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Have you ever noticed that because of the rediculously short range of most space weapons you A: have to get in really close to engage in combat and B: you cant be moving very fast at all if you intend to get a mellee's worth of attacks in. The only exception of course is if you have your opponent in a "dog" position. I have calculated that traveling at a speed of mach 10 (mach speed calculated at sea level) you will travel over 30 miles in one melee. Most weapon ranges on a fighter are 5 miles or less, which means you may get off one or two shots if traveling head to head or intersecting one another. Given that most space battles are taking place head to head you proactically have to be standing still to actually engage in combat. Thats retarded, its just a case of bigger guns more megadamage.

so fix things with house rules, like me.

the mach listing is accelleration (in either per melee, per minute, or per hour, depending on the drive), with max speeds based on drive type (weak drives like ion/plasma top out at about 1,080 mach, stronger stuff like fusion tops out at 10,800 mach, and powerful stuff like CG drive at 504,000 mach. basically 1%, 10%, and 50% the speed of light.)

(i also redefined mach to be 650mph, or 1000kmh, and switched to an entirely metric set up. easier to use.)

weapons got a major increase in range (almost 100x).

battles either take place in orbit as ships coast, barely using their drive, or in chases, with both ships almost stationary to each other.

i also added rules for ramming (roughly, every 10 mach of speed inflicts 1d6x10md per ton, to both rammer and rammee, so that 20 ton scorpion fighter moving at a slow 100 mach inflicts a massive 2D6x1000 md, destroying itself and probably crippling the target), and the use of reaction drives as weapons ("the Kzinti lesson")

a touch more realistic in the physics department, and not that much harder to play.

unfortunately i can't find people wanting to do phase world, so it was kinda pointless.

I use some abstract and house rules and the combat in space between ships go fairly fast.

Both are out of print, as far as I know. Battlespace was one of the many expansions for BattleTech and Aerotech featuring capital ships, both dropship, jumpship and otherwise. Even included rules for planetary bombardment. For a higher tech version (although also out of print) FASA also produced a space combat game called Leviathan. The tech level there might more accurately reflect that of the Three Galaxies. The rules are kinda clunky, but the campaign chapters give some good insights on how to handle various aspects of space travel.

aerotech and battlespace are both out of print.
Fanpro put out Aerospace 2, which uses a new ruleset, which includes vectored movement. (the basic movement is so badly done, everyone uses vectored, it actually is easier to play that way. LOL)
AT2 recently got revised (mostly error fixes), and is revised again (mostly streamlining) in the new Total Warfare volume. (TW lacks vectored movement though. ugh.)


the Colonial marine tech manual is cool.

in regards to distance, the usual issue isn't lag, it's spread. a one inch wide laser beam fired from earth will cover the whole moon when it gets there a second later. for a weapon, that means your destructive power would be negated. you have to really focus the beam, which requires very precise range data.

I agree about the Colonial Marine Handbook. I'm glad I picked mine up a couple of years ago.

Cirlot wrote:

gadrin wrote:yeah, just scoped both out on www.abebooks.com

$45 and $65 were the cheapest.

Heh. Sounds about right. I picked up Battlespace back when it was new (one Christmas I cleaned out the entire Battletech shelf at the local hobbyshop . . . ahhh, memories) and I lucked out on the Tech Manual. Something like $17 used and in mint condition. This after I walked right past it in a Barnes and Nobles five years earlier

again, grab a copy of Aerotech2 (revised). only $30 or so. it has all the same vectored movement explanations as battlespace, and it has a large section on space combat, space travel, space conditions, ship systems, ect. setting specific, but most are general issues.

I wasn't commenting on the time requried to resolve the combat but the speeds you would have to travel at to engage in combat in the three galaxies. The speed of the fighers is great enough that unless you are in a dogfight you will only get one or two attacks in as you pass by each other. The oly way to get a full mellee of attacks in is to slow right down.

Thats why cruise missiles are launched from only one mile away, to eliminate the dodge and take advantage of the fighters speed

The very first scifi RPG was a game called Starfaring by Ken St. Andre who wrote the great Tunnels & Trolls. Ken addressed the FTL and high speed combat issue and detailed how lasers, missiles and other weapons would be effectively useless due to the high manueverability and speeds that mean that your enemy would be miles away in miliseconds.

His solution was Psi-Gunners. Psychics would predict where the enemy ship would be and when and the weapons would be fired to those locations. You could also teleport bombs to those locations and time where your enemy would be as well. It was an interesting idea.

I noticed the fast speeds of Phase World ships and their short ranged weapons. As always, I would handwaive past the rules for the sake of the story, but I do like the Das Boat idea and I like the option of fighting in gravity wells.

Anyone else have a solution?