Capital ship combat and MAPs

[S-Foil]

I've come up with a question to which I can't seem to find the answer. In capital ship combat does each individual weapon have its own MAPs or does the ship itself accumulate MAPs for additional attack actions. For instance a Star Destroyer has 60 turbolasers, if it was standing off against an MC80 would get get 20 individual attacks (front firing arc) with no MAPs in a turn? The Star Destroyer could potentially target twenty individual ships in a round with no MAPs if this were the case.

Or instead would it get a single attack in the turn at 8D+2 fire control and then a second attack at 7D+2 (-1D MAP)? I interpret the rules this way. The ship itself accumulates the MAPs so there's a practical maximum number of attacks the Star Destroyer could possibly take in a round, limited by fire control and capital ship gunnery. Fluff wise all of the weapons in the arc would be considered to be making a combined action attack under the direction of a chief gunner. Individually each turbolaser would do far less than 5D damage to other capital ships. Since it's been a long time since I even thought about capital ship combat in D6 I'm not sure if this interpretation is correct.

Hunting through the books I can't seem to find anything giving explicit rules on how exactly capital ship weapons are supposed to work. I think both interpretations make sense with one being a bit more impractical at the table than the other. One also rewards weapons with good fire control ratings and high crew skill.

I'm well aware this situation would come up rarely in play but I was recently thinking about doing some large fleet skirmishes as a fun aside and I came up with this problem.

[Raven Redstar]

Technically speaking, according to the RAW, each individual crew member on the ship accrues their own MAPs. So, with no penalty, the 60 turbolasers on an ISD could target 60 different ships. Although, generally the rolls are limited by using combined action to either increase damage or to hit based on the target.

[vanir]

RAW assumes the organisation of fire teams and the chain of command.

Enlisted men like gunners on a capital warship simply don't have the authority to fire their guns unless given a free fire order in combat, which is about when the captain is running for an escape pod.

In this event, each gunnery team will have to interpret sensors data for the fire control system. The gunnery team NCO will have to do the aiming.
He will have to MAP sensors or Per/search to sight a target in his field of fire and fire upon it with the single weapon.

This is done much more effectively from the bridge, under command of a gunnery (bridge-) officer who will have already established a sensors scan around the ship prior to enemy craft reaching weapons range.
He will then MAP command and fire orders so that individual teams have full fire control system benefits and coordinate fire as enemy vessels move through different fire arcs and over different parts of the ship.

Space combat in capital warships then is best performed with scenes based similarly to the bridge of the Enterprise or Andromeda. You have a gunnery officer and the weapons fire under his control. This way the full facilities and avionics of the vessel can be brought to bear with each individual volley or coordinated fire pattern.


Each individual gunner only has a very limited field of view and no access to fire team support/coordination facilities, that's up at the bridge. In fact bridge stations are so vital for capital ship combat that most have at least three, including one heavily armoured battlebridge located within the hull or central superstructure.
Star Destroyers have a forward bridge and two in the main superstructure, but other stations like the computer core and engineering decks can be adapted to function as auxiliary bridge command centres.
A bridge and skilled command staff doing the MAPs is important, fleet command thought. USS Iowa, Supercarriers, they've all got three or four bridges.

[S-Foil]

Both of those responses make sense. In the past I've run capital ships as the GM but from a hand-wavey sort of fashion. They mostly existed as ways to goad the PCs into moving in a certain direction. It was only when I looked at it with the idea of the players controlling a big ship did the question come up.

If each gun of the weapon system gets their own attack (with its gunner's own personal MAPs) it makes the Imperial II SDs extra deadly. They're downright dangerous to smaller ships with their 60 turbolasers but at only 5D damage they're not going to overcome the hull+shields of the likes of an MC80 very easily. The Imperial II's 10D and 7D guns end up being a different story altogether.

[vanir]

That's the idea behind the ISD II. However keep in mind bridge coordination is still nominally required for scatter fire patterns. (a good way to think of large weapons emplacement firing solutions is for scatter fire or concentrated fire, IRL it would be direct fire or plunging fire as a tactical descript but that's projectiles, one you try to "hit" the target directly with every shot, the other you try to "saddle" or "straddle" the target in a dangerous field of falling warheads).

One thing which will really help GM starship combat is to look up military nomenclature and use it, or invent it in lieu to suit your gaming style.

For example, don't call it targeting in a capital ship. In a starfighter the fire control set works with an avionics CPU or astromech to feed sensor data to the HUD and the pilot can target, track or scan ships in the sensor field.

But for capital ships and submarines, for fleet vessels you change terminology to suit the different way that this function is technologically performed.
It is not targeting an enemy craft, you'd get kicked off the boat for even suggesting such a thing. It is called a firing solution.
And it is largely mathematical calculus, performed on the bridge by a qualified systems command officer, with an abacus in his hands if need be.

Here, a speculative breakdown. We cruise in space. I order a sensors sweep. Oops...
"Enemy vessel. It's charging weapons sir."
"Okay, give me a firing solution."
So, the bridge crew use the ships computer to assess which guns have the vessel in their field of fire. They're off the port arc.
"We can hit them with a port broadside sir."
"Okay, coordinate five emplacements. I don't want them vapourised."

alternatively,

"Sir, starfighters have broken through our shields! They're hitting us with proton torpedos!"
An explosion at the forward gun control rocks the ship, emergency klaxons blare throughout the cruiser's interior.
"All point defence commands: free fire on the enemy starfighters, fire at will!"
The point defence lasers begin targeting individual starfighters independently, however due to poor coordination and limited support can only target craft within a space range of 5 and on their firing arc, individual gunners will be unaware of starfighters which are orbiting across more than one facing during a combat round. Starfighters performing high speed attacks will be relatively immune to defensive fire.

That's how you do it on the big ships

[vanir]

As an aside, my gaming group once spent two weeks preparing for an Endor scale engagement x5. In our galaxy Alliance forces were reinforced twofold by our independent corporate empire's navy.
We went up against ISD I and II and the ISD I went down to MC80 and coordinated rebel attacks, it just takes a long time to finally reduce them to a useless hulk, but their fleet capability is easy to take down.
We didn't find them very combat worthy for fleet ships proportionate to resource and procurement costs. The ISD II is far and away much more what a Star Destroyer should be like in fleet combat using the RAW.

Listen if you'll forgive the self indulgence, why don't we turn this thread into an expansion of all ad hoc capital ship combat rules the various members have adapted or ad hoc, a sort of log.

For one I look at weapons systems technologically for fire control setup and things like that, because I know how jet fighter ones work IRL and they're not that complicated. Actually technology today is much more basic than the marketing programs of manufacturers suggest, the Raptor isn't really a very complicated or advanced plane, it's a very customised and purpose built plane, but not alien or anything, it basically uses the same technology as your iPad and aint the bee's knees Lockheed/Boeing want you to think, it's just a plane no different from half a dozen contemporaries with its own personality.

So look at your heavy turbolasers. Simple fire control, big damage, they're slow targeting close range weapons. Keep in mind their technology is geared for this use and is out of its element doing precision strikes at long range to disable specific systems. It's more likely to miss, or vapourise.

Look at your concussion missiles. 1D fire control? No that's not from a targeter, it's from the terminal-phase guidence warhead.

Proton Torpedos work like a submarine armament, you use firing solutions calculated mathematically on the mothership, their fire control is computerised and isn't normally from a homing warhead, it's from a computerised targeter at the gunnery station.

There are specific homing torpedos in existence, but they're expensive and aren't used much. Usually concussion missiles are used when you want homing weapons and you can get AI versions (2D-4D fire control and the missile acts as a starship with a move of 15 or so per MAP to strike the target).

So think about your specific weapons, and how their technology works in your game.

[Bren]

[ZzaphodD]

[quote="vanir"]"Sir, starfighters have broken through our shields! They're hitting us with proton torpedos!"
"Just make a full evasive maneuver, theyll have to fire a spread pattern (ie combine to hit) to get one of those torpedoes to connect"
quote]

Sorry, couldnt resist...
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[garhkal]

["Sir, rebel fighters are shooting proton torps at us!!"]

["No sweat.. Activate all cwis batteries."]
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[vanir]

I liked Gunther Räll's reply when a smarty pants at a seminar asked him, "So if you're in a 109 and you see hundreds of Thunderbolts diving on you, how can you use the 109 to manoeuvre against the superior dive speed of the Thunderbolt, what would you do?"

He looked at the guy like he was stupid and said, "I'd shoot them down of course."