Multiple Ship Combat

Jack2288

Mongoose
How do you guys deal with ranges in multiple ship combats?

In the basic rule book the ranges work well if the chracters only have one ship. If they have two or more it make calculations more difficult than I want to do in session.

What I am trying to do is create an A3 board with range markers on it and use counters to represent the combatants, the counters would move through the various ranges (A,C,S,M,L,VL,D) as the combat evloved.

This works with one ship in adjacent and all foes moving around them, but if the characters had more than one ship that wants to persue more than one foe it starts to fall apart.

Am I looking at it wrong or is there an easier solution?
 
I would probably handle this by giving each ship their own "radar" screen with their ship at the middle, rings indicating each range band (divided into sections, so you know approximate direction), and colored markers/dots/counters/etc to represent each other ship. Use Polar Graph paper, like this here: http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/polar/

I would then have some master ones for myself behind my screen that I kept an "accurate" accounting on, and let the 'captains' of each PC ship make sure they properly update their own by making sensor rolls, etc. Could add great fun when one of them heads off to where they think the enemy ship is, only to find out they aren't reading the sensors right.
 
kristof65 said:
I would probably handle this by giving each ship their own "radar" screen with their ship at the middle, rings indicating each range band (divided into sections, so you know approximate direction), and colored markers/dots/counters/etc to represent each other ship. Use Polar Graph paper, like this here: http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/polar/

Thank you for posting the website! MT suggested something similar but it was never repeated in post-MT editions of Traveller. I've been able to make some very useful "radar" maps using the following settings at the website.

Concentric Circles: 8 (this allow an additional circle outside the farthest combat distance to allow tracking of ships out of sensor range)
Primary Spokes: 24 (allows labels every 15 degrees)
Reverse Labels: checked (sets heading 0 to the top of the portrait orientation rather than landscape)
Primary Labels: degrees (allows players to easily see bearings)
Secondary Spokes: 72 (forces a line every 5 degrees of arc)
Line Color: Black (easier to see than the default light blue)

Simply slip each printout into a plastic sheet protector and I'm in business.
 
SSWarlock said:
Thank you for posting the website! MT suggested something similar but it was never repeated in post-MT editions of Traveller. I've been able to make some very useful "radar" maps using the following settings at the website.
No problem. It was actually one of the first sites that came up when I did a google search for "polar graph paper". I've got the site bookmarked on one of my other PCs for hex paper purposes, I didn't even realize they had polar graph paper to.

I loved the ones in the MT books DGP published - I've got a few that I photocopied and laminated and use with wet erase pens.

If I get a chance, I'll try and make something a little more Traveller specific using Campaign Cartographer. My plan for my next campaign is to have some sort of "control panel" representing sensors, controls and the likes relating to the starship for each PC to use during starship combat and other "tense" situations.
 
kristof65 said:
If I get a chance, I'll try and make something a little more Traveller specific using Campaign Cartographer. My plan for my next campaign is to have some sort of "control panel" representing sensors, controls and the likes relating to the starship for each PC to use during starship combat and other "tense" situations.

Whipped this up tonight for those who are interested:

http://chris.heismann.net/TravellerShipSensorDisplay.pdf
 
Thanks.

I could have, but I tried to keep it simple. I was going strictly from the base rule book, I don't yet have High Guard.

The core MgT starship combat rules basically break it down into the 7 ranges - Adjacent, Close, Short, Medium, Long, Very Long and Distant - so I made that many circles for tracking. The core rules also don't appear to deal with vectors or directions at all, so I didn't feel it necessary to add too many - again, I kept it simple and kept it to 12 sectors - basically the clock directions.

I may revise it or do another version once I see the High Guard rules.
 
kristof65 said:
I may revise it or do another version once I see the High Guard rules.

As I said, I'm not familiar with the MGT space combat rules, so I may be talking out of my butt.

I was thinking more along the lines of Starter Traveller Range Band combat where you want 10,000 km "squares". It's an easy range increment.



One problem, though, that I see with your grid, is that its centered on the player's ship. Distance is measured from the center (the player's ship).

That's fine if the player's vessel, alone, is fighting one or more enemies.

But, what if the enemies aren't allied?

What if the players have someone on their side?

Or, what if the players are attacked by a corsair, and then a customs boat arrives, realizing that the players' vessel is wanted for boarding and Imperial inspection?

You've got a three-way, then, and no way to calculate distance between vessels other than the player's ship on your grid.

That's why I suggested using the same number of spokes as your to circles. If you do that, you can keep track of range between bogies as well as distance to the players' ship.
 
Supplement Four said:
As I said, I'm not familiar with the MGT space combat rules, so I may be talking out of my butt.

THAT is an image I could have done without on Christmas eve.
But, if so, does that mean that .... you...I mean...if so.... then...do you...uhhhhh

**TWITCH & SHIVVER**

no, never mind. Forget I said anything.

No questions here, move along......
 
Well I just set up a plotting table in my Command center/lounge (family room), so over the next few days The boy and I will be doing some plotted combat.
 
Supplement Four said:
One problem, though, that I see with your grid, is that its centered on the player's ship. Distance is measured from the center (the player's ship).
My solution to this is to run one of these grids for each ship. As I get into my campaign, I'll be doing some of these up for various common ship types.

Most RPG ship to ship combats are going to involve less than half a dozen ships - with the players plotting their own ship(s), and the GM the rest, it's not too out of hand.

If there are going to be more ships than that, thus requiring more than 6 of these sensor displays, might as well pull out Power Projection, Brilliant Lances or another mini's space combat game and deal with it that way.
 
kristof65 said:
My solution to this is to run one of these grids for each ship. As I get into my campaign, I'll be doing some of these up for various common ship types.

If you make the spokes equal to the ciricles, you can plot them on just one grid. Players' ship in the center, but range can be calculated between bogies, too.
 
Supplement Four said:
If you make the spokes equal to the ciricles, you can plot them on just one grid. Players' ship in the center, but range can be calculated between bogies, too.

The OP asked how we would suggest he handle multiple ships. MY suggested solution was to use a display like what I made, and use one for each ship.

Again, that is MY solution. I've used it in MegaTraveller with up to five ships, it worked great for me and my players. Any more ships than that, and I'm pulling out miniatures and a battlemat for tracking, and possibly a more miniature's oriented system like Power Projection, which means I don't need a more complicated grid.

This is something simple that allows both players and GM to see where each ship is in relation to others at a glance for any given ship. My old MT versions had additional stuff on the bottom for sensor notes, current vectors, thrust ratings, various common tasks, etc. Once I get High Guard and a bit more familiarity with the MgT system, I will add the same on my MgT version.

I may do a simple "GM Tracking screen" to handle multiple ships for GM tracking. That will more likely be a hex, square or triangular grid, depending upon a system I come with. It's likely to be a lot more complicated, and I have to figure out how to make it interact with the simpler version the players will be using.

If it doesn't work for you, and/or you want the grid to be more complex, then that's your solution.
 
Supp 4 - after rereading my previous post, that came across a lot more snippy and/or snarky than I intended. Sorry 'bout that.

Let me expand on my thinking a bit more. First off, space combat simulation is a difficult thing to pull off - frankly, the best method to simulate it is to use a computer that can track all the math. Outside of the computer, there have been hundreds of attempts to model space ship combat via board games/miniatures games, etc. Every one of those attempts has had to make compromises in some form or another. If you want more insight on that, check out the forums at www.star-rangers.com, which is dedicated to starship miniatures and space combat games.

For most Traveller GMs, they want to simulate the feel of starship combat, yet still make it interesting from a role-playing viewpoint. Traveller's relatively abstract system actually does this pretty well - except for that small human "failing" of being visual - a picture, graph, map, mini's etc help people grasp that abstractness.

So when designing the "grid" of the Sensor Display, my goal was to be as faithful to the abstract nature of the MgT while still providing a means of visualization. Adding the additional grids like you suggest would actually complicate things, because of the logrithmic nature of the range bands:

A < 1km
C 1 to 10km
S 10 to 1250km
etc

By adding the additional grids, I'd be adding possble complication, confusion and/or innaccuracies which would need explaination and/or house rules.

I simply felt there was no need to make things any more complicated - basically, I would either be adding argument inducing inaccuracies, or re-writing the space combat rules. I have no desire to write a set of space combat rules when so many have done so before me - there must be a dozen variations for Traveller alone.
 
kristof65 said:
I simply felt there was no need to make things any more complicated -

I don't think the 30 spokes and circles makes the grid too complicated.

First off, there were be an "unreadable" area close on your map, but that's mucho OK, because it's only 0-20,000km, which is very short range in space combat. You'll never have a ship that close (and if, by some weird chance you do, then it will be easy to keep track off using the standard range band method).

Second, once the grid is printed, simply place a pencil dot in the box containing the ship. The player's ship is the center of the grid, of course. But, if you want range between two other vessels, just cound boxes between the two pencil dots.

Not complicated at all.

And, it provides range on both axis.




For a quickie graph to show you want I'm talking about:
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/polar/



Try using something like these settings:

30 concentric circles. 30 primary spokes.

Use 0 secondary spokes so you don't muddy up the graph.

Then...print.
 
Jack2288 said:
How do you guys deal with ranges in multiple ship combats?
Multiple ship combats are extremely rare in my settings, but in the few
cases I had to deal with them I used the Saganami Island Tactical Simu-
lator with rules adapted to Traveller technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saganami_Island_Tactical_Simulator
 
Supplement Four said:
I don't think the 30 spokes and circles makes the grid too complicated.
I know what you're saying, but it doesn't work with the MgT rules as written (RaW).

First off, there were be an "unreadable" area close on your map, but that's mucho OK, because it's only 0-20,000km, which is very short range in space combat.
That's actually a problem with the MgT RaW. 20,000km covers most of the first 5 range bands. But you mention switching back to the standard range bands - which means you're effectively writing new rules - no, they aren't complicated, but it's introducing new "rules".

Second, once the grid is printed, simply place a pencil dot in the box containing the ship. The player's ship is the center of the grid, of course. But, if you want range between two other vessels, just cound boxes between the two pencil dots.

This method adds some large inaccuracies to the ranging system - to resolve or reduce them, it makes the grid much more complicated.

The problem is the size of a polar grid "square" (more properly, a segment) changes with each concentric ring. If each ring represents a distance of 10km from the center, the 12 degree segment on each ring gets wider and wider. Take the following examples:

At the third range band out or 30,000 km away from the center ship, each 12 degree segment (30 spokes) represents a width of only 3140 km. This means two enemy ships at 30k km but in adjoining segments from your central ship aren't 10k away from each other, but somewhere between 1 and 6280 km.

At the 20th range band out, or 200,000 km away from the center, each 12 degree segment represents a width of 20,933 km. Two ships in the same segment could still be over 20,000 km away from each other.

At the 30th range band out, or 300,000 km away, each 12 degree segment represents 31,400 km. Again, two ships in the same segment can be over 30k away from each other.

The problem gets worse when you take two ships that are 90 degrees apart from each other and the same range out from the central ship. If you count the roughly 9 segments between them, that would lead you to falsely beleive they were 90k away from each other. That number would not only be way off depending upon what ring they were actually in, but a straight line between the two ships actually cuts in at least 2-3 range bands.

Not complicated at all.
Nope, it's not. It's also highly inaccurate - more so than the existing abstract system. You can compensate for much of it by varying the number of segments at each range band to make them as close to the width of your range circles as possible - for example, using 10km rings, the third band would have 3 segments, while the 20th band would have 60 segments and the 30th one would have 90+ segments.

Do you want to draw that? I am certainly capable of it using the same software I used for this, but it's a time consuming task and it's still no more accurate than the simple abstract system in the RaW. Might as well use plain graph or hex paper at that point - at least the squares/hexes will all be the same size.

If it's any consolation, it took one of my math whiz players to point this out to me many years ago during a MegaTraveller game when I had a similar idea.

I just got High Guard into today, once I'm through reading that I am going to try and figure out how to make a companion GM "display" - probably using a triangular grid.
 
The math errors of the polar graph make it unsuitable; a hex grid is a far better representation for these purposes. Use it just the same way... ship at center.
 
The segments in the spokes aren't supposed to represent distance based on their size. They represent the same distance no matter what size the segment is.

By design, the segments farther out will be bigger than the closer ones. But, they all represent 10,000 km linear distance.

So, it's not as inaccurate as you make it out to be. The graph doesn't represent actual distance. It represents a plot of real distance.

So, if a ship is 10 squares out, it's 100,000 km from the player's ship.

If another ship is 3 segements clockwise from that ship, then it's 30,000km from that ship and 100,000 km from the player's ship.

That's as accurate as a hex board.
 
Yes, it is that inaccurate.

If ship 1 is 10 "squares" directly ahead of the players ship, and ships 2 & 3 are 10 "squares" clockwise and counter clockwise from ship 1 the same distance out, where are ships 2 & 3? Looking at polar graph plotting tells you the three ships are equally spaced and equidistant from the player's ship - one in front at 0 degrees, and two to the rear, towards either side at approximately 120 and 240 degrees respectively.

The reality is that since those ships are actually only 100,000 km apart from each other, they are actually all to the front, at 0, roughly 60 and roughl 300 degrees, because at that distance away from the ship, the band has a diameter of 628,000 km. That could (and should) make a big difference to the player's tactics.
 
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