Star Trek Space Combat Game (new fangame)

[PhaserLightShow]

I have the idea for a Star Trek space battle game.
It's main rule is that damage is only counted against the shield if the damage is more than the current shield absorption rating (which falls from damage).

Starship Stat Example (NOTE: Also have Evasive Action and Picard Maneuver covered, will show soon)

Set in 24th Century

Miranda Class Light Destroyer
Shield Absorption Capacity: 15
Main Power: 60 (two std. nacelles)
Aux. Power: 20 (std. imp. engine)
Type-1 Phaser Turrets: 1 fwd/port, 1 fwd/stbd
Type-1 Phaser Bank: 1 fwd
Photon Torpedoes: 48 total, 2 fwd launcher, 2 aft
Max Speed: 7
Max Warp: W/ Factor 6

 

[Sgt_G]

Interesting concept.

damage is only counted against the shield if the damage is more than the current shield absorption rating

Let me see if I understand this: with a shield absorption rating of 15, if the enemy only hits with 10 points, nothing happens. If they hit with 20 points, then I presume the shield rating drops by 5. Yes? Do the shields "leak", or do they stop all damage until they're down? Are shields directional, or is it one big shield?

I still need to know more, like how much damage does each type of weapon do. And how does the ship take damage once the shields are down? How much can a ship like the Miranda-class take?

 

[PhaserLightShow]

Interesting concept.

Let me see if I understand this: with a shield absorption rating of 15, if the enemy only hits with 10 points, nothing happens. If they hit with 20 points, then I presume the shield rating drops by 5. Yes? Do the shields "leak", or do they stop all damage until they're down? Are shields directional, or is it one big shield?

I still need to know more, like how much damage does each type of weapon do. And how does the ship take damage once the shields are down? How much can a ship like the Miranda-class take?

Standard hull is 13 points (some ships have more or less). What you said about the dropping is correct (you do understand). Your ship has four shields (forward, port, starboard, aft). Thank you for the compliment, and I am considering, that perhaps shields will leak on every 10th damage point that weakens the shields (with 16 damage points, 1 point leaks through, with 20, 2 leak through). However, your engines (power supply) and weapons can be damaged.
The Type-One Phaser does 5 damage (turret and bank are not different) and the Photon on the Miranda does 12 damage.

@PhaserLightShow

 

[PhaserLightShow]

Evasive Action can also be done to dodge Torpedoes (roll on a 1-10 die against your agility, so a Miranda has a 70% chance of evading).
Most ships can evade 4 times before they begin to take damage to their hull and engines. The Miranda can do it 5 times.

@PhaserLightShow

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Standard hull is 13 points (some ships have more or less). What you said about the dropping is correct (you do understand). Your ship has four shields (forward, port, starboard, aft). Thank you for the compliment, and I am considering, that perhaps shields will leak on every 10th damage point that weakens the shields (with 16 damage points, 1 point leaks through, with 20, 2 leak through). However, your engines (power supply) and weapons can be damaged.
The Type-One Phaser does 5 damage (turret and bank are not different) and the Photon on the Miranda does 12 damage.

@PhaserLightShow

While it is certainly thematic that shields come down whenever damage is being taken, I wonder if the mechanism is more complicated than it needs to be. I've played many wargames in which each stage of damage translates into a reduced capacity to perform actions or to evade attacks. In one game, Tide of Iron, a tank that receives light damage loses 1 Armor Point (usually ranged 3-6) and 2 points of movement; at heavy damage, the tank is immobile and can only give 1/2 of its attack value; and destroyed means the tank is a smoking pile of steel. Qualifying, rather than quantifying, the damage greatly simplifies the declining abilities of the unit.

Let's take your example. The Miranda takes 20 hits to the full strength aft shields. The 5 pts it takes can be classified as light damage, reducing shield effectiveness by 1/4-1/3. Since it is at the aft, maybe movement will be similarly reduced. If the attack had happened forward,maybe weapons would be affected weapons rather than propulsion. Heavy damage, either 10 pts or two 5 pts damages to the same location, would reduce shields to 1/2-3/4. The critical systems in those areas would be severely limited or non-functional. Beyond that, the ship is venting atmosphere into space.

Of course, you could set up more stages. However, you could set up a number of categories of damage that apply to every ship. All you would need to do after that is establish the shield strengths of the individual ships.

 

[PhaserLightShow]

While it is certainly thematic that shields come down whenever damage is being taken, I wonder if the mechanism is more complicated than it needs to be. I've played many wargames in which each stage of damage translates into a reduced capacity to perform actions or to evade attacks. In one game, Tide of Iron, a tank that receives light damage loses 1 Armor Point (usually ranged 3-6) and 2 points of movement; at heavy damage, the tank is immobile and can only give 1/2 of its attack value; and destroyed means the tank is a smoking pile of steel. Qualifying, rather than quantifying, the damage greatly simplifies the declining abilities of the unit.

Let's take your example. The Miranda takes 20 hits to the full strength aft shields. The 5 pts it takes can be classified as light damage, reducing shield effectiveness by 1/4-1/3. Since it is at the aft, maybe movement will be similarly reduced. If the attack had happened forward,maybe weapons would be affected weapons rather than propulsion. Heavy damage, either 10 pts or two 5 pts damages to the same location, would reduce shields to 1/2-3/4. The critical systems in those areas would be severely limited or non-functional. Beyond that, the ship is venting atmosphere into space.

Of course, you could set up more stages. However, you could set up a number of categories of damage that apply to every ship. All you would need to do after that is establish the shield strengths of the individual ships.

I have a few other ships done. And, BadThoughts, I won't have movement reduction, bit damage to engines that produce your power is possible (as hull could be). I have a damage chart that you roll on.

@PhaserLightShow

 

[PhaserLightShow]

Wait a minute - who voted terrible and why?!

@PhaserLightShow is angry!

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I didn't vote (the new polls look like the things you are confronted with when you want to read a newspaper article, so I ignore them).

 

[PhaserLightShow]

I didn't vote (the new polls look like the things you are confronted with when you want to read a newspaper article, so I ignore them).

I didn't say you voted. Thanks for telling the truth.

@PhaserLightShow is feeling better but is still angry and wants an answer!!!

 

[Sgt_G]

Wait a minute - who voted terrible and why?!

Not me ... didn't have enough data to formulate an opinion, so I haven't voted. You have some interesting concepts. Whether or not they'll work remains to be seen.

As you may remember, I play (tho not recently) Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander. I have also played A Call To Arms: Star Fleet two or three times. I have a couple other Trek-based and otherwise spaceship-to-spaceship combat games. Your approach is different from anything else I've seen. I am intrigued.

The key now is to balance weapons vs. shields. In SFB, shields take and block all damage until they are knocked down. In FedCmdr, shields "leak" damage thru. In ACTA:SF, damage leaks thru based on the weapon's to-hit dice roll. But in all the games, ships tend to have enough shielding to take one good volley of damage from a ship in its own weight-class without too much degradation to the ship's capabilities. If shields are too strong, ships can pound on each other all day long with nary a scratch. If shields are too weak, ship become pop-corn.

You also have to define what that power rating means as far as what the ship can do. SFB and to a lesser extent FedCmdr are all about power utilization and energy allocation. Most ships have "just enough" power to move at maximum speed allowed in the game, but then they can't do anything else. To power shields and weapons, as well as secondary systems, they have to slow down to have energy to do all that. Taking damage to the engines, of course, means the ship has even less power and can't do everything.

SFB is the single most detailed game on the market, bar none, with a rule book weighty enough to prove it. FedCmdr is kind of like SFB-lite; still detailed but plays a lot faster. ACTA:ST is on the other end of the scale, designed to be played very fast but lacks a lot of the real starship feel of the other two game. It sounds to me like you're going for something a bit more than that, perhaps on the order of Full Thrust or Armada.

 

[PhaserLightShow]

@Sgt_G
The power rating is high, but it costs energy to fire phasers and recharge shields (the power rating carries over from turn to turn). No arming Photons. In my opinion, Photons do not cost energy. They can always fire.

@PhaserLightShow

 

[Sgt_G]

Phasers do 5 points of damage each, yes? How many phasers are in a bank? Just one?

If it's just one, your sample ship has three phasers, presumable with different firing arcs but still all can fire center-line forward. If they all hit, that's 15 points of damage, which is equal to the shield rating. I asked and you confirmed that you have to exceed the shield rating to begin to degrade it. If it works the way I asked, you have to do 30 points to one-shot drop the shields. That means you have to hit with both photons (2x12=24) and two of the three phasers (24+10=34) to one-shot the shields to zero (doing 4 points of damage to the ship).

Let's say on average you hit with one photon and one phaser for 17 points of damage per turn.
1) Shield = 15, excess damage = 2, shield degraded to 13.
2) Shield = 13, excess damage = 4, shield degraded to 9.
3) Shield = 9, excess damage = 8, shield degraded to 1.
4) Shield = 1, excess damage = 16, of which 1 point drops shield, ship takes 15 points of damage.

If on average every-other turn you hit with a second phaser (22 points):
1) Shield = 15, damage = 17, excess damage = 2, shield degraded to 13.
2) Shield = 13, damage = 22, excess damage = 9, shield degraded to 4.
3) Shield = 4, damage = 17, excess damage = 13, of which 4 points drop shield, ship takes 9 points of damage.
-OR-
1) Shield = 15, damage = 22, excess damage = 7, shield degraded to 8.
3) Shield = 8, damage = 17, excess damage = 9, of which 8 points drop shield, ship takes 1 point of damage.

That actually works okay, kind of sort of. However, comma, my problem is that the shields can take single hits of photons all day long with zero effect. You can fix this in one of two ways: you can either degrade the shields earlier or you can leak damage thru to the ship. If the shield degrades by one point every hit, no matter how small, that might do the trick. Perhaps you can allow the ship's owner to decide whether to thusly degrade the shield or leak a damage point to into the ship.

Oh, question: Can you add addition power to reinforce the shields? Can shields be repaired during the game?

 

[PhaserLightShow]

Phasers do 5 points of damage each, yes? How many phasers are in a bank? Just one?

If it's just one, your sample ship has three phasers, presumable with different firing arcs but still all can fire center-line forward. If they all hit, that's 15 points of damage, which is equal to the shield rating. I asked and you confirmed that you have to exceed the shield rating to begin to degrade it. If it works the way I asked, you have to do 30 points to one-shot drop the shields. That means you have to hit with both photons (2x12=24) and two of the three phasers (24+10=34) to one-shot the shields to zero (doing 4 points of damage to the ship).

Let's say on average you hit with one photon and one phaser for 17 points of damage per turn.
1) Shield = 15, excess damage = 2, shield degraded to 13.
2) Shield = 13, excess damage = 4, shield degraded to 9.
3) Shield = 9, excess damage = 8, shield degraded to 1.
4) Shield = 1, excess damage = 16, of which 1 point drops shield, ship takes 15 points of damage.

If on average every-other turn you hit with a second phaser (22 points):
1) Shield = 15, damage = 17, excess damage = 2, shield degraded to 13.
2) Shield = 13, damage = 22, excess damage = 9, shield degraded to 4.
3) Shield = 4, damage = 17, excess damage = 13, of which 4 points drop shield, ship takes 9 points of damage.
-OR-
1) Shield = 15, damage = 22, excess damage = 7, shield degraded to 8.
3) Shield = 8, damage = 17, excess damage = 9, of which 8 points drop shield, ship takes 1 point of damage.

That actually works okay, kind of sort of. However, comma, my problem is that the shields can take single hits of photons all day long with zero effect. You can fix this in one of two ways: you can either degrade the shields earlier or you can leak damage thru to the ship. If the shield degrades by one point every hit, no matter how small, that might do the trick. Perhaps you can allow the ship's owner to decide whether to thusly degrade the shield or leak a damage point to into the ship.

Oh, question: Can you add addition power to reinforce the shields? Can shields be repaired during the game?

Just one phaser emitter in a bank. Because of "The Doomsday Machine".
And you can divert two power points to shields in a turn. Not two to each shield. Two total.

@PhaserLightShow