My Starship Combat Houserules..comments

[Abraxus]

Here are a few houserules I have for Starship combat. Tell me what you think and how you do things.

1. Automatic Criticals. I don't just have criticals occuring only when a "Critical Hit" occurs. What I do is I take the ships Hit points and divide by 10. I call it the critical hit threshold. Then, every time a ship takes its threshold in damage, a level of critical occurs. I'll give an example.

Let's say we are looking at a Hyperion. It has 500 hp, so its critical hit threshold is 50 (500/10). So let's say it gets hit for an even 200 points of damage in one hit. For every 50 hit points it suffers it also takes a critical hit, so in this case it has suffered 4 levels of criticals. I then roll a d6 and compare it against the chart. That area then takes 4 levels of criticals.

Now, what happens if you also do a "Critical Hit" to a ship. Use the standard rules, just roll for a seperate location.

2. Less then 0 hitpoints. Take a ships HP and divide by 10. This is how far below 0 in hitpoints a ship can go before it is destroyed. I felt that all ships going to -10 to be destroyed did not reflect a ships overall hull and size. So a hyperion in my game can go to negative 50 hp before it is destroyed utterly. 0 still means it becomes inoperable.

3. Weapon Damage in hyperspace. I don't know if there is a rule about damage that ships do to other ships in hyperspace, so I came up with a rule that the threat range of all weapons is doubled. Is there a rule somewhere that i've missed?

What do you guys think? Comments? What do you guys do?

Abraxus

 

[Dag'Nabbit]

If anything, fighting in hyperspace should shorten the range of weapons. I have also thought about adding a chance that any energy weapon used in hyperspace, atleast those used by non-ancients, would have a chance of harming the firing ship. This being due to the energetic characteristics of hyperspace.

 

[cerebrolator]

2. Less then 0 hitpoints. Take a ships HP and divide by 10. This is how far below 0 in hitpoints a ship can go before it is destroyed. I felt that all ships going to -10 to be destroyed did not reflect a ships overall hull and size. So a hyperion in my game can go to negative 50 hp before it is destroyed utterly. 0 still means it becomes inoperable.

I'm very new to this so my thinking is probably wrong, but don't the larger DR values of the big ships take into account the fact that since it is bigger it can take more of a pounding? By making the hps to destruction greater, the big ships are getting the advantage twice IMO.

Have you play tested your critical idea to see how much of an impact it has on the game? I'd be interested in your comments on what you learned during play and how it compares to the flow in combat using the standard rules.