HG Capital Ship Combat?
- Thread starter BP
- Start date
Ticked Interested, not had a chance to play yet. Missed TCS completely when playing CT, only knew it existed when I purchased the CD last year. Would like to build up towards the big figure 1 TCr and see how it works. My gaming background includes SFB/FC, great games to play, but take a little long for me and no design rules.
GDW had a heritage in war games and boardgames, so the concept of annual tournaments of high guard made sense. Given 90% of it was solo play scheming the fleet before hand, I think it made sense in the TL 7.5 days of CT, before the Internet as something Traveller players could do easily when they got together at conventions.
These days the wargames/boardgames/roleplaying cross over is lower (at least I think a summary of the WoTC market research concluded), so I am not sure the same "percentage" of people on this board will be interested in scaling up that large, as it does not fit in with the scale in a typical Traveller campaign.
GDW had a heritage in war games and boardgames, so the concept of annual tournaments of high guard made sense. Given 90% of it was solo play scheming the fleet before hand, I think it made sense in the TL 7.5 days of CT, before the Internet as something Traveller players could do easily when they got together at conventions.
These days the wargames/boardgames/roleplaying cross over is lower (at least I think a summary of the WoTC market research concluded), so I am not sure the same "percentage" of people on this board will be interested in scaling up that large, as it does not fit in with the scale in a typical Traveller campaign.
Agreed - that's why I put 'Not interested' at the top of the list.Somebody said:
It also explains why a lot of folks haven't questioned the capital ship combat rules - though a good 3rd so far have expressed interest - and nobody yet has expressed confidence in actually using the rules...
Elysianknight
Mongoose
i put not interested because, as with others, i find the rules as presented overly complex and confusing. I perhaps should have ticked "gave up - switched systems" as we do occasionally have large fleet actions ( sometimes the ongoing campaign builds to a climatic encounter, and we step out of character to resolve a large battle), but we use a very simple house rule system
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
I said "Use other system"
I ran an MGT game (before HG) set in TNE1248 with some high Social Status characters that were aboard Cruisers and Battleships (100Kton+). Since Mongoose didn't have HG out yet, I extrapolated everything and basically told a story.
The players were gunners and I let them roll to hit and if they did hit, I described the damage without actually rolling anything. I knew where I wanted the battles to go from a story point of view.
This cinematic approach seemed to work REALLY well and the players liked it a lot. THEY felt like they were influencing the battle, but the overall outcome had been predetermined by me. The fact that they blew up one Cruiser and severely damaged another did not affect the overall outcome, but they got to be a part of the victories.
I may never use actual rolls for capital ship combat again.
Besides, with most groups, they can't even fill all the positions on one ship, let alone an entire fleet. Even as command officers, you can either roll thousands of dice to determine what happened, or just decide what happens and let the players affect the little things.
Now, having said that, I LIKE the idea of Barrages and being able to reconfigure your ship's weapons on the fly (changing barrages around), so I will definitely be incorporating that into my narrative combat system.
I ran an MGT game (before HG) set in TNE1248 with some high Social Status characters that were aboard Cruisers and Battleships (100Kton+). Since Mongoose didn't have HG out yet, I extrapolated everything and basically told a story.
The players were gunners and I let them roll to hit and if they did hit, I described the damage without actually rolling anything. I knew where I wanted the battles to go from a story point of view.
This cinematic approach seemed to work REALLY well and the players liked it a lot. THEY felt like they were influencing the battle, but the overall outcome had been predetermined by me. The fact that they blew up one Cruiser and severely damaged another did not affect the overall outcome, but they got to be a part of the victories.
I may never use actual rolls for capital ship combat again.
Besides, with most groups, they can't even fill all the positions on one ship, let alone an entire fleet. Even as command officers, you can either roll thousands of dice to determine what happened, or just decide what happens and let the players affect the little things.
Now, having said that, I LIKE the idea of Barrages and being able to reconfigure your ship's weapons on the fly (changing barrages around), so I will definitely be incorporating that into my narrative combat system.
I've always thought that should be an option along with rules to simulate large scale conflicts just using numbers and a handfull of die roles. The later is probably the goal of the HG system, but it still seems overcomplicated and not clearly nor comprehensively defined.Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Vile
Banded Mongoose
I dunno, I think this reflects the fact that most people seem to use the Traveller ship rules (past editions included) for designing ships, but not fighting them. Speaking only from personal experience, my players have normally found ship combat too impersonal and too deadly to risk losing their beloved characters. Not to mention the fact that normal player ships are almost always outgunned.
A dedicated ship combat game would be nice, though.
A dedicated ship combat game would be nice, though.
The same over here.Vile said:
In fact, it is one of the reasons why my settings usually are quite peaceful,
without pirates, interstellar wars and thelike. It simply is a waste of time
and effort to design all this when the characters prefer to avoid any space
combat whenever possible.
In the very few cases where space combat happens in my settings, I can
just as well let the players roll some dice and tell the story as it fits into
the campaign, without any detailed combat system.
Granted, but from the poll >40% do consider this a part of their roleplay, or might like to.
Wether capital sized ship combat is part of an adventure is really all about the type of game and setting being played. Somebody has to be operating and in charge of those starships - and a large part of chargen revolves around military space careers. Heck some players in their lust for skill levels wind up with high ranking officers.
Wether capital sized ship combat is part of an adventure is really all about the type of game and setting being played. Somebody has to be operating and in charge of those starships - and a large part of chargen revolves around military space careers. Heck some players in their lust for skill levels wind up with high ranking officers.
Vile
Banded Mongoose
But are they PCs or NPCs?BP said:
Normally ex-officers, though.BP said:
I personally feel that fleet combat doesn't mesh well with the Traveller roleplaying game, though it might work well as a war game. But I honestly think that capital ships in almost all roleplaying campaigns are either wallpaper or adventure locales.
No reason they can't be PCs, and ex-Officers can be re-instated, if just temporarily, when the need arises. (Or one can do an active military campaign where players haven't finished their careers).
In CT days, I played Traveller with characters having acces to and control of capital sized ships and fleets (they didn't own them ), though only a few times.
After all, Traveller has often been citied as a Space Opera style RPG. Often meaning melodramatic and on massive scales.
In CT days, I played Traveller with characters having acces to and control of capital sized ships and fleets (they didn't own them
), though only a few times.After all, Traveller has often been citied as a Space Opera style RPG. Often meaning melodramatic and on massive scales.
