CODA Starship Combat

[Kodiak]

Hello,
I don’t have the CODA books (yet), and I’d like to know a little bit more about how combat is handled in the system, would it be possible for some what to point me to an example of CODA starship combat?
Thanks!
-Kodiak

[Champions Guru]

It's a rather simple system, but flawed in some ways IMHO. Its made to be more cinematic than tactical. It's made for one on one battles, as a single ship against two more ships is at a really bad disadvantage.

The combat system is quite easy, each ship can make two actions in a round, either Helm, Command or Tactical, these are situational.

The Narrator's tells you what range you start at the beginning of combat. Distance is done on a scale givin in the book and not on the tabletop. You roll initiative by making the captain of each ship roll a Tactics skill + 2D6 modified by how good a crew he has, highest roll wins initiative.

After initiative each ship's crew picks a primary target and all the manuevers you make only affect that one target. No matter how good a tactical or command manuever you might make it can only affect the ship you chose as primary target. So if you are fighting two or more ships you could only get one at a disadvantage. But they warn you that its not a tactical system upfront. This is the weakest point of the system IMHO.

Like I said you get two movements and these are based on what situation you are in. To hit you roll 2D6 + Systems Operation (Tactical) skill, again modified by crew versus a ship's shield protection value plus or minus any modifiers for manuevers. If a weapon (usually in banks) penetration value is higher than the shield protection value then damage taken to the ships superstructure. For every 5 points of damage gets through a system onboard the ship takes a critical hit and degrades causing penalties. If the superstructure falls to 0 (zero) the ship is destroyed.

That's pretty much CODA starship combat in a nutshell.

Ship creation is really simple and can be manipulated very well if your Narrator doesn't keep an eye on things.

If I missed anything I'm sure it will be made known.

Hope this helps,

Da Guru

[qerlin]

Da Guru got it really short and really sweet.

S'a good system.

[Kodiak]

Very cool, thank you Champions Guru, I have four follow up questions:
1) What does this mean for one on one engagements between large ships and small ships, it looks like a large ship could pound on a smaller ship with out the smaller ship having an effective reply.
2) Shields – in the ICON system they leaked, it doesn’t sound like the same thing happens in CODA, but I assume that you can destroy part of the shield so that the next shot will not have to deal with the shield threshold?
3) With regards to movement, how do you change track positions?
4) Multi-ship combat – you said that combat takes place on a track, would it be possible (in your mind) to replace the track with hexes and use the system normally?
Thanks!
-Kodiak

[mattcolville]

Originally posted by Kodiak
Very cool, thank you Champions Guru, I have four follow up questions:
1) What does this mean for one on one engagements between large ships and small ships, it looks like a large ship could pound on a smaller ship with out the smaller ship having an effective reply.
2) Shields – in the ICON system they leaked, it doesn’t sound like the same thing happens in CODA, but I assume that you can destroy part of the shield so that the next shot will not have to deal with the shield threshold?
3) With regards to movement, how do you change track positions?
4) Multi-ship combat – you said that combat takes place on a track, would it be possible (in your mind) to replace the track with hexes and use the system normally?
Thanks!
-Kodiak

I should start by saying; I'm not sure why, exactly, all the maneuvers only affect your primary target. Jess and I just talked about it and we agree that something should be done about that. The way Come About works doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Rather than errata what already exists, Jess may want to add maneuvers like Evade that work against everyone.

The system really cannot be used tactically, it wouldn't make any sense. How you change track positions is easy. If you or your opponent close distance, move the ships one range category closer, or more if you close more. Ditto for moving away. If you've got multiple ships, just stack the range markers on top of each other and now you can keep track of each ship's distance to each other ships. You really can run lots of ships at one time, in fact it's a lot easier to run multiple ships in CODA combat than any kind of tactical game.

Exactly how to use the tracks may not be immediately obvious. In fact, you don't need them at all if you're only doing two ships, the narrator and the helmsman should easily be able to just jot down the range between two ships. We didn't have enough room in the layout for the example I wanted. I may mock something up that would be more useful.

[Kodiak]

Okay,
One of the things that I'd like to do is play around with larger scale operations, so while it wouldn't be perfect, do you think that it would work for giving a reasonable aproximation of fleet actions?
-Kodiak

[Lancer]

I don't think the rules would work for fleet actions. As Champions Guru pointed out the system is more cinematic than tactical, so fleet actions would turn
(a) into a major headache, trying to keep track of each and every ship in a system that was never designed to handle this, or
(b) into a combat that concentrates on the player's ship and uses the rest of the action as "windowdressing", i.e. something only described to the players, but not played out in any detail.

One way around this problem may be to combine several ship's stats into an "aggregate value", the same way Spacedock handles fleet actions.
But how you would go about actualy doing this is beyond my current creativity.

[mattcolville]

Originally posted by Kodiak
Okay,
One of the things that I'd like to do is play around with larger scale operations, so while it wouldn't be perfect, do you think that it would work for giving a reasonable aproximation of fleet actions?
-Kodiak

Ah, no. Fleet Operations would require. . .really a different system I think. I'm not sure any abstract system for fleet operations would make me happy. So you've have to break out the minis. If things move forward as we'd like them to with Engage, there would eventually be Fleet Action rules.

[Kodiak]

What I'm thinking of is something along the lines of Book 5: High Guard for Classic Traveller, you chose range (dependent on maneuverability and number of ships) and then you attacked with weapons that worked differently and different ranges.
It should work untill Engage is produced at any rate.
-Kodiak

[Kronok]

Originally posted by Kodiak
What I'm thinking of is something along the lines of Book 5: High Guard for Classic Traveller, you chose range (dependent on maneuverability and number of ships) and then you attacked with weapons that worked differently and different ranges.
It should work untill Engage is produced at any rate.
-Kodiak

CODA starship combat does this. It is very simple (i.e. little depth or complexity), but makes for some easy/quick gameplay.

[Fortunae]

An optional temporary fix for handling fleet battles until they release one for CODA (if you aren't just going to use Space Dock of course) is the Space Opera Mass Combat system found in GURPS SPACE and GURPS Compendium One. It's not perfect, but with only a little tweakage you can make it work for you, with no minatures, no battle maps.

Peace

[Kodiak]

Hi Fortunae ,
Thanks for the advice on using GURPS Space, I had a chance to take a look at it, I'm not sure that it does a better job. I also had a chance to play around with the CODA starship combat and... it provides some interesting results and ideas (I'll be starting another thread with those questions) and I think that it will work for what I want.
-Kodiak

[qerlin]

Originally posted by Kodiak
Okay,
One of the things that I'd like to do is play around with larger scale operations, so while it wouldn't be perfect, do you think that it would work for giving a reasonable aproximation of fleet actions?
-Kodiak

Look at the LOTR and the Dominion War thread. I slapped some fleet scale rules and ground combat rules together using the LOTR's mass battle rules.

[Kodiak]

The LORT/Dominion War thread is very interesting for large fleet battles, but I'm looking for more detail, with reguards to damage, the LORT mass battle rules are a good start for strategic games, but you lose the detail of the U.S.S. Galaxy coming back to port with 21 points of structure damage, weapons offline and shields are all but destroyed and what the ship did during the battle. With the track system, it seems like it wouldn't be a problem to turn it into a range system and put the ships on a hex map, becouse everything is taken in relation to the primary target, it shouldn't be a problem, although the effect of a failed Close or Open maneuver might be a bit interesting.
-Kodiak

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by mattcolville
I should start by saying; I'm not sure why, exactly, all the maneuvers only affect your primary target. Jess and I just talked about it and we agree that something should be done about that. The way Come About works doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Rather than errata what already exists, Jess may want to add maneuvers like Evade that work against everyone.

I addressed this slightly in Starships -- there are maneuvers that affect more that just the vessel that you have Locked On. I also don't know where the "maneuvers only affect the vessel you have Locked On" came from. Matt and I never intended this.

System "manipulation" as CG mentioned has also been addressed in Starships. It's a bit harder to bend the system to try to get away with stuff now. However, I believe we've kept the flexibility of the system intact which is a large concern of mine.

I disagree with Matt on the fleet action. I've actually written up material for detailed/group fleet action that didn't make it into Starships because of word count. Perhaps when the book comes out we'll make it available as a free download, otherwise I'll hold onto it for the sequel.