The Black Campbell

The Battlestar Galactica game naturally lends itself to mass-combat, if only due to the large number of fighters in any combat between capital vessels.  In our campaign, we’ve had three capital ships on either side, plus masses of fighters.  Instead of judging combat by caveat, some fights should have that element of danger that randomness gives…

To that end, I cobbled together a set of mass combat for BSG RPG:

1.  Whereas personal combat takes place in 6-second increments, mass combat takes place in at least 1 minute increments.  All capital ships are a single unit, with fighters represented by flight, squadron, or wing.

2.  At Capital range, all capital ships are an EASY target and cannot maneuver to avoid fire.  Point defense systems may conduct an opposed test against incoming fire to stop missile and kinetic weapons, as well as attack fighter craft that close to skirmish range.  At ranges before Capital, ships can also attempt to maneuver to make targeting more difficult by presenting a smaller target or better angle to slough off attacks.  This requires a HARD AGL+PILOT/CAPITAL SHIP.  A success allows the to add the ship’s AGL to the EASY difficulty, and at Long Dradis, the test acts as an opposed test to the enemy’s roll to hit.

3.  Another way to stop incoming missile fire is to jam the guidance systems of the weapon.  EW raptors can attempt to better the defense test of the capital ship with an INT+TECHNICAL ENGINEERING/ ELECTRONIC WARFARE.  The higher roll is the difficulty for the missile attack.

4.  Fighters and raptors act in groups to be ore effective.  Fighters are grouped into flights, squadrons, and wings – each is considered a single “capital level” unit in mass combat and do damage at the spacecraft-scale.

Flights consist of 1-11 fighters.    They can take twice the damage of the number of vessels in the flight.  Every two hits, lose a fighter (never a player character ship, though!)  Flights only do basic damage from a successful hit on a vessel.  Squadrons consist of 12-24 craft.  They gain d2W to a unit (be it a capital ship or a fighter unit.)  Wings consist of 2 or more squadrons (48+ fighters) and gain a d4W to any damage rendered.  Whenever a unit takes enough damage to drop below the minimum size, then lose their damage bonus.

5.  In fleet level combat, initiative is decided by an opposed INT+PERCEPTION/ TACTICS  of the commanders.  (For a fleet, this is the admiral; for a ship, the commander; for a fighter wing or what have you, the CAG.)  [We allow the CAG to roll separately of the admiral/commander, but the latter can do an indirect combined test with the CAG to gain initiative.]

6.  Combat takes place as with character level combat:  winners of initiative go first, then the force with the lower initiative.  On board the capital ships, the commander can aid any number of tests going on with an ALE+LEADERSHIP test.  Other characters can conduct tests they are assigned (a gunnery officer or executive officer might be handling the ship’s cannons or the point defense.)  Each test give a -1 step on the attribute.  (So a gunnery officer might be handling a gunnery salvo with a d8 Alertness and a d8 Heavy Weapons/Ship Cannons, then conduct point defense with a d6 Alertness and a d8 Heavy Weapons/Ship Cannons.)  This also counts for the leadership tests the commander might be rolling.  (Ordering a gunnery salvo, directing damage control, and aiding the CAG in conducting the fight — the last to tests would each lose a -1 shift to the attribute test.)  Engineers or deck crew can conduct damage control — fixing stun damage, or doing jury rigging on wounds.

Fighter units are commanded either by the player character leading a flight or squadron, and any non-PC led unit is commanded by the CAG.  The character rolls an opposed test vs. their opponents (usually an AGL+PILOT/VIPER) and vice-versa.

7.  Players in mass combat:  during the combat actions, you can “zoom in” on individual characters doing their thing — the fighter pilot in one tough dogfight, the engineer trying to stop the tylium lines from catching fire and blowing the ship sky-high, or the marines fighting Cylons boarding the ship.  Every ten rounds, zoom back out to handle the fleet-level stuff.

Granted, these aren’t well fleshed out, nor are they comprehensive, but they worked as a good framework for capital-ship level combat in the last few games we’ve had.

There is a debate going on in the Cortex System RPG boards over Strength as a dump stat for characters.  Agility is more important for scoring a hit on an opponent, Vitality more important for survivability.  Strength winds up often being the stat that gets short shrift.  One of the ideas to make strength more important in Cortex is to have it effect melee and hand-to-hand damage.

In the Cortex system, weapons damage is usually represented by the basic damage done by an attack with the weapons damage added (ex. Bill swings a knife at Jim.  Bill’s attack is and Agility of d6 and a skill in Melee Combat of d4 v. Jim’s Agility of d6 and Atheltics (he’s dodging) of d4.  Bill gets lucky and rolls a 9, while Jim rolls a 4…that’s 5 points basic damage, which is broken into 3 stun/2 wound.  He then rolls a d4W for the knife and gets a 2W — total:  4 wound, 3 stun…)

Here’s the rub:  Bill’s a friggin’ monster with a d10 Strength.  Shouldn’t the knife do more damage?  Certainly if it’s a cinematic-styled game, it should.  There are a few ideas floating around on the Cortex System RPG boards, suggesting an average between the knife damage and the strength of the character (in this case, it would be a d6 [rounding down].)  Another is to roll the strength and weapons damage and average that.  (Ex. On a d4W Bill rolls a 2, and for his strength a 7:  average of 11 is 6, rounding down.)

I am suggesting that the d10 Strength would be the damage roll for the weapon, but it would be Basic damage…thus the increased impact of the strength only amplifies, but does not replace, the weapon’s wound capabilities.  (Ex.  Bill had the 5 points basic for his initial impact split into 3S and 2W.   He rolls his strength-based damage of d10B and gets a 6.  That is split down the middle for 6 stun and 5 wound.  It’s a serious wound, but not immediately fatal to Jim with his 12 Life Points.)

As for hand-to-hand combat, I often allow the characters to choose Agility or Strength in HTH Combat.  While not entirely realistic in the ability to strike a blow, it captures the “big action hero” punch/kick styles for the movies.  Schwartzeneggar was never very fast in his punches, for instance, but on impact, they were impressive in their effects (on screen, at least.)

To go alone with yesterday’s Pegasus posting, here’s my take on Admiral Cain.  There are two versions, pre- and post-attack.  Although some of the material in Razor helped to flesh out her background, I found the original Cain episodes of Season 2 to present not an insane woman, but one too sane.  She is perfectly aware of their situation and is willing to do whatever has to be done to survive…even when she knows her actions are morally or ethically wrong.

Her step down from going through with the assassination of Adama after the attack on the Resurrection Ship, in my mind, was her first step toward regaining some of her moral compass.  In many ways, I viewed her as what Adama could have become, had he not been shot by Boomer; he had been going down the road of expedience, and without his son or Roslin to give him a slap in the chops, from time to time, he could easily have gone Cain’s route.

Adama describes her as smart and well-connected in the extended version of Pegasus.  That lead me to believe that she was more politically savvy than it would appear in the episode, and her crew’s loyalty is not that of a woman who was insane, or prone to irrational actions, but a steady, caring, but stern disciplinarian.  Shaw’s arrival on Pegasus in Razor suggests a sharp, and somewhat cruel sense of humor.

Admiral Helena Cain, #866931

Tauronese female, age 49.  Height: 5’9″   Weight: 140 lbs   Hair: Brown   Eyes: Brown

ATTRIBUTES:  Agility: d6   Strength: d6   Vitality: d8   Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d10   Willpower: d10

Life Points: 20   Initiative: d6+d10   Endurance: d8+d10   Resistance: 2d8

ASSETS: Formidable Presence [d2], Lady Luck [d4], Political Pull[d6],  So Say We All [d4]

COMPLICATIONS:  Anger Issues [d2], Duty [d10]

SKILLS:  Athletics: d6, Covert: d4, Discipline [Leadership]: d6 [d8], Guns: d4, Heavy Weapons: d2, Influence [Administration, Bureaucracy]: d6 [d8, d8], Knowledge: d4, Mechanical Engineering: d2, Perception [Tactics]: d6 [d8], Pilot: d6, Planetary Vehicles: d2, Survival: d4, Technical Engineering d6, Unarmed Combat: d4

At the time they meet Galactica:

ATTRIBUTES:  Agility: d6   Strength: d6   Vitality: d8   Alertness: d8   Intelligence: d10   Willpower: d12

Life Points: 20   Initiative: d6+d10   Endurance: d8+d12   Resistance: 2d8

ASSETS:  Cool Under Fire [d6], Formidable Presence [d4], Lady Luck [d4], So Say We All [d6]

COMPLICATIONS:  Anger Issues [d4], Duty [d6], Out for Blood [d4], Sadistic [d4]

SKILLS:  Athletics: d6, Covert: d4, Discipline [Leadership]: d6 [d10], Guns: d4, Heavy Weapons: d4, Influence [Administration, Bureaucracy]: d6 [d8, d8], Knowledge: d4, Mechanical Engineering: d2, Perception [Tactics]: d6 [d8], Pilot: d6, Planetary Vehicles: d2, Survival: d4, Technical Engineering d6, Unarmed Combat: d4

The last in this series, for now, is the Mercury-class battlestar.  This is the newest, most powerful ship in the Colonial Fleet at the time of the Cylon attack.  The onscreen example is Pegasus, and there is still a bit of speculation on her capabilities, but this is the best I could glean:

BATTLESTAR PEGASUS

SHIP DATA:
Class: Mercury     Length: 5872′     Beam: 2187′     Draught: 1131′     Decks: 35    Scale:  Spacecraft     Crew: 1700 standard    Passengers:  up to 10,000 max

ATTRIBUTES:

Agility: d4     Strength: d12+d4     Vitality: d8     Alertness: d10     Intelligence: d10     Willpower: d10

Life Points: 28     Armor: 6W, 4S     Initiative: d4+d10     Speed: 5 [SL/JC]

SKILLS:  Heavy Weapons d6, Mechanical Engineering d4, Perception d6, Pilot d6

TRAITS:    Construction Facilities (d4), Formidable Presence (d6), Tough (d4)

ARMAMENT:  Heavy Skirmish Range Point Defense System (d12W Planetary-scale ), 34 Capital-Range Heavy Railguns (d12+d2W Spacecraft-scale), 24 Short Dradis-Range Heavy Missile Launchers  (d12+d4W Spacecraft-Scale), 12 Short Dradis-Range Nuclear Missiles  (d12+d8W Spacecraft-scale)

AUXILIARY VEHICLES:  200 (8 squadrons) Mk VII Vipers, 40 Raptors, 12 Marine Landing Shuttles, 6 standard shuttles, assorted work vehicles

Schematics courtesy of Starship Schematics Database, Jim Stevenson’s encyclopedic site.