Delayed Update for 2/22

Was supposed to be a very busy weekend.
Had three games planned and had to get the system playable for Monday.


Two games cancelled and one downgraded to online resulting in having a lot more time, but also resulted in me forgetting about posting.  Should set an alarm or something...


ANYHOW


The first game with the system in use went much better than expected.  The players caught on quickly and the system went through a functional combat.  I need to come up with a pilot sheet and maybe some counters to shift around to make things easy, but I think it's looking good.


Areas that need development.  Warp, aside from needing a new name needed to be written down and jump delays evaluated.


Salvaging needs minimal functioning rules.


Cargo space needs to be developed into minimal functioning rules.


Chases need to be developed into having slightly less bias towards ship agility and more bias towards skill.  I think I've already got a handle on this.


Player morale is good, I think they're looking at exploring their options.


Damage effects NEED to be written down.


I need to take better notes during play.


Gotta figure out why Google Docs didn't have the most up to date doc on another computer (the one with a printer) <--- VERY IMPORTANT


Formations 'worked'.  Haven't tried with PCs in a formation.


Game started off with a crit fail on a warp check followed by a crit fail on a notice check.  This was amusing but had us start with a pirate ambush.

Progress 2/15

Got myself a bunch of yellow notepads.
I love them, I can fit them in my back pocket and take em anywhere.
Great for spontaneous notes.  Now I just have to figure out that car ride home issue.

Started reworking my concepts of technology in the setting.  This was apparently a huge sticking point from one player who had to have realism inserted into a setting made for a cinematic game.  Anyhow, while I wont be going into Newtonian physics for him, I'm putting more thought into the hows and whys.

Got a good start on the hows and whys of faster than light travel, and how the tech behind it generally is what makes up most of future tech.  I'm working on the power source technology now too.

I also decided to add a group temporarily named 'spacers' to be all the rough survivalist folks living in shitholes in space.

Ruleswise I added a lot for Formations in ships.  Basically benefits and drawbacks for flying in formation.  In general it should be more advantageous to fly in formation if you are skilled pilots, but if you aren't you are going to lose a lot of options in combat for some defensive and offensive bonuses anyhow.

Formations also extends to escorts offering defensive benefits for the escorted ship.

I broke out a lot of the stats into averages for ship sizes and added more listing for ship equipment and the limits of upgrading ships and ship parts.

I'm looking at stepping through a sample combat sequence to understand where I'm lacking.  To be honest I should have been doing that from the beginning.  It's just playtesting 101.

Progress 2/8/2014

Made more progress.
Roughed out some general ideas for interesting new character weapons.
Expanded on ship equipment and damage effects (hull breach, fire, malfunctions)
Expanded on some of the Chase vs Dogfight rules.
Started gathering resources for ship character sheet.
Started sketching out thoughts for the ship combat map.

I'm beginning to think I should actually start mocking up combat rounds.  Possibly starting with fighters (super simple and easy to draw up) then moving to mid range craft which will likely be piloted by a full party as a crew.

From there I need to start investigating the effects of subordinate extras on wildcards manning stations.

I think I should also start considering the idea of 'extra' space ships and what that means in this combat system.  As it stands I think there might just be a base guideline of size ratio difference being an automatic extra or wildcard as far as damage is concerned and a guideline for true wildcards as getting the bennies while effective wildcards don't.

The problem arises that wildcards in fighters will be VERY vulnerable to a single or even two steps difference in ship size.  This hazard drops some when going up a size or two, but is still pretty harsh.  Perhaps I will suggest only extras pilot fighters.  That said, if you need to do a trench run, I want a decent fighter as an option.

If you haven't caught on yet, the majority of the work on this system is effectively replacing the vehicle system Savage Worlds uses (which I hate) and replacing it with my own 'fast, furious, fun' system.

Furthermore the fact that I use two Google accounts for this blog is really a pain.  Maybe I can hook this one up with Google drive and share it so I can work on the doc with either.

It doesn't sound like much work to me.  I feel like I could do more, but I console myself with the thought that I am doing any work at all.  Given I'm in 2 'live' games, 3 online games, a project on a team of cool people and trying to spend time with my significant other, I think I'm doing alright.  Though maybe after she get's through grad school I can take a LOT of time off just to work on this project...  Assuming it isn't done in 3-4 years.  Which I hope is NOT the case.

Space Combat System

So basically the last post didn't get it's intended result. While I did end up getting some work done, I actually ended up finally drawing out most of my combat system for a savage worlds space game. Mainly I didn't feel too great about the system they had implemented, so I drew up a different one. I feel like this one grants a lot more dynamic and interesting system for four plus players in one ship.

Roughly put, each system and facing on a ship has a different damage record. For simplicities sake I'm restricting the facings to fore, aft and starboard. If this seems too few, I'll switch things around and add a top and bottom. Also there is the core and system which can be targeted by another ship.

Attacking a ship is simply a matter of determining which side is facing you, then targeting a side or system based on that. Targeting a side facing you has no penalty, targeting a side at 90 degrees grants a -2, targeting a system is -4 and targeting the core is -8. Targeting the core is targeting the weak innards, while targeting the side is not caring if you hit the armor plating which will absorb a degree of damage based on the classification of ship and type of armor. Once the armor is gone, targeting the core is the same as targeting the side the armor was on. Damage can blow through the armor and into the core if the hit is strong enough to do more damage than the armor has health.

Systems follow a different set of health, each system is in one of five states, finely tuned, normal, damaged, disabled, destroyed. Finely tuned when damaged goes straight to damaged however, and does not grant in effect extra HP, it instead grants protection against malfunction and bonuses to managing its features, such as alternate ammo, granting extra power and whatnot.

The core is the squishy bit. Once you start taking damage there, you better hope you are wearing an environment suit. Each time the core takes damage it causes one of three effects, fire, vacuum and system damage.

Fire results in a chance of more damage, crew damage and general inability to repair in that area till fire is out. Putting out fire requires a repair roll, there are also automated systems which if powered will put out fire automatically.

Vacuum sucks people out into space. If you aren't in a vacuum suit, then you're dead, or a robot, but most likely dead. Repairs here require getting out of the ship and patching the hole. Nothing can be repaired in that section till the vacuum is sealed. On the bright side however, there is no ongoing damage. There are automated systems just like for fire, which if powered will automatically seal such breached parts of the ship.

System Damage means stuff starts breaking. If you're lucky it's only things like engines, guns or special computers. If you're unlucky that includes life support, power grid and generators. If life support or generators go out, you may as well have had a full ship breach into the vacuum, cause it's going to be a long suffocating death.

I've also established baselines for average ship capabilities. This means that if I want to have five destroyers come in and do something, I can either slightly modify the destroyer's capabilities or just leave them stock as I wish, and still be within a consistent ballpark.

Finally, I feel like I've come up with the ability to make all the necessary skills per role narrow down to two skills. This I feel is important because I don't want to force the players to invest extremely heavily into large amounts of skills, then find themselves screwed for the ability to do things on the ground, or during events inside the ship. Even better, most of the skills could be used on the ground as well.

Pilots have pilot and knowledge (Navigation). Pilot is used for chasing, and performing attack and evasive maneuvers. It helps the pilot set course and facing in combat. Knowledge navigation is used for managing extra power granted by the engineer and setting long courses, such as plotting jumps, getting used to new navigation systems, analyzing problems with navigation systems or knowing destinations.

Engineers use repair and knowledge (Engineering). Repair is used for repairing, enhancing systems and bolstering systems. Knowledge engineering is for diagnosing problems, identifying parts, systems or ships and for managing power.

Gunners use shooting and knowledge (weapon systems). Shooting lets you shoot accurately. Knowledge weapon systems lets you use special targeting, manage power and manage ammo types.

Science uses Notice and Knowledge (Astrophysics). Notice is used for scanning and identifying basic information using scanners, they are the eyes for this ship as space is big and ships are small. Knowledge astrophysics is just a name, it mainly applies to performing electronic warfare, allocating sensor power and marking targets.

There is no captain role. This means that any one of the four roles can act as captain. Really it might as well be just taking some social skills to be captain. When there are four people in a ship, you can't really waste hands on sitting there looking pretty.

Since there are four different roles, this means a few things. Firstly, odds are only gunners will be attacking, I tried to offset this disadvantage by allowing the science, engineering and pilot abilites that can either boost or penalize the shooting ability and defenses of the ship, and perhaps even boost or penalize the enemy ship. I'm very interested in how this plays out, and whether or not this will keep the players interested. One positive benefit I see is that if each player does only one thing, rounds may go faster as each player does not need to worry about positioning, attack and other abilities and modifiers, just one particular role.

On the Vehicle Combat

The meat of the work for setting up my Savage Worlds campaign is going to be in the technology, and a majority of that will hopefully be space ships. And there are three areas I'm focusing on; content, activities and speed. I think each of these areas are very important for a successful combat system.

Content means to me that there is loot, there are settings, there are enemies and there are allies, and there are many different varieties. The player ship will be broken down into a hull and several systems. Depending on the hull class and subtype it will have differing numbers and potential qualities of systems. The NPCs will appear very different (easy fluff) and have a variance of hull type, role and faction bonus' (this partly plays into the speed category) When I'm done, hopefully I can create the ships with a series of dropdowns in an excel sheet rather quickly. There should be at least 6 hulls, 4 roles and 10 factions, for a reasonable 240 possible ships. There should also be a variance in the skill of the crew, however that will be a tad more complicated. As for settings, it's space, it's beautiful, full of nebulae and asteroid fields and unknown phenomena.

Activities is VERY important, especially for the style of space game I am pursuing. Each person in the ship will need to take on a role, and each role will need to be interesting. The main roles I'm considering in the ship right now are; Gunner, Science, Navigation and Engineering.

Gunners shoot things, they do it well and they do it with skill. This will be more than just the shoot skill, it will also require knowledge (gunnery) This skill refers to the ability to do advanced actions with weapons, route extra power, advanced aiming, utilizing the computer systems for more than stock optimizations, lock on with missiles/torpedos and so on. It's a fairly straightforwards role, in combat they will be busy, outside, they may assist with grapples and other likely unrelated skill checks.

Science is software. While the Engineer will be dealing with cables and patching holes, the science specialist's job will be both defending against and jamming enemy communications and scanning, they will also help with any other software tools, including hacking and stabilizing systems. This is a harder role for me to narrow down the purpose for in combat, but I think with enough development this is the right direction. Outside of combat (or rarely inside combat) they should also be responsible for watching the scanners (notice checks) and advanced scans for activities like salvaging and investigating anything other than visual analysis.

Navigation is moving the ship. This is another interesting one, while it seems like it would be a rather key role, in space it tends to be just open... well space. Most of the summary of combat would be, get closer to them, get further from them, stay at X range from them. Therefore I'm going to look into creating a system of maneuvers including evasive and offensive. Choosing an offensive maneuver against target A grants a bonus based on how well you do to attack A, choosing an evasive causes an bonus to defense. Other maneuvers if the players ever work with other ships, would be things like formations. Outside of combat, they will function making rolls during asteroid fields, knowing destinations and locations and performing FTL calculations.

Finally Engineering, the hardware of the ship. Engineers perform upgrades, repairs and manual stripping of other ships. They manage routing power and emergency repairs during combat. Emergency repairs could be reducing the effects on damage to systems and emergency hull patches to prevent breaches. Power routing sends power to various systems that either automatically get converted by the computer for certain uses, or used for other things based on the operator of the system. (Extend the range or power of guns, improve the signal of scanners, boost the maneuvering engines and so on...) Out of combat, they perform complete repairs, convert spare parts to ammo, repairs, or new systems, salvage hardware, or whatever else hardware might be required.

Now these four roles are separated only in concept, theoretically everyone could have a little of each, as to take on a role requires only two or three skills. This would work, especially if each player instead of taking a destroyer between the four of them, went with fighters. Of coarse this means their travel will be pretty restricted, and their average skill rather low, that and ideally a few supporting skills will aid every role. During creation for the first game, I'm going to ask all the characters to choose a role and explain them just to get things going in the right direction.

Finally, speed is a concern. I want the combats to not take FOREVER as I resolve four NPC ships and one player ship. In the beginning when the enemy will be fighters (one to two man craft) this should be easy, but later I'm considering treating them using averages for skill with the exception of boss ships. But as is, each player should be performing one or two actions, and referring to no more than three skills with a very consistent effect. Outside of combat, skills should be almost exactly like adventuring with a few modifiers based on equipment.

I am a bit concerned about balancing bonuses. Right now there is a high potential for granting bonuses to the gunners. Science, Engineering AND Navigation each able to grant a bonus. It makes me wonder if with all these bonuses if I should counterbalance the ability to miss and heavier weight armor to make hits less devastating. This area I think will work itself out with tweaking and playtesting. Right now I'm considering maximum power tolerances and possibly making bonuses only apply to different traits. (navigation removes penalties, science increases accuracy and engineering increases damage or something.)

So I have a few questions to anyone who may actually read this. Assuming you had any interest in a space campaign, do any roles interest you? Do you find the idea of customizing your own ship intriguing? Do you see any areas that could heavily slow down play?