Simulating Star Ship Combat with Paper & Dice

In creating Battle for Gallion's Reach, I wanted to "simulate" star ship combat without too much complexity and yet divert away from the simple two-dice roll or who has the larger number. In fact I really wanted a dice-less mechanic, but I was disappointed to find there aren't any that would do much better than dice. Most dice-less combat mechanics actually are more involved and costly to make than a few dice. So, with this, I created a dice-based combat system. After test playing, however, I realized that it was flat-out boring. It was missing something. Most of the rest of the game - economics and empire management had been reduced to simple formulas in an effort to keep the game playable, fast-moving and open to ages 12 and up, so a dull combat mechanic would really spell doom for the "fun" factor". Let's face it - if you choose to spend $60 on a space game you want some Star Wars-like battles to make it worth the money and time. So I needed to come up with a means of creating these battles without too much complexity. I needed to roughly simulate star ship fleet battles.

FLEETS AND SHIPS

I looked at star ship combat as I would a modern naval battle rather than tanks and soldiers shooting at one another over terrain. Space is open and there is nowhere to hide to gain advantage, so we are looking at ships sailing flat seas firing on one another. Most fleets are made up of squadrons of smaller organizations which themselves are made up of a variety of ships. You have Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers, Torpedo Boats, Submarines, Battleships and Aircraft Carriers. How you assemble these squadrons will determine the sort of battle you are expecting to wage. Carriers give you a long arm. Battleships give to long-range firepower, Destroyers can take out submarines and screen the bigger ships. Submarines and torpedo boats try to use stealth and small size to get in close and sink the big boys.

My first major move in this direction was going from single ship cards to squadrons of ships according to ship type. How one brought these diverse types together in one battle was up to the player. I created a mat to place these cards on and used concept of battle lines with left and right wings. Commanders would face their fleets-off and place their ships in these wings to try and destroy the opponents ship lines. Some ships had long-range weapons while others could only fight close-in. So in combat, long-range fire came first. Any ship that survived it would be able to fire at any ship nearby.

First Incarnation of the Squadron Card

First incarnation of the Ship Combat Mat

NEED SOMETHING BETTER

After test playing this system it was discovered that the dice-rolling mechanic was too involved and cumbersome and complex. So, I adopted the dice mechanic in our new game (under development) called Storm of Steel. In this system the numbers on the squadron card identify which dice are used. 6,8,10,12, or 20-sided die. In this mechanic the highest number rolled "won", meaning if the attacker rolled higher, it was "HIT". If the defender rolled higher it would be a "MISS". Obviously this is a very simplistic combat mechanic. But  for a fast-paced game like this it needed to be. However, since I had so simplified this combat mechanic I needed to add color and some options for the budding star ship admiral that would keep the game interesting and colorful.  I kept the squadron cards and changed the die-rolling mechanic but added to the options available to the players. Using the Fleet battle-line Wing mechanic I added the option to select a Formation for your fleet. This formation would give your fleet advantages in attack and defense and affect the die roll. You could still feed-in reinforcements and use characters such as the Great Admiral, but now the player could affect the outcome by choosing how to use his squadrons according to both formation  and wing.

Second Incarnation of the ship Combat Mat

RANGE BECOMES WEAPONS

Instead of "Long Range" and "Short-Range" changed the labeling to Missile and Beam. So ships such as Leviathans and Battleships could fire missiles (for long range attack) and beams (for short range attack), while cruisers, destroyers and raiders had to survive the hail of missiles to get close enough to use their beams. Acquiring the ability to use Battle Tactics became a technology one would have to research, otherwise one would simply select the standard "line" formation.

SELECTING THE BEST FORMATION

Commanders could determine that they wanted to sacrifice hitting power over defense and therefore they would select the Arrow Formation. All attack die rolls would add 4 to the number rolled. However, any counter-fire would be defended by -4 on the defensive die roll so such a tactic could be very risky. If a commander had a weaker force and wished to survive to counter-fire he would opt for a defensive-heavy formation such as Vanguard. This formation would give his fleet the best chance of survival. Any defensive die rolls would add 2 to the number but any counter-fire would be severely weakened because 2 would have to be subtracted from the roll. This tactic might give the fleet the chance to escape and retreat from battle.

SPECIAL SHIP ABILITY OPTIONS

Finally I considered adding an optional rule that certain ships could help the fleet. For example placing Destroyers in front of Battleships or Leviathans, they could reduce the any missile-fire damage. This would make having Destroyers in a fleet a valuable resource. I also considered having Raiders being able to relay beam fire so short-range Beam-only ships could fire them at long range. This would allow a Fleet Commander to keep his Cruisers in the rear and use them as long-range ships. 

These options are still being worked out at the time of this writing. Clearly this would complicate combat, but might add a large amount of flavor to the game.