Ship To Ship Combat

[Meliath1742]

I'm new to ship combat in FG. Exactly how do you use the Chase tracker (or Combat tracker) for ship combat? I tried just dragging in stock ships from the SciFi companion to try it out but they come up unskilled with "zero" for attack numbers and no basic stats (Pace, Parry, Toughness, Armor all show "0"). Damage seems to work but the ships show Toughness of "0".

[Mask_of_winter]

It does the same to me in the chase tracker. I've only ever used vehicle combat through the chase tracker once and can't remember how I did it. I usually just put the pilots, drivers, AI in the combat or chase tracker and keep track of the vehicles separately.
Gonzalo is running a Last Parsec game and has come up with some great stuff, let's hope he can share how he does it.

[g0ntzal]

It does the same to me in the chase tracker. I've only ever used vehicle combat through the chase tracker once and can't remember how I did it. I usually just put the pilots, drivers, AI in the combat or chase tracker and keep track of the vehicles separately.
Gonzalo is running a Last Parsec game and has come up with some great stuff, let's hope he can share how he does it.

Thanks for your kind words :) I love The Last Parsec but I don't like the spaceship combat rules from SciFi companion. I use the High Space rules in the Combat Tracker plus some homebrew mechanics. I'm going to show you a fast system for playing the space combats (but I recommend the High Space combat system).

First of all, create the ships as NPC's. Set the Toughness and Armor values manually, set the skills (shooting, sensors, whatever you want) and drag the ship weapons on them. Then, add the PC ship as an ally for every PC in the ship. Finally, add the PC's and all the ships to Combat Tracker.

In the beginning of each round after the first, every pilot (or ship) rolls Piloting as free action in order to set the combat distance. One ship can keep the distance or change it just for a level (for example from Medium to Close) if its roll is higher. Lets see it with an example.

PC's ship is trying to escape from a patrol of three fighters. GM set the initial combat distance at Medium range. In the beginning of the second round, PC pilot rolls Piloting and gets a 9. The two wingmen are extras so they make just a Piloting roll getting a 3. The leader is a WC and rolls his own Piloting roll getting a 12.

Leader makes an aggressive decision and chooses Close range. PC ship is trying to escape from the patrol so the pilot chooses Long range from wingmen.

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[Mask_of_winter]

Great stuff! I shall give High Space another look, especially with the new Kickstarter about to hit.
Thank you Gonzalo!

[Meliath1742]

Sorry so long to respond. Thanks for the help. I'll give your technique a try...sounds very doable!

[Meliath1742]

OK, I've done some experimenting since my last post on how to handle my groups ship-to-ship combat. For now im going to use the Chase Tracker and theater of the mind instead of a 2D map. Thinking about a furball type battle that we've seen Han and Rogue squadron engaged in i dont feel theres a better way than TotM. The Chase tracker is abstract enough to pull off the feeling of ever positioning ships. Sometimes you have a target...sometimes you don't. Making the ships NPC's as was suggested allows this to happen fairly easy. They are essentially in a Millennium Falcon type ship so it gets a tiny bit tricky when figuring out who and what is rolled. Only one Piloting roll is needed while everyone else on board makes a Shooting (main and turreted ship guns) roll under the pilots turn on the tracker. This puts the group in a bind if the pilot rolls crappy since they could spend a round being shot at and no targets to return fire on! It's fast and furious...the fun will follow!

[Mask_of_winter]

Have you read the spaceship chase rules in the Sci-Fi Companion? I believe hey offer an alternative to correct the problem with using the chase rules you brought up.

[Meliath1742]

Brilliant! Just took a look...its called Reaction Fire! It gives ships a chance to fire on targets they don't have advantage on (at a -2) as long as the target has an action card of 10 or less. Thanks...that will come in handy��

[Mask_of_winter]

Brilliant! Just took a look...its called Reaction Fire! It gives ships a chance to fire on targets they don't have advantage on (at a -2) as long as the target has an action card of 10 or less. Thanks...that will come in handy��
Cool beans! Let me know what you think of it, never tried it myself.