CODA Starship Combat

[FDor]

Hi

I have a short question about starship combat this time.
In NG in Attacking & Damage (pg 114) is stated that when target is hit (System Ops (tactical) is equal or more than protection) well target's shield strenght drops (1-5 above TN drops it by 1, 6-10 above by 2).
In Battle damage the same page it is stated that weapons do damage only if their penetration is higher than shield threshold.

Does shield strenght drop when they are hit even if weapon's penetrations is less than shield's protection rating?

Thank you,

Vesku

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by FDor
Does shield strenght drop when they are hit even if weapon's penetrations is less than shield's protection rating?

Yes. You can wear down a ship's shields without necessarily penetrating and doing internal damage.

[Imagus]

Originally posted by Don Mappin
Yes. You can wear down a ship's shields without necessarily penetrating and doing internal damage.

I finally got to run some ship combat last night, and proved this was true.

The scenario was a b'rel-class bird of prey vs a Miranda both built by yours truly with the NG rules. The Fed ship was bigger and had better weaponry, but the shields were fairly equal. Specifically, they both had shields of protection 14, threshold 3 - while the Fed's weapons were doing 4 points of penetration and the Klingon's were only doing 3.

The upshot of this was that as the two pounded away at each other (circumstances ensured a minimum of manouevring), the Fed vessel got continual internal hits on the Klingon (pen 4 vs threshold 3), but the Klingon was unable to overcome their shields.

However, each hit from the Klingon reduced the cruiser's shield efficiency by 1 (the 10 point track nobody's mentioned yet . As it dropped in value, various consoles blew out, and then the shields began to fail.

A lucky hit on the Klingon eliminated its weapon control and brought the fight to an end, but one more hit on the Miranda would have reduced her threshold by 1. At that point things would have gotten more interesting as the Klingon could then hurt her badly.

I found the system worked extremely smoothly once I'd gotten the hang of it, although having three separate sets of shield numbers to track (protection rating, threshold and efficiency) was a little confusing!

(Next time I prepare in advance )

Regarding multi-ship stuff, I'm seriously looking at Agents of Gaming's Fleet Action as a possibility. It's the only game system I've seen explicitly designed for fleet ops (you can't have two ship battles with it), and the latest version is multi-genre. Merging it with the Code rules might be worth experimenting!

[Kodiak]

Imagus,
One thing that you might want to try the next time you send a B’rel against a Miranda is to use the spread maneuver, this allows you to trade in penetration for a bonus to-hit, a greater success will allow you to do more damage to the shields, and you aren’t going to penetrate the shields until you do damage, with collapsing the shields (usually at 2 or 3 levels per spread maneuver), you’ll do two primary hits and then you’ll have downed the shields and then can attack without having to deal with the threshold.
At least that is how it looks going over the rules in the NG, it doesn’t have the feel of Star Trek, so I’m a bit suspicious about what was supposed to happen with the spread maneuver. If someone with better knowledge would like to set me straight on how it is supposed to work, I’d really like to know why it works the way that it does and how a battle is supposed to evolve.
-Kodiak

[Imagus]

Originally posted by Kodiak
Imagus,
One thing that you might want to try the next time you send a B’rel against a Miranda is to use the spread maneuver, this allows you to trade in penetration for a bonus to-hit, a greater success will allow you to do more damage to the shields, and you aren’t going to penetrate the shields until you do damage, with collapsing the shields (usually at 2 or 3 levels per spread maneuver), you’ll do two primary hits and then you’ll have downed the shields and then can attack without having to deal with the threshold.
At least that is how it looks going over the rules in the NG, it doesn’t have the feel of Star Trek, so I’m a bit suspicious about what was supposed to happen with the spread maneuver. If someone with better knowledge would like to set me straight on how it is supposed to work, I’d really like to know why it works the way that it does and how a battle is supposed to evolve.
-Kodiak

TBH, that wasn't what I was trying for. I run a very cinematic/story-telling game - I didn't want the B'rel to destroy the PC's ship. The players were supposed to win! Which is one reason I gave them a bigger ship...

The only change I'd make to what I did, was know the rules a little better and use the manouevres properly. But this was the first time I'd run it. I thought it worked ok.

While I see your point about spread, I think it's not really meant to be used this way. Firing stuff in different directions is more likely to hit, but less likely to hit solidly, so I think I'd reduce the success level for purposes of damage by at least one category for a successful hit!

This would of course have been an ideal way to get past the B'rel's cloak in the first place. I just ruled the commander was somewhat gung-ho - and if Kruge could defeat a Connie, of course he could deal with a Miranda

[Kodiak]

True, I agree with your point, I was just hoping to get some response to the Spread maneuver. One thought that I had was limiting the amount of shield damage that a ship could to do the its penetration, so if a ship reduced penetration to one, it would very likely do one, but only one, point of shield damage.
-Kodiak

[Imagus]

Originally posted by Kodiak
True, I agree with your point, I was just hoping to get some response to the Spread maneuver. One thought that I had was limiting the amount of shield damage that a ship could to do the its penetration, so if a ship reduced penetration to one, it would very likely do one, but only one, point of shield damage.
-Kodiak

Like I say, I think your best bit is Ignore the bonus from spread when it comes to assessing the degree of success (in other words the spread just makes it easier to hit at all). You could even reduce the degree of success (minimum - basic hit) if spreading.

[Don Mappin]

A comment on the spread maneuver. (Sadly, I don't have my books with me to reference, so a little latitude is appreciated.)

This certainly would appear to be a valid tactic, but as with most tactics only useful in certain situations. For example, when facing a starship with a vastly superior protection rating (and threshold), using spread is a good way to try to buckle their shields and cause significant damage. I don't see anything wrong with this. Don't forget that such an attempt would take 4-5 actions (providing you hit for maximum effect every time) to succeed. During this time the opposing vessel is either shooting at you, evading in some manner, or countering your effects. Starship combat is not a static affair. The opposing engineer could re-enforce their shields, the helmsman counter with some tricky evasions, or other combinations.

Also, in "Starships," this maneuver would be fairly ineffective against vessels with regenerative shielding. Meanwhile you're getting pounded with some truly frightening penetration values in the double-digits. I'm not sure you'll want to be using "spread" exclusively in such a situation. Trying to lower a vessel's shields is a valid tactic in of itself in order to force a surrender (you don't want to destroy them), beam over an Away Team to capture the vessel, or beam off something that you desire (captured Starfleet officers). That's a big reason as to why the spread maneuver exists, so you can try these types of things.

So, is it a valid tactic? Yes. Are you somehow exploiting some loophole in the system that will allow you to defeat any vessel you meet? Absolutely not.

Great idea. Keep 'em coming.

[Kodiak]

In the NG most ships have thresholds between 3 and 4 (with the exception of U.S.S. Voyager), while penetration ratings are between 2 (for some long range phaser fire) and 6 (close range pulse phaser fire). The opening stages of any battle is going to begin with torpedo fire (unless one side holds fire to come about and close) likely resulting in one or maybe two points (only against a D7) of hull damage, while a single turn of spread-fire (two actions) will result in a primary hit, depending on what is hit this could quickly turn the tide of battle, by either making maneuvers more difficult or by causing damage to weapon systems. Granted that for the most part while you’re taking out a primary system, you will lose (assuming the other guy hit) two points of structure damage, this is a fair trade, if you have more structure or better systems. On some small ships, even a single point of damage can put systems completely offline, while on larger ships systems can be seriously damaged.
While boosting power to shields works, it is a limited resource that is mainly available to larger ships (a nice touch, BTW) and quickly depleted, without causing impairments to a ships fighting ability. Additionally, if a ship is going up against three smaller ships (even size 2 fighters, as long as they have penetration 4 torpedoes) will be all but guarantied to lose its shields on turn 1, and suffer major hull and system damage (first two fighters fire two full spreads +9, unless the ship is lucky, both with score extraordinary successes, doing 12 pts of shield damage), while the last one puts 8 points of hull damage into the ship, brining to the total for a small squadron of fighters to three primary system hits, and eight hull damage points.
It sounds like “Starships” will redefine starship tactics, or at least redefine ship stats. Would it be possible to get a taste of what will be in “Starships” in terms of new systems and or new ships? Perhaps a table of contents? If no to both, would it be possible to know if rules for multi-ship engagements are included?
-Kodiak

[Imagus]

Originally posted by Don Mappin
So, is it a valid tactic? Yes. Are you somehow exploiting some loophole in the system that will allow you to defeat any vessel you meet? Absolutely not.

Ah, put like that it makes more sense! Basically what you're doing is firing to miss the hull but hit the shields in several places, thus reducing them rapidly with minimal physical damage.

Kodiak's suggestions then become reasonable - and explain the "attack fighters" seen in DS9. Especially considering Starfleet's apparent distaste for small easily-killed ships.

Just for the record, I think Kodiak's calculations on the statistics are actually assuming extremely good rolls.

Assume a starship with a shield PR of 14, and the fighter has 4 torpedo tubes (for that 4 penetration - it's basically a flying torpedo launcher), and a pilot with a +4 bonus (primary skill) - you'll average 7 + 4 + 9 = 20, which is only a superior success. You'd need a 12 (1 shot in 36) or a 9 (with lock-on - 10 in 36). PCs might do better, but they're rarely in fighters!

The end result may be the same, but it will take a lot longer...

[Kodiak]

I wasn’t assuming extremely good rolls, but I was thinking that the crew would be more skilled, +1 attribute, +6 skill, +2 specialization, for a total bonus of +9, for a extraordinary success. The idea behind the +9 total is that NPCs (especially in fighters) will be “combat pilots,” very focused training, or the captains of larger ships will have been around the block a few times and gained experience on the job. Now that I look in the characters section of the NG, those numbers seems a bit out of place, compared to the professionals.

However, even assuming a superior success, seven fighters (5 to knock down, 2 to shoot at the hull) will do eight points of structural damage, and three primary hits, just the thing to make it so that a Galaxy class starship can come in finish the ship off, either by capitalizing on the fact that with out shields, the protection value is extremely low, and you can use multi-weapon and multi-fire to damage a fair number of ships. Hmm, I see doctrine approaching. Send in the fighters, knock down enemy shields and do some hull damage, then have you heavy ships come in and use multi-fire with torpedoes (the Intrepid looks good for this) hmm…..

-Kodiak

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Imagus
Just for the record, I think Kodiak's calculations on the statistics are actually assuming extremely good rolls.

I agree as I stayed up and did the math last night with 3 fighters against an Intrepid. The Intrepid spanked them around without too much difficulty. Of course, if he's planning on giving all the bad guys a +9 (!) then it would get a bit more difficult, but not impossible.

Essentially, you can't bank on that extraordinary success on every shot like his figures are. I can pretty much destroy/disable one fighter a round without too much difficulty with a rookie ("green") crew straight out of the PG, depending on the range the vessels start at.

As the vessels/situations change so do the methods to counter this tactic.

As it should be, IMO.

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Kodiak
However, even assuming a superior success, seven fighters (5 to knock down, 2 to shoot at the hull) will do...

Seven on one? Egads.

LOL.

[Kodiak]

I think that we may not be looking at the same idea for fighters. The fighter idea that I have been using as a base line is:

Starfleet Tactical Support Fighter
Size 2 29 (1 deck, 2 crew (pilot and gunner)
Operations: Class 1 1
Life Support: Class 1 1
Sensors: Class 1 1
Impulse: Class 8 7 (.95c)
Warp: Class 4 3 (4/6/7)
2xType II Photon Torpedoes 6 (4/4/4/4/4)
Deflector Shield: Class 3 10 (14/3)

Assuming that things start at long range and each side makes a helm maneuver (either come about or close/open) and the other is a fire or spread maneuver, I do not see how it is possible that an Intrepid could destroy one fighter (at long range, 2 points of damage per attack, so at least 5 shots), while during the same time period the fighters will get in 3 shots per turn, turn 1 shields are hit for six damage, turn 2 another six, but let’s be optimistic and say that three points got restored, turn 3, one fighter downs the shields, the other two do eight points of damage, turn 4 and 5, all three fighters attack, doing 12 points of damage, at this point he Intrepid has lost 20 points of hull and destroyed one fighter, unless I’m missing something.

BTW, even trading seven fighters for one Intrepid is a good deal, 14 lives for 150, the dockyard time and space needed to replace the Intrepid, balanced against the replaceable nature of fighters. It maybe cruel, but trading even a dozen fighters to take down a battleship is a good deal.
-Kodiak

[aelius]

I agree with Kodiak, he might be slightly optimistic but he has the right idea.
It makes allocating 10 spaces on an Akira for 5 shuttle bays to carry 16 fighters a good deal.
By the way Doug, I hope the Akira's do have large shuttlebay's.