Vector based space combat

[heselbine]

Am I the only GM who has house ruled vector based space combat? For me, it makes things more fun. Of course, it's a computational nightmare if you have anything but two ships which are either flying towards each other or away from each other, but that is overwhelmingly the case in my games.

A ship which accelerates 1G is travelling at (very approximately) 1,000 km per space combat round. I track the velocities of the two ships as multiples of this, which makes it easy to apply Thrust to. For me, it works. What is anyone else's experience?

 

[OrdosMalleus]

We did this decades ago (classic Traveller in the early 80s) and it was a nightmare for us. It took hours to resolve a combat and we had people in our group who were AP Calc & Physics students. This was back when they were invitation-only (before they let anyone who asked take those classes). It wasn't that we couldn't do the math (Well, I couldn't! :wink: ) but it just slowed things down immensely. I'm older and stupider now, so as I ease back into Traveller (MGP 2e now), I want to be bothered with it even less. YMMV of course.

 

[Reynard]

Back when I bought the classic Traveller, (early Eighties), a friend and I tried it. My ship was placed outside my room at the start of the encounter distance. Took a while to get to firing range. Maneuvering took up a lot of space in my bedroom.

We never did that again, ever.

 

[NOLATrav]

I have similar memories of Classic Trav space combat... trying to turn and ending up sliding off the map, wasting every sand canister, missiles that never hit... it was awful. Thankfully we found Star Frontiers and a new way of looking at space combat.

Although I love the simplicity of range band and Thrust based combat, it can be unexciting from a table top point of view, especially at longer ranges. IMTU I use varying turn lengths based on range so the tension really starts to ratchet up as ships close, even though it’s just a few counters ticking thru the little range band boxes we made.

MgT 1e High Guard had a hex-based vector system, with hexes scaled at 1250km each. Might be worth revisiting.

 

[MonsterX]

I did it back in the 80s like a lot of people here, but I am not sure why you are all doing math for the combat aspect: if you just measure out the vector, then that's how you move every turn, unless you apply thrust. If you apply thrust, then you just use it to shorten or lengthen your vector, or add to it in another direction, if you thrust sideways. So you use a piece of string, or something like that to keep track.

It did use up space, and I don't think it added much in terms of giving tactical options. There might be special cases though, when it really matters how you position your ship. If there are a lot of moons that could be used to impede line of site it might create tactical choices for the players: dump your speed by thrusting to slow down and hide behind a moon, but then not be able to get away, for example. Gravity effects are relatively trivial with Traveller's magic engines, but if there is a gas giant and a weak maneuver drive (or battle damage) then there could a hazard to watch out for. But if the fight is just out in empty space, the scenario can be easily abstracted, with exactly the same outcome - the tactical choices are just to thrust away, or thrust towards the enemy ship - and if you thrust toward , do you also slow when you get there , or flash on past? No need to measure this stuff out, you can just say what is happening.

 

[heselbine]

As I said in the OP, if you are just talking about two ships, or two groups of ships, and they are flying either directly away or directly towards each other, and there are no other complications, there is no maths beyond tracking a velocity. I would abstract it if it got any more complicated.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If I am wargaming a ship combat then vector combat is used - there are loads of games that use psudo-vector combat but only a couple that get full Newtonian movement right.

If ship combat is part of a rpg encounter/scenario then I use a homebrew system that focusses on what the PCs are doing rather than moving a ship around a map for 3 hours.

 

[paltrysum]

My group used Brilliant Lances back in the TNE era, which is a really elegant and nicely designed little vector-based space-combat system. However, it does take a lot of time to conduct each round and you run into the same difficulties with 'falling off the map' at some point. Nevertheless, for Traveller, it's the best system I've seen.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Both of the TNE ship combat games - Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider - are great, but they take far too long to resolve a ship to ship combat encounter that is part of a roleplaying session. Attack Vector Tactical is probably my favourite ship combat wargame, with Squadron Strike Traveller a close second, although if I want a faster playing vector movement game then it's either Triplanetary or Mayday.

I don't like ship combat taking more time than personal combat to resolve during a rpg session, and I want every PC to be involved so that no player is sitting around with nothing to do, so my focus is on what the PCs are doing inside the ship rather than what the ship is doing.

One of the tricks is to vary the time scale, so during the initial detection and target resolution phase turns are longer than during the phase where missile fire is possible due to target locks, and the scale gets shorter still once beam weapon range in entered. All the while diffent PCs will have different things to do.

 

[Condottiere]

It's hard to make space combat exciting.

In the end, the best solution is that someone illegally modifies something like Deadlock, superimposing Traveller characteristics and performance on the existing spaceships, eliminating the need for extensive calculations.

 

[Sigtrygg]

It's hard to make space combat exciting.

It's hard to make a wargame that replaces character actions with 'the ship' exciting, but I find my system keeps my players engaged.

In the end, the best solution is that someone illegally modifies something like Deadlock, superimposing Traveller characteristics and performance on the existing spaceships, eliminating the need for extensive calculations.

No need to look beyond the basic game - there is a rather exciting space combat system hidden in plain sight in the original CT ship's boat skill = all you need to do it expand it so other skills and other character become involved.

 

[paltrysum]

I don't like ship combat taking more time than personal combat to resolve during a rpg session, and I want every PC to be involved so that no player is sitting around with nothing to do, so my focus is on what the PCs are doing inside the ship rather than what the ship is doing.

Great approach. After all, if it's not fun for everyone, what's the point. How do you do that and still ensure realistic outcomes to ship battles?

 

[NOLATrav]

One of the tricks is to vary the time scale, so during the initial detection and target resolution phase turns are longer than during the phase where missile fire is possible due to target locks, and the scale gets shorter still once beam weapon range in entered. All the while diffent PCs will have different things to do.

Precisely what I’ve been doing. We’ve had a few combats go from six minute turns at Very Long range down to 30 seconds at Close. Quite fun as the mood goes from tense sub-hunt style minutes watching the missiles close in to sweaty palms trying get a lucky hit as far out as possible to hectic flurries of activity in every part of the ship, all hands on deck.

 

[paltrysum]

We just ran the combat at the end of Islands in the Rift and I was tempted to revert to some of our house rules, but I’m refereeing some new players and one requested that we run it with the RAW. It went pretty well. Not vector-based, obviously, but fast and efficient. We were able to get back to the RPing in the same session.

 

[Ursus Maior]

I never used that system for Traveller and my group would probably not fancy the heavy crunch. But I played a couple of aerospace combat games with my BattleTech gaming partner using optional rules from the current Strategic Operations that allowed for vectored movement. It was great fun and could be adopted for Traveller, I guess. Both systems use 2D6 and similarly granular modifiers. In BT a thrust of 1 g is doubled into 2 points of thrust, so your average Type-S scout would have a maximum thrust of 4. Of course all the rest of heat management common to BT really has no meaning in CT and Power Points do not translate well from Traveller into BT.

 

[Garnfellow]

I started looking at this about six month ago for a Roll20 game. In theory, a VTT should make vector based space combat much easier to run and eliminate the old "fly off the table" problem. In reality, Roll20 has problems with maps larger than 120 x 120 hexes, and really isn't that great with stuff much about 60 hexes or so.

What is needed is something that allowed you to easily switch between scales as the scenario unfolds. You do a dogfight at 1 hex = 10 km, then pull back to 100 km scale, and 1,000 km, 10,000 km, etc. And drop back down as individual combatants draw closer.

 

[Finnulf]

For what it's worth, I've been using vector movement for space combat for a couple of years now. Integrates well with the existing rules - vector movement simply replaces the maneuver step.

Turns are still 6 minutes; hexes are 1250km

Ranges:
Adjacent - Same hex, same vector
Close - Same hex
Short - 1 hex
Medium - 2-8 hexes
Long - 9-20 hexes
Very Long - 21-40 hexes
Distant - 41+ hexes

If you need to plop a world on your map:
Size:
0 - less than hex size (safe jump 32 hexes)
1 - 1 hex Ø (safe jump 128 hexes)
2 - 2-3 hex Ø (sj 256)
3 - 4 hex Ø (sj 384)
4 - 5 hex Ø (sj 512)
5 - 6-7 hex Ø (sj 640)
6 - 8 hex Ø (sj 768)
7 - 9 hex Ø (sj 896)
8 - 10 hex Ø (sj 1024)
9 - 11-12 hex Ø (sj 1152)
A - 13+ hex Ø (sj 1280)
SGG - 40 hex Ø (use map edge)
LGG - 80-120 hex Ø (use map edge)

That's the bare bones of my system.

Finnulf