I am working on a space setting based on the SR4 rules. I was planning on using the regular damage rules but then I realized that it would make it strange.

Basically you could have a base damage of 80 with ships having a hull health track of 3000. Now how do I do extra successes? 5 successes shouldn't make it 85. That doesn't sound right.

Any idea of how they are going to do naval combat?

Any ideas of how to do this?

Why not use some sort of Damage Scaling? That way you aren't dealing with big numbers but someone with a pistol isn't going to blow up your death-star and anyone unlucky enough to get hit by a ship-based laser is simply dead without pulling a Hand of God.

damage scaling systems are often clumsy if you have more then personal and vehicle scale. I can see two scales working okay but once you get fighter scale and transport scale and destroyer scale it gets a bit clumsy.


The only thing I can think of is maybe have damage codes listed as 50 + 10. Each success adds 10 to the base damage of 50.

I was wondering what people thought that the naval damage codes would be like.

I don't know, personally I think I would go with only two scales, Fighter/Small Craft Scale which would include your transports, ect and Capital Ship Scale with each DV translating at a 10/1 or maybe a 5/1 Ratio.

As for the indivadual damage ratings, well personally using a Scaling System I think I'd simply steal the same values as the personal weapons, and if you don't want to use a scaling system, then I think I would still use them and multiply them by X for some sense of balance...

*Edit*

And then also multiply your net hits by whatever you decide X is.

Well the scaling between personal and vehicle might sort of work but the nature of the setting wont allow scaling above that to work out.

For one I am doing some of it a bit unSR-like in that I have Hull Points and DR instead of a soak value and armor rating. The reason for this is that it eliminated a lot of rolls. Basically you have an attack roll. Damage past the DR is taken fully. No resistance rolls. If the target is moving then it will generate a penalty on the attack roll. Fighters can actually dodge but larger ships can't.

Now you can have huge transports, which are actually the largest ships around, that has low DR. You can have a combat starfighter that has higher DR. Now the transport has lots of mass and will take a long time to destroy. The fighter can only take a bit.

Also you can have a workbee, which is about the size of a VW, and put a combat sled on it to make it a Warbee. It functions as a fighter. It isn't very big at all. The whole thing is about the size of a Tie without the panels. They would loose quickly to a combat fighter but they can do some damage to a Lt Freighter.

The capitol ships are medium scale vessels similar to EA Destroyers from Bab 5 but without the rotating section.

The scaling thing just doesn't work for the setting.

Aye, I see now, I was envisioning something akin to Wing Commander...

ah okay. I wish I had a good example of the setting. It is like bits and pieces of a lot of different settings.

I am rethinking how I am going to do this. I took a look at Alternity and it gave me some ideas. This would push it back towards SR somewhat. I could have three health tracks for ships. System track would cover damage to the electrical systems, weapons, etc. Penalties go to active use of the ship. Engines track would cover damage to the engines. They would go slower or loose control. At the end the engines might explode. Crew track would cover crew areas. Penalties would be fires, explosions, or atmosphere leaks.

I was going to have armor as a soak value meaning that it removes it's value instead of rolling for body. This would make it faster. Each track would have it's own armor rating.

Ships would have penetration and damage to their weapons. Penetration removes armor.

I was thinking about possibly using a mechanic from Jovian Chronicles for damage. Instead of a base damage it would be a multiplier. Take your successes and multiply it by this number to get your damage. Take it and multiply it again to get personal scale.

Any thoughts?

I am also thinking about a structural integrity track. Maybe you figure out damage for each track separately but all damage also goes to the SI track. I'm trying to figure out what that track would actually track. At the end the ship would break up but is that it?

Should there be penalties at certain levels, and to what? I thought about having an additional roll at certain points but that would turn into a death spiral.

The SI would reflect the Hull. I could see large tracks on freighters so that SI damage as a way to destroy the ship would be pointless. On a fighter it might occur quickly. It could also take damage instead of another track reflecting normal damage.

Not sure

I think the Jovian Chronicles/Silhouette system is really very good for large vehicle combat (and IMO for combat generally. I do like that system ). I'm not sure how one would convert or adjust it to run with SR though.

My personal opinion would be to use a different, pre-existing system, with rules for space combat and large vehicles. Why did you particularly want to use the SR4 ruleset, out of interest?

Well I had the game in a modified version of Spycraft 2.0 but when I went back and looked at it I remebered how much I hate d20 - even as good a version as Spycraft. I've got most of the setting and system worked out and I thought that I had more of this worked out but I realized that I was not converting everything.

Besides it would be jarring to the players to shift from a SR type system to another system during combat.

I am basically trying to turn my modified version of SR4 into a universal system. I already have a version for Fantasy.

Fantasy is remarkably easy, (since there are fantasy elements in SR anyway), although it does mean that no one would play as a mundane as there would be no 'ware.

Well it was based on Avatar the last Airbender, Dynasty Warriors, and Weapons of the Gods. The only magic available was bending and everyone in the group would be a bender. Actually in this version there were many Avatars and the group would be made up of new avatars. There are only a few dozen avatars in the world. They did similar stuff as in the series and were supposed to keep the balance in the world. There were no adepts or spell casters in the setting. I also included a Wood Bending discipline as well.

Why must you taunt my over-tired over-caffinated brain Garrowolf? WOOD bending GAH!

well in the Swamp episode they encountered a version of wood bending. I combined it with archery and made it more well known.