12  Void Fights

Speed kills in space. Being fast means your first attach is a surprise attach and that there’s not much between it and you that’s slowing it down.

And units that can withstand high speeds gain tactical advantages.

But even the most gravity-resistant unit can’t change course that much out there. Revealed units have a hard time concealing.

But once you’re gone, you’re gone. Once concealed, units can quickly be lost to the fog.

Mods tend to be more extreme. Finding targets is a big part of the fight, except for melee range, which is anything within ambient information, which is loosely defined

12.1 One Degree Higher Than Planetary Warfare

Attacks from spacecraft are 1° higher.

This does not mean that there aren’t planet-stationed weapons that fire at this degree. Häggs are at that level. Although they are also admittedly near the top of that degree, too, planet-based system weapons are usually the strongest. They have a pretty nice and well-resourced platform to fire from. However:

  • The range of planetary system weapons varies throughout a scenario. If no other rules are set by the scenario, then:
    • The GM rolls 2D. The values are the highest and lowest ranges for weapons based on that planet. The location changes by 1 each round as it bounces between and to each of these values.

12.2 General

How’s this for dealing with both relative velocities and mapping a 3D solar system onto a 2D hex map (it’s kinda hard to put into practice on a kitchen table, though, and everything must be if it is to stay):

  • All units get the same map elements, like massive bodies, asteroid belts (which are discussed below), dust clouds, dual suns, etc.)
  • There is a center point on the middle of the map that is the same for everyone. Every unit (yeah, and I both [a] mean “every” here and [b] see how this makes an already complicated system a lot more complicated to manage between units for the same player—but I guess at least the defense could map their maps all the same or whatever; in-coming units have a skill roll degree of getting the same starting values as the other unit(s) in the system. If this couldn’t be further away from the kitchen table)
  • On every unit’s map, those massive elements are randomly moved toward or away from that center point, ±5 hexes
  • Other units become aware of the placement of those bodies at different times randomly. Both sides see which elements have become visible (i.e., it’s the same on both maps. See? A modicum of simplicity)

12.3 Speed and Movement

Like Traveller, speed is well measured in Gs. It’s the wet part of a fleet that slows it down, the number of Gs they can take.

  • Some sort of easy way to set up and navigate a 3D battle space

Maybe:

  • In addition to positions being arrayed into a given location, locations are placed along a dimension1. - That locations can also have different values or attributes that are shared by all positions there.
  • When a unit spends APs to move along a given line of positions or of locations, they will continue to move along that line (in that direction) in all subsequent rounds for 0 APs.
    • Additional APs spent moving in that direction are added to this automatic movement, letting units to quick pass along a line.
    • This automatic movement can be countered by spending movement APs to do so

12.4 Ships and Weapons

12.4.1 Blinkerblasters

Can indeed move to any position on the map instantaneously. Costs a lot (10? 20?) APs to do, but does happen automatically and causes a location radiation blast. Blinkerblasters can also then blink back to any point they’ve previously jumped to without any movement cost.

12.4.2 山

12.5 Map

  • Stellar maps are ten times the size of planetary maps. And that’s just in number of hexes
  • Heavenly bodies
    • Dust, asteroids, moons, planets, etc. create pretty large blind spots. Gravity, unfamiliarity with the system, and the fog of war all make heavenly bodies through out larger cloaks than you’d think. The cones of blindness behind them to a unit spread out 1 extra hex to each side per row of hexes back: The cone actually fans outs as it gets farther back

12.5.1 Information Tansfer

  • Ambient information travels at X hexes per turn. So, a unit can see…. [Maybe do it this way, maybe not]
  • Instead, maybe it’s simply that units can see all other units that are within X hexes (I’m thinking 10, but I’ll have to do that more exactly, like as a light second)
    • This means that they can still ID concealed units. I.e., the concealed unit can’t go dark (and be replaced by a question mark and all that). They don’t know their concealed disposition well enough to fire on them, but they can still pick up where it was a second ago—it’s that close.
    • Oh, or unless the unit is not in line of sight.
  • Most war fleets (including Deciders) carry a certain number of entangled lines—abilities to instantly communicate with a given other ship. The number of entangled messages for a fleet is the number of times a ship can immediately communicate with 1 other ship. (Same message can be sent out to multiple ships, but 1 entangled message is needed for each other ship.)
    • This number can only refresh when the fleet all returns to the same repair yard.
    • I’m thinking the number would usually be 12 — 20. Usually more than enough, but still worrisome if you can’t go in for a fresh set of them for a while. Hm, stellar combat would be better done on a computer. I’m going to try to make a simulator in R.

12.6 Types of Combat

12.6.1 山 Lunges

Basing their strategy on Fei’s Thrusts—but still learning to do it themselves—the strategy of a 山 lunge is to go for the eyes. Jump in at a precise enough location (and that’s been tricky) and you can leave that Buzzkill-infested blind and unable to fire its main weapon since Flashbacks only shoot if they hit, and so only shoot if they can see if they’ve hit.

But if you miss (or can’t resolve a good shot early enough), you’re screwed. From behind. With a very big gun.

  1. So far, adding an other dimension seems too much.↩︎