From: Stuart Murray <smurray@a...>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 07:20:16 -0400
Subject: Vectored Thrust (a fairly long post)
Hi, I've been thinking about fighters for a while now as I bought a Micro-machines Starfury, Narn Fighter and Minbari runabout. I wanted to play simple one-off games using these without buying Silent Death so I thought hey why not adapt FT to a fighter game. Big problem!, or at least it was until the rules for true vector movement were posted here. I've had a tinker with things since and sort of hacked together a fighter game from FT. The rules have been play-tested minimally since this pesky PhD thesis keeps getting in the way. So far I've tried one on one dog fights and a few ships per side and the rules seem to work OK for this, the games only really go 'pear shaped' when small ships such as Frigates are used. Enough waffle here is: VECTORED THRUST A space combat game for small fighter actions based on Full Thrust MOVEMENT Orders are written as per FT Ships are moved using the true vector movement system as published on this list. A ship that applies NO thrust is considered staitionary, it may rotate to any facing. THRUST CAPABILITIES Fighters: 6 Ships: As FT Caveats To Movement Rules: A fighter may NOT apply main drive thrust in addition to maneuvering thrusters. The total thrust applied may only total half of thrust, e.g. a normal fighter movement orders may read MD1 RP2, which would mean an increase in 'speed' of 1 followed by rotation 2 points to port. SYSTEMS A fighter has: 1. Pilot(s) (multiple crew count as 1 system) 2. Fire con 3. Weapons (each weapon counts separately) 4. Drive (generally non-FTL) DAMAGE A fighter has 5 boxes A Scout has 5 boxes A Corvette has 7 boxes A Frigate has 10 boxes A Destroyer has 15 boxes (what you want more!) A fighter may be represented by (this may not turn out well) -------^------- | P | | | | | | C C | | | | ooooo | | | | 6 | --------------- (please excuse the bad ascii art) WEAPONS Weapons are the standard beams, this is simplified to: Low Tech: C bats only Mid Tech: B or C bats High Tech: A, B, or C bats This depends on the Genre the player wishes to represent. A point to consider is since there are no points described, this game is for playability only, it is feasible for both players to field A bat armed fighters. IMO, it is more fun to maneuver a C bat armed fighter into the rear of an enemy and shred them from 'up close and personal'. INFLICTING DMAGE Exactly as FT. C, B, A bats normal range/damage EXCEPT, Fighters are more fragile than ships, they do not have multiple redundant systems and repair crews. ANY damagge inflicted on a fighter (even 1 point) causes a threshold roll with the following dice modifications: Damage from C bat: 1 D6 B bat: 2 D6 A bat: 3 D6 Threshold rolls that hit the pilot kill automatically (either that or the sensible pilot ejects), the fighter is out of the game. As FT when all the damage boxes are ticked (if you actually get that far) the fighter is destroyed. Drive damge is as FT. Ships do not test for threshold rolls until the first row of boxes are ticked. ADDITINAL FIGHTER ABILITIES Up to two abilities can be combined, I use these to represent specific Genres (e.g. B5), or the specific abilities from MT. AGILE: the fighter may use all of it's thrust to maneuver HEAVY: As MT FAST: thrust = 8 TORPEDO: fighter is equiped with a single pulse torp. INTERCEPTOR: add +1 to a SINGLE die roll in attack. Against ships -1 on a SINGLE die roll. In attack the fighter player chooses, in defense the opponent choses which die roll. ATTACK: -1 on a SINGLE die roll against fighters. +1 on a SINGLE die roll against ships. SHIPS They don't really have much of a place in a fighter game but I threw them in for specific scenarios (attack on convoys etc.). PDAF are 'auto' C bats that will attack the nearest enemy fighter regardless of whether the fighter is attacking or not. If two fighters are equidistant from the ship roll for each PDAF to determin which is shot at. Ships maneuver using true vector thrust, they can use main drive thrust in combination with thrusters. EXAMPLES These are off the to of my head so appologies to B5 fans STARFURY Thrust = 6 Weapons = 4 C bats, forward arc only Abilities = Heavy, Agile NARN FIGHTER Thrust = 8 Weapons = 2 C bats, forward arc only Abilities = Fast (hence 8 thrust) UNIDENTIFIED MINBARI SMALL SHIP (was a Flyer until I chopped it up) Thrust = 8 Wepons = 2 B bats, forward arc only Abilities = Fast and for fun, NOT! VORLON FIGHTER Thrust = 8 Weapons = 2 A bats, forward arc, extra Fire Con Abilities = Fast, Agile ( the micro machines vorlon ship looks sort of like the fighter). OK so that's it, try them and see I am claiming NO intellectual propertiy rights to this material, almost all of this material has been the work of others, I have meerly put it together in an alternative manner. If by some strange quirk someone out there likes this stuff then please feel free to use it as you wish. If this stimulates someone to come up with a better system then could I have a copy please cos I'm too lazy to write another myself:) Happy thrusting!