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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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 Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2021 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| For a prior incarnation, Whill wrote: | 
The web pages below update and expand some of the game rules in The Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded published by West End Games (hereinafter R&E), which is required to use the rules in this document. Please also note that, unless specifically referring to ships with interstellar hyperdrives or R&E rules, the more general terms spaceship or ship are used here in place of starship to be correctly inclusive of spaceships without interstellar capabilities. Unless otherwise specified, all uses of the term gunner include pilots who may have access to firing weapons.
General
. . • Cover and Protection
. . • Object Damage
. . • Repairs and Damage Control
. . • Non-Vehicular Weapon Damage and Repair
. . • Armor and Powersuits, Damage and Repair
. . • Blasters Underwater
. . • Game Option: Skill Damage Bonus
Characters and Creatures
. . • Damage
. . . . . o Strength Damage
. . . . . o Brawling Damage Options
. . . . . o Damage Resistance
. . • Character/Creature Damage/Injuries
. . • Character/Creature Healing and Medicine
. . • Droid/Shard-Droid Symbiont Damage
. . • Droid/Shard-Droid Symbiont Repair
. . • Shard Damage and Healing
Spaceships and other Vehicles
. . • Collision Damage, Passenger Damage, and Falling Damage
. . • Vehicle Damage
. . . . . o Crash-Landing
. . • Vehicle Repair
. . • Shields and Tractor Beams
. . . . . o Speed Chart
. . • Spaceship Damage
. . . . . o Spaceship Systems Targeting
. . • Spaceships Underwater
. . • Spaceship Repair |
Over the past several weeks, I implemented several revisions...
I added the Skill Damage Bonus discussed in the thread. Although all game rules are technically optional, I labeled it specifically as optional like the minimum blaster damage rule because the system as a whole is deadlier than RAW and those options make it even deadlier. RoE has the options of pip for pip and pip for every 5 points of success. Pip for pip is too much and out of the question for me. I liked the pip per die (1 per 3.5) concept but rounded up to a pip for every 4 points of success because (1) it is bonus damage in a deadlier system, and increments of 4 already exist in the damage success ranges. Mine makes it a compromise between RoE's pip for 5 and CRM's pip for 3. Lastly, since it is even more deadly, I added a GM discretionary clause that the rule could use a mook differential factor, meaning that the skill damage bonus would not apply to the attacks made by unimportant characters (but it would still apply to important villain attacks, so it would not just be a PC thing regardless).
I added a small section for Shard damage and healing (for Shards outside of droid bodies). I changed the Damage Resistance of Shards in their natural state from 1D to 2D because 1D is just too fragile. They are crystalline silicon-based lifeforms that live for thousands of years with no natural defenses, so they shouldn't be quite that fragile. I already had a (a) medicine: Shard specialization to handle the Shard-droid integration, so I decided to also add a fourth healing option – Someone with the (a) medicine: Shard and a supply of the mineral water from the hot springs of the Shard homeworld can simulate the hot springs with a bacta tank and heal them (with rolls like normal bacta tank usage, unlike actually going to the homeworld where it is still automatic (but I added timeframes). There are still no first aid options for Shards so I thought RAW was just too harsh.
Although I included ion damage from the beginning, I recently added the missing definition of ion weapons to applicable sections, and added some guidelines for ion damage to equipment/devices, non-vehicular weapons, armor equipment (such as helmet sensors), and powersuits. And based on some franchise statements about ion weapons, I decided that they do stun damage at -1D to organics (while stun damage still has no effect on anything but organics).
I revamped vehicle/spaceship ionized controls effects. First, I removed shield penalties because shields have to be completely (blown in RAW or) drained in my system before controls are ionized, so there never would be any situations (in RAW or my system) where there would be shields available to be penalized by ionized controls. However I feel that RAW was still too harsh by always affecting both piloting and gunnery actions (and weapon damage code, which I completely moved to lightly and heavily damaged). Ionized controls is supposed to be a lesser effect than light damage, which is why it is temporary, but it can overwhelm a ship quickly in RAW making it potentially worse. I wanted to add other possible effects, so I decided that there will be a 1D roll to determine which system is affected by the ionized controls for each 1D of ionization, and I have five different single possibilities with piloting+gunnery being the sixth result, thus preserving something congruent to the RAW effect as a 1-in-6 chance. I also changed the threshold of controls frozen from ionization dice equalling the vehicle's maneuverability code to a flat -5D for all vehicles/ships because my chart goes up to -4D for a single attack. Ion weapons being able to more easily freeze controls already makes them potentially very powerful by making ships very vulnerable to normal damage, and I thought being able to do that in a single damage result is just too punitive to targets. I did however add the systems from my other ionized controls effects to the controls frozen effect thus making it more debilitating – at least it doesn't come in until a net 5D of simultaneous ionized controls regardless of the vehicle/ship's maneuverability code.
I made all of the controls ionized results, and some more of the normal damage results penalize skill rolls as opposed to vehicle/ship die codes. This further differentiates the results that pointedly do affect the vehicle/ship die codes. I also changed some other add-to-difficulty results to penalize skill rolls just because.
Instead of just the formula for calculating a ship's Speed Code for the Tractor Beam rules, I added a Speed Chart which replaces the wacky "Ships in an Atmosphere" chart on R&E p.129 and includes the Speed Codes corresponding to the Space codes. It also includes a tweaked Move progression (linear but stays close to RAW's chart), and then I put exact All-Out distances based on those Moves instead of rounded off figures. I added a rule for damaged ship speed codes.
For vehicles and spaceships, I eliminated 'No Full Evasions' as its own result and added it as the first Maneuverability damage effect, before Maneuverability code dice are damaged. That helps pad that result since vehicles and ships tend to not have that many dice in that stat (if any). For vehicles I replaced it with sensor damage, and for spaceships I replaced it with GM Selection for both the first and second time that result is rolled (instead of GM Selection being only the second time).
On the Spaceship Damage Lightly Damaged 'Roll 2D' result, I reordered them based on the probabilities of rolling two dice. In other words, I used the results of the simplified water pressure damage system (which only has roll 1D in its place, see the third paragraph down from this one) and put those in the middle of the spread so they would be the most common results and correspond to water pressure damage more, assigning them in the order I thought they should be most common to least. This lead me to reorder all the damages on all the vehicle and space damage and repair sections.
I reversed the order of my first and second artificial gravity results because losing artificial gravity is not as bad as having it fluctuate. And I removed the ability to just turn off a fluctuating gravity generator because that makes it too easy to ignore the damage. So now, the first damage is a power surge that knocks it offline, and then the second damage is a power surge that reboots it with the fluctuation and you can't just turn it off. I also tweaked how repulsorlift generator damage works.
I created a new Spaceship System Targeting ("called shots") system. For target ships that are less than severely damaged, gunners may target one of six systems: Shields, Weapons, Hyperdrives, Sublight Engines, Maneuverability, or Com-scan. The attack roll is -4D. There is a small chance of missing the targeted system but still damaging the ship normally, but full success means only the damage results applicable to that system are damaged according to the damage level result from the damage roll (and damage accumulation of heavy on top of heavy). Since I now have individual ionized control results, hitting the targeted system includes even the specific shields drained/controls ionized effect if that damage level is rolled. Full success also removes the result of destroying the target ship, so this option can be helpful when you only want to disable a target ship. It was floated on the forum that targeting specific systems on ships should maybe be with only a -2D penalty to hit, but I feel that is too easy to bypass system damage randomness (and also eliminate the destroyed result) if successful, so I went with -4D. I toyed with a system for ion weapons but felt that bypassing drained shields for anything more than a 1D effect is too much, and it got too complex with keeping shields drained in every result (until completely drained) so in the end I just decided ion weapons can't be used to target specific systems.
I added some underwater rules, mostly for spaceships underwater based on this post. I ended up creating an alternate damage system for water pressure damage that simplifies the main system and tweaks some of the results (including less results for light, and single results for both heavy and severe). I added a small section about (all) blasters underwater since the rule includes a reduction to the damage code.
I also made edits to several sentences throughout the site with clarifications of intended meanings and very minor tweaks to rules not worth detailing here. I fixed a handful of typos. I added several reference sentences (internal from one section to another and external to sources).
Thoughts?
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Raven Redstar
Rear Admiral
Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 2648
Location: Salem, OR
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| Posted: Mon Oct 11, 2021 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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Wow! Very cool!
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Dr. Bidlo
Commander
Joined: 24 Nov 2021
Posts: 440
Location: Arizona, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 1:44 am Post subject: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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I too had concerns with the limitations of the standard starship damage charts. I am currently running an Imperial Officers' Campaign that heavily relies on capital ship combat, so the standard charts got very predictable and old quickly, so I devised an expanded list of damage results affecting more systems using 2D6, so this also allowed me to increase the likelihood of some results (1:6), while making others much less likely (1:36). I have also never liked how the shield rules worked and thought a ship should not suffer damage from an energy weapon unless its shields were fully weakened. Finally, and not specifically noted here, I also allow ships to use their full die code to all fire arcs. I know, it is heresy, but I cannot stomach the idea of splitting 1D of even 3D of shields among multiple fire arcs. It may not be perfect, but it has been working out really well for my use so far:
Modified Starship Damage Rules
Passenger Damage
Passengers may be injured when a vehicle suffers damage or crashes. Use your judgment to decide whether a character takes damage. If a vehicle is destroyed, everyone is almost certainly killed. On the other hand, if the characters are in the pilot's compartment of a sail barge and a weapon turret on the other side of the barge is destroyed, it is very unlikely they'll be injured.
Determine character damage based on how badly the vehicle is damaged. (Damage is character scale.)
Vehicle is: Passenger suffers:
Lightly damaged 1D
Heavily damaged 3D
Severely damaged 6D
Destroyed • 12D
• Typically, all passengers aboard a destroyed ship in flight will be killed automatically.
Damage Roll
Hull Code Roll by: Effect
0-3 Controls ionized•
4-8 Lightly damaged•
9-12 Heavily damaged•
13-15 Severely damaged•
16+ Destroyed•
• Shields weakened - A ship will not suffer damage from an energy hit as long as it has shields remaining in the fire arc hit. Damage to a ship is reduced by -3 for each 1D and -1 for each pip of shields in the fire arc hit, reducing the shields value accordingly. Any remaining damage is applied to the ship using the damage table above. Shields weakened in this way may be restored with an Easy repair test for up to 1D of shields, increased by one difficulty level per additional 1D of shields, or part thereof.
Example: A heavy turbolaser cannon hits a Corellian Gunship with 2D+1 shields up in the front fire arc and the damage roll exceeds its hull and shields roll by 18. This would be a destroyed result, but the damage result is reduced by -7 because of the gunship’s shields (-3 for each of the two shield dice and -1 for the pip). After the shields are penetrated, the gunship suffers the remaining 11 damage, heavily damaging the gunship.
Controls ionized. A controls ionized result means that the ship's controls are temporarily overwhelmed by power surges. The ship loses -1D from its maneuverability, shields and weapon fire control and damage for the rest of that round and the next round.
If a ship is suffering from as many controls ionized results as the ship has maneuverability dice, the ship's controls are frozen for the next two rounds. The ship must maintain the same speed and direction for the next two rounds; it may not turn, fire weapons, make shield attempts or take any other actions, making the ship an easy target for enemy gunners.
The pilot must still make the piloting rolls or the ship automatically crashes (if there's anything to run into) or goes spinning out of control. When controls are frozen, blue lightning plays across
all of the controls of the vehicle, as seen when Luke Skywalker’s snowspeeder was destroyed in The Empire Strikes Back.
Ship Damage
Lightly damaged. Starships can be lightly damaged any number of times. Each time a ship is lightly damaged, roll 1D to see which system is damaged. All Lightly damaged results may be suffered multiple times and the effects are cumulative.
2. The lights flicker momentarily, but the ship suffers only superficial damage.
3. Hyperdrive damaged. Double the time to calculate any astrogation courses; if the pilot wants to try to jump to hyperspace in one round, add an extra +10 to the astrogation difficulty until the drive is fixed.. If the ship has a hyperdrive back-up, roll for the drive affected:
1-4: Hyperdrive
5-6: Hyperdrive Back-up
The hyperdrive may be fixed with a Moderate repair roll.
4. The weapons systems experiences a power surge. Roll 1D.
1-4: All weapons lose -1D Fire Control (may be a negative value). The targeting sensor suite is considered lightly damaged.
5-6: All energy weapons including tractor beams lose -1D damage (minimum 0D). Damage may be restored with a weapon repair test for each weapon type.
5. Ship loses 1D from its maneuverability. (If the ship's maneuverability has already been reduced to 0D, it suffers -1 Space.)
6. One on-board weapon emplacement was rendered inoperative by a major power surge or system failure and is lightly damaged. Randomly determine which weapon is affected.
7. The ship loses -1D from its shield code. If the ship has no dice remaining in shields, it suffers the controls ionized result.
8. One on-board weapon emplacement was hit and destroyed; the gunners take damage. (See "passenger damage.”) Randomly determine which weapon is hit.
9. Sensors damaged. Reduce all sensor modes fire control of all weapons by -1D (may be a negative value) until the sensors are fixed with a Moderate repair roll and one hour of work.
10. Reduce the ship’s Space by -1 and adjust the ship’s Atmosphere based on the new Space value.
11. Ship loses one from the number of moves it can make in a turn: if it could make four moves, it can now only make three moves. When a vehicle with only one move remaining must reduce its speed, it can now only move at half-speed, and that requires a normal movement roll. When a ship that can only move at half-speed must reduce its speed, the powerplant gives out completely, and the ship can no longer move.
12. The ship loses -1 from its hull code and all passengers suffer 3D damage. Reduce the damage to 1D if they pass an Easy Dexterity test.
Heavily damaged. Heavily damaged ships have taken a much more serious amount of damage. If a heavily damaged ship is lightly damaged or heavily damaged again, it becomes severely damaged. Roll 1D to see which system is affected.
2. The ship is rocked by the hit but suffers only minor damage. Roll for damage using the lightly damaged table.
3. Hyperdrive damaged. Increase all astrogation difficulties by +10 and results of 1 on the wild die for astrogation tests always cause a complication until the drive is fixed. If the ship has a hyperdrive back-up, roll for the drive affected:
1-4: Hyperdrive
5-6: Hyperdrive Back-up
The hyperdrive may be fixed with one hour of work and a Difficult repair roll and one hour of work.
4. The weapon systems experience a series of power failures. Roll 1D.
1-4: All weapons lose -2D Fire Control (may be a negative value). The targeting sensor suite is considered heavily damaged.
5-6: All energy weapons including tractor beams lose -2D damage (minimum 0D). The weapon power regulator is considered heavily damaged.
5. Ship loses -2D from its maneuverability. (If the ship's maneuverability has already been reduced to 0D, the ship suffers -2 Space.)
6. Ship loses a weapons' system in one fire arc. Randomly determine which one. All weapons of that type and in that fire arc are rendered inoperative due to a major power surge or system failure.
7. Ship loses -2D from its shields. If the ship has no dice remaining in shields (or had no shields to begin with), the ship loses -1D from its hull code.
8. Weapons system destroyed. All of the weapons of one type in the same fire arc are destroyed by a series of power overloads. The gunners take damage. (See "passenger damage.”)
9. Sensors disabled. Sensor are rendered inoperative due to a major power surge or system failure until fixed with a Difficult repair roll and one hour of work.
10. Reduce the Space of the ship by -2
11. Ship loses two from the number of moves it can make in a turn: if it could make four moves, it can now only make two moves. When a vehicle with only one move remaining must reduce its speed, it can now only move at half-speed, and that requires a normal movement roll. When a ship that can only move at half-speed must reduce its speed, the powerplant gives out completely, and the ship can no longer move.
12. Particle shields smashed. The ship loses -2D from its hull code and all passengers suffer 6D damage. Reduce the damage to 3D if they pass a Moderate Dexterity test.
Severely damaged. Severely damaged ships have taken major amounts of damage and are rendered almost useless. A severely damaged ship which is lightly damaged, heavily damaged or severely damaged again is destroyed. Roll ID to determine which system is affected:
2. Superficial damage. The ship suffers only a lightly damaged result.
3. Hyperdrives engaged. The ship’s hyperdrive engages without a proper calculation of trajectory. If the ship’s hyperdrive and back-up are disabled, the hyperdrives and nav computer are destroyed and may not be repaired.
4. Disabled hyperdrives. The ship's hyperdrives - main and back-up - are rendered inoperable. The ship cannot enter hyperspace until they are fixed with a Very Difficult repair roll and one hour of work.
5. Overloaded generator. The ship's generator is overloading; unless it's shut down, the generator will explode in 1D rounds and destroy the ship.
6. Dead in space. All drives and maneuvering systems are destroyed. The vehicle is adrift in space.
7. Frozen controls. The ship must maintain the same speed and direction; it may not turn, fire weapons, make shield attempts or take any other actions, making the ship an easy target for enemy gunners. The ship’s sublight drives may be shut down with one hour of work and a Moderate repair roll: capital ship repair, space transports repair or starfighter repair.
8. Disabled weapons. All weapons systems lose power. Roll 1D:
1-4: Weapons are severely damaged but may be repaired.
5-6: All weapons aboard the ship are destroyed.
9. Sensors dead. All sensors and communication systems lose power. Roll 1D:
1-4: Sensor and communications systems are severely damaged but may be repaired.
5-6: Sensor and communications systems are destroyed.
10. Structural collapse. All passengers suffer 12D damage from falling debris and internal explosions. Reduce the damage to 6D if they pass a Difficult Dexterity test.
11. Structural damage. The ship is so badly damaged that it begins to disintegrate. The crew has 1D minutes to evacuate.
12. Destroyed. This ship’s ion reactor overloads and the ship explodes.
Destroyed. The ship is instantly destroyed and explodes in a ball of flame. Everyone aboard is killed. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 2:48 am Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I too had concerns with the limitations of the standard starship damage charts. I am currently running an Imperial Officers' Campaign that heavily relies on capital ship combat, so the standard charts got very predictable and old quickly, so I devised an expanded list of damage results affecting more systems using 2D6, so this also allowed me to increase the likelihood of some results (1:6), while making others much less likely (1:36). I have also never liked how the shield rules worked and thought a ship should not suffer damage from an energy weapon unless its shields were fully weakened. Finally, and not specifically noted here, I also allow ships to use their full die code to all fire arcs. I know, it is heresy, but I cannot stomach the idea of splitting 1D of even 3D of shields among multiple fire arcs. It may not be perfect, but it has been working out really well for my use so far... |
Cool. Thanks for sharing your version. Our spaceship damage systems are the only two I've seen so far that logically only have one or the other hyperdrive be damaged by one attack, as opposed to both simultaneously (which totally defeats the purpose of redundancy).
My shields solution is a lot different. I brought it into three dimensions by adding two more arcs, but I did add default pips to every arc so unless a projector of an arc gets blown, all arcs are covered by minimal protection no matter where the shield dice are allocated.
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Dr. Bidlo
Commander
Joined: 24 Nov 2021
Posts: 440
Location: Arizona, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 8:51 am Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Whill wrote: | | Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I too had concerns with the limitations of the standard starship damage charts. I am currently running an Imperial Officers' Campaign that heavily relies on capital ship combat, so the standard charts got very predictable and old quickly, so I devised an expanded list of damage results affecting more systems using 2D6, so this also allowed me to increase the likelihood of some results (1:6), while making others much less likely (1:36). I have also never liked how the shield rules worked and thought a ship should not suffer damage from an energy weapon unless its shields were fully weakened. Finally, and not specifically noted here, I also allow ships to use their full die code to all fire arcs. I know, it is heresy, but I cannot stomach the idea of splitting 1D of even 3D of shields among multiple fire arcs. It may not be perfect, but it has been working out really well for my use so far... |
Cool. Thanks for sharing your version. Our spaceship damage systems are the only two I've seen so far that logically only have one or the other hyperdrive be damaged by one attack, as opposed to both simultaneously (which totally defeats the purpose of redundancy).
My shields solution is a lot different. I brought it into three dimensions by adding two more arcs, but I did add default pips to every arc so unless a projector of an arc gets blown, all arcs are covered by minimal protection no matter where the shield dice are allocated. |
Yeah, that bit about both hyperdrives going was always so ridiculous. Unless the GM specifically concocted a reason for the main hyperdrive only to go out (and why would you do that?), it was all or nothing. Both hyperdruves going out should ONLY be at the direction of a GM as a plot device, not as a standard damage result.
As for shields... so many ways they can be handled. I like the idea of the six fire arcs, but I stayed away from it because it would require me to delve in head first into the third dimension and I decided not to do that strictly for ease of play. I contemplated that course for half a minute and I saw oblivion at the end, so I steeled my mind against the notion. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 12:07 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | Yeah, that bit about both hyperdrives going was always so ridiculous. Unless the GM specifically concocted a reason for the main hyperdrive only to go out (and why would you do that?), it was all or nothing. Both hyperdruves going out should ONLY be at the direction of a GM as a plot device, not as a standard damage result. |
I get that, but in a space battle that includes both a heavy damage and a severe damage to a ship, in my system it is remotely possible (1-in-36) chance that both hyperdrives will become nonfunctional.
| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | As for shields... so many ways they can be handled. I like the idea of the six fire arcs, but I stayed away from it because it would require me to delve in head first into the third dimension and I decided not to do that strictly for ease of play. I contemplated that course for half a minute and I saw oblivion at the end, so I steeled my mind against the notion. |
It's really no trouble because space combat is abstract anyway, the theater of the mind. Even if one ship is chasing another, if the target ship is performing evasive maneuvers (vehicle dodge), then they have turns in their movement and who is to say what angle the target ship is from the attacking ship at the moment the shot lands? The GM. Since space has movement in three dimensions, some of those evasive turns can be "up" or "down" in relation to the other ship, and thus the other two arcs. Honestly, I was inspired by looking at a d6 and imagining a ship at the center of it, so the six arcs each emanate from the ship and extend out in the direction of each face of the die.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 12:19 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Whill wrote: | | Our spaceship damage systems are the only two I've seen so far that logically only have one or the other hyperdrive be damaged by one attack, as opposed to both simultaneously (which totally defeats the purpose of redundancy). |
Good point. I just copy-pasted that line over when I was making my version, but it's a worthwhile change. In fact, the only time we see a damaged hyperdrive on screen (ESB), the backup is still functioning (hence the jump from Hoth to Bespin).
As an aside, there pretty much had to be a short jump on the Falcon's backup hyperdrive during the escape from Hoth to get from the Hoth system to the Anoat system (which are presented as two different star systems in the Essential Atlas).
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 12:30 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I am currently running an Imperial Officers' Campaign that heavily relies on capital ship combat, so the standard charts got very predictable and old quickly |
I've been working off and on on a system for capital ship combat, and helped one other person develop their own rules which they used in their campaign. Hit me up if you want to compare notes.
| Quote: | | I also allow ships to use their full die code to all fire arcs. I know, it is heresy, but I cannot stomach the idea of splitting 1D of even 3D of shields among multiple fire arcs. |
That never sat well with me, either, so I came up with my own version that has shields covering all four arcs evenly by default, but allows the shield operator to stack them for better coverage. The Shield dice are treated as Cover, instead of being added to the Hull, and Ion Cannon no longer ignore Shields, but instead (taking a page from the X-Wing PC games) have a draining effect on shields. Plus a few other odds and ends.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 2:30 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | Our spaceship damage systems are the only two I've seen so far that logically only have one or the other hyperdrive be damaged by one attack, as opposed to both simultaneously (which totally defeats the purpose of redundancy). |
Good point. I just copy-pasted that line over when I was making my version, but it's a worthwhile change. In fact, the only time we see a damaged hyperdrive on screen (ESB), the backup is still functioning (hence the jump from Hoth to Bespin). |
Bidlo's way is an easy fix, just inserting a roll to determine which hyperdrive is damaged. I went a different route. I put navicomputer damage as a light damage result, backup hyperdrive as a heavy damage result, and main hyperdrive as a severe damage result. Each damage level has an according repair difficulty, so I wanted to allow for the possibility that if both hyperdrives do get damaged (in two separate attacks), a captain may choose to repair the backup first because it is a quicker and easier repair.
| Quote: | | As an aside, there pretty much had to be a short jump on the Falcon's backup hyperdrive during the escape from Hoth to get from the Hoth system to the Anoat system (which are presented as two different star systems in the Essential Atlas). |
All three of those systems are close together, and backup hyperdrives have a shorter range according to fluff. So that's one possible interpretation of the film. They could have used the backup to jump from Hoth to Anoat, and the Imps caught up with them there so they hid and used it again to jump to Bespin.
When I was a kid, my interpretation of it was that when Leia asked, "Where are we?" and Han answered, "Anoat system," that wasn't a literal answer. I interpreted the question to mean, "What are we close to?" Leia did reply, "There's not much there," not "here." So Han moved on to the next closest system and it was Bespin. In addition to the there/here thing, the Hoth system was already established as having a lot of meteor activity which could come from asteroids that have left their orbit. It was chaotic and they were crashing into each other.
Another suggestion I've read that makes sense is that Hoth and Anoat are part of a binary system where the stars are far enough apart to each have their own planetary orbits (so not like Tatooine where planets orbit both stars that are closer). These types of systems are very common in the universe, and them having an asteroid field between them is plausible since a planet may have difficulty forming there due to being pulled at by both suns. So that could have been the edge of the Hoth and Anoat systems.
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Dr. Bidlo
Commander
Joined: 24 Nov 2021
Posts: 440
Location: Arizona, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 4:27 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Whill wrote: | | Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | Yeah, that bit about both hyperdrives going was always so ridiculous. Unless the GM specifically concocted a reason for the main hyperdrive only to go out (and why would you do that?), it was all or nothing. Both hyperdruves going out should ONLY be at the direction of a GM as a plot device, not as a standard damage result. |
Agreed.
| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | As for shields... so many ways they can be handled. I like the idea of the six fire arcs, but I stayed away from it because it would require me to delve in head first into the third dimension and I decided not to do that strictly for ease of play. I contemplated that course for half a minute and I saw oblivion at the end, so I steeled my mind against the notion. |
It's really no trouble because space combat is abstract anyway, the theater of the mind. Even if one ship is chasing another, if the target ship is performing evasive maneuvers (vehicle dodge), then they have turns in their movement and who is to say what angle the target ship is from the attacking ship at the moment the shot lands? The GM. Since space has movement in three dimensions, some of those evasive turns can be "up" or "down" in relation to the other ship, and thus the other two arcs. Honestly, I was inspired by looking at a d6 and imagining a ship at the center of it, so the six arcs each emanate from the ship and extend out in the direction of each face of the die. |
I should further clarify the concern about the 3rd dimension. I did not want to touch the idea of three dimensional space combat because I am running the space combat as tactical games on a map with ship images in a virtual format. In order for this format to work, keeping it two dimension makes it a lot easier to represent graphically. If I were running it theater of the mind like I did back in the day, I would probably use the 6 fire arcs.
I did recently run a game in low orbit over a planet with the ship's firing down on ground targets and I approximated a few levels, each representing 100 meters, but it was a bit of a pain. In open space, it would break quickly and could not be represented graphically to any good effect (from what I have been able to figure anyway). |
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Dr. Bidlo
Commander
Joined: 24 Nov 2021
Posts: 440
Location: Arizona, USA
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 4:49 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I am currently running an Imperial Officers' Campaign that heavily relies on capital ship combat, so the standard charts got very predictable and old quickly |
I've been working off and on on a system for capital ship combat, and helped one other person develop their own rules which they used in their campaign. Hit me up if you want to compare notes.
| Quote: | | I also allow ships to use their full die code to all fire arcs. I know, it is heresy, but I cannot stomach the idea of splitting 1D of even 3D of shields among multiple fire arcs. |
That never sat well with me, either, so I came up with my own version that has shields covering all four arcs evenly by default, but allows the shield operator to stack them for better coverage. The Shield dice are treated as Cover, instead of being added to the Hull, and Ion Cannon no longer ignore Shields, but instead (taking a page from the X-Wing PC games) have a draining effect on shields. Plus a few other odds and ends. |
I would love to see what you develop with stacking shields and using more as cover rather than a flat die boost to the hull.
I didn't mention it, but I also have rules that allow the ship to temporarily double shields to a single facing while reducing the other three faces. It gets harder to maintain with each additional round and it ends up blowing out a 'Waveform transmitter' from the affected facing. I term waveform transmitted and the inspiration for the rule came from the 1st Edition Rules Companion.
I am a game tinker...er and I am in good company, so would love to hear what else has been developed. However if it diverges off the posted topic of damage, I might need to migrate it to a new topic entry. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 7:05 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | As for shields... so many ways they can be handled. I like the idea of the six fire arcs, but I stayed away from it because it would require me to delve in head first into the third dimension and I decided not to do that strictly for ease of play. I contemplated that course for half a minute and I saw oblivion at the end, so I steeled my mind against the notion. |
It's really no trouble because space combat is abstract anyway, the theater of the mind. Even if one ship is chasing another, if the target ship is performing evasive maneuvers (vehicle dodge), then they have turns in their movement and who is to say what angle the target ship is from the attacking ship at the moment the shot lands? The GM. Since space has movement in three dimensions, some of those evasive turns can be "up" or "down" in relation to the other ship, and thus the other two arcs. Honestly, I was inspired by looking at a d6 and imagining a ship at the center of it, so the six arcs each emanate from the ship and extend out in the direction of each face of the die. |
I should further clarify the concern about the 3rd dimension. I did not want to touch the idea of three dimensional space combat because I am running the space combat as tactical games on a map with ship images in a virtual format. In order for this format to work, keeping it two dimension makes it a lot easier to represent graphically. If I were running it theater of the mind like I did back in the day, I would probably use the 6 fire arcs.
I did recently run a game in low orbit over a planet with the ship's firing down on ground targets and I approximated a few levels, each representing 100 meters, but it was a bit of a pain. In open space, it would break quickly and could not be represented graphically to any good effect (from what I have been able to figure anyway). |
If you are running space combat for the RPG as a 2D tactical game then it makes sense to me why you'd keep the 4 fire arcs of the game. It would really be a pain to add the third dimension. The fact that graphical space combat removes the third dimension is exactly why I don't do it – I can't disregard that space is 3D, and theater of the mind preserves three dimensions. Most of the time, there is no larger frame of reference so the PC ship's orientation is the frame of reference and the enemy ships are described in relation to it, and I do take advantage of all three dimensions when doing so.
To each GM their own.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 9:01 pm Post subject: Re: Alternative Damage Starship Damage Tables |
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| Dr. Bidlo wrote: | | I would love to see what you develop with stacking shields and using more as cover rather than a flat die boost to the hull. |
Here's the link. I thought I had included it above, but that was an older system more in line with the RAW.
| Quote: | | I didn't mention it, but I also have rules that allow the ship to temporarily double shields to a single facing while reducing the other three faces. It gets harder to maintain with each additional round and it ends up blowing out a 'Waveform transmitter' from the affected facing. I term waveform transmitted and the inspiration for the rule came from the 1st Edition Rules Companion. |
I have somewhat similar rules, in that the shield operator can add up to 2D to their base Shield Dice by stacking all four arcs' Shields into a single arc, subject to a Very Difficult Shields roll. I can see potential to combine the two concepts.
| Quote: | | I am a game tinker...er and I am in good company, so would love to hear what else has been developed. However if it diverges off the posted topic of damage, I might need to migrate it to a new topic entry. |
Don't worry; you're in the company of like minds.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10402
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2022 10:52 pm Post subject: Re: Star Wars D6 Damage |
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Another revision, not as major as the first revision last October but a big improvement...
| Whill wrote: |
General
. . • Object Damage
. . • Repairs and Damage Control
. . • Computer Damage and Repair
. . • Non-Vehicular Weapon Damage and Repair
. . • Armor/Powersuit Damage and Repair
. . • Cover and Protection
. . • Blasters Underwater
. . • Game Option: Skill Damage Bonus
Characters and Creatures
. . • Character/Creature Damage
. . . . . o Strength Damage
. . . . . o Brawling Damage Options
. . . . . o Damage Resistance
. . • Character/Creature Injuries and Stun Effects
. . . . . o Interpretive Hit Location
. . • Character/Creature Healing and Medicine
. . • Droid/Shard-Droid Symbiont Damage
. . • Droid/Shard-Droid Symbiont Repair
. . • Shard Damage and Healing
Spaceships and other Vehicles
. . • Collision Damage, Passenger Damage, and Falling Damage
. . • Vehicle Damage
. . . . . o Crash-Landing
. . • Vehicle Repair
. . • Shields and Tractor Beams
. . . . . o Speed Chart
. . • Spaceship Damage
. . . . . o Spaceship Systems Targeting
. . • Spaceships Underwater
. . • Spaceship Repair |
REORDER/RENAME
When I first designed this site, the order of the rules sections was mostly based on R&E. Most RPG core books, to some degree or another, have rules that are self-referential, a sort of thing where reading the book straight through for the first time you end up reading rules that don't make sense yet but you keep reading and they will eventually. R&E Chapter 5 is written like that where it introduces damage rules for protection, armor, weapons (and objects) before it gets the main introduction to damage mechanics, where the focus is on characters.
I considered switching page 1 and 2 of my site so character damage would come first, but page 1 has an intro to repair so it make sense that that would appear before droid repair rules on page 2. So I instead moved Cover and Protection down to after the Armor section because there is nothing inherent in C&P that should be first, and I beefed up the Object Damage section to be worded as an introduction to damage. I also renamed the first two sections of page 2 to clarify that the first was character/creature damage, and the second one was injuries and stun effects.
I slightly renamed the Armor section to match the format of other section titles. I also moved the description of how armor works to the more appropriate place of the Damage Resistance subsection of the character damage section, and added a sentence referring to Armor damage in the new subsection on hit location (see below).
In 1989 I prophesied the 1996 innovation of "Wounded Twice" in the game's wound system, applying it to my 1e game but only for PCs and important NPCs, calling it "double wounded" or "doubly wounded". In an more recent forum version of my wound system, I took a page from D6 Space and renamed it "Severely Wounded" but later realized I didn't like that because "Severely Damaged" status for tech is more analogous to the more severe wound statuses Incapacitated or Mortally Wounded. So I went back to "doubly wounded" for this site just because that's what I always called it before it was officially a thing in this game. But I never really liked that or "Wounded Twice" so I finally settled on "Heavily Wounded" which is more analogous to "Heavily Damaged" with similar effects for some technologies.
NEW STUFF
I added a new Computer Damage and Repair section. Computers had been one of the technologies that was a part of Object Damage and general repairs, but the rules had to be altered from the general so it got its own section (see Changes below).
I slightly expanded the intro to Characters/Creatures Injuries and Stun Effects to indicate that cyborgs are more susceptible to ion damage than fully organic characters (see below for more on cybernetics).
I found several posts throughout the forum about me referring to my post-damage roll 'narrative/interpretive hit location' system I've had since 1988, so thought I should finally codify it in these rules, adding it as a subsection of Characters/Creatures Injuries and Stun Effects.
I added a new "Cybernetics Damage and Repair" section between the general character sections and the droid sections. It uses a very simple mechanic: If GM determines a character's cybernetics are hit (using hit location above), the character still has normal net wound status from wound accumulation, but the GM may determine that a cybernetic repair attempt is required separate from any medicine for biological wounds, which may reduce medicine requirements that would normally be required for the net wound status. Depending on body location and the type of cybernetic part damaged, it may need a Technical skill repair or it may need surgery by someone with (A) Medicine (not just first aid), so there is a down side to having cybernetics beyond being more susceptible to ion damage.
CHANGES
In the intro to Characters/Creatures Injuries and Stun Effects, I only slightly changed the rule for ion weapons used against fully organics characters to them getting a +1D to damage resistance (instead of the ion damage being -1D stun damage against them), just in case the same ion damage roll is used against carried equipment which would have its own damage resistance roll. (Cyborgs do not get the +1D so ion damage is fully equal to stun damage for them).
In my skill list, I have combined computer and droid technical skills into one skill using the premise that droids are just computers with more advanced programming and mobility. I have stated on the forum that droids tend to have higher difficulties than computers. I have fully implemented that for programming but in these damage rules I had not fully realized my concept on the repair side of things. I am limited by what I can do because I have two droid damage systems, one for important characters and one for unimportant. So like characters, droids have more damage levels than other things and I have already used the full gamut repair difficulties from Very Easy to Heroic. Since I couldn't make droid repairs harder, I only had one direction to go: make computers easier to repair. My rational is because computer technology is ubiquitous in Star Wars, being inherent in most all technologies. After implementing that change, it made sense to adjust the vehicle and spaceship computer system repairs accordingly.
I revised the Navigation/Hyperdrive damage system. I already had hyperdrive damage as a Heavy and Severe possibility, but for light I had navicomputer because it was something that I thought should be added to the damage chart. But the specific effect of navicomputer damage didn't make sense, and now I'm not even sure how I even came up with it. Plus it didn't make sense for that to be an unlimited light damage because the navicomputer is an internal system and that is a lot of power surges. So I replaced navicomputer damage in the main random list of light damages with damage to the main hyperdrive. Not offline or disabled like the more severe damages, but each damage slows it down by increasing its hyperdrive multiplier. With multiple light damages it just gets slower and slower. This new system was applied to my water pressure damage and system targeting rules.
And I didn't want to lose navicomputer damage completely so I moved it down to replace the most boring one that was in my 'Roll 2D' list: Emergency Battery damage. I moved battery damage to the list of possible other systems in the 'gamemaster selection' option. And I revised navicomputer damage to a simple penalty to the roll to use the navicomputer (such as for astrogation), with the second damage adding that it takes longer as well.
FORMATTING
I went through the whole document and fixed some font formatting and quotation marks and apostrophes to be the correct smart quotes as in the true Times New Roman font.
I correctly labeled all the charts with a chart title, and indented the charts to stand out even more.
And I remembered how to use anchors in HTML coding, so now the entire site is much more user friendly with internal links when some section referenced another section. It makes referencing and finding things much quicker and easier.
I feel Star Wars D6 Damage is now really starting to be what it should be. Check it out and let me know what you think! Thoughts? Questions?
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Mamatried
Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017
Posts: 1854
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2022 11:19 am Post subject: |
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MMmmm something good to read .
One quick question I so far could not find any real answer to.
How many times can a ship/character/object etc take light damage before this becomes more serious.
I can see easily a shot up ww2 spitfire suffer light damage after the first burst more or less only made some holes, but the second burst and the third burst recived also only makes holes and not really damages any systems but is also far less "hull" to make these holes in and the plane imo is not now lightly damage but maybe heavily damaged, even with every system intact.
Of course in a SW stting we have to acount for more systems like lifesupport and such, but still I would say that when we see the falcon ebing shot at in ANH it suffers maybe light damage from each "hit" or near hit, but I would say that even with being a flying junkyard, the damages that we do see are being fixed are severe enough to require some time to fix and what seems to be also what could not be simply "ducktaped up" like normal.
So the question is how do damages stack? will how many light damage become heavy, and how many heavy become severe, and how will a light + a hevay be? |
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