Hard about ... and the use of maneuvers.

We've had a game this week-end, and encountered some problems with the starship combat rules ...

The fight went quite similar to one of the Defiant fights at the end of DS9 ... on screen, here is what we saw:

The Defiant is in hot pursuit of a Breen ship. It manages to get a few shots in, before two Jem'Hadar attack ships start chasing it. After the Defiant taking a shot or two, Nog manages to shake the pursuers off ... probably also manages to take down at least one of the Jem'Hadars, then only notices they've lost their initial target.

All right, maybe this is not exactly what we saw, but it was probably pretty close. This is also what should have happened in our game, only I guess I'm at a loss as to how this should have been handled with Coda rules.

For instance, I was thinking a "hard about" was supposed to be used, but the way I see it, the Breen ship was the Defiant's primary target, and not the attack ships. Thus, the hard about would have been of no help. Which is a bit surprising ... as a matter of fact, I'm not sure I understand te description correctly as it says: "the maneuver only affects the acting ship's primary target ... thus, Hard about only affects one opposing ship per use" ... so the only way it could affct two ships would be someone with combat piloting at the helm doing a hard about, disengage (switch primary target), hard about again ... isn't that a bit ... err ... unusual?
Similarly, something like an "immelman turn" could be seen as appropriate, but seems rather impractical as the Defiant would have had to "disengage" to have an attack ship as their first target, hence could have been very vulnerable.
Any help on this? How would you handle this?

I would make out another maneuver, for example:

Tier II
Evasion (Helm)
Prerequisites: Cannot be executed after any Tier III maneuvers.
TN: 15 + 3 per attacker
The ship performs a series of sharp turns to shake off attackers. For each attacker the ship want to shake off beyond the first, the helmsman rolls for gets a +3 malus to the TN.
If the maneuver is successful, the ships lose Lock On. The ships that didn't have Lock On engaged add +3 to their tactical TN rolls to hit the ship for the next round.
The acting ship cannot perform any Tactical maneuvers just after Evasion.
Here goes... What do you think?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but Immelmann Turn is what you were looking for. You would have done a Close (H), followed by a Hard About (H), and then the Immelmann Turn (C).

Presuming you were successful on all three maneuvers, the results would have been:
Round 1
Close: Decrease the range increment with your primary target (the Breen)
Hard About: Again alter increment with your primary target (the Breen), break the Breen's Lock On (if appropriate), otherwise protection +5 (against the Breen only).
Round 2
Immelmann Turn: The Jem'Hadar following receive a -5 to their next Helm or Tactical maneuver.
Probably follow-up with your own attack on the Breen.
Round 3
With the Jem'Hadar hot on your tails, you'd probably turn your attention to them.
Disengage (from the Breen)
Multifire (you should have everyone in the same increment by now, thanks to your Close, Hard About, and Immelmann Turn). Alternately you can do a Hard About to cancel out the Disengage penalty and line yourself up to attack the Jem'Hadar the next turn.

It sounds like the problem is that you want all this to happen in the span of one round?

BTW, Disengage is only dangerous if it’s the last action you perform in a round--as long as you immediately follow it up with a Helm maneuver (any) the -5 penalty goes away. I typically follow a Disengage with an immediate Hard About or Come About and then blast them to the stars the following round.

Let me know if I'm missing something. :)

The situation you've described is a 3-on-1 battle, so they're taking 6 actions to your 2--you're already understandably in a tight situation. :)

You're right, Don, things could be done that way... I didn't think about that.

My maneuver refers to some battles, where a ship evade multiple opponents that come by surprise. What troubles me with the Immelman is that it must be a well-prepared maneuver (if I get things right). My Evasion attempt suits more desperate situations (and anyway, it's not nearly as powerful as the Immelman, I think).

But that's true that there's no real need for it :)

The funny thing is that I submitted a maneuver called the "Scorpion Evasion" where you fly towards your primary target at point blank range in the hopes that vessels pursuing (and firing at) you hit the vessel you're weaving around instead.

While some of these maneuvers may sound complex, during the course of a game it's interesting to see vessels jockeying for position. In your example the enemy vessels are working under the same constraints as you.

Hmmm.... Scorpion Evasion... I like the sound of that and so would my players, being a lot on the swashbuckling / daring side of ST.

That gives me some ideas...! ;)

Thanks a lot, Don and KW :). It's slowly beginning to make sense. There are still a few fuzzy points ...

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Originally posted by Don Mappin
Perhaps I'm missing something, but Immelmann Turn is what you were looking for. You would have done a Close (H), followed by a Hard About (H), and then the Immelmann Turn (C).

Presuming you were successful on all three maneuvers, the results would have been:
Round 1
Close: Decrease the range increment with your primary target (the Breen)
Hard About: Again alter increment with your primary target (the Breen), break the Breen's Lock On (if appropriate), otherwise protection +5 (against the Breen only).
Round 2
Immelmann Turn: The Jem'Hadar following receive a -5 to their next Helm or Tactical maneuver.
Probably follow-up with your own attack on the Breen.
Round 3
With the Jem'Hadar hot on your tails, you'd probably turn your attention to them.
Disengage (from the Breen)
Multifire (you should have everyone in the same increment by now, thanks to your Close, Hard About, and Immelmann Turn). Alternately you can do a Hard About to cancel out the Disengage penalty and line yourself up to attack the Jem'Hadar the next turn.

It sounds like the problem is that you want all this to happen in the span of one round?

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Not really. I thought it'd be possible to cram it up in 2 rounds, but the way you present it, 3 rounds make more sense indeed.

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BTW, Disengage is only dangerous if it’s the last action you perform in a round--as long as you immediately follow it up with a Helm maneuver (any) the -5 penalty goes away. I typically follow a Disengage with an immediate Hard About or Come About and then blast them to the stars the following round.

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Good point.

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Let me know if I'm missing something. :)

The situation you've described is a 3-on-1 battle, so they're taking 6 actions to your 2--you're already understandably in a tight situation. :)

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I still have two ... err, three questions ... and a half ;):

Round 1: Are the prerequisite for the Immelman Turn exclusive, or is a T allowed inbetween? For instance, someone with Combat Piloting can do one additional H maneuver per round (does he get an additional action penalty if he attempts 3 H maneuvers?) ... so round 1 could have been: Close (H), Fire (T), and Hard About (H) ... would this also qualify for an Immelman Turn in round 2?

Round 1 again: As Nog's comment attest it ("Stay on him Ensign!" "I'm trying Sir, but he's sneaky!"), the Breen ship was trying: 1 to shake the Defiant off, and 2 to avoid his pursuer's fire. Is it possible to model this with Coda? I mean, since Coda does not bother much with fire arcs, pursuit is already quite hard to simulate, isn't it?

Round 3: Disengage. It seems to be the only way to effectively switch target if said target is still in the combat area. I don't quite understand the point of this "primary target" rule. Why is it so difficult for a ship to handle more than one ship? For instance, why do most evasive maneuvers apply only to your primary target (when it seems reasonable to think that they're aimed at your primary "targetter"/attacker)? Does this rule attempt to represent something we see on screen? This bugs me as there seems to be some underlying principle in the Coda starship combat that I simply don't get ...

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Originally posted by KillerWhale
I would make out another maneuver, for example:

Tier II
Evasion (Helm)
Prerequisites: Cannot be executed after any Tier III maneuvers.
TN: 15 + 3 per attacker
The ship performs a series of sharp turns to shake off attackers. For each attacker the ship want to shake off beyond the first, the helmsman rolls for gets a +3 malus to the TN.
If the maneuver is successful, the ships lose Lock On. The ships that didn't have Lock On engaged add +3 to their tactical TN rolls to hit the ship for the next round.
The acting ship cannot perform any Tactical maneuvers just after Evasion.
Here goes... What do you think?

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I think I'll use something like that too, but I guess I'll change the TN to 10 + size + 3 per attacker. It seems reasonable to think a D'deridex will have a harder time evading than a Runabout or a Hideki.
It's just that I'd like to be sure I understand the starship combat rules well before I start making up my own maneuvers ... and this is far from being the case right now ;).

Hi!

Yes, I think the maneuverability and size of the ship should affect the TN of maneuvers; but they are already accounted for in the H modifier of the ship...

I think adding the Size would make this way too difficult. What do you think?

I think the system needs "primary target" because it is modeling 3 dimensional action in 1 dimension.

In Decipher's 1 dimensional model it is impossible to keep track of exactly where each ship is in relation to every other ship as well as how they are oriented towards each other. A point of reference is needed to adjudicate the effect of maneuvers. That PoR is the "primary target"

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Originally posted by Calcoran

I don't quite understand the point of this "primary target" rule. Why is it so difficult for a ship to handle more than one ship? For instance, why do most evasive maneuvers apply only to your primary target (when it seems reasonable to think that they're aimed at your primary "targetter"/attacker)? Does this rule attempt to represent something we see on screen? This bugs me as there seems to be some underlying principle in the Coda starship combat that I simply don't get ...

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When I'm GMing, the players often want to do things that don't make any sense to me, or that seem curiously useless.

Players often get an idea in their head, whereby through the execution of a series of actions they produce an effect that wouldn't be evident to someone examining each action individually.

So when I sense this is happening, I always ask 'What are you trying to acheive with this?' They tell me and, since I'm the kind of GM that wants his players to be able to do funky things, I often allow it even though, through a strict interpretation of one or more of the elements of their plan, it wouldn't work.

DecTrek ship combat is, I think, very like this. Since the GM has to adjudicate each maneuver and interpret what the PCs see onscreen, it helps a lot if he knows what the players are trying to do when they execute a maneuver. "Well, we want to get behind them and do this or that." This kind of stuff has spatial crap built into it that the system itself doesn't support, so there's no reason for the GM to know that's "what's going to happen" unless the players tell him.

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Since the GM has to adjudicate each maneuver and interpret what the PCs see onscreen, it helps a lot if he knows what the players are trying to do when they execute a maneuver.

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You're talking about players who know what they want to do and how the rules might allow them to do it (even if the GM might see it differently). Weeelll, my (our) problem occurs even earlier than that.
When it comes to character combat, then I usually manage to stay on top of things: whether my players know what they're doing and I just have to tell them if they succeed (it usually isn't that difficult to figure out what they're trying to achieve), or whether they know what they want to do and ask advice about the how, everything is rather easy to envision. I mean, a character who sprints is just ... well, running very fast, there are no two ways you can understand what this means.
Now starship combat is a completely different beast. There are those maneuvers. IMbnmshO, they participate a lot to the unique feel of CODA starship combat ... if only they weren't so hard to understand. There are actually two things that get in the way when we attempt some:

• Names: I had a similar problem with Traits from the PG ... somehow, from the name of the Maneuver (alt. Trait), if I try to guess what it does I usually get it wrong. Sure, I'm not a native speaker, so it may be my English that gets in the way, but as a matter of fact I never had this kind of problem with other games.
• Doing something: This is actually a corollary of the first problem. When I or my player want to do some fancy move, each time we go: "all right, how does this translate in terms of maneuvers?". And lo, here we go reading the all the helm maneuvers again to find those that correspond partly to the envisioned move. Then we have to discuss about 5 minutes to select one or two of the 5 maneuvers that probably could fit, without doing exactly what we'd like them to do.

All right, maybe I'm exagerating a bit. Well, maybe we're just clueless, too. And maybe it's just a learning curve thingy, maybe CODA starship combat takes more time to get accustomed to than others ...

What I'd say the system lacks is a list of maneuvers, with an associated visual representation of what it does or could do. I sure wish I had some computer-artistic of some kind to do it myself ;).

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Originally posted by Calcoran
Doing something: This is actually a corollary of the first problem. When I or my player want to do some fancy move, each time we go: "all right, how does this translate in terms of maneuvers?". And lo, here we go reading the all the helm maneuvers again to find those that correspond partly to the envisioned move. Then we have to discuss about 5 minutes to select one or two of the 5 maneuvers that probably could fit, without doing exactly what we'd like them to do.

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Okay, maybe this is a really stupid idea, but if you'd like a table of the maneuvers, then why don't you just write it yourself? That could give you something like:
Maneuver XXX - no change to range - damage increases - against one opponent only
Maneuver YYY - range closes - no change to damage - bonus to protection
.....

IMHO visual representations might not be a big help at all, as they could just as well "railroad" your imagination. I believe it would be best to think of the maneuvers strictly as a tool to achieve a certain result and not look too closely at the descriptions of said maneuvers.
That way it becomes easier to achieve the result you want, even if the stunt you want to pull of doesn't fit any description in the book.

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Originally posted by Lancer

Okay, maybe this is a really stupid idea, but if you'd like a table of the maneuvers, then why don't you just write it yourself?

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Well, because I'd have to be sure I understand it first :D.

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IMHO visual representations might not be a big help at all, as they could just as well "railroad" your imagination. I believe it would be best to think of the maneuvers strictly as a tool to achieve a certain result and not look too closely at the descriptions of said maneuvers.
That way it becomes easier to achieve the result you want, even if the stunt you want to pull of doesn't fit any description in the book.

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Not necessarily. I think a visual clue would be a real help in determining the maneuver(s) you need: As a matter of fact, we humans are much better at finding visual clues than we are at reading a list hoping a clue word will catch our eyes. I mean, as a GM, I think I'll be able to understand maneuvers in the end ;), but it seems rather fair to me that players should be able to see this chart too, and my players have a tendency to forget rules easily (we only play once every 3 months or so).
Anyhow, on the railroading problem ... I thing ST starship combat has not much in common with SW starship combat. In SW, fighters and small vessels zoom around and are able to do pretty much what they want to: attack, dodge, and so on, it's all pretty similar to standard combat, only in 3D (from a RPG point of view of course). In ST, what we see are mostly big ships, lumbering into position, firing, and basically trying to get an edge over the other crafts by maneuvers. That's precisely why I like maeuvers, although they torture my brain every time I have to use them ;). Because they ... not so much railroad you, but because they simulate pretty well the constraints under which you have to work. I mean, even the best Defiant or runabout dodge seems clumsy compared to X-wings whirling around. Because ST crafts basically have constraints that SW's space opera prefers to ignore. I'm not saying that ST's constraints are more realistic than the lack thereof in SW, nor am I saying that I prefer one or the other ... They simply have a different feel, and CODA renders that rather well IMO ... it's just that it'd be really great if it was easier to chose maneuvers.

Oh, about maneuvers, will we see somewhere in Decipher's supplements some of those spiffy maneuvers as shown in the shows? ("Lieutenant, evasive maneuver Omega 3!" "Yes, Sir!") It'd be great!

All right, I'm no good with computer drawing and such, but when I really put myself to it, I usually manage to create nice explanatory diagrams.
As I said above I thought it would be a nice idea to create a list of available maneuvers, each with an explanatory diagram or two. This would probably not be extremely useful for GMs (except for me ;) ) , but I think players would benefit from it. There always are players who are more interested in playing than learning the rules, and giving them a sheet with all maneuvers nicely listed and explained would make it a lot easier than having to tell them how to do what every time a starship combat happens. ;)

Anyhow, I'd be quite willing to give it a try, and then post it here if anyone is interested (...hellooooooo, anyone?...). The only problem is that I'd hate to spend half an hour on a diagram, only to realize afterward that I had understood the maneuver wrong. Hence the favor I ask ;). Actually, I think it's something that the starship combat in the NG lacks: examples. There is in my opinon (YMMV) not enough of them, especially in the maneuvers section.
Anyhow, this is why I ask here ... could anyone involved in the developing or playtesting process of the NG try to give me a small example of each Helm maneuver (and Command maneuvers maybe?). Not an example of how to apply the rules, I think those are explained well enough in the NG. Rather, what would we see if this maneuver was to be filmed and put into an episode? Don? Doug?
I know this is a lot to ask, because there are quite a lot of them, but this'd help me a great deal :).

Oh, by the way, no word on my question about spiffy maneuvers like we saw in DS9?