separate set or rules to govern it.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Yea I feel like the dogfight rules are very confusing and unnecessary.

Remember (and this cropped up in the internal playtesting), you can always ignore dogfights - however, the rules are needed to cover certain types of sci-fi. Basically, while they may not occur in your universe, we can't stop someone doing it in their universe.

Like using these rules you can shoot about 10 times as many times as you would if you weren't dog fighting? Why is that? Do my lasers magically increase their rate of fire when they detect that we're close to the enemy? Does the gunner simply fire more often? Why doesn't the gunner hammer the pew pew button this often when he's further away?

Because he would miss every time Combat at those distances requires methodical calculation to have even a chance of hitting - a 100 ton scout ship at 50,000 km is a very, very, very small target, plus it may be moving (relatively speaking) fast enough that even a laser might miss.

Up close, where you can actually physically see your target, the principles change.

Also the rules for getting an advantageous firing position on your enemies is just weird. I see that it's trying to simulate a real world dog fight, but real world dogfights take place in earths atmosphere where generally speaking your jets direction of travel is the same as the front of your jet. This is not the case in the cold vacuum of space where aerodynamics don't really matter, in space you can spin your whole ship on any axis you want (try that in an F-22).

This is why we deliberately avoided using terms like being in an enemy's six. All dogfighting is representing is a position of advantage. What that actually means is open to the ref's and players' interpretation. In an atmospheric dogfight between aircraft, it means you are behind your enemy. In space, it could mean a certain vector, using passing space junk as partial cover, or moving into an enemy's blind spot before he can counter rotate.

And another head scratch-er, what happens if my buddies scout ship is locked in a dogfight with a filthy pirate and I'm at far range away? Can I shoot into their dogfight? Can the pirate shoot at me? How often can the pirate shoot at me? Every 6 second or every 6 minutes? If it's one of those than why not the other?

You are far away, so you use the standard rules. The pirate is dogfighting the third ship. If the pirate chooses to engage you, he is no longer dogfighting and uses standard space combat - though he will likely be blown out of the sky by the third ship, as he is no longer concentrating on it but is making those complex calculations to get you.

 

[MongooseMatt]

An OTU example of where we need these faster space combat rules...

(And, incidentally, even if this did not apply, we would still need them for Traveller games set in, say, the Star Wars universe, but I digress...).

The players, being players, have annoyed the local authorities. They blast off from the Lowport, which throws the odd pulse laser and missile at them. A few rounds later, the ready fighters (or sentry fighters, maybe both) blast off and chase the escaping Far Trader at very close range.

Six minute combat rounds do not really work for that (they can be shoe-horned in, granted) but, more importantly, they just don't get the excitement needed for an operation like this.

Once the players have plinked off the fighters with their turret weapons, you then move to the standard space combat rules to handle the Corvette that is now slinging itself round the planet to get onto their tail.

That is where I am coming from on these rules

Plus, they have the advantage of being directly compatible with vehicle dogfighting, allowing ships to engage with aerospace fighters - and if it is just a case of transferring those same rules, then we are left with 'why not?' Remember, you can always forgo them in YTU, but they need to be in there to handle the refs/universes where they are justified.

Hope that is clear!

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I LIKE that the rules can be used the same for various types of Vehicles and spacecraft.

And yes, when I read the rules, I was thinking Star Wars (Episode 5) where Han pulls the Falcon up close to the Star Destroyer and hides from them by being too close for them to see.

It also works in the Asteroid Cluster chase (Never tell me the odds!)

 

[vladthemad]

I would find it hard to believe that in the far future it would take six minutes to come up with a firing solution. Is the gunner in the turret with a slide rule? I like to think it just takes that long for energy weapons to burn the hull and cause the listed damage. Inaccuracy and evasive manuevers account for the randomness of the damage die rolls.

Reasoning aside, why not make the combat turns sixty seconds for both dogfighting and distance fighting? I understand the idea behind the dogfight rules, it's just that it doesn't feel right as written and gives the impression it was shoe horned in. Special case rules should be kept to a minimum or you end up with a hodge podge mess like CT. If you really want to go this route, why do it half way? Make personal, vehicular, and spacecraft work across the board. Same time frames, same action sequence. Hell, drop the time frame all together and just call it a combat round. The only thing that differentiates the three would be scaling, it'd be easier to deal with.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Reasoning aside, why not make the combat turns sixty seconds for both dogfighting and distance fighting?

That is exactly what I did in the first draft, but there was too much push back from playtesters. We had to stick to 6 minute rounds for long-ranged combat.

 

[Nerhesi]

Reasoning aside, why not make the combat turns sixty seconds for both dogfighting and distance fighting?

That is exactly what I did in the first draft, but there was too much push back from playtesters. We had to stick to 6 minute rounds for long-ranged combat.

eh? Why... hrmm... 60 seconds seems plenty of time when considering how far along we will be. Obviously it means that it would take more "combat turns" to actually leave orbit, or the 100D range, or conduct repairs or so. But makes perfect sense for jamming/point defence/attacking.

Oh well.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Unless you are thinking about ships at 50,000 km separation and thrust limited to a couple of G's. It would take FOREVER to change range bands, which means the tactical part of space combat is out the window. Ships just sit at some range and pound each other; neither one able to close or escape.

Long range means long times.

 

[phavoc]

You could easily insert a rule that says for close/adjacent combat, the rounds are shorter (60 seconds), so you have 6 combat rounds in one standard round. A player may not do anything other than fight/fly during a combat round, and their normal actions are done during the standard round. For attacks against more distant targets the player still gets one shot/action against them. Closer targets get 6 attacks.

You could make it an alternative rule for people that want the faster-paced action. It would allow you also to have boarding actions taking place, and if the boarders can get to the turret on combat round 5 and disable it, it cannot fire at the end of the standard round (thus all standard round activities take place at the END of the combat rounds - gives an incentive to knock those pesky boarders out).

 

[Condottiere]

You can call it Matrix time.

 

[vladthemad]

Reasoning aside, why not make the combat turns sixty seconds for both dogfighting and distance fighting?

That is exactly what I did in the first draft, but there was too much push back from playtesters. We had to stick to 6 minute rounds for long-ranged combat.

eh? Why... hrmm... 60 seconds seems plenty of time when considering how far along we will be. Obviously it means that it would take more "combat turns" to actually leave orbit, or the 100D range, or conduct repairs or so. But makes perfect sense for jamming/point defence/attacking.

Oh well.

Unless you are thinking about ships at 50,000 km separation and thrust limited to a couple of G's. It would take FOREVER to change range bands, which means the tactical part of space combat is out the window. Ships just sit at some range and pound each other; neither one able to close or escape.

Long range means long times.

Not if they corrected the range band system to account for 1G being acceleration and not speed. That would be a pretty simple fix too. Simply keep track of your speed separately. 1G of acceleration every turn would simply be 1G the first round, 2G the second, 3G the third, 4G the fourth, etc.

The range band system isn't very accurate anyway, is it? To go from 1km (or less) to 50km would take 44 thrust, at 1G that's 44 rounds or 264 minutes. 1G is what, roughly 1250km (if we are going to call it speed and not acceleration and round it to the nearest 50km to make it easier to match to the table), that would actually be 330000km not 50km. To let you know, you should really have moved about 2.5Mkm in that time with a constant 1G accel.

I couldn't exactly find an example of 1G to minute to distance, so I did some quick calculations at 1am given what I found on the net. If I'm grossly off, feel free to correct me.