Sneak Peek - Spaceship Combat
Hopefully by now you have all downloaded and tried out the free standalone adventure 'The Worst Intentions'. What you will have noticed is that in some areas the rules are a little light. Well this was on purpose, and here to explain further is the games author, Oliver...
The standalone adventure, The Worst Intentions, has to pack a lot of different rules and combat systems inside it, along with a full adventure. In order to squeeze it into 50 pages we had to cut a lot of content and only give you the absolute basics. For those who have already played the adventure you might have found space combat rather restrictive, with only five actions to choose from. Today we’ll look at a few more which you’ll find in the core book, broadsides, flight assist off and strafe. We’ll save the spaceship close combat actions, chicken and ram for another time.
Actions At-Distance
Chicken
Flee
Joust
Snipe
Strafe
Actions Up-Close
Broadsides
Disengage
Dogfight
Flight assist off
Ram
Broadsides
Instead of attempting to outmanoeuvre your opponents in the up-close zone, you can steady your ship to allow you to fire your turrets more accurately. When you choose this action pick an enemy ship in the up-close zone and fire a turret at it. If you hit you can fire another turret at it, provided you have more than one turret on your ship. If you miss you must choose a different target within the up-close zone when firing your remaining turrets. Continue to do this until you have fired with all your turrets or you have run out of targets to shoot at.
Analysis: Broadsides is the preferred tactic of large, un-manoeuvrable ships which are caught in the up-close zone. It is not as good as Dogfight because it is harder to focus fire on a single target. The rule that forces you to target another enemy ship on a miss reflects the fact that turrets are typically scattered across the hull of your ship and that enemy fighters will be actively trying to escape to arcs of your turrets.
Flight assist off
You switch off the computer flight assist causing your ship to drift almost out of control so you can fix an enemy in your sights. Choose a target in the up-close zone and fire a weapon at it. If you hit you can fire another weapon at the same target. If you miss your turn ends. Keep doing this until you have either missed your target or you have fired all your weapons. Until your next turn starts you cannot add your ship’s Agility score to your Defence.
If you use Flight assist off during an atmospheric combat your ship crashes at the end of your turn and is destroyed.
Analysis: Flight assist off gives any ship the chance to attack a more agile ship with its main weapons, at the cost of seriously hampering its Defence score. It is a good tactic for larger ships, such as Pythons or Imperial Clippers, that rely on fixed or gimballed weapons and which expect to be hit by enemy weapon fire anyway due to their low agility. It is less effective than Broadsides because you have to stop firing entirely if you miss, but allows you to attack with heavy fixed weapons that otherwise wouldn’t get a look in in a Dogfight.
Strafe
A strafing ship combines a joust with a disengagement. You sweep towards your target, guns blazing, and then pull away and engage your booster engines to swoop far away from the target. Choose a target in the up-close zone that is not disengaging. A strafing ship fires all its weapons, one at a time, at the target in the up-close zone. If you miss with a weapon the attack is over and you can fire no more weapons – it is assumed you have pulled off the target early to boost away, or the target has manoeuvred unexpectedly out of your gunsights and you are moving too fast to correct your aim. After firing your weapons you move into the up-close zone, but immediately take a disengage action. Other ships can try to intercept you with a dogfight as normal (see the disengage action).
Analysis: The strafe action helps to keep you in the safer at-distance zone. In exchange for hampering your weapons fire you get to begin disengaging from the up-close zone immediately. Like the flight assist off action, strafe ends your fire on a miss, making it less effective than a joust. Fast ships, such as the Cobra MkIII or Imperial Clipper benefit the most from strafe, since their impressive speed makes it hard for slower interceptors like the Sidewinder or Eagle to catch them, allowing them to strafe again and again without experiencing returning fire.
We hope you enjoyed this article – and feel free to include these new manoeuvres the next time you play!
