Hey /tg/ I need your help. Are there any good systems that do a good job of simulating space battles between space fleets (anywhere between duels between frigates all the way up to massive battles between capital ship squadrons)? I was hoping for something similar to the Star Wars movies in terms of how the science works (in that science doesn't matter at all).
I'm running a space opera game for my friends in a couple of weeks, and I'm not certain what system will be best for simulating battles between their forces and the enemies' starfleets.
>>43634025
Until you guys come up with something I'll just dump some images of starships.
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>>43634061
>>43634061
>>43634073
>>43634086
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>>43634191
What's the difference between plasma, pulse and particle weapons?
I'm trying to assign them to difference alien races as warship weapons for differences in flavor, but I realized I don't know that much about the weapons themselves. I was thinking the style of weapon could be used to reflect a culture or military style.
I need the opposite of OP. What are nice and light systems for up to 5 Player Characters.
>>43634025
>>43634549
Traveler
>>43634423
they're arbitrarily assigned by whatever setting they're in. there's really no standard.
>>43634423
>Plasma
Plasma is essentially regular matter, superheated to the point where it's ionized. This means it's super hot. A cloud of plasma can be sent traveling very quickly, for kinetic damage, and be very hot, for thermal damage as well. Since the particles are all positively charged, the cloud spreads out rapidly, leading to short range
>Pulse
Pulse weapons, in terms of a Pulse Rifle like in Aliens, refers to a regular gun that uses something like a spark plug to ignite the propellant rather than striking a spark off a piece of metal like modern guns do. "Pulse Rifle" has also sort of become a generic term for any sort of energy rifle, like the Geth Pulse Rifle from Mass Effect, which is just a plasma gun.
>Particle
Particle weapons are essentially weaponized particle accelerators. They'd shoot a coherent beam, probably of protons, towards their target, and deal damage with the kinetic energy of the protons and the secondary radiation caused when those protons split the target atoms.
>>43634607
>striking a spark off a piece of metal like modern guns do
is it the 1600s in here?
>>43634423
I don't think there's any official difference, since they're mostly made up. But here's my take:
>Plasma
Fires discrete "plasma bolts" of some kind, presumably plasmoids, at high velocities. Unlike any actual plasma phenomenon, carries a large amount of momentum and penetrating power, making them something like space cannonballs.
Alternately, maybe they're Casaba-Howitzer weapons: Shaped nuclear charges, adapted from Orion drive that can direct large fractions of the energy of a small nuclear bomb into a very tight cone of relativistic metal plasma just a handful of degrees wide. Extremely short-range compared to lasers, has to be ejected to a significant distance before launching lest the other 50% of the nuke's energy not focused into the beam damage your ship (thereby giving the enemy the potential to see it coming and dodge), and requires physical ammunition, but with an unbeatable level of power per shot.
>Pulse
Fires a pulsed laser - an ultra-high-intensity laser rapidly discharged at a target, flashing the skin to plasma and blasting a crater, with the next pulse arriving at the target to blast a deeper hole just after the vaporized material from the last pulse has cleared. Because of the extremely high power requirements, it must be charged up before firing the next train of brief pulses so the accumulated energy can be discharged all at once, and the low efficiency of lasers means that a very large amount of waste heat is built up as well, and it's not as damaging. But you get unbeatable range and accuracy.
>>43635115
>Particle
Fires a continuous, focused stream of high-energy charged particles; basically a particle accelerator with one end open. Something rather like a laser, but packing much more punch, with deeper penetration that could simply bypass armor (made worse by the high-energy X-rays emitted when a charged particle beam is decelerated by solid matter), and with higher efficiency. They're lethal on electronics and worse on crew, without needing to physically cut the armor. Downside? They're very large, running the whole length of the ship, and they too have rather short range. They can also be deflected by electromagnetic fields.
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>>43634025
Star Wars: Armada
Firestorm: Armada
Battlefleet: Gothic
Firestorm is probably your best bet at the moment as it has the widest variety of available ships.
That said, it's kinda meh.
This should be usable fer ya OP
I'm surprised nobody mentioned Full Thrust. All free online, highly customisable, and can scale however you want, e.g. The basic battery could be just a turret, or it could be a full battery.
>>43634607
>rather than striking a spark off a piece of metal like modern guns do.
That's not how modern guns work...
>>43635802
I haven't tried out Full Thrust yet, if I'm using the basic ships does scale matter too much? Or should just roughly matching the size/shape work?
>>43634423
>Plasma
Cloud of ionised gas, assuming a space ship is already designed to withstand re-entry then fuck all happens most of the time; otherwise superheating, electronics fucked. If you have enough plasma then You might manage to melt a hole, probably not though.
Plasma is hard to cohere though, for long distances it would require a strong magnetic or electric field to direct it (see plasma loops on the sun). If your target is using a strong EM field for whatever reason on their own ship then they just focused your weapon for you, unless they used the field to deflect it. (EM is non trivial and it depends on what the field is doing whether it will direct the plasma into the ship or away from it)
>Pulse
This means nothing by itself, but I'll interpret it as a pulsed laser. Much weaker than plasma, benefits are that unless you have a mirror that blocks in the frequency range of the laser, then you cant stop it, and it travels at the speed of light, so good luck avoiding it. Downside is that at best it can just heat stuff up, if you heat something up enough you might cut through. This wont fuck electronics unless you cut them.
>Particle
High energy particle, if the particle is charged it is just a very thin beam that acts as the plasma above, if it is neutral it acts as the pulse above. Particles have a high enough velocity that you can assume they are almost at the speed of light.
>Kinetic
Will cause hull punctures and cause depressurisation hell, literally no reason not to just use this. First thing you should do when designing a setting that wants to use plasma weaponry is develop a reason people arent just using good old kinetics.
>>43634025
Traveller. Mongoose edition with high guard for vectors and capital ships.
Can't have space combat without vectors
Why not play Full Thrust?
>>43636821
Looking through the rules it feels like starcraft on paper, with damage bars for each ship.
It doesn't use vectors properly either, you just increase or decrease your speed, and then sacrifice speed to change facing. Using vectors would simplify it a lot.
>>43636869
check vanguard free rpg
>>43636202
OP here, that's kind of what I'm looking for. Something that doesn't have vectors. I need something that can abstract a starship battle, and also isn't too tied to realism.
>>43638490
FFG Star Wars RPG, Age of Rebellion to be exact. Capital ships, rules for firing everything in a ship's arc, only downside is fighters die very quickly.
>>43635802
Me and my friends have been playing Full Thrust for a while. I find that it has a really nice balance between crunchiness and speed-of-play. I've been planning on using it for a space opera campaign, but I haven't yet.
http://www.paulradford.mistral.co.uk/ft/camrules.html
made for interesting reading on setting up a campaign system for the game. It may or may not be useful for you.
>>43638490
you can abstract movement in Traveller core rules. not a vector in sight. you should check them out.
