The Black Campbell

Most players of the Battlestar Galactica RPG are going to want to play viper pilots, but just as important — in fact possibly more important — is the Raptor. These vessels were used mostly for recon missions, and occasionally packed with missiles and rockets for some dramatic battle sequences in the show, but would the real use of these vehicles be?

The Raptor is the workhorse of the Colonial Fleet.  It acts as an SAR vehicle, recovering pilots that have successfully ejected from damaged craft; they are a small-group transport, moving sqaud-level troops into an area of operation; and they are an electronic warfare platform.  It is essentially a combination of Blackhawk helicopter and E-6 Prowler.

It is the role of ECM bird that is where the Raptor is highly important and overlooked.  Spacecraft in BSG are huge and ungainly — they don’t duck and weave to avoid missiles and gunfire.  They are also incredibly easy to hit with weapons — space is huge, but there’s also not a lot of stuff to hit on the way to the target.  This makes stopping incoming weaponry is of paramount importance.

Vipers are used to intercept and shoot down fighters and missiles in flight, and once ordinance is past this phalanx, the next line of defense is the ship’s point defense system.   In between these lines of defense is the raptor.  Acting in its ECM role, the raptor attempts to jam and confuse the missiles that are fired at their battlestar.  They can use this capability to confuse and limit the response of the raiders that are similarly attacking their viper squadrons.

During a combat turn, a raptor pilot or his ECO can attempt several actions:

They can attempt to jam incoming fire from an enemy unit.  The ECO or pilot rolls a ship ALE (usually a d12)+their Tech Engineering/ECM.  The result is the difficulty of the enemy to hit their target.  Example:  a Cylon basestar needs a 3 to hit the battlestar Pleiades.   Raptor pilot “Jumbo” attempts to jam incoming fire, rolling the raptor’s d12 Alertness and his d10 Tech Engineering/ECM.  He rolls an 11.  The basestar rolls its Alertness of d12 and a Heavy Weapons of d4 and rolls an 8…the missiles are jammed, missing the baattlestar or exploding in flight (confused as to their range to target.)

Although I don’t allow jamming of cannon fire, I do suppose that attempting to jam ranging DRADIS would be possible.

Second, a Raptor can try to jam the guidance or tracking systems of a raider.  The ECO or pilot does an opposed test against the raider’s Alertness +Perception.  If the ECO fails, the raider suffers no consequences.  If he succeeds, his success is added to the difficulty of the raider to fire on an enemy or avoid fire.

Example:  A particularly wily raider is harassing Pleiades‘ CAG, Professor.  He can’t shake the raider due to a series of really good rolls on the raider’s part.  His wingman, 3-Point, is trying to line the Cylon up, but it’s all over the place.  Jumbo decides to try and jam the raiders in the vicinity of his raptor, including this annoying toaster.  He rolls his d12+d10 (raptor Alertness+his Tech Engineering/ECM) vs. the raider’s d8+d4.  Jumbo rolls an 11, the raider an 8.  The raider now has a +3 to all difficulties on its tests (including adding to the dodging tests for Professor to avoid being hit, and 3-Point’s attack on the raider.)

A third option might be to deny the enemy use of communications — jamming their communications.  Doing this can seriously turn the tide in combat, by making it hard for the enemy to coordinate their actions.  The raptor crew can use their jamming test against the command and control elements of the bad guys.  this would make tactical rolls for the enemy more difficult.

Example:  Pleiades‘ commander has noticed that Cylons are running very tight operations, running their fighters in well-organized, coordinated attacks that their vipers are having trouble countering.  (Professor’s been rolling badly for his tactics test to gain initiative against the Cylons and it’s meant his squadrons are out of position and not intercepting Cylon raiders.)  He orders Jumbo and his ECO Drippy to find and jam Cylon communications.

Jumbo rolls a d12+his Tech Egnineering/Communications (a d6) to find the Cylon frequencies — he gets a lucky test of 18!  Having rolled onto the Cylons C3 signals, he has Drippy jam them vs. a Formidable (15) — Jumbo, being the player character, rolls for Drippy with his stats: a d12 for the raptor and a Tech Eng/ECM of d10 for a 17!  The Cylons now have a -2 to their Alertness+Tactics tests for the next round vs. Professor (rolling for the vipers) and Pleiades — and it’s just enough to allow Professor to use the confusion to get his people into position and splash some toasters.

There’s a downside to jamming, however, as any signals intelligence guy can tell you:  You have to broadcast loud and hard across the battlefield.  The makes you the brightest radiation signature in the area of operations…and that brings a lot of fire down on your position.  Jamming isn’t something you want to do for long, and you don’t want to sit still while you do it.

Locating the jamming element is EASY on an Alertness+Perception test.  Once spotted, the raptor crew can expect an anti-radiation missile (a missile which locks onto EM signatures) to come visiting in short order.  the pilot better be ready to dodge fire at any moment.  It also means that a raptor is unlikely to jam the communications across the battlezone consistently.  Leakage can effect friendlies, even if they’re not on the same frequencies, if they’re close enough.  (A botch and the friendly forces are being jammed.)

This gives the raptor player something more to do than wait for an SAR mission in combat, and makes them as important a part of the action as the gunnery officer or the viper pilot.