Since the beginning of the year, 11 of my 20 posts were on space combat. I’ve tested the default 4e Spaceship rules, modified 4e Spaceship rules, and 3e THS/Vehicles rules. And, in the end, what did I end up with?

Three Different Approaches

Let me look at the different iterations and what they resulted in.

  • 4e Spaceships: Everything is extremely vulnerable, and takes quite long to play out (armour damage makes everything quite complicated). On the other hand, spacecraft are extremely fast to build (twenty decisions, not counting weapons and cabins), if not detailed.
  • Modified 4e Spaceships: Kept the speed of building new spacecraft (but also the lack of details). The disadvantage is that it took quite a bit of time to play out. I also disliked that it took quite a while for the small AKVs to actually die.
  • 3e THS: That one was quite nice. AKVs were deadly (potentially) and it was actually quite fast to play. The disadvantage is that I really need a spreadsheet (I want to write a small script for that later) to build spacecraft. Also, there’s the railgun inconsistency.

In summary, I guess I liked the 3e THS rules the most, although there’s still some things to improve. I’d also like to do a few more playtests. But both of these will have to wait.

Summary

In the end, I do have a high-level overview over how space combat (and therefore arguably military doctrine) might look like.

Specifically, there are three weapons that are used by spacecraft: Lasers, railguns, and particle beams. Lasers are used as point defence and to destroy exposed systems (other lasers, mostly). Railguns are extremely deadly, but can be intercepted and take very, very long to reach their target. And particle beams effect almost-random destruction on electronic systems and a horrible and gruesome fate on anyone living.

For our purpose, therefore, the main weaponry are railguns and lasers: The latter strip the target of its defences, allowing the latter to kill the target. Particle beams are going to be banned for their gruesome damage.

However, in a state of war, it’s quite likely spacecraft will be upgraded with better point defences, but new spacecraft (if the war lasts that long; maybe refitting with externally-mounted particle beams) will be equipped with particle beams.

But that’s not the main weapon: As in THS, the main offensive (and defensive, if deployed) weapon are unmanned AKVs of about a hundred tons, mounting railguns and kinetic-kill munitions but killing bigger targets through ramming.

Meta-Summary

Primarily, I believe I spent too long on this.

I’ve spent about three months trying to optimize spacecraft combat, which ended with some very diminishing returns. Arguably, the final result wasn’t that different from the first iteration. But one does live and learn.

Next Steps

After having spent three months talking about space combat, one thing has become fairly clear: It is not important.

Don’t get me wrong, it clearly is important for several worldbuilding details - the size of polities and trade streams cannot be defined without knowing more details on space travel, and how they interact cannot be defined without at least some idea on how the military balance might look like.

However, what’s actually more important to the players (and more formative to the setting) is how the daily life looks like. Yes, it’s interesting to know that railguns can tear spacecraft apart, but how do I get to the hospital? How does my food look like? How does my computer look like? Do we even still have computers?

All of these are questions I want to explore next to eventually build up a better idea of how you, your characters, and NPCs live.