Penalties for size.

[Rimmer]

One of my PC's just reminded me of a rule that i had overlooked (that will teach me for speed reading ) that of a "to hit" penalty based on differing size levels, for example a "Soverign" class (size 9) has a -5 penalty to hit a "Defiant" class which is size 4, making it near impossible for the bigger ship to hit anything but vaccum

Any help would be appreciated.

[Owen E Oulton]

Considering the relative actual sizes and the distances at which combat takes place, the realistic difference in sizes should make little difference. I tend to ignore tis penalty. It makes even less sense considering that the penalty is based on the difference in size between the two ships and not the absolute size of the targeted ship. Why, in the name of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, should it be harder for a Size 9 ship to hit a Size 4, than it would be for a Size 6?

[Rimmer]

I think that, that would be the best way to go, and just ignore that rule and pretend that it never existed.

[TFVanguard]

Yeah, the targeting systems would be roughly the same 'size' as far as their relative skills would be. IE, the Saladin's weapon systems would be just as effective at hitting an Orion pod as the Constitution or the Soverign. I could see smaller targets getting /some/ size advantage , but it wouldn't depend at all on the firing ship.

So, say a Corvette gets a +4 'profile' bonus.. that would apply to any ship trying to hit her, since all ships use rougly the same scale weapon systems.

Exceptions would be things like the Cornacopia of Death, which is geared towards more massive targets, and is designed for such. Or man-to-man weapons since they're designed for man-sized targets, etc...

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

I always looked at the differences as a measure of maneuverability and its effects to achieve a lock on the target because of this (dis)advantage. I'd have to look at the basic rules again but I know Spacedock has rules for negating various combat modifiers including size.

Regards,
CKV.

[TFVanguard]

I always looked at the differences as a measure of maneuverability and its effects to achieve a lock on the target because of this (dis)advantage. I'd have to look at the basic rules again but I know Spacedock has rules for negating various combat modifiers including size.

Well, Trek isn't the first game to suffer from this flaw, and likely won't be the last. You have to remember that the thing firing is basically a human in size, though. It's not the whole ship doing it, as if it were just a really big guy holding a gun, it's just the weapons system which is, in turn, scaled for human operators.

Most editions of Star Wars, for instance, treated the ship size differences as key and not keeping track the it's the gunner who should be checked. By this, most versions made the Death Star and Star Destroyers nothing but big completely non-threatening targets because they cannot hit most targets, while smaller ships going after them simply cannot miss.

In Trek terms, the Defiant could take out a Borg Cube ,and, in fact, have a strong survivability against one while the Big E would just get whopped around since it WILL get hit more often and more likely to miss. Make sense? No.

Some games will kludge on this with 'targeting bonuses', but the problem is the initial thinking with the rule. Flat out the size penalty or bonus for the attacking ship, and keep the bonus or penalty for the target. The rule will then make a lot more sense.

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

Spacedock does have rules for the tactical officer to target smaller more maneuverable ships, thereby eliminating this penalty and trust me in Spacedock, the Borg Cube would eliminate the Defiant in seconds.

Our Wolf 359 battle proved the effectiveness of the Borg Cube.

Again without looking at the basic rules again to double check, I'm pretty sure you could adapt a similar mechanism if it is not already in there. In the few battles we did have with the basic system, the size penalties were never a huge issue anyway that we found.

Regards,
CKV.

[TFVanguard]

Again without looking at the basic rules again to double check, I'm pretty sure you could adapt a similar mechanism if it is not already in there. In the few battles we did have with the basic system, the size penalties were never a huge issue anyway that we found.

I'll check it in the morning.

Decipher seemed to default to 'pretty much everything will /hit/, but getting through shields may be a pain', much the same way that we see in most of Star Trek anyway. (Only one ship was able to be 'too fast' for the Enterprise to lock well, and that was an extremely unusual circumstance.) I imagine that LUG defaults to the same direction.

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

I just did a quick skim.

LUG keeps the size penalties in the basic version of space combat but allows for a sensor test to affect the number of dice a tactical officer can have as an addition to his own test.

However, while the size modifier can make quite the difference at longer ranges it and to some extent in close, you can either leave it as is...ignore it as is mentioned as one option in the basic combat or instead I might suggest switching the sensor test to provide an additional bonus to the actual tactical roll rather then additional dice.

Regards,
CKV.

[Diamond]

Ok, in our game I addressed the size versus maneuverability by making the base target number for starship dodges equal to the size of the dodging starship, modeling that the defiant can not only dodge like mad but that even for supertech targeting systems, it's easier to hit a large target than a small one. Note that the wording of the starship dodge rule is critical to amkeing this balanced: for every 2 the dodger beats the base target #, and only 1 to the firer's to-hit #.

Thus, your helmsman can get a significant but not overwhelming dodge bonus for smaller ships, a slight bonus for medium size ships, and isn't getting a lot of dodging done for the large ships. This replaces the size modifier chart, reducing the amount of thinking you have to do and speeding the game - you were probably rolling a starhip dodge anyway.

[Rimmer]

OK Diamond, let me get this straight. The standard difficulty for s starship dodge i think is 8, for every 2 points that the conn officer beats this number, the attacking ship suffers a 1 point penalty to hit the dodging ship, correct me if i get this wrong, but you are suggesting that we should change the base difficulty of 8, to whatever the size level is for the dodging ship, 4 for "Defiant" class, 8 for "Galaxy" class, 9 for "Soverign" class etc etc, which in turn makes it easier for the smaller ships to execute more effective evasive actions.

Sounds like a good idea, will have to give this a play test to see how it goes.

Cheers.

Oh, and on a side note, my torpedoe problem is solved.

[Diamond]

Yes, exactly. Sorry, I should have communicated that more clearly. I look foreward to hearing how the playtest goes.

[Dan Gurden]

For my money, I would ignore this rule unless a player was targetting manually. But again, considering the ranges concerned, there are going to be some negative modifiers to manual targetting anyway.

This is of course why Starship weapons are Computer aided.

But sometimes manual systems need to come into play...

[Evan van Eyk]

In my group we handle it the following way.
The "base size" is 8 ( as the difficulty number for e.g. the tactics roll ). For each 2 points of the target's size above that 8 the attacking ship may add +1 to the attacking roll, for each 2 below its a -1.
That way to hit a Defiant class vessel you get a -2, no matter how large your ship is. considering the distances and the small size of the ship I think this is realistic. On the other hand anyone only receives a +1 to hit a D'deridex-Class Warbird or +2 for the few size 12 exceptions.