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What are the best ship-to-ship combat rules in a sci-fi game? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by vagrant@lemmy.ml to c/rpg@lemmy.ml

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I've played my share of sci-fi RPGs, such as Traveller and Starfinder, but as many things as they do well, the space combat rules have never really captured the feel of a Star Wars-style starfighter dogfight or even a Star Trek-style naval battle. What is your favorite sci-fi RPG for shipt-to-ship combat?

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[–] 5too@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I feel like Starforged can feel pretty cinematic, particularly for a dogfight style encounter!

[–] randomnick@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago

I agree. Once you get how it works, the rythm is interesting. I have seen some people complaining about the big book with lots of rules (moves), but actually is just the same one again and again: 2D10 vs 1D6+modifiers

[–] snowkeep@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

I've been thinking about this a lot. And not just for space combat. Naval combat, too. I don't have a good answer. I think a single-person fighter dogfights could be done almost the same as person to person tactical ranged combat. Maybe not naval here - tactical Optimist or canoe battle. ;-P Larger ships, though, are either going to be very abstract, if you're the captain giving orders, or over-zoomed in if one following orders. A partial way around it is to treat the ships as the characters for the fight. Easy for solo. Takes agency away from everyone but the captain in a group. Which is probably realistic, but hardly fun. Even so, you can have the gunner rolling for shots fired, navigator rolling dodge, etc.

I've been avoiding (solo) games with ship-to-ship combat, as much as I really want to, because I haven't felt able to do it justice, yet. I suspect I'm going to end up somewhere between Pirate Borg and Worlds Without Number ship to ship combat, but playing as the ship, once I finally do bite the bullet.