Starship Combat

[sheliakbob]

One of the problems with the original STAGITFF game was the lack of starship combat rules. I know that there were rules published later that are the de facto starship rules for the game, but I never owned them.
To cover this gap, I've used a very simple and fairly effective system.
Basically, roll up stats for the ship as if it were a character of the same race as the ship's builders (Human is the default for Federation ships unless they are specified as being built by or primarily staffed by another race--ie: the Intrepid is generated as a Vulcan character).

Handle ship to ship combat exactly the same as if it were a HTH fight between the two ship "characters". Punch with beam weapons, kick with torpedoes. Shields are included in the CN stat for the ship. At 0 the ship is dead in space, a battered hulk. At -10 it is blown to pieces.

When appropriate, use the skill modifiers of the PC manning the appropriate system (the Helmsman dodges, I let the Capt use his CBT skill for attacks. etc.)

Every ship has unique, individual stats this way and quickly develops a character of its own. We didn't have a lot of stock ship types at the time, so each vessel got its own design and description.

I think I did set the min stats for a "Starship" at about 15. Without that level of stats, the ship was of some other design or designation. (We used some design sketches from the old Making of Star Trek book for ideas, as well as TAS examples.)

The Serenity RPG uses the same idea of treating the ship as a character with the same stats etc. I'm surprised it hasn't been used more often in rpg's.

[Falconer]

Welcome, sheliakbob! Good post. I agree it’s a good way to wing it, especially if you don’t anticipate starship combat being the centerpiece of the campaign. And I think if you’re trying to recapture the feel of Star Trek TOS, that is perfectly fine. A campaign that focuses on a “planet-of-the-week” adventure as STAGFF describes is normative; “Balance of Terror” only happened once.

If you were doing a campaign based on Battlestar Galactica (TOS), then space combat moves more to the center. Not only would there be frequent tactical skirmishes involving fighters and basestars, but there’s the larger campaign aspect of strategically maneuvering the fleet through the galaxy, feul and food logistics, etc. It’s like Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign in that sense—you would start with wargame mechanics, and the RPG aspect grows out of it as an adjunct game. BG is set up pretty well for this, as the “PCs” of the show tend to be the “warriors” who fly Vipers and do all the planet exploration.

My point is that in Star Trek it does make sense to work from the other way around.