A New Calamity Table for Threshold-Limited Magic

Threshold-Limited Magic is one of the great innovations for the standard GURPS Magic system. It was introduced in Thaumatology, based on S. John Ross' Unlimited Mana article from way back when. Threshold-Limited Magic dramatically increases the size of a spell that a wizard can cast while giving wizards the option to risk their lives by casting too much magic too quickly.

Unfortunately, the risks of casting too much magic too quickly are too great. Wizards who use more mana than their Threshold have to roll on the Calamity table, with increasing risks of awful things happening the more the wizard is over the Threshold. Even for a wizard who barely exceeds the Threshold, there is a 25% chance of a fairly severe penalty (Threshold reduced by 33% or more, -3 on all spellcasting rolls) lasting for weeks, and a 5% chance of the wizard acquiring a permanent disadvantage. Greatly exceeding the Threshold and rolling poorly on the Calamity table can cause the wizard to lose the ability to cast spells, permanently alter the state of magic in the world, or possibly explode.

The reason that the severe results of the Calamity table are so unfortunate is that they act as a solid brake on wizards exceeding their Threshold. The Threshold/Calamity interaction is a neat mechanic, but with the results so severe, most wizards aren't going to risk making a Calamity check at all. I think even risk adverse wizards would be more likely to go over their Threshold in difficult situations if there was a bit more of a safety margin.

I mentioned rewriting the Calamity table for my College Ritual Book magic system, and here it is.

Revising the Calamity Table: Design Goals

Thaumatology explicitly states that the sample Calamity table is a suggestion, and the GM can adjust and expand it for flavor and style. What should be the design goals for a new Calamity table?

• Any game mechanic that is only used voluntarily needs to have a positive risk-reward ratio. Rolling on the Calamity table should not be such an obviously bad deal that no one will ever do it. If it is, there's no point in writing up the Calamity table.
• Bad results on the Calamity table should affect the wizard, not anyone else around him. It should not be possible to use the Calamity table as an offensive weapon (for instance, casting a huge spell and using the magical backlash to destroy mana-dependent creatures).
• Minor effects on the Calamity table should fade in a playable period of time.
• Increasing the amount the wizard went over the Threshold should increase the odds and severity of bad things happening.
• It should possible to achieve bad effects without exceeding the wizard's threshold by unreasonable amounts.
• It may be possible to get into some kind of death spiral, but it shouldn't happen just for slightly exceeding Threshold.

The overall principle is to encourage wizards to risk going over the Threshold, so as to actually use the Calamity mechanic.

Calamity Checks and the Calamity Table

To make a Calamity Check, roll 2d and add 1 for every full 5 points by which tally exceeds threshold after this casting. Calamities take effect immediately, but don’t normally cause the spell to fail.

Roll	Effect
2-8	Nothing happens -- this time.
9-10	Until the wizard's tally is reduced to 0, the base cost of casting that spell or ritual is doubled. Increase the multiple by 1 every time this result is rolled again.
11-12	As 9, and the wizard has a -1 penalty to cast that spell until his tally is reduced to 0.
13	As 9, and the wizard has a -1 penalty to cast all spells in the same college until his tally is reduced to 0.
14	Until the wizard's tally is reduced to 0, the base cost of casting all spells or rituals in the same college are doubled. Increase the multiple by 1 every time this result is rolled again. Also, the wizard has a -1 penalty to cast all spells in the same college until his tally is reduced to 0.
15	As 14, but the casting penalty is -2.
16	As 15, but the casting penalty is -3.
17	As 16, and the wizard's Magery is reduced by 1 (recalculate threshold and recovery rate based on the new Magery rate). This effective is cumulative. 1 level of Magery is recovered every day that the wizard has a tally of 0, doesn't cast any spells at all, and makes a HT check.
18	As 17, and as long as the wizard's Magery is reduced, he suffers from Nightmares with a control roll of 9 or less.
19	As 18, and as long as the wizard's Magery is reduced, he suffers from the -10% version of Radically Unstable Magery (Thaumatology p 26).
20	As 18, and as long as the wizard's Magery is reduced, he suffers from the -30% version of Radically Unstable Magery (Thaumatology p 26).
21	As 20, and the wizard is in a Twisted Mana (Thaumatology p 60) zone that only affects him for the next d6 hours.
22	As 20, and the wizard is in a Twisted Mana (Thaumatology p 60) zone that only affects him for the next d6 days.
23	As 20, and the wizard is in a Twisted Mana (Thaumatology p 60) zone with a radius equal to his base Magery (minimum 1) for the next d6 days.
24	As 20, and the wizard is in a Twisted Mana (Thaumatology p 60) zone with a radius equal to his current Magery (minimum 1) until is Magery completely recovers and for d6 days after that.
25-28	As 20, and the wizard is also a Mana Dampener with the same radius of affect as the Twisted Mana zone.
29+	The wizard takes (Calamity Modifier / 20)d of injury, reduced by half on a successful HT-6 check. If the wizard dies from this injury, their body explodes (reducing the wizard to -10xHP in the process) and doing the same damage as a cr ex centered on the wizard's hex. Should the wizard survive, also apply the effects of 25, above.

Design Notes

The default 3d Calamity table has a huge range: 3 to 18 on the unmodified dice. If barely exceeding the Threshold isn't supposed to do much harm, then nothing bad can happen until a 19+. If nothing bad happens until a 19+, either the severity of bad stuff happening has to increase very quickly, or the amount of going over the Threshold has to increase a lot. Reducing the table size to a 2d roll shortens the range to 2 to 12, meaning that bad stuff can start happening quicker.

Still, it's reasonably hard to reach the bad parts of the table. The first really unpleasant result is a 17, which requires exceeding Threshold by 25 and getting a really bad roll. Most wizards are going to stop there, especially in games where threshold is related to Magery and their effective threshold just decreased, but continued casting could get them into a death spiral of critical failures, low and twisted mana zones, and eventually personalized explosions. Magic should have some risk.

But with some lucky rolls, it's possible to have a tally that's 50 points over threshold and nothing worse happening than some penalties to individual spells or colleges. Most effects clear up in a week or three without casting spells.

The Effectiveness of Thieves in Dungeon Fantasy

The Thief template in Dungeon Fantasy isn't very good. Since it is descended from a long line of thief implementations that aren't very good, at least it stays true to its roots.

Historically, creating a separate thief role was one of the more controversial decisions in the early development of D&D. Separating out a bunch of important functions, such as sneaking around and scouting ahead, into a separate class implied that the wizards, clerics, and fighting men of the day couldn't sneak and scout. The fact that beginning thieves were terrible at sneaking, scouting, and fighting didn't help matters either: what's the point of bringing along a dedicated scout who only has a 1 in 4 chance of avoiding detection and has no chance to survive being detected? Adding abilities to (unreliably) find traps and (infrequently) open locked doors didn't help much, and created a dilemma for adventure designers: add traps and locked doors so as to justify the thief, and thereby force the PCs to bring one along, or ditch all that stuff and let the thief PC be a weak second line fighter and waste of resources?

Dungeon Fantasy hasn't really resolved the question of whether or not to include traps and locked doors, though it leans towards always including them. But a delving band has other options than taking along a pure Thief: Artificers and racial Dwarfs and Gnomes can disable traps and locks; Wizards and Clerics can use Lockmaster and See Secrets to open doors and find traps; Dungeon Demolishers can blow up locked doors or trapped passages; or Barbarians can rip open locked, trapped chests and use their massive HT and HP to soak any bad effects. So while delving bands need to bring along someone to deal with traps, it doesn't have to be a Thief.

GURPS also resolves the question of whether fighting men can sneak and scout: does the fighting man in question have useful levels of Stealth and Observation? Given that Knights have low Perception, and that encumbrance penalizes Stealth, the answer is generally "no." But the Scout has a high Perception, good to great skill in Stealth, is generally lightly encumbered, and has a decent Trap skill. Almost indisputably, a Scout makes a better scout inside or outside of dungeon than a Thief: better Perception to notice things, Tracking skill to figure out what kind of monster is ahead before seeing it, a very useful combat skill (that can be used while running away) to fight off monsters after being discovered.

So that's the Thief in a nutshell: a template that has two main utility functions, both of which can be replicated better by other templates. In combat, the Thief has some of the melee skill of the Knight, but not the strength and armor, or acts as a weak, unskilled ranged combatant.

That's the effectiveness of thieves. The next bit is just some follow-up and background.

The Basic Chassis

The Thief needs lots of good attributes for his role: good DX, obviously, and a decent IQ and a high Perception. He also needs a good Basic Speed to get adequate defenses when Dodging, and a decent Basic Move. High ST isn't necessary, but it helps with encumbrance to keep that Basic Speed, Dodge, and Move high. As written, the Thief Basic Speed is a bit low at 6.00, but his other stats are mostly decent. Investing in improved HT increases survivability, both directly and by increasing Basic Speed and Dodge.

Advantage Selection

All Thieves have Perfect Balance, which eats up a lot of points with a cost of 15. My experience is that Perfect Balanced is overpriced for what you get, but Thieves should try to stage all their fights on narrow and slippery ledges to leverage the advantage and justify the cost. Flexibility and High Manual Dexterity are thieves' other mandatory advantages, and these two are generally worth the cost.

Thieves get another 30 points in advantage selection, which quickly get split a lot of different ways. Night Vision is almost mandatory, Luck is helpful, and Danger Sense is an obvious choice for someone who goes around sticking his hands into potential traps. For combat, Thieves also have access to Combat Reflexes and Surprise Striking ST. Getting bonus damage when stabbing people from behind is great, but it's also expensive with most Thief weapons use the thrust damage table.

Skills

GURPS has a lot of thiefly skills, and Thieves unsurprisingly get them all: Filch, Pickpocket, Traps, Lockpicking, Holout, Smuggling... The utility of some of these skills in play can be minimal, and its a bit painful to have to buy both Filch (to shoplift unattended items) and Pickpocket (to take things from people's pockets).

Combat wise, Thieves use light blades such as rapiers and shortswords, but not very well. They also have a wide variety of ranged weapons, but none of them are very good: crossbows are single shot impaling weapons, bows are hard to use with Heroic Archer and high levels of skill, and slings do low damage. A lot of Thief players go for the throwing knife, but that isn't really a viable strategy for fighting anything more dangerous than giant rats.

Thief skills or Thief!

Thief! is one of the great wildcard skills and any Thief who has the opportunity should take it. A straight thief spends can get Thief!+2 for 48 points, which gives them better skill at almost every thief skill than they got by buying the skills separately. The sting of having Filch goes away if you get every other thief skill at a higher level along with it.

In games using Wildcard Destiny points (from MH1: Champions or Powerups 5: Impulse Buys), Thief! is even better. Disarming the Fatal Apocalypse Deadfull (normally a roll at -10 with failure by 5 or more triggering it) just isn't that big a deal when you can auto-succeed on any thief related roll 4 times per session. This is one of the few places that a Thief is better than a Scout, because Scout! specifically doesn't cover disarming traps.

Thieves and Race

Half-Elf is an excellent choice for Thieves, since racial Magery lets them detect magical traps with a Perception roll and lets them use Mage Light to have a light source that non-mages can't see. Gnomes have a very useful racial Talent in Widget Worker, and Halflings have a host of advantages that make them a traditional Thief race, but in both cases, combat ability drops off with low ST and size.

An unorthodox but highly successful race for Thieves is Leprechaun. Thieves start with high enough IQ that Leprechaun charms are affordable, and Winged Knife with Ridiculous Luck makes throwing knives into people's eyes into an almost viable strategy. Ridiculous Luck is also generally useful when trying to disarm Fatal Apocalypse Deadfalls. The downside to being a Leprechaun is that with only 4 HP, failing to disarm a trap is usually fatal.

Equipping Thieves

Thieves want a lot of stuff: spider silk cord and grapnels, high quality lock picks, and a trap-finding kit are almost basic necessities. They need some kind of blade, which is expensive, though which one to choose isn't obvious: edged rapiers are hideously expensive and hard to use in close combat but provide Reach; sabers are less expensive and better for close combat but still provide swing/cutting damage; short swords are the cheapest but can't be used to get a fencing parry. I often favor a main-gauche or long knife: accept that the Thief isn't a front-line fighter and get a blade that is cheap enough to get Balanced or Fine from starting points.

Poisons are an obvious purchase, but can become expensive and heavy rather quickly.

It's debatable how much armor Thieves want. Heavy Leather with Fortify +1 and Lighten +1 provides DR3 for 15 lbs, which is generally affordable and enough to ward off lesser foes. Anything more than that quickly becomes too expensive and heavy.

Thieves in Play

Thieves have a lot of utility: scouting, trap-finding, lockpicking. Most of that utility can be better done by a Scout or a Wizard. Still, a wizard's FP tends to get pulled a lot of different ways, while a Thief can try to open a lock at any time.

In combat, Thieves really have one good option: hide at the beginning of combat, get behind a foe with a vital or vulnerable spot of some kind, and make a Telegraphed attack to that spot. Against humanoid foes, this can be good for a kill. Against undead, constructs, elementals, demons without vital organs, Elder Things, and Floating Electric Jellies, Thieves don't really have any good options.

Verdict

As written, any delving band that already has a Scout and a Wizard is not going to need a Thief, and should take a different utility guy: a Bard or Shaman for diplomatic skills, or a Holy Warrior or Swashbuckler for more combat utility.

Should there be a place for thieves? The early literature is full of thief type characters, but Conan and the Grey Mouser are not straight thieves by any means. Only Bilbo Baggins is well-modeled by the thief template. If your delving band already includes 11 other guys, then splitting out another share to get a thief probably isn't a bad deal. Otherwise, I'm not entirely sad that thieves aren't a good template.

The Effectiveness of Clerics in Dungeon Fantasy

The Cleric has a long but varied history in fantasy role-playing. Generally, a Cleric is an armed and armored fighting priest, a necessary component of the delving band for his ability to heal wounds in the field and cast various utility spells, but not liked by many players who don't want to play a support role. There are a lot of variations, from the over powered fighting spellcasters of D&D 3rd edition to the non-magical priests of GURPS Banestorm. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy puts the Cleric somewhere in the middle of the range: not as strong, armored, or deadly in melee as the Knight; a generally weaker spellcaster than the Wizard, though with some unique strengths and spells; but nevertheless a valuable and arguably vital part of the delving band. I personally find Clerics somewhat unsatisfying to play, but it's hard to see where to improve the archetype without stealing niche from others.

The Basic Chassis

Clerics have decent attributes across the board, with 12 for all physical abilities and 14 for all mental abilities. They're a primarily mental/social focused class, but they don't come off as big brains like Wizards or eagle-eyed masters of perception like Scouts (though they are, attribute-wise). Their physical abilities are adequate, but most Clerics are too weak to pile on heavy armor, too clumsy to be reliably sneaky, and not nearly resistant enough to poison and other environmental hazards.

Cleric's primary skill set involves non-magical healing, Exorcism, and melee combat. As melee combatants, they're solid but not impressive: average skill 14 isn't enough to reliably get hits against dangerous opponents nor to defend against them, and ST 12 doesn't do very much damage. It can be humbling to see the rapid-striking Swashbuckler or Weapon Mastered Knight still have a better effective skill than the Cleric while doing much, much more damage. That said, Exorcism is a life saving skill in the face of curses, possessions, and other threats of the delving experience, and Clerics have the Willpower and related advantages to be successful exorcists.

Their secondary skills are mostly focused on religion and healing, making Clerics useful for identifying demons and undead on the one hand, and scoring a little extra cash by recovering bits from dead monsters. Stealth and Climbing are background skills for them, and combined with a low DX and generally medium-heavy armor means that Clerics should leave the scouting to someone else. They have some abilities as public speakers, but don't generally have the advantages and skills to be an effective public face for the delving band.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Unsurprisingly, every Cleric has Clerical Investment, and they also have 30 points in Power Investiture, which is a leveled talent that lets them learn spells from limited lists without prerequisites. Between IQ 14 and Power Investiture 3, every starting cleric is a decent spell caster.

Clerics also get 25 points in "Holy" advantages: things like supernatural Allies, Faith Healing, and Truth Faith (Turning). True Faith is the big winner here, since Will + Power Investiture + equipment bonuses starts at 17 and can easily go over 20 for a starting Cleric, and the ability to force every undead monster to stay at least 5 yards away from the Cleric is enormously helpful against a monster type that is generally focused on melee hordes. Not every Cleric takes Truth Faith, but it's a common and solid choice. Faith Healing is another good option, but most Clerics can use magic for healing and don't need Faith Healing on top of that.

There's another 20 points worth of optional advantages that can also be used for more Holy abilities, to pick up more Power Investiture, or for more mundane abilities like extra ST or DX. None of the suggested optional advantages are really noticeable, and more Power Investiture or more Holy abilities are usually the way to go.

Clerics have to pick a 10 point disadvantage such as Honesty or Vow (No Edged Weapons) that represents their Pact with their deity. As long as they adhere to the disadvantage, they can use their Holy powers, even in areas with no sanctity. That rule has been confusing to every group I've every played in, since Cleric spells are affected by Sanctity, but as written, Powers are only affected by the Pact disadvantage. Which is actually very helpful for Clerics, since they can do things such as heal with Faith Healing or turn undead with True Faith, even in the middle of the high unholy temples of the Black God of Undeath. It's an important rule, and easy to get wrong.

The rest of the Cleric disadvantage list is focused on "good" disadvantages, such as Compulsive Generosity or Vow (Vegetarianism). Nothing particularly stands out, but it does push the Cleric towards being something of a goody-two-shoes. It's possible to play a sleazy Cleric of the God of Thieves off the base list, but it can be some work. Fortunately, there are variant Cleric lenses for people who want that sort of thing.

Cleric Skills or Cleric!

Cleric! is one of the weaker wildcard skills. It mostly deals with the cleric's knowledge role, covering skills like Theology and Hidden Lore (Undead). One of its big advantages is that it covers Exorcism, and thus Destiny Points (for games using those rules) can be spent on those tricky and difficult contests. The other advantage is that most of a Cleric's knowledge skills are already at the same level as the Cleric would get with Cleric!, so there's not the same sort of breadth or depth question that Knights and Swashbucklers have to worry about.

Spells

Arguably, spells are the real reason to play a Cleric. Of the original archetypes, only Clerics get the versatile and inexpensive Major Healing, and starting Clerics can buy it with their initial level of Power Investiture. The rest of the spells are a grab bag of general buffing and utility, but Command, Continual Light, Cure Disease, Purify Air, Recover Energy, Resist Fire, and Watchdog are all solid choices for some of a Cleric's twenty starting spells. Higher levels of Power Investiture are worth more for the skill bonus to all Cleric spells than for the extra spells available, though Dispel Magic, Divination, Gift of Tongues/Letters, Instant Restoration, and Regeneration are all useful. The last two, especially, can turn a disastrous fight into a merely expensive one, if the Cleric has a Power Item large enough to cast either of these fairly expensive spells.

The biggest problem with the Cleric spells is not what is on it, but what isn't. While Clerics don't suffer for the crippling overspecialization problem of the various summoners, they're still well confined to the healing and support role, and much of their support is purely defensive with the various Resist (thing) spells. They don't have much in the way of offense or battlefield control, and they lack the general purpose "screw with the GM spells" that wizards get, such as Shape Earth, Apportation, History, Trace, Invisibility, or Flight.  

Clerics and Race

There's no race that's especially well suited for Clerics, though any race without an IQ penalty is playable. Dwarven Clerics are a good choice for more combat focused Clerics, since Pickaxe Penchant is a cost effective way to become a better melee combat while being able to hurl axes at range. Dark One Clerics seem like a good idea from a superficially munchkin, but it's spending 20 points for a minor bonus to secondary skills and better power items. These are good things to have, but probably not worth the cost, and the other advantages such as High Manual Dexterity will rarely come up. On the high end, Celestial is conceptually appealing but practically no better than spending 75 points on the equivalent set of attributes and advantages, and while Infernal provides a better set of racial disadvantages, the absolute requirement to buy off the Weakness to areas with High Holy Sanctity means that's its really more of a 95 point template, only available in the most high powered games.

Variant Clerics

Clerics are a unique template, in that they're the only template to have an entire book devoted to its variations. DF 7: Clerics provides the first formal reference to the Good-Evil, Bunny-Squid morality axis implied in the DF works, and also provided 15 variant Clerics for Gods of the City, Death, Fire, Storms, and so on. The variants get slightly different skill lists, advantages, and disadvantages options, and they also get massively different spell lists.

I'm not generally a fan of the variant Clerics, since they tend to move spells that I consider essential or at least very important to Power Investiture levels I generally don't want to buy, in exchange for making a spell I would have been able to buy normally available slightly earlier. Still, they do give a Cleric of the appropriate deity type a lot of flavor, and in the right campaign, they can be especially powerful: a Cleric of a God of Storms on a sea-going campaign, for instance. Each one needs to be judged on their individual merits for the campaign and the tastes of their player; on the whole, I'd rate them all as slightly weaker than the basic Cleric but situationally more powerful.

Equipping Clerics

Clerics tend to equip much like Knights, but with less strength, so their armor tends to be somewhat inferior to conserve weight. The basic choice of axe, mace, sword, or flail remains, with the normal trade-offs: cheap swords are versatile but fragile, basic axes are inexpensive but dull, fully kitted out axes are much cheaper and nearly as good as expensive swords. I generally favor the Dwarven, Balanced, Fine axe for around $1500, especially for Dwarven clerics. Expensive weapons also double nicely as power items, so if there are points available to trade Points for Money, there's no reason to not make the axe Silver-coated, Spiked, Hammer-headed, Holy, and Ornate. For about $2500, it's already a 13 point Power Item, helpful for getting off those important spells such as Great Healing or Restoration.

Blessed or High Holy Symbols are other good choices for gear (a High Holy Symbol makes a good Power Item, too). On the less exciting side, potion belts stocked with healing potions or cheap Holy Water (see DF2 p 3) are another item competing for scarce dollars. A lot of Clerics buy surgery kits, since they would like to cut up monsters for loot, but at $300 and 15 lbs, it's not an investment that I've seen pay off very often unless there's a Barbarian or Half-Ogre in the delving band to tote the thing.

Clerics are often constrained by weight more than dollar amount: the need for decent armor, a weapon or two, a shield, potions, and healing kits can easily put the Cleric into the dread medium or heavy encumbrance. Whenever possible, Clerics should try to distribute the load by passing equipment to stronger members of the band. Clerics don't act as scouts, and instead are in the center of the band like a wizard, so not having their stuff immediately on hand is less of a disadvantage.

Clerics in Play

Providing healing is a vital role, so Clerics are a necessary part of most delving bands. They also have a lot of utility in identifying and removing curses and unholy stuff, as well as figuring out which dark temple the band has wandered into this time. A cleric's player usually has something to do, even if it isn't always superbly interesting, when out of combat.

In combat, Clerics have to accept that they're second tier combatants at best. They don't have the ranged abilities of a Scout or archery focused Mystic Knight, nor the straightforward melee mayhem of a Knight or Swashbuckler. Even the Barbarian hits harder and straighter than the Cleric, though the Cleric is marginally better than the Bard, Druid, or Thief. Generally, the Cleric wants to fight as part of the battleline, but not the focus of it. On the side where they can be protected by the Knight or Swashbuckler while still helping keep the Scout and Wizard out of trouble is a good spot. In larger delving bands, a Cleric with a pole arm is happy to be in the second rank, with the ability to cast buffing or healing spells on the front line, attack past them, or Concentrate on Truth Faith, as appropriate.

In Summary

Clerics are a good, but not great, archetype, and one best suited to the kind of player who likes being in the support role more than being in the spotlight. It's not an easy class by any means, since playing one does require understanding the GURPS Magic system and juggling trade-offs. Even something as apparently simple as True Faith (Turning) can become complicated, since the power lasts a few seconds after the Cleric stops concentrating and that means undead can be repelled even as the Cleric attempts a quick healing.

It would be nice to buff the Cleric by adding more combat abilities or more spells, but each option either pushes them into the Knight's or Wizard's niche. Without Trained by a Master or Weapon Master, the Cleric is never going to be a first tier melee combatant, and without a better spell selection like the Wizard's, they're never going to be a general utility caster.

Spaceships/JC: Corvettes vs a Strike Carrier Example Combat Revisited

So I've decided to start posting combat examples for GURPS Spaceships using the Jovian Chronicles conversions I recently did, more or less in response to a thread on the SJ Games forums asking for turn by turn examples of GURPS Spaceship combat. I started with a bunch of small craft fighting each other and went on to small craft against an escort ship. I tried a bunch of escort ships against a strike carrier, and it went poorly, so now I'm trying it again with some slight changes.

I'm trying to run these examples without any house rules. I'm not doing a perfect job of that, though. One issue is that technically, a single pilot/gunner can't fire two different weapons (GSS1 p53). I don't consider it at all abusive to let the pilot/gunner use both his main weapons and his point defense weapons at the same time, with appropriate multi-tasking penalties, and I didn't notice that rule on my first read through. I'm not about to go back through these examples and add a semi-competent AI gunner, but you can do that mentally if it really bothers you.

Another issue is that multiple identical weapons in a turret mount cannot fire together (GSS1 p57). I didn't notice that rule either. Tripling the number of rolls made for turret attacks is not going to make these examples shorter or easier to read and I doubt it would affect the outcome. Again, you can do it mentally if it really bothers you.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed readers of the forum and on the comments below who pointed out my mistakes. It's a learning experience and I welcome the feedback.

Scenario: The Surprise of the Vigilant

While on routine patrol of the asteroid belt, the JAF Valiant-class strike carrier Vigilant sends most of her strike-fighters and exo-armors to deal with pirates attacking a nomad ship. The Jovian pilots easily deal with the pirates and return to their carrier, except for a pair of Lancer aces who get overexcited and spend all their delta-V reserve. The Vigilant heads after them to prevent them from traveling into interstellar space.

The Vigilant's radar then picks up two new shapes coming around an asteroid: a pair of CEGA Bricriu-class corvettes! The Briks light up their drives and angle for attack vectors while signaling the Vigilant to surrender. The Jovian exo-armors are still rearming and refueling in the hangar and won't be ready to launch for another twenty minutes, but Valiant-class strike carriers are meant to handle themselves in dangerous situations, and the Vigilant prepares to see the hostiles off.

Special Rules and Command Orders

Objectives: The CEGA corvettes want to destroy the Vigilant. The Vigilant wants to destroy the CEGA forces and needs to continue on this course in order to recover her errant strike fighters.

Retreating: The Vigilant may not attempt a Retreat maneuver until she has completed five consecutive Contolled Drifts, Hold Course, Evasive Maneuver, or Closing maneuvers, since she basically needs to get past the corvettes on this path to catch up with her strike fighters.

The Briks are trying to destroy the Vigilant, and while CEGA high command might consider trading the both of them a good deal for one strike carrier, the crews of the Briks don't. After either Brik has had more than half their medium batteries disabled or have been reduced to -0 dHP or less, any remaining Briks can attempt to retreat.

Opening Turn: The Vigilant is taking a very low acceleration Hold Course maneuver to catch up with strike fighters when the CEGA corvettes appear from behind an asteroid at Long range. Her PDS gunners are taking Aim and Wait (Point Defense). Her captain has just performed Space Tactics to determine what the Briks are attempting.

Both of the CEGA Bricrius will act before the Vigilant. The CEGA start off in formation but do not have to maintain it. The Briks have to win at least one maneuver contest in order to reach neutral range with the Vigilant.

Turn Length and Scale: All of the ships have 0.5G of acceleration, and 20 mps of delta-V, but the Vigilant has several Extreme range weapons. The best scale is Close Scale and the best Turn Length is 1 minute per turn.

delta-V reserves: The Vigilant and the Briks all have 20 mps of delta-V reserves. They can spend 0.3 mps of delta-V at 0.5G to get a +1 acceleration bonus or 1.2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus.

The rapid increase in delta-V reflects the doubled fuel consumption for high thrust operations.

Skill Levels and Crew Actions: All ships are fully staffed with professional crew, giving them Skill-14 at whatever they're trying to do. They can perform one of every type of task every turn without multi-tasking penalties, except for Gunnery Tasks, where they can perform 1 Gunnery Task for each of their weapon batteries.

Other Notes: These are optimized Bricrius that have swapped the Habitat and Tertiary Weapon Battery from the forward hull with the two KKC Medium Weapon Batteries in the central hull. Their KKCs have slightly worse arcs of fire, but the ships don't explode as soon as someone fires a missile at them from behind.

The Vigilant is also an optimized version of the normal Valiant-class strike cruiser. The 10 GJ Spinal Laser Battery is downgraded to a 3 GJ Laser fixed Main Battery in the forward hull; the forward hull Hangar bay at [4] is moved to central hull [core]; the central hull Fusion plant at [3] is removed; and the rear hull spinal battery is removed. Downgrade the armor from nancomposite to advanced metallic laminate (dDR 30) and add advanced metallic laminate to the various open spaces at forward [4], central [3], rear [6]. Change each hull's armor to 60 dDR, reduce the cost by $700M. The "spinal laser" now does 3dx10 d-damage and has a range of L/X.

Play of the Encounter

CEGA Turn 1: The Briks are starting at long range against a weapon that can blow through their armor and hulls in a single shot and outranges their guns to boot. Closing in on Vigilant is mandatory, and hopefully at short range their KKCs and particle beams can overwhelm the Vigilant.

Bricriu 1 starts off with its captain performing defensive space tactics, resisted by the Vigilant's captain. The rolls are 13 for the Brik and 12 for the Vigilant, so there's no effect. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 10 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 1.2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and attempts a closing maneuver, rolling against Pilot-14, +2 for acceleration, -1 for handling, +1 for navigation, and getting a 15 against a net 16 (MoS 1). The Vigilant's pilot contests with a 9 against Pilot-14 and a -2 for handling, and wins his roll by 3 and the contest by 2. Bricriu 1 ends up neutral to the Vigilant, at long range with the front hull facing. Should the Vigilant survive this turn of attacks, Bricriu 1 is a likely target of the spinal laser. At this range, Bricriu 1 has no weapons that will reach, and the gunners decide to Aim and Wait on the off chance that the Vigilant decides to close with them.

Bricriu 2 sees no value in hanging out at the edge of space and being demolished by long range fire, and chooses to break formation and try to pincer the Jovians instead. She will also start with defensive space tactics, resisted by the Vigilant's captain. The rolls are 10 for the Brik and 15 for the Vigilant, so Bricriu 2 will get +1 to Dodge this turn. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 11 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 1.2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and attempts a closing maneuver, rolling against Pilot-14, +2 for acceleration, -1 for handling, +1 for navigation, and getting a 6 against a net 16 (MoS 10). The Vigilant's pilot contests, also with a 6, against Pilot-14 and a -2 for handling, and wins his roll by 6 but loses the contest by 4. Bricriu 2 closes to Short range, with her front hull toward the enemy.

Her gunners open up with the port particle beam battery. They roll a 10 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, +0 for RoF, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 1 against a net 11. Two particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 12 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +1 for turn length, missing by 3. The beam's AP modifier of (5) is reduced to (3) by the hardening of the Vigilant's armor, so the effective arrmor dDR is 20. d-damage for the two shots is 52 and 63, reduced to 32 and 43 of penetrating d-damage on locations 2 and 6. Each hit does at least 10% of the Vigilant's 150 dHP and disables the system, so the reserve fuel for the exos in location 2 and the cargo hold in location 6 are disabled. Vigilant is also reduced 75 dHP and has to make 2 surge checks against its HT of 13, all of which it passes.

Then Briciu 2's gunners open up with the starboard particle beam battery. They roll an 8 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 3 against a net 11. 4 particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 15 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +1 for turn length, missing by 2. The beam's AP modifier of (5) is reduced to (3) by the hardening of the Vigilant's armor, so the effective arrmor dDR is 20. d-damage for the 7 shots is 53, 54, 53, and 54 which is reduced to 33, 34, 33, and 34 penetrating d-damage on locations 2, 3, 1, and 6. Each hit does at least 10% of the Vigilant's 150 dHP and disables the system, so the reserve fuel for the exos in location 2 is destroyed, the other half of the hangar bay is location 3 is disabled, the armor location at 1 is disabled, and the cargo bay is destroyed. The Vigilant is also driven to -59 dHP and has to make 4 surge checks against its HT of 13, all of which it passes.

Bricriu 2 decides not to fire the KKCs, since the Vigilant's powerful PDS suite is still available and is more than sufficient to intercept the slow-moving attacks.

Vigilant Turn 1: The Vigilant is hurting, but hopes to be able smash the Briks and still recover her strike fighters. Taking Evasive Action would be desirable, but that means turning the spinal laser away from the Briks. Instead, the captain orders increased acceleration on the current course.

The captain plots offensive tactics against Bricriu 1, rolling a 13 against a 9 to no effect. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 10 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 1.2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and holds course. The Vigilant remains at long range to Bricriu 1 and at short range with Bricriu 2, with her front hull facing the distance foe and her central hull facing the closer enemy.

The spinal laser glitters in darkness, attempting to gut Bricriu 1. The gunner rolls a 10, against Gunnery-14, +9 for target size, +3 for sAcc, -12 for range, -2 for being below 0 dHP, and -1 for the target's ECM (halved for the tactical array), and succeeds by 1. Bricriu 1 attempts to dodge, rolling a 14 against a base 7, +1 for ECM, and +1 for turn length, but fails. The laser does 3dx10 bur d-damage, resisted by the Bricriu's dDR 40. Rolled damage is 107 against front hull location 2, and armor location 2 is destroyed and the Bricriu takes 67 dDamage of penetration. With 33 dHP, the corvette is certainly shaken but not out of the fight.

At the same time, the twin KKC turrets open up on Bricriu 2. The gunner rolls a 10, against Artillery-14, +9 for target size, -6 for sAcc, -3 for 2 mps of relative velocity, -1 for ECM, -2 for being below 0 dHP, and +1 for RoF. One projectile hits, and is trivially intercepted by 2000 point defense laser shots. The twin missile bays also belch their missiles, rolling an 11 against Artillery-14, +9 for target size, +2 for sAcc, -3 for 3 mps of relative velocity, -1 for ECM, +4 for RoF, +4 for proximity fuses, and netting an MoS18 against a net target of 28. 19 missiles hit, and Bricriu 2 zaps them with another 2000 laser shots. The point defense gunner has Gunner-14, +0 for sAcc and range, -1 for target size, and +11 for RoF, with a target of 24 and a roll of 9. MoS is 15, and though most of the missiles are intercepted, 3 get through. The missiles hit locations 5, 2, and 4 for 6dx4 d-damage each, resisted by armor dDR 40. D-damage rolled is 101, 72, and 98, and penetration is 61, 32, and 58. The defensive ECM system is destroyed, one of the KKCs and both armor locations are disabled, and and the other KKC is destroyed. In the forward hull, only the forward fusion plant and the bridge are unscathed. The Bricriu is also reduced to -51 dHP.

CEGA Turn 2: The CEGA Bricrius are in bad shape, and move to withdraw behind their asteroid. The Vigilant is in no shape to pursue and lets them depart.

Result

This is a draw. The CEGA failed to destroy the Vigilant, but the Vigilant will be under repair for months.

Conclusion

This play-through was different, but not markedly better, than the previous example. The Valiant is somewhat lightly armed and armored for a SM+10 craft, but a single salvo by a not particularly well designed SM+9 craft was enough to put it into the negatives. Only some cheesy missile tactics allowed it to damage Bricriu 2, and without those tactics, it would have been crippled on its next turn.

Missiles are still too effective for my tastes, and point defense is still too all or nothing. Particle beams also hit too hard.

I'd been enjoying the Spaceships combat system, but this fight soured it for me.

12 Hours Later: After some more thought, I'm feeling less distressed. I still don't have a solution for point defense, but I have some ideas toward reducing missile damage (which may end up just being giving everything a hardened kinetic force field for free but I'm still thinking). For particle beams, using a variant of the laminate armor rules from Pyramid 3.40 would give armor doubled dDR against them. Particle beams would still have a role as armor penetrators, but they wouldn't be so overwhelmingly good at it.

An even simpler solution would be to use the altered dHP rules from Pyramid 3.34. If dHP scales with the square root of mass, instead of the cube root, larger ships are already more survivable. It'd be pretty easy to scale disabling damage for subsystems, so it only takes damage greater than 1/300 of total dHP to disable a single weapon in a tertiary battery. That would leave a role for small craft that can force a rendezvous against a large ship, target the weak points of various weapons at rendezvous range, and disable the ship piecemeal.

Spaceships/JC: Corvettes vs a Strike Carrier Example Combat

So I've decided to start posting combat examples for GURPS Spaceships using the Jovian Chronicles conversions I recently did, more or less in response to a thread on the SJ Games forums asking for turn by turn examples of GURPS Spaceship combat. I started with a bunch of small craft fighting each other and went on to small craft against an escort ship. Now I'm going to try a bunch of escort ships against a strike carrier.

I'm trying to run these examples without any house rules. I'm not doing a perfect job of that, though. One issue is that technically, a single pilot/gunner can't fire two different weapons (GSS1 p53). I don't consider it at all abusive to let the pilot/gunner use both his main weapons and his point defense weapons at the same time, with appropriate multi-tasking penalties, and I didn't notice that rule on my first read through. I'm not about to go back through these examples and add a semi-competent AI gunner, but you can do that mentally if it really bothers you.

Another issue is that multiple identical weapons in a turret mount cannot fire together (GSS1 p57). I didn't notice that rule either. Tripling the number of rolls made for turret attacks is not going to make these examples shorter or easier to read and I doubt it would affect the outcome. Again, you can do it mentally if it really bothers you.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed readers of the forum and on the comments below who pointed out my mistakes. It's a learning experience and I welcome the feedback.

Scenario: The Surprise of the Vigilant

While on routine patrol of the asteroid belt, the JAF Valiant-class strike carrier Vigilant sends most of her strike-fighters and exo-armors to deal with pirates attacking a nomad ship. The Jovian pilots easily deal with the pirates and return to their carrier, except for a pair of Lancer aces who get overexcited and spend all their delta-V reserve. The Vigilant heads after them to prevent them from traveling into interstellar space.

The Vigilant's radar then picks up three new shapes coming around an asteroid: a trio of CEGA Bricriu-class corvettes! The Briks light up their drives and angle for attack vectors while signaling the Vigilant to surrender. The Jovian exo-armors are still rearming and refueling in the hangar and won't be ready to launch for another twenty minutes, but Valiant-class strike carriers are meant to handle themselves in dangerous situations, and the Vigilant prepares to see the hostiles off.

Special Rules and Command Orders

Objectives: The CEGA corvettes want to destroy the Vigilant. The Vigilant wants to destroy the CEGA forces and needs to continue on this course in order to recover her errant strike fighters.

Retreating: The Vigilant may not attempt a Retreat maneuver until she has completed five consecutive Contolled Drifts, Hold Course, Evasive Maneuver, or Closing maneuvers, since she basically needs to get past the corvettes on this path to catch up with her strike fighters.

The Briks are trying to destroy the Vigilant, and while CEGA high command might consider trading the three of them a good deal for one strike carrier, the crews of the Briks don't. After two Briks have had more than half their medium batteries disabled or have been reduced to -0 dHP or less, all Briks can attempt to retreat.  

Opening Turn: The Vigilant is taking a very low acceleration Hold Course maneuver to catch up with strike fighters when the CEGA corvettes appear from behind an asteroid at Long range. Her PDS gunners are taking Aim and Wait (Point Defense). Her captain has just performed Space Tactics to determine what the Briks are attempting.

All of the CEGA Bricrius will act before the Vigilant. The CEGA start off in formation but do not have to maintain it.

Turn Length and Scale: All of the ships have 0.5G of acceleration, and 20 mps of delta-V, but the Vigilant has several Extreme range weapons. The best scale is Standard Scale and the best Turn Length is 3-minutes per turn.  

delta-V reserves: The Vigilant and the Briks all have 20 mps of delta-V reserves. They can spend 0.5 mps of delta-V at 0.5G to get a +1 acceleration bonus or 2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus.

The rapid increase in delta-V reflects the doubled fuel consumption for high thrust operations.

Skill Levels and Crew Actions: All ships are fully staffed with professional crew, giving them Skill-14 at whatever they're trying to do. They can perform one of every type of task every turn without multi-tasking penalties, except for Gunnery Tasks, where they can perform 1 Gunnery Task for each of their weapon batteries.  

Other Notes: These are optimized Bricrius, that have swapped the Habitat and Tertiary Weapon Battery from the forward hull with the two KKC Medium Weapon Batteries in the central hull. Their KKCs have slightly worse arcs of fire, but they don't explode as soon as someone fires a missile at them from behind.

Play of the Encounter

CEGA Turn 1: The Briks are starting at long range against a weapon that can blow through their armor and hulls in a single shot and outranges their guns to boot. Closing in on Vigilant is mandatory, and hopefully at short range their KKCs and particle beams can overwhelm the Vigilant.

Bricriu 1 starts off with its captain performing defensive space tactics, resisted by the Vigilant's captain. The rolls are 13 for the Brik and 12 for the Vigilant, so there's no effect. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 10 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and attempts a closing maneuver, rolling against Pilot-14, +2 for acceleration, -1 for handling, +1 for navigation, and getting a 15 against a net 16 (MoS 1). The Vigilant's pilot contests with a 9 against Pilot-14 and a -2 for handling, and wins his roll by 3 and the contest by 2. Bricriu 1 ends up neutral to the Vigilant, at long range with the front hull facing. Should the Vigilant survive this turn of attacks, Bricriu 1 is a likely target of the spinal laser. At this range, Bricriu 1 has no weapons that will reach, and the gunners decide to Aim and Wait on the off chance that the Vigilant decides to close with them.

Bricriu 2 sees no value in hanging out at the edge of space and being demolished by long range fire, and chooses to break formation and try to pincer the Jovians instead. She will also start with defensive space tactics, resisted by the Vigilant's captain. The rolls are 10 for the Brik and 15 for the Vigilant, so Bricriu 2 will get +1 to Dodge this turn. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 11 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and attempts a closing maneuver, rolling against Pilot-14, +2 for acceleration, -1 for handling, +1 for navigation, and getting a 6 against a net 16 (MoS 10). The Vigilant's pilot contests, also with a 6, against Pilot-14 and a -2 for handling, and wins his roll by 6 but loses the contest by 4. Bricriu 2 closes to Short range, with her front hull toward the enemy.

Her gunners open up with the port particle beam battery. They roll a 10 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, +5 for Rof, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 6 against a net 16. 7 particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 12 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +2 for turn length, missing by 2. The beam's AP modifier of (5) is reduced to (3) by the hardening of the Vigilant's armor, so the effective arrmor dDR is 17. d-damage for the 7 shots is 52, 63, 44, 57, 46, 62, and 62, reduced to 35, 46, 29, 40, 28, and 28 penetrating d-damage on locations 2, 6, 6, 4, 6, 4, and 4. Each hit does at least 10% of the Vigilant's 150 dHP and disables the system, so the reserve fuel for the exos in location 2 is disabled, the cargo hold in location 6 is destroyed, half the hangar bay is location 4 is destroyed, the control room is disabled (from wrap-around on the third '6'), and the forward section of the spinal gun is disabled. The Vigilant is also driven to -33 dHP and has to make 7 surge checks against its HT of 13, all of which it passes.

Then Briciu 2's gunners open up with the starboard particle beam battery. They roll an 8 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, +5 for Rof, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 8 against a net 16. 9 particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 15 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +2 for turn length, missing by 2. The beam's AP modifier of (5) is reduced to (3) by the hardening of the Vigilant's armor, so the effective arrmor dDR is 17. d-damage for the 7 shots is 53, 54, 53, 54, 57, 41, 47, 58, 40 which is reduced to 36, 37, 36, 37, 40, 24, 30, 58, 40 (the last two hits are are previously destroyed armor sections) penetrating d-damage on locations 2, 3, 1, 6, 6, 4, 4, 1, 1. Each hit does at least 10% of the Vigilant's 150 dHP and disables the system, so the reserve fuel for the exos in location 2 is destroyed, the other half of the hangar bay is location 3 is disabled, the armor location at 1 is disabled, the core control room is destroyed, the armor location at 1 is destroyed, and the forward section of the spinal gun and the last half hangar are destroyed by wrap-around attacks. The Vigilant is also driven to -371 dHP and has to make 2 death checks and 9 surge checks against its HT of 13, all of which it passes.

Bricriu 2 decides not to fire the KKCs, since the Vigilant's powerful PDS suite is still available and is more than sufficient to intercept the slow-moving attacks.

Bricriu 3 will also break formation to form a pincer on what's left of the Vigilant. He will also start with defensive space tactics, resisted by the Vigilant's captain. The rolls are 11 for the Brik and 10 for the Vigilant, and no effect. Then the navigator plots a tactical course, rolling 10 against Navigation-14 and providing a +1 bonus to the pilot. The pilot burns 2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus and attempts a closing maneuver, rolling against Pilot-14, +2 for acceleration, -1 for handling, +1 for navigation, and getting a 12 against a net 16 (MoS 4). The Vigilant's pilot contests, also with a 13, against Pilot-14 and a -2 for handling, and wins his roll by 1 but loses the contest by 3. Bricriu 3 closes to Short range, with her front hull toward the enemy. (Oddly, at this point Bricriu 2 and 3 are at long range to each other, even though they're only at short range to the Vigilant.)

Briciu 3's gunners open up with the starboard particle beam battery. They roll an 8 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, +5 for Rof, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 8 against a net 16. 9 particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 5 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +2 for turn length, succeeding by 5 and dodging all but 2 of the beams. The beam's AP modifier of (5) is reduced to (3) by the hardening of the Vigilant's armor, so the effective arrmor dDR is 17. but the shots hit destroyed armor locations 1 and 2 and the armor stops nothing. D-damage for the 2 shots is 51 and 52, which goes straight to the dHP, reducing it to -483 dHP and requiring another death check, which succeeds with a 12.

Briciu 3's gunners then fire the port particle beam battery. They roll an 8 against a base Gunnery-14, +10 for target size, -3 for sAcc, -8 for range, +5 for Rof, -2 for ECM, and succeed by 4 against a net 16. 5 particle beams hit, and the Vigilant tries to dodge with a 5 against a 7, +1 for ECM, +2 for turn length, succeeding by 5 and dodging all.

Vigilant Turn 1: The Vigilant is a shattered hulk, with her entire forward hull smashed. She can't possibly recover her missing strike fighters without her hangar, and indeed, all her on-board exos and strike fighters were destroyed with the hangar. She could try closing on the luckless Bricriu 1 and pounding it with KKCs and missiles, but the corvette could respond with particle beam fire and destroy the Vigilant.

Results

Overwhelming CEGA Victory, as the corvettes destroyed a high value target without taking any losses.

Conclusion

I wasn't thrilled with the Valiant conversion, because it felt like it was trying to cram too many things into too small a space, but I didn't expect it to go down like that! And I'm not sure what would have helped.

Replacing one of the hangars with more armor would have drastically cut down on the available exo-armors without noticeably increasing the craft's toughness: every shot in the first p-beam blast would have penetrated the armor and most would have disabled a system. Another ECM system might have helped, but not enough.

No, I think the decision to use the Standard scale and 3 minute turns was the problem, turning the nasty but survivable RoF9 attacks from the Briks' turrets into the devastating RoF30 attacks. And the only solution is to back to Close scale and 1 minute turns, which means that the Vigilant can't properly take advantage of her giant spinal laser.

Well, I'm definitely going to revisit this fight, and see how it works out on a closer scale.

Using the Size Modifier Table for Rapid Fire in GURPS

GURPS has never had a very satisfactory set of rules for rapid fire. The original system in 2e failed to scale at all for weapons with high rates  of fire; the revised system in 2e and 3e required too many table look-ups, too many die rolls, and allowed for insanely high numbers of hits; the current version in 4e is fairly playable, but weapons with high rates of fire still get too few hits. There has to be a better solution.

Fortunately, there is. The Size Modifiers Rapid Fire system uses the same base mechanics as the 4e system, so it's a single roll to resolve all the shots fire, but it replaces the clunky and unmemorable Rate of Fire bonus table with the well-known and formulaic Size/Range modifier table. In doing so, it also creates a system that ensures that the same to hit roll will produce about the same percentage of shots on the target for weapons of the same recoil, no matter how many shots are fired.

The Size Modifier Rapid Fire system uses the same rules as Rapid Fire on B373 until you get to the RoF Bonus to Hit chart. Instead of looking the bonus up on that chart, look up the number of shots fired on the Size Modifier chart and use that bonus instead.

Example: Ted is firing an M-16 with RoF12 at full auto. 12 is more than 10 and less than 15, so Ted would get a +4 RoF bonus. If Ted were firing his semi-automatic shotgun with RoF 3x9, he would be firing a net 27 shots, for a +6 RoF bonus.

Calculate the Margin of Success for the attack normally, and then divide by the weapon's Recoil value to the get the Margin of Recoil. Subtract 1 from the Margin of Recoil and look up that bonus on the Size Modifier chart. The corresponding size measurement is the number of bullets that hit, up to the total number of bullets fired and to a minimum of 1.

Example: Firing an M-16 at RoF12, Ted makes the roll by 4. An M-16 has Rcl 2, so Ted's Margin of Recoil is 2. Subtracting 1 from 2, Ted gets a +1, which means 3 bullets hit. Had Ted made the roll by 0, his Margin of Recoil would have been 0, and he still would have hit with 1 bullet.

Example: Firing the shotgun, Ted makes the roll by 6. The shotgun has Rcl 1, so Ted's Margin of Recoil is 6. Subtracting 1 from 6, Ted gets a +5, which means 15 bullets hit. If Ted had made the roll by 8, he would have hit by all 27 bullets.

The Size Modifiers Rapid Fire System is elegant in three ways: it replaces an arbitrary table look-up with a look-up against a well-known and formulaic table; it scales up with the number of shots fired; and it ensures that firing more shots doesn't mean that a greater percentage of them hit. 

This table shows the number of shots that hit for a given RoF and recoil, assuming a 0 MoS attack without RoF bonuses:

		Shots Hit (Margin of Recoil) by Recoil
Shots Fired	Bonus	1	2	3	4
1	0	1 (0)	1 (0)	1 (0)	1 (0)
2	0	1 (0)	1 (0)	1 (0)	1 (0)
3	1	2 (1)	1 (0)	1 (0)	1 (0)
5	2	3 (2)	2 (1)	1 (0)	1 (0)
7	3	5 (3)	2 (1)	2 (1)	1 (0)
10	4	7 (4)	3 (2)	2 (1)	2 (1)
15	5	10 (5)	3 (2)	2 (1)	2 (1)
20	6	15 (6)	5 (3)	3 (2)	2 (1)
30	7	20 (7)	5 (3)	3 (2)	2 (1)
50	8	30 (8)	7 (4)	3 (2)	3 (2)
70	9	50 (9)	7 (4)	5 (3)	3 (2)
100	10	70 (10)	10 (5)	5 (3)	3 (2)
150	11	100 (11)	10 (5)	5 (3)	3 (2)
200	12	150 (12)	15 (6)	7 (4)	5 (3)
300	13	200 (13)	15 (6)	7 (4)	5 (3)
500	14	300 (14)	20 (7)	7 (4)	5 (3)

Given that the Margin of Recoil values are roughly equal to the number of shots that would hit under the normal 4e rules, I think it's clear that the Size Modifier Rapid Fire rules produce a better scaling of shots hits to total shots fired, at no additional cost in complexity.

Inspired by this thread on the SJ Games forums. http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=1631294

Edit: What About Dodging?

I forgot to address rules for dodging in the original draft of this article, but they're easy enough to figure out. A successful Dodge defense reduces the Margin of Recoil by 1 plus the MoS on the Dodge roll.

Example: Ted fires an RoF 3x9, Rcl 1 shotgun at an alien and makes his roll by 6, hitting with 15 shots. The Sectoid dodges and drops, succeeding on its defense roll by 3. Ted's Margin of Recoil is reduced from 6 to 3, so only 7 shots hit the Grey.

Example: Ted's partner Allen opens up with an RoF12, Rcl 2 assault rifle on another Sectoid, making the shot by 4 for a Margin of Recoil of 2 and 5 shots hitting. This Sectoid also drops and dodges, succeeding by 3. All of Allen's shots miss.

Spaceships/JC: Exo-armors vs a Corvettes Example Combat

So I've decided to start posting combat examples for GURPS Spaceships using the Jovian Chronicles conversions I recently did, more or less in response to a thread on the SJ Games forums asking for turn by turn examples of GURPS Spaceship combat. I started with a bunch of small craft fighting each other, at it worked out pretty well. Now I'm going to try a bunch of small craft fighting an escort ship.

I'm trying to run these examples without any house rules. I'm not doing a perfect job of that, though. One issue is that technically, a single pilot/gunner can't fire two different weapons (GSS1 p53). I don't consider it at all abusive to let the pilot/gunner use both his main weapons and his point defense weapons at the same time, with appropriate multi-tasking penalties, and I didn't notice that rule on my first read through. I'm not about to go back through these examples and add a semi-competent AI gunner, but you can do that mentally if it really bothers you.

Another issue is that multiple identical weapons in a turret mount cannot fire together (GSS1 p57). I didn't notice that rule either. Tripling the number of rolls made for turret attacks is not going to make this example shorter or easier to read and I doubt it would affect the outcome. Again, you can do it mentally if it really bothers you.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed readers of the forum and on the comments below who pointed out my mistakes. It's a learning experience and I welcome the feedback.

Scenario: Sensor Picket Miyu

During the Battle of Elysees, the Bricriu-class Corvette Miyu is on sensor picket duty at the flank of the 4th CEGA fleet. The Miyu comes under a probing attack by a reinforced flight of 4 JAF Pathfinders (enhanced with a Medium Battery Improved VRF Laser point defense turret). The Miyu must drive off her attackers, but the JAF pilots need to destroy the Miyu quickly before CEGA reinforcements arrive.

Special Rules and Command Orders

Objectives: The Jovians want to destroy the Miyu. The Miyu would like to not be destroyed and also would like to not be forced from her patrol area.

The Jovians win if they destroy the Miyu with at least two Pathfinders still able to fight, or if they force the Miyu to retreat without losing any Pathfinders. The Miyu wins by preventing a Jovian victory.

Retreating: Although this is war, there's a limit to how hard either side is willing to fight. Any Pathfinder that is damaged below 0 HP must take a Retreat maneuver (if possible) on its next action and cannot make attacks as long as it is capable of Retreating. The Miyu will not fire on a heavily damaged exo-armor that is Retreating and not firing (or that has a destroyed engine or no fuel left and is not firing as it uncontrollably drifts away). The Jovians must retreat after the 10th turn, so as to not linger in the face of approaching CEGA reinforcements.

The Miyu must fight as long as she has Medium Batteries with ammo operational, but can take a Retreat maneuver if all her Medium Batteries are destroyed or run out of ammo.

Opening Turn: The Miyu is on sensor picket duty and can detect the incoming Jovian flight. Both sides have been making Hold Course maneuvers with +0 acceleration bonuses on the turns before the Jovians come into the Short range of both sides weapons. (Yes, technically the Jovians can launch missiles from outside extreme range, but both sides are well aware that launching a half dozen missiles into the Miyu's PDS is an exercise in futility). Both sides have power allocated to all their energy weapons and are taking Aim and Wait (Point Defense) maneuvers on the turn before the fight starts.

All of the Jovian Pathfinders will act before the Miyu. The Jovians start off in formation but do not have to maintain it.

Turn Length and Scale: None of the ships have less than 0.05G+ of acceleration, more than 10G+ of acceleration, more than 5 mps of delta-V, or many weapons that reach past Short range. The best scale is Close Scale and the best Turn Length is 1-minute per turn.

delta-V reserves: For simplicity, the Pathfinders have 4.5 mps of delta-V. It takes the Pathfinders 1G and 0.3 mps to get a +2 acceleration bonus, 1.5G and 0.5 mps to get a +3 acceleration bonus, 2G and 1.2 mps to get a +4 acceleration bonus, and 3G and 1.8 mps of delta-V to get a +6 acceleration bonus.

The Miyu has 20 mps of delta-V reserves. She can spend 0.2 mps of delta-V at 0.5G to get a +1 acceleration bonus or 1.2 mps of delta-V at 1G to get a +2 acceleration bonus.

The rapid increase in delta-V reflects the doubled fuel consumption for high thrust operations.

Skill Levels and Crew Actions: The Jovians have Pilot-14, Artillery/Gunner (Whatever)-14, and all other space related skills at 13. The numerous and professional CEGA crew of the Miyu have Skill-14 at whatever they're trying to do. The Miyu can perform one of every type of task every turn without multi-tasking penalties, except for Gunnery Tasks, where she can perform 1 Gunnery Task for each of her weapon batteries.

Play of the Encounter

Jovian Turn 1: The Jovians know that if they can get behind the Miyu, her PDS won't be able to intercept their missiles. However, her particle beam and KKC turrets will be able to, if not well. At least when they first come into range, launching missiles is still too high risk. Their particle beams can just barely penetrate the Miyu's armor, so they can try to plink out important systems as they approach. The end goal is to use the plasma lances to cut up the weapon systems and then finish her off with the missiles.

Each Pathfinder chooses to perform 3 tasks this turn, and they'll stay in formation no matter what. They'll perform a Pilot task for a Closing maneuver (preferring to get closer over being advantaged), a Gunnery task to Aim and Attack with the particle-beams, and a Gunnery task to Wait (Point Defense) in hopes of intercepting any KKC fire. There isn't anything they can do about the particle beam fire except for Dodge and hope.

Pathfinder 1 leads off, accelerating at 1.0G with 0.3 mps of delta-V for a +2 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver on the Miyu. She rolls a 9 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +2 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling, and succeeds by 5. The Miyu counters with a roll of 14 against Pilot-14, +1 for acceleration, -1 for the corvette's handling, and gets an MoS of 0 and loses the contest. The lead Pathfinder comes in on Attack vector and drops to Close range against the Miyu's front hull.

She fires her particle-beam, hoping to get lucky and take out the PDS. She has Gunner-14, -2 for multi-tasking, +9 for the target's size, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -1 for the corvette's ECM array (halved for the Pathfinder's tactical array), -4 for close range, and +1 for a gun braced in both robot arms, rolling a 15 vs an effective 14 and missing with all three shots.

Pathfinder 2 follows, accelerating at 1.0G with 0.3 mps of delta-V for a +2 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver against the Miyu while staying in formation. He rolls a 13 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +2 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling,and successfully stays in formation, ending up on Close range attack vector on the Miyu's front hull.

He fires his particle-beam, hoping to get lucky and take out the PDS. He has Gunner-14, -2 for multi-tasking, +9 for the target's size, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -1 for the corvette's ECM array (halved for the Pathfinder's tactical array), -4 for close range, and +1 for a gun braced in both robot arms, rolling a 11 vs an effective 14 and hitting with all three shots. The lumbering corvette attempts to Dodge, starting with a 7 for half the Pilot skill and adding 1 for ECM, rolling a 5 against an 8 and successfully avoiding all three shots.

Pathfinder 3 makes his attack run, accelerating at 1.0G with 0.3 mps of delta-V for a +2 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver against the Miyu while staying in formation. He rolls a 4 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +2 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling,and successfully stays in formation, ending up on Close range attack vector on the Miyu's front hull. A lovely critical success wasted!

He fires his particle-beam, hoping to get lucky and take out the PDS. He has Gunner-14, -2 for multi-tasking, +9 for the target's size, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -1 for the corvette's ECM array (halved for the Pathfinder's tactical array), -4 for close range, and +1 for a gun braced in both robot arms, rolling a 8 vs an effective 14 and hitting with all three shots. The lumbering corvette attempts to Dodge, starting with a 7 for half the Pilot skill and adding 1 for ECM, rolling a 7 against an 8 and successfully avoiding two shots. The third shot hits for 4d bur sur rad (5) d-damage, rolled as 15. The Miyu's hardened 40 dDR reduces the armor divisor to (3) and is effectively reduced to 13 dDR, so 2 d-damage penetrates on system 1, the armor. A Bricriu has 100 dHP, so 2 damage is not more than 10% and doesn't disable or destroy the system, but the Miyu does need to roll its HT of 13 to avoid losing a system to the surge effect: an 11 on the die and the Miyu is safe for now.

Pathfinder 4 makes her attack run, accelerating at 1.0G with 0.3 mps of delta-V for a +2 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver against the Miyu while staying in formation. She rolls a 13 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +2 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling,and successfully stays in formation, ending up on Close range attack vector on the Miyu's front hull.

She fires her particle-beam, hoping to get lucky and take out the PDS. She has Gunner-14, -2 for multi-tasking, +9 for the target's size, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -1 for the corvette's ECM array (halved for the Pathfinder's tactical array), -4 for close range, and +1 for a gun braced in both robot arms, rolling a 12 vs an effective 14 and hitting with all three shots. The lumbering corvette attempts to Dodge, starting with a 7 for half the Pilot skill and adding 1 for ECM, rolling a 7 against an 8 and successfully avoiding two shots. The third shot hits for 4d bur sur rad (5) d-damage, rolled as 12. The Miyu's hardened 40 dDR reduces the armor divisor to (3) and is effectively reduced to 13 dDR, but that's still enough to stop the attack.

CEGA Turn 1: The Miyu is down to 98 dHP, facing a formation of 4 Pathfinders at Close range. Letting them get closer would be bad, as only some lucky maneuvering saved him from more damage in their first wave of attacks, and at closer range they might start firing at his weak points and ripping through his hull. Retreating is an option, but it would put his rear hull to the Pathfinders, and the MMJ-4 missiles are more than sufficient to tear through his ship. He orders Evasive maneuvers while seeing how the Pathfinders fare against his KKCs; for now, he'll hold the particle beams in reserve against missile attacks from any Pathfinders that get behind him.

The captain makes a Command task to perform space tactics against the Jovian formation; he'll go for offensive tactics to predict their defense patterns and reduce their Dodge by 1. He rolls against Tactics-14, +1 for the 1 minute turn, but fails with a 16. Meanwhile, the navigator performs a Navigation task for Tactial navigation, rolling against Navigation (Space)-14 and easily succeeding with a 7. The pilot will get +1 on a Pilot rolls for the next turn. The pilot, in turn, makes evasive maneuvers, spending 0.5G of thrust and 0.2 mps of delta-V to get a +1 acceleration bonus that will be doubled this turn, as well as a +1 to dodge. The Miyu is now at close range with her central hull facing the Pathfinders.

Then the KKC gunners open up, each battery firing a combined salvo of 9 shots against the first two Pathfinders. The port battery starts, rolling a 10 against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 4, and hits with two shots (the guns have Rcl 4). Pathfinder 1 fires 200 laser PDS shots at it, rolling a 6 against Gunnery-14, -1 for target SM, +0 for range, +8 for RoF 200, -2 for multitasking, and succeeds by 13, easily obliterating the gun rounds. The starbard battery fires at Pathfinder 2, rolling a 12 against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 1, and hits with a single shot, which is obliterating by another 200 PDS lasers (rolled a 9 versus a target of 18).

The captain resolves to reverse his targeting next turn, holding the KKCs for point defense while the p-beams sweep the Jovians from the stars.

Jovian Turn 2: The Jovians still need to get behind the Miyu, preferably at point-blank range.

Each Pathfinder chooses to perform 3 tasks this turn, and they'll stay in formation no matter what. They'll perform a Pilot task for a Closing maneuver (preferring to get closer over being advantaged), a Gunnery task to Aim and Attack with the particle-beams, and a Gunnery task to Wait (Point Defense) to keep intercepting any KKC fire.

Pathfinder 1 leads off, accelerating at 1.0G with 0.3 mps of delta-V for a +2 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver on the Miyu. She rolls a 10 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +2 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling, and succeeds by 4. The Miyu counters with a roll of 8 against Pilot-14, +2 for evasive acceleration, -1 for the corvette's handling, +1 for tactical navigation, and gets an MoS of 8 and easily wins the contest. The lead Pathfinder falls off the Attack vector and moves to Short range against the Miyu's center hull.

Long range particle beam fire is unlikely to hit in general and won't penetrate the corvette's armor. The Jovians hold their fire and their formation.

CEGA Turn 2: The Miyu has plenty of reaction reserves and reinforcements inbound. Long range particle beam fire is unlikely to hit nimble exo-armors, but it may keep the Jovians back and it doesn't cost the captain anything. He'll continue with his evasive maneuvers and tactical analysis.

The captain makes a Command task to perform space tactics against the Jovian formation; he'll go for offensive tactics to predict their defense patterns and reduce their Dodge by 1. He rolls against Tactics-14, +1 for the 1 minute turn, and barely succeeds with a 15. Meanwhile, the navigator performs a Navigation task for Tactial navigation, rolling against Navigation (Space)-14 and easily succeeding with a 10. The pilot will get +1 on a Pilot rolls for the next turn. The pilot, in turn, makes evasive maneuvers, spending 0.5G of thrust and 0.2 mps of delta-V to get a +1 acceleration bonus that will be doubled this turn, as well as a +1 to dodge. The Miyu is still at short range with her central hull facing the Pathfinders.

Then the particle beam gunners open up, each battery firing a combined salvo of 9 shots against the first two Pathfinders. The port battery starts, rolling a 6 against Gunner-14, +5 for target SM, -8 for Short range, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -2 for ECM, and +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots. He succeeds by 2, and hits with three shots (the beams have Rcl 1). Pathfinder 1 desperately dodges, rolling an 11 against a base of 7 with a +1 for the lone ECM system, a -1 for the Miyu's command task, and failing miserable. The 300 MJ particle beams do 5dx3 d-damage each, for 52, 46, and 53 damage. Hardened dDR 21 armor is effectively dDR7 against the p-beams, and a total of 130 d-damage penetrates. The Pathfinder is dropped to -110 dDR, more than -5xdHP, and is immediately destroyed.

The starboard battery contiues, rolling a 10 against Gunner-14, +5 for target SM, -8 for Short range, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -2 for ECM, and +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots. He misses by 2, and Pathfinder 2's pilots sighs with relief.

Jovian Turn 3: The new flight leader in Pathfinder 2 is no longer interested in slowly moving behind the Miyu. He wants to get behind the corvette, pop off his missiles, and get the heck out of the area before getting roasted by more particle beams.

Pathfinder 2 barrels in, accelerating at 3.0G with 1.8 mps of delta-V for a +6 acceleration bonus and attempting a Closing maneuver on the Miyu. She rolls a 7 against Pilot-14, -2 for multitasking, +6 for acceleration, +0 for the exo-armor's Handling, and succeeds by 11. The Miyu counters with a roll of 6 against Pilot-14, +2 for evasive acceleration, -1 for the corvette's handling, +1 for tactical navigation, and gets an MoS of 10 and barely loses the contest. The Pathfinder formation aligns off the Miyu's rear hull at Short range.

In sequence, each Pathfinder fires off both MMJ-4 16 cm missiles. Pathfinder 2 starts by rolling a 12 against Artillery-14, +9 for target SM, +2 for missile sAcc, -3 for more than 1 mps but less than 3 mps of relative velocity (per the errata, the missiles are travelling at 2 mps, same as the guns), -1 for the target's ECM, -2 for multi-tasking, and no bonus or penalty for rate of fire: net is a 19, and both missiles hit easily. The KKC gunners respond with the entire port battery, rolling a 12 against Artillery-14, -1 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for relattive velocity, +2 for RoF, and misses entirely against a target of 6. The Miyu then dodges, rolling a 14 against a base 7, -1 for handling, +1 for ECM, and +1 for evasive, and misses by 6. Both missiles impact the rear hull for 6dx4 d-damage, doing 82 and 76 to hull locations 1 and 3. The hardened armor nullifies the missile's penetrators and absorbs 40d-damage, allowing 42 and 36 d-damage to get through. Neither attack is enough to destroy the target system, but both systems are disabled, leaving the Miyu a drifting derelict without an engine.

Clearly, the Pathfinders should have used proximity fused missiles here, as another 5-10 missile hits in each volley would have finished the Miyu off. I resisted, because in my head I'm downgrading proximity fused missiles to RoF x10, d-Dmg/3, and they wouldn't have penetrated the Miyu's armor at all that way. Which would have been more cool.

Pathfinder 3 follows with more missiles, rolling a 10 against Artillery-14, +9 for target SM, +2 for missile sAcc, -3 for more than 1 mps but less than 3 mps of relative velocity (per the errata, the missiles are travelling at 2 mps, same as the guns), -1 for the target's ECM, -2 for multi-tasking, and no bonus or penalty for rate of fire: net is a 19, and both missiles hit easily. The KKC gunners respond with the entire starboard battery, rolling a 12 against Artillery-14, -1 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for relattive velocity, +2 for RoF, and misses entirely against a target of 6. The Miyu then dodges, rolling a 13 against a base 7, -1 for handling, +1 for ECM, and +1 for evasive, and misses by 5. Again, both missiles impact the rear hull for 6dx4 d-damage, doing 100 and 83 to hull locations 1 and 2. The hardened armor nullifies the missile's penetrators and absorbs 40d-damage, allowing 60 and 43 d-damage to get through. The first missile destroys armor location 1 and disables the engine room in location 6; the second missile disables armor location 2. The Miyu is at -81 dHP, but is still holding together.

Pathfinder 4 tries to finish the corvette off with the last missiles, rolling a 9 against Artillery-14, +9 for target SM, +2 for missile sAcc, -3 for more than 1 mps but less than 3 mps of relative velocity (per the errata, the missiles are travelling at 2 mps, same as the guns), -1 for the target's ECM, -2 for multi-tasking, and no bonus or penalty for rate of fire: net is a 19, and both missiles hit easily. No point defense is possible, so the Miyu dodges, rolling a 9 against a base 7, -1 for handling, +1 for ECM, and +1 for evasive, and misses by 1. Again, both missiles impact the rear hull for 6dx4 d-damage, doing 79 and 94 to hull locations 6 twice. The hardened armor nullifies the missile's penetrators and absorbs 40d-damage, allowing 39 and 54 d-damage to get through. The first missile destroys the already damaged engine room; the second missile destroys armor location 2 and passes another disable result to the engine room, destroying it. The Miyu is at -174 dHP, and rolls HT to survive: a 12 is barely enough.

CEGA Turn 3: The Miyu is wrecked but still has attitude controls; she is drifting controllably and can hopefully still avenge herself. Point defense is irrelevant now that the Pathfinders have dumped all their missiles and dodging is impossible. She'll turn to face her tormentors and attempt to pick them off.

The captain makes a Command task to perform space tactics against the Jovian formation; he'll go for offensive tactics to predict their defense patterns and reduce their Dodge by 1. He rolls against Tactics-14, +1 for the 1 minute turn, and barely succeeds with a 13. The pilot makes a controlled drift maneuver to turn the front of the ship toward the enemy. The Miyu is still at short range with her central hull facing the Pathfinders.

Then the particle beam gunners open up, each battery firing a combined salvo of 9 shots against the first two Pathfinders. The port battery starts, rolling a 10 against Gunner-14, +5 for target SM, -8 for Short range, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -2 for ECM, and +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots. He fails by 2, and misses. The starboard battery continues, rolling a 14 against Gunner-14, +5 for target SM, -8 for Short range, -3 for the beam's sAcc, -2 for ECM, and +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots. He fails by 6, and also misses.

The port KKC battery fires, rolling a 5 against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 9, and hits with three shots (the guns have Rcl 4). Pathfinder 2 fires 200 laser PDS shots at it, rolling a 7 against Gunnery-14, -1 for target SM, +0 for range, +8 for RoF 200, -2 for multitasking, and succeeds by 12, easily obliterating the gun rounds. The starbard KKC battery fires at Pathfinder 2, rolling against Artillery-14, +5 for target SM, -6 for the KKC's sAcc, -3 for the 2 mps gun velocity, -2 for ECM, +2 for the RoF bonus for 9 shots, and +4 for proximity fusing. He succeeds by 3 with an 11, and hits with a single shot, which is obliterating by another 200 PDS lasers (rolled a 13 versus a target of 18).

Jovian Turn 4: The Jovians have won a significant victory, as the drifting Miyu can no longer interfere with Jovian exos and ships attempting to move through this path in space. The Jovians quickly disengage to long range and head into towards the rest of the CEGA fleet, signalling for their own reinforcements.

Conclusions

Apparently, I can't design ships. Swapping the Bricriu's e-mag guns with her habitat and PDS system would have been sufficient to give the corvette all-angle protection against missiles. Then she could have used her e-mag guns and particle beams to destroy the Pathfinders no matter where they were.

That said, this was an interesting little scenario. The increased crew actions on the Bricriu added a bit to it, and there was some potential for some interesting tactics. Too bad that Spaceships is so overwhelming realistic that there aren't many good switches to allow cinematic dogfights.

The love affair with missiles is probably realistic, but it's annoying: missiles can fire from a destroyed craft (beams and guns can't); missiles don't take targeting penalties for a badly damaged ship (beams and guns do); missiles do more damage than beams and are much more accurate at lower Rcl than guns... missiles just rock. The perfect ship has a lot of missile launchers, ECM, and improved VRF laser point defense arrays, and minimal armor because proximity fuse missiles are either stopped by point defense or destroy the ship. Which is realistic, I guess, but it's not Jovian Chronicles.

I'm going to a fight off a trio of Bricriu's against a Valiant, just to do a capital on capital ship fight. And then I'm going to start thinking about some house rules to address the issues I currently have:

1. Missiles are too effective, especially with proximity fuses.
2. KKCs and E-mag guns are too ineffective. If nothing else, e-gun rounds should be much harder to intercept.
3. It needs to be easier to rendezvous with a craft and harder to shake rendezvous attempts.