Starship Movement and Combat

[dph]

I'm running a game with lots of starship combat at the moment and have I have a bit of an issue with movement...

As a character, you can move on any action (assuming you take multiple actions) during a round.
Vehicle and Starship combat appears to be the same...

My issue with that is based on what happens to your startship when its controls are ionised; you follow on with the momentum of your ship.

Now of course the rules are abstract and the flexibility to move on whichever action you want provides more flexibility (and is available to both sides of combat) but...

It seems odd to me that you can fly along at All Out and on your first 3 of four actions in a round, effectively stop and 'hold position' while the gunnars fire away and then on your fourth action, continue your Allout movement! Maybe the fact that you're activley piloting allows for you to kind of 'brake' mid flight...

Am I missing something in the rules here or is this just a part of the abstraction... Maybe I'm the only one to find this strange, if not, feel free to share your thoughts...
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[Krapou]

What version of the D6 rules are you using ? In the 2nd edition R&E, I don't recall the effect of ionized controls other than lowering manoeuvrability or completely shutting down the ship for a few rounds (weapons included)

Moreover, flying all-out is a full-round action, so nothing else is possible for the pilot that turn (though gunners could still fire I guess)

Could you please elaborate on your example ?
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[Bren]

I'm going to go into the details of the RAW, but just a few points.

(1) The ship doesn't have to "stop" to shoot. The firing is just an action that occurs sometime during the 3-5 second turn and if you are conceptionalizing the action from say a movie viewpoint - the ship is actually moving throughout the shot (turn) and at some point during the shot the guns fire.
(2) The alternating actions by side during a round is a fairly common wargame and RPG convention to manage combat events. It does not simulate simultaneous combat and thus there is a certain abstraction inherent in the design, but this abstraction is not a particularly unusual one, though you may be used to a more simultaneous RPG design.
(3) Mentally, it may help to think of action, especially movement, as occuring continuously throughout the round even though the actions occur at discrete points
(4) From a what do we do perspective, while rolling any movement rolls at a discrete action time point during the round, I divide movement throughout the round to, as much as possible, simulate continuous movement.
(5) You are right to query the ionization rule as it has historically been an bit of a uniqure situation where momentum is conserved, where as, traditionally WEG ship combat essentially ignores momentum.
(6) However, based on 2RE rules, IIR a ship cannot decelerate from All Out to full stop in a single action. So a brake in mid flight cannot occur at that speed.

[garhkal]

True.. moving in vehicles you can go from 1 speed catagory up or down from where you are currently at. So from all out you can only downshift to full. From full you can go to cruise or all out.
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[atgxtg]

I also apply the ionization penalty to the fire control of ship's weapons. So a badly ionized ship might not be able to shoot weapons. My thinking is that if the ships is so badly ionized that the flight controls don't work, the targeting computer is probably "out of whack" too.

[garhkal]

Controls ionized already reduces fire control..
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[CRMcNeill]

I let it affect base speed in my game as well, at a rate of about -2 for every 1D of ionization. It makes no sense to me that space-aged drive systems would somehow not have computer systems managing their operations, and those systems would be just as vulnerable to ion cannon attacks as any other electronic system on the ship.
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[atgxtg]

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

That's why i prefer my house rules for ionization, where each system is listed out, and when you get 'one or more' controls ionized, you roll to see which system it actually is.
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