Interaction between personal combat and space combat

[Vortex]

I look at the characters my players are preparing and I can't help but think that some of them are going to have absolutely nothing to do in a space battle. I was thinking of trying to get them something to do on a more personal scale during that time but the rules don't seem to accommodate that very well.

Space combat turns obviously last much longer than a combat round. There is no way an Omega class could launch fighters, position itself and then attack in six seconds. And that's only with three orders. But what is the ratio?

The situation I'm imagining is something like some players fighting a space battle while others are trying to do something that will calm things through the use of personal skills (running and climbing to some place and then attempting diplomacy, telepathy, computer use, etc…).

I think that would be great drama; fighting an impossible battle to buy time for people to do some thing important. A situation like the "telepath booby-traps" on earth ships in season 4 is another example. Soldiers have to fight with personal weapons to stop them. If it takes them 12 rounds, how much happened in the space combat during that time?

Has anyone tackled this before?

 

[Mongoose Gar]

Orders happen at the speed of plot. I'd generally just intercut back and forth between personal combat and ship combat, with five or so rounds of personal combat between orders - but there's no hard and fast rule.

 

[Vortex]

Yeah, 5 to 1 is around what I had guessed I would use. I was just wondering if anyone had actually tried it before me.

 

[Gabriel_Luna]

I had a similar question up a while back, but never did get a response.

I had a space battle happening outside while saboteurs were trying to disable the ship from within. So the PCs who couldn't shoot the ship's guns or couldn't fly a Starfury were trying to fight off the saboteurs. While they actually resolved the internal combat too fast for it to matter to the outside, my plan was to take each encounter (like the fight over the port side boarding hatch, or the assault on the bridge) and compress that to about a round or two of space combat. So the combat rounds inside go much faster, but once they're moving around the ship outside of combat rounds I don't see any reason not to take that opportunity to let the space battle catch up.

 

[Vortex]

Reading in my book I actually found my own answer without looking for it. It says that a space combat turn lasts about a minute so if synchronisation is important, a ration of 10 to 1 can be used.