11  Rocky Combat

11.1 Terrain

Terrain, of course, plays a larger—or at least more consistent—role in rocky than space combat.

11.1.1 Anthropic Terrain

Other people make great cover. Recon is very important in populated environments.

Battles in Anthropic spaces simmer. They tend to be low-degree melees until things heat up and you might as well attack with full force—or one side clearing the room for an old-fashioned brawl.

Something like:

  • Evasion rolls are modified by the terrain’s Anthropic degree.
  • Concealed units make evasion roll increased by the location’s Anthropic degree.
    • Any mod that puts that over a magnitude more (i.e., at least +9), puts it up the next magnitude.
      • Example: A unit uses 1 AP to mod an evasion roll in an Anthropic location that was already 9° now makes a 1° roll at the higher order).
  • Revealed units in Anthropic spaces make evasion rolls penalized by the space’s Anthropic degree
  • Every round while a unit is revealed, they must make a 0-AP defense roll against an environmental attack from that location’s Anthropic degree. Defense roll outcomes:
    • Failure: The unit does not defend against the environment—all those lonely people—and must loose 1 AP that round to it. I.e., most units would have 1 instead of 2 APs that round.
    • Success: the defending unit rolls garners no penalties.

Degree of an Anthropic Space

  • All Anthropic spaces start with a degree between 1 and 9. Some places stink more of Humans than others.
  • The degree of the enviro can change through:
    • Attempts to subdue it
    • Attacks made from or to it
    • Actions by external forces, such as Deciders & their angels and Blattids

Hear Me Roar

  • Units can use their Voice skill to change the Anthropic of their Present location. (Some, like some psions and Deciders & their angels can use it on other locations.)
    • Failure: The Anthropic degree is not affected. Wimp.
    • Success: The Anthropic degree is changed by 1 in the direction of the Voicer’s choosing1.

Subdued Anthropic Terrain

The Anthropic terrain is people. This is combat. You can shoot people in combat.

  • In addition to / instead of spending an AP to defend against an enviro attack, a unit can use APs to attack the environment
    • Failed attacks do not subdue it and instead raise that location’s degree by the degree of the loss (just roll minus degree: Failed with a 7 against a 5° enviro, the enviro gains 2°)
    • Successful attacks subdue the environment.
      • Every full round an Anthropic space remains subdued (staring with the first), the enviro looses one degree.
        • Anthropic spaces who are subdued to 0° are no longer Anthropic spaces, and revert to normal melee rules
    • Enviro spaces that reach the next order of magnitude (i.e., go from 9° to at 1° at the next order) cannot be subdued. And yeah, are now a higher-order 1°enviro. Units in that location can loose up to 2 APs per round, until someone else does something to lower the degree.

The Substrate

  • Substrate spaces start at 1° Anthropic
  • Rolls of 1 on defenses against effects of Substrate spaces mean that that unit must use its next AP to defend itself (or suffer -2 on the roll) against an attach from the environment at +1 to the current degree of the environment. Although a melee attack, the attack is made using normal skirmish rules.
  • Denizens of the Substrate2 don’t usually use Influence to modify the degree of Anthropic spaces (it’s nearly always just rolls of 1s)
    • Instead, they have / can sometimes invoke other units from the space as additional units for combat. Degree of success of these Influence rolls is the number of default 1° denizens or the degree of one denizen invoked. Denizens can spend food points to mod the roll.

Attacks From and Into Anthropic Spaces

Attacks From Anthropic Spaces
  • Whenever a unit makes an attach from an Anthropic location, the next roll defending against the enviro is penalized by the degree of the attack.
    • Example:
      1. A 4° unit is in a 3° Anthropic location. The first round begins, and they roll against the environment. They roll a 5, so the “attack” failed and the unit loose no APs. They spend 1 AP to move to a more offensive position and an other to prep an attack next round3
      2. The next round, also makes its initial defense against still-3° environ. It then declares its attack, devoting 1 (more) AP to the shot.It’s a full-bore 4° attack +1, so the next time (i.e., next round) that unit makes its defensive roll against the environment will be made at -5°, making the attack 8° (original 3 + 5 from the attack).
Attacks Into Anthropic Spaces
  • Units in Anthropic locations into which attacks are made also have their next defensive roll penalized by the location’s degree.
  • Units that are hit (i.e., successfully damaged, not just suppressed) are immediately elevated in Awareness4, going from Fogged to Concealed, and Concealed to Revealed.

Attacks into such units must also make units in that location have to make this AP-free defensive roll against the degree of their location (i.e., the location attacked into. - Unless it’s into the same space (i.e., melee), in which case only that first roll must be successfully made - Successful attacks—including suppressions—into Anthropic locations automatically reveal that unit

Melee in Anthropic Spaces

The effect of the Anthropic enviro acts differently on melee combat. Essentially, people clear the space around it (even at indirect melee levels). But the environment may step in strongly at any time.

  • At the beginning of every round of melee combat, all units make a 0 AP evasion roll against the enviro.
    • If none win, the space instantly gains one degree, and units must all make defensive rolls against it as per normal (non-melee) Anthropic combat.
    • If any win, then the space increases one degree5, but no units need to roll to defend against the environ that round
    • If all win, the space does not go up a degree, and no units need to roll to defend against the environment.

Blattid Attacks

Most tactical attacks made by Blattids are changes in the degree of the Anthropic hex.

  • Blattids that are physically present in a system can change the degree of one of the locations in the battle space one degree in either direction. (Unless this is way too much housekeeping in play) So, they can clear the way or gum up the way of actions in locations.
  • They sure try to only have to actually fight through other races, so the effect is most often in battles where there are no Blattids present
  • But if they are present, then they also gain the ability to change the degree of either own or one adjacent location. (Unless that totally breaks the bank)

Decider Actions

  • Like Blattids, every round, Deciders can change the degree of one of the locations in the battlespace for 0 AP.
  • They can also spend APs to:
    • Make a Voice roll to change a Subdued-to-Blight location back to 1° Anthropic
    • Make a Voice roll to change the degree of an Anthropic location up to 3 more degrees, including into Blight

11.1.2 Blighted

Most interstellar battles are either in voids or blights. Blighted terrain is usually the simplest of rocky combat terrains, but it can also vary in extreme ways, usually through dangerous or debilitating environmental attacks.

Earth

The blighted spaces in Human-inhabited systems are usually low-resource areas.

11.1.3 Guarded

Usually co-occurring with Anthropic spaces, these spaces can vary. Some are relatively pristine nature preserves; others are military batteries. These usually represent “bollards” on a battlefield, but can be opened up (sometimes forcibly) to give access to new terrains.

11.2 Psionics

Most uses of psionics are to rationalize having magic users in space. And I’m certainly no Bester, Herbert, or Isimov. But in the vein of exploring it in Cambria like I’m exploring “hey, if you could travel in space, it might kinda be like this” in Taurus, how might that matter in a way useful to a game?

  • Psionic skills can only either be 1° or 2°, using simple—primitive—attacks with low-degree weapons (if any)
  • However, one’s degree of psionic ability is used instead as the highest number of APs a unit can store between rounds (in addition to the normal 1 that can be carried over for all units) and how many rounds it is until that store degrades by 1 point.
  • When these stored APs are used, they must be used all at once.
  • Normally, units can use these stored APs for modding one of the four basic combat actions: attack, defend, recon, or evade.
  • Units declare they’re using these stored APs as the last thing done before a die roll. I.e., after the defender has not only stated whether they’re using OPs but also after all points have been modded to the roll.
    • If both sides are using stored Ψ APs, then the attacker(s) declare they’re using their APs before the defender declares if they are.
    • The attackers don’t, however say how many they have stored (It’s moot for the defender since the die will next be rolled without further mods)
  • Stored Ψ APs can be used for any roll relevant to their flavor

Round 1

  • A unit with a 3° psionic attack skill uses 1 AP to defend and stores the other AP for its psionic skill.

Rounds 2 & 3

  • The psionic unit does the same for both rounds, storing up a total of 3 APs.
  • The unit would waste an AP if is stored an other for psionics since they’re at their maximum number of stored APs. So, they are free to use their APs to do things other than store psionic ability; all they need to do is devote one to “refreshing” this 3-point store every fourth round.
  • If, say, a recon-skilled psionic could tell this unit when to prepare to attack they could use 1 AP for defense (or whatever) and then carry over the second AP for a 3-point AP attack

Round 4

  • The psionic unit uses both APs from this round and the carried one from last to attack with its 1° psionic attack
    • This is a +2 attack from the APs from this and last round
    • To this is added the 3 APs they’ve stored
    • Making the total mod be +5, or essentially a 6° attack
  1. A 3° psionic attacker with a 1° attack has all their APs stored up and has since been using their APs to take pot-shots at the target.
  2. The attacker finally rolls a 1, a break-through attack to the back line
  3. They use all 3 stored ʨ APs to mod the roll for the attack on the back line.
    • If the defender also has stored defensive Ψ APs, they can use them at this time, too.

11.2.1 Armor & Defense

  • Default armor defaults to not protecting against psionic attacks.
  • Instead, units has a stack of Ψ defense-flavored OPs equal to their degree of one of their traits (usually Intellect or Fortitude).
    • The trait that provides a defense against a psionic attack is determined by that psionic attacks: Attack skills are partly defined by which trait protects against them.
    • 5°and higher traits can have specializations that protect / alter psionic attacks against them
  • Usually, the protecting trait is only used to determine the degree of this armor.
    • But rare psions can actually damage that trait instead. Traits heal like HPs within and between battles.
  • Some defensive psionics skills allow the unit to use their defensive skills to protect units they’re in direct communication with (usually meaning ambient range, but it can also be through using an entangled message)

11.2.2 Damage & Attacks

  • Not all psionic attacks do physical damage. Although some don’t, most are amplifications of normal Human attacks or ways of inducing a target to be physically harmed, which is usually on most attackers’ to-do lists anyway.
  • Non-physical attacks may instead use their damage inflicted to otherwise affect the target, like preventing the target from using that many APs or reducing the degree of a trait of the target.
  • Psionic attackers can normally only be made on revealed units

11.2.3 Psionic Modifiers

Rarer Ψ skills affect traits or primary skills, either as a simple mod or, more commonly, as a storage of APs.

  • These can include mods to the uses of other weapons. A unit can be psionically adept at using a weapon
  • Or, say, modding the protecting trait. It could be for example, that the defensive psion can apply its psionic degree to whichever trait is the one defending against a give trait

11.3 Non-Mortal Combat

  • Units may engage in non-mortal combat with any other unit within ambient range
  • As soon as a unit first makes a non-mortal attack on an other unit, those units are engaged in a non-mortal duel.
    • The duel ends when one unit surrenders
    • Units can start a non-mortal duel with no more than 5 OPs
    • APs can be used and spent as usual
    • Instead of HPs, units loose OPs

11.3.1 Non-Mortal Attacks

  • Successful attacks during these duels wins the attackers an OP from the defender for each degree (e.g., rolling a successful attack with a 4 wins the attacker 4 of the loser’s OPs)
  • As long as units are engaged in this duel, a unit can loose OPs
  • Once a unit has lost all of the 5 OPs they started with (either through “damage” or use to try to make damage), they must draw OPs from their general reserve.
    • A a unit/Player runs out of OPs, they must make up that deficit with any they win, and even possibly end that campaign at a deficit (to be paid immediately from the next series of rolls)
  • The attacker decides the

  1. Deciders & their angels can change it up to the degree of the roll’s success. They cannot, however, use it to “resurrect” a totally subdued unit back into an Anthropic one, unless the story line allows it.↩︎

  2. Yea, I gotta work on that one.↩︎

  3. So, regardless of how many APs the next round has, this unit can make a +1 attack.↩︎

  4. Or whatever I’m calling it there days.↩︎

  5. This is always only up to 9°, never to the next magnitude.↩︎