I came up with these early in the morning. Haven't looked at really balancing them, especially haven't play-tested them.
* Dogfight combat consists of 6 1-min rounds, or 6 per standard turn.
* Dogfighting occurs when two small craft engage in combat. They may not attack a starship during dogfighting, only other small craft at close or adjacent ranges.
* During dogfighting the craft may not disengage. To disengage the player must choose to do so at the beginning of the round. They may not engage any craft pursuing them unless they have turreted weapons.
* Dogfighting is a one-on-one combat, thus an attacker must declare which ship they are attacking for that turn and engage only that ship.
* Each combat round allows a player to perform ONE offensive action (firing missile, fire beam) OR ONE defense action (evasion/dodge)
* A crafts thrust rating determines how many action points it has for dogfighting. Once a craft has exhausted it's action points it may no longer perform offensive or defensive activities. Action points are determined based on thrust rating of the craft, excluding any thrust produced by high-burn thrusters (not sure about this. IF this is added to the initial launch speed from a catapult/launch tube launch, even pooky little fighters would have the benefit of high speed, at least for one turn)
1-6 Thrust rating = 1 action point
7-12 Thrust rating = 2 action point
13-17 Thrust rating = 3 action point
18-21 Thrust rating = 4 action point
22-23 Thrust rating = 5 action point
24-25 Thrust rating = 6 action point
* Standard missiles may not be used for dogfighting engagements. Instead the standard missile is substituted for a short-range rocket. Rockets hit on a 8+, no positive DM's are possible, except for Pilot skill (added to the 'to hit' roll).
* Rockets may not be engaged by PD, or ECM. Only Pilot skill (negative DM) and evasion/dodge, which provides a -2 DM for all attacks during that round).
* A rocket does 1D of damage, ignoring armor resistance (e.g. it will do the same amount of damage to a small craft with a lvl 15 armor, or lvl 1). This is so that dogfighting is on an even keel, and because small craft should NOT be flying tanks that can shrug off hits.
* A smallcraft may fire no more than 1 rocket per round.
* A small craft may fire energy weapons every other round
So the intent here is to make small craft combat more like true dogfighting. Six second combat rounds are far too short to get the feel of ships moving and dodging and lining up their shots. A minute seems reasonable. I ramped down how often they can fire because these are still ship weapons, and the firing ratio would be too high, so why wouldn't a starship get to fire it's beam laser as fast as a fighter in dogfighting, especially if the fighter has closed and is attacking at very close range.
I think the idea that fighters can have the same level of armor as a starship is nuts. One of the reasons they are harder to hit is because they are smaller and more nimble. And nimble means NOT carting around collapsed-matter hull plating. Small craft could not, in any logical universe, have the same armor factor as a 500,000 ton battleship. MASS still matters in the Traveller universe, if you don't have to worry about gravity. Small craft is where the concept of high-burn thrusters belongs. There should be diminishing returns the more massive your ship gets, and at some point the amount of energy required to move that extra G should be unavailable from the thrusters - at least insofar as you get to use it in a single turn. If we were talking days of thrust, that's one thing. But we are talking about a 6min acceleration curve (technically instantly, since Traveller does not have acceleration). The size of the chemical thrusters to do that would be rather large, and the specific impulse of the fuel insanely high. I accept the fact that we now have afterburners... but we need to draw the line somewhere before we get too deep in the silly / hand-wavium space.
I wasn't sure about the thrust rating without high burn thrusters adding to the action points concept or not. Still on the fence there. On the one hand, speed is good. On the other hand, if you are trying to use your afterburners to maneuver, your use of them works against you because you are thrusting away so fast you can't do maneuvers AND still bring yourself back to bear on your target. That violates the concept of physics, and targeting, and common sense. A craft you are orbiting at higher speeds has to expend FAR less energy to maintain a track on you since it's at the center of the movement sphere. So there's no bonus available for that sort of movement process.
* Dogfight combat consists of 6 1-min rounds, or 6 per standard turn.
* Dogfighting occurs when two small craft engage in combat. They may not attack a starship during dogfighting, only other small craft at close or adjacent ranges.
* During dogfighting the craft may not disengage. To disengage the player must choose to do so at the beginning of the round. They may not engage any craft pursuing them unless they have turreted weapons.
* Dogfighting is a one-on-one combat, thus an attacker must declare which ship they are attacking for that turn and engage only that ship.
* Each combat round allows a player to perform ONE offensive action (firing missile, fire beam) OR ONE defense action (evasion/dodge)
* A crafts thrust rating determines how many action points it has for dogfighting. Once a craft has exhausted it's action points it may no longer perform offensive or defensive activities. Action points are determined based on thrust rating of the craft, excluding any thrust produced by high-burn thrusters (not sure about this. IF this is added to the initial launch speed from a catapult/launch tube launch, even pooky little fighters would have the benefit of high speed, at least for one turn)
1-6 Thrust rating = 1 action point
7-12 Thrust rating = 2 action point
13-17 Thrust rating = 3 action point
18-21 Thrust rating = 4 action point
22-23 Thrust rating = 5 action point
24-25 Thrust rating = 6 action point
* Standard missiles may not be used for dogfighting engagements. Instead the standard missile is substituted for a short-range rocket. Rockets hit on a 8+, no positive DM's are possible, except for Pilot skill (added to the 'to hit' roll).
* Rockets may not be engaged by PD, or ECM. Only Pilot skill (negative DM) and evasion/dodge, which provides a -2 DM for all attacks during that round).
* A rocket does 1D of damage, ignoring armor resistance (e.g. it will do the same amount of damage to a small craft with a lvl 15 armor, or lvl 1). This is so that dogfighting is on an even keel, and because small craft should NOT be flying tanks that can shrug off hits.
* A smallcraft may fire no more than 1 rocket per round.
* A small craft may fire energy weapons every other round
So the intent here is to make small craft combat more like true dogfighting. Six second combat rounds are far too short to get the feel of ships moving and dodging and lining up their shots. A minute seems reasonable. I ramped down how often they can fire because these are still ship weapons, and the firing ratio would be too high, so why wouldn't a starship get to fire it's beam laser as fast as a fighter in dogfighting, especially if the fighter has closed and is attacking at very close range.
I think the idea that fighters can have the same level of armor as a starship is nuts. One of the reasons they are harder to hit is because they are smaller and more nimble. And nimble means NOT carting around collapsed-matter hull plating. Small craft could not, in any logical universe, have the same armor factor as a 500,000 ton battleship. MASS still matters in the Traveller universe, if you don't have to worry about gravity. Small craft is where the concept of high-burn thrusters belongs. There should be diminishing returns the more massive your ship gets, and at some point the amount of energy required to move that extra G should be unavailable from the thrusters - at least insofar as you get to use it in a single turn. If we were talking days of thrust, that's one thing. But we are talking about a 6min acceleration curve (technically instantly, since Traveller does not have acceleration). The size of the chemical thrusters to do that would be rather large, and the specific impulse of the fuel insanely high. I accept the fact that we now have afterburners... but we need to draw the line somewhere before we get too deep in the silly / hand-wavium space.
I wasn't sure about the thrust rating without high burn thrusters adding to the action points concept or not. Still on the fence there. On the one hand, speed is good. On the other hand, if you are trying to use your afterburners to maneuver, your use of them works against you because you are thrusting away so fast you can't do maneuvers AND still bring yourself back to bear on your target. That violates the concept of physics, and targeting, and common sense. A craft you are orbiting at higher speeds has to expend FAR less energy to maintain a track on you since it's at the center of the movement sphere. So there's no bonus available for that sort of movement process.
