Our Star Trek Wargame.......Reborn!

[Sionnach Glic]

Some of our older members may remember Sunny's wargame that used to run in the Books/Games/General section of the site. After Sunny dissappeared the game quickly died off, but a discussion in the TNG forum has led to renewed interest in it, and we've decided to give it another shot.
Shortly before he left, Sunny emailed me a copy of the game mechanics he used. I'll post them below so people can observe the system and how it works.

First off, for those of you not familiar with wargame terminology "D6" reffers to a simple, six-sided dice. "2D6" is simply two normal dice, and so on. If there are any questions, feel free to ask. The game simply uses the stats taken from the entries on the DITL main site.

The Turn

Lasts 3 seconds

Divided into:
Conn
Tac

Conn:
Moving the ship:
Actions require a 7 to succed on 2D6+3, with modifiers.

Modifiers:
+2 for a higher Combat Maneuverability rating
Damage taken

Results:
7 will get a basic result, a 10 a better result and a 12 better (and occasionally the max).
Example 1:
Deep in an Excelsior attemtps to evade a torpedo fired by Rochey's Galaxy. A result of 7 puts a -1 modifier on Rochey's "to hit" roll, a 10 gives a -2 and a 12 gives him a -3 to hit the ship.

Orders:
Evasive: Ship doesn't go anywhere in particular, but attempts to dodge enemy fire by twisting and turning.
Closing/moving away from enemy
Moving into position to target a particular section of the ship

Speed:
Ship speed is deduced by the ship's 'Speed' ranking (using DITL stats), X 100, in kilometres.
EG: an Akira with a speed ranking of 1,203 would be able to move 120, 300 Km per turn.

For things that are opposed (one ship trying to get a shot with their photons while the other manoeuvres to stay out of the firing arc of their torpedo tubes) the person in a higher "score" wins. If it's a tie than the opposed thing is considered doable with a penalty to hit.

You can specify multiple things for your ship to do. But doing more things can mean you don't do any of them well. For example lets say you want to get someone in your forward torpedo arc and maneouver to get a shot at their stardrive.If you roll a 7-9 you do the first thing at the basic level, at 10-11 you do both things at a "+1" level so it's easy to beat either.

Example 2:
Deep wants to position his Excelsior so that it can target the bridge of Rochey's Galaxy (which is in front of him) while at the same time trying to get Teaos' Nova (behind Deep) into his rear torpedo arc. Neither of the enemy ships are attempting to evade. It rolls a 10, allowing it do both.

Tac:
Attacking hostile ships, firing weapons, etc.

Targetting:
For tactical targing, a section like a nacell or center section of the stardrive section gives -2, while a specific spot (like the bridge) gives -3.

I'll generally tell you what you can hit (such as being able to hit stuff in the front when ships are closing). Once they're at "dogfighting" range and are twisting around each other generally you can hit forward things and side things, but ships are by default assumed to make their warp cores hard to hit. So con should attempt to manuver to get a clear shot if you want to hit that area without an extra -1 or -2 penalty. Ditto for the bridge. So declare your intentions if you specifically wish to target the bridge or WC.

You generally fire by rolling 2d6+3 (with mods) and need an eight to hit.

Phasers:
Phasers gain a +2 mod to hit, and reduce the targeting penalty by one (so they are good at hitting specific stuff).
Phasers have a max range of 300,000m and suffer an addition -1 penalty for every "weapon range and accuracy" *100 meters. So a Galaxy class ship fireing phasers at a target 230,000m distant would get a -2 modifier.
A phasor hit does it's wattage x3 in damage.

Torps:
Torps can be fired in one of three 'spreads':
tight (-2 to hit but all torps hit the same place, causing massive damage )
medium spread (+1 to hit but torps all hit different places on the ship)
wide spred (+3 to hit but only 25% rounded down of the torps hit the ship)
Photon torpedos take the same range penalty mentioned above, but cap the penalty at -2 becuase they are self guiding. Their max range is more like 3,000,000m. However they generally only travel at about 700,000m per three second combat turn. So if you're fireing at distant targets they could hop to warp or attempt to shoot the photons or something. Best to use them a little closer. Also until you are 300,000m from your target photons have fire arcs. Which ships very close to you can avoid with a good 'evasive' con roll.
Photons torps do 80,000TJ of damage each.
Quantum torps do 120,000TJ of damage each.

Ships and damage:

Shields:
The daystrom value in TJ is how much damage a shield can take. The shield is devided into six sections. fore, aft, starboard, port, dorsal and ventral. "shield power" is assumed to distribute evenly every combat turn, but if you can overload a specific section (doing 1/6th of the total sheild damage capacity) in one turn it'll collapse and not regenerate (presumably the generators for that section have overloaded and burnt out, making them inable to function any more).

The 1/6th value is also used for determining the following.

at 10% random crits can occur if you roll a 12 to hit. Usually not a vital system. This is the "panel blowing" and such we see in the series while the shields are still up.
at 50% random crits occur on a 11. Also 10% of the weapons damage hits the hull in addition to damaging the shield. If you targetd a specific area on the surface of the ship(bridge) and do 50% of the damage of one of the six shields in one hit you score an automatic crit.
at 100% That shield section goes down and all further damage goes straight though.

Hull:It is devided into 10 sections. (on fed ships usually front, port, starboard, centralm and rear/neck of saucher, forward engineering(deflector dish), central engineering (warp core), rear engineering(usually a shuttlebay or some such), and the two nacelles).

Each section can take sqrt(mass*(1+hull armor))*100+90,000 TJ of damage before being totally destroyed. But it doesn't just go from perfect to destroyed.

at 0-24% destroyed: crits can affect surface systems (stuff you can see on the outside of the ship)
at 25%-49% destroyed: surface systems are disabled or destroyed. Crits affect systems inside on the side facing the attack. Hull breachs have occured. Sick bay will be busy
50% to 75% destoryed: Internal systems facing the attack desabled/destroyed. Major hull breaches, some people sucked out before force fields seal things up. Unless engineering staff is present on the next turn the EPS system here will fail shutting down everything in that section and possibly cutting power to forward sections.
76-99% destroyed. Everything in section disabled or destroyed, hull ripped open, heavy casualties, unless crew is present EPS conduits to other sections fail next turn possibly cutting off their power. The section is just barely hanging on.
100% destroyed. Embers and space junk.

Crits:
Either by a high roll or by targeting something ships systems can get crited. They aren't blown up, but something is wrong and engineering will need to do a quick fix.

Federation crews roll 2d6+1 to fix stuff.
Klingon crews roll 2d6 to fix stuff.

For the first turn it's just down.
Next the turn it'll work if they roll 10
The turn after that, 8
For all turns after that they just need a 6
Multiple crits need to be repaired seperatly and delay the repair process.

Example 3:
Seafort's Sovereign fires on Mark's Intrepid, scoring criticals on both the starboard impulse engine and the aft torpedo launcher. Mark must repair each of these systems seperately, and can only attempt to repair one per turn.

For where you hit on a ship or what you crit when it's random I kinda just make up odds on what I think you could hit/crit and roll from there.

Cloaks:
Any ship with a cloaking device can attempt to activate the cloak during its Conn Phase. To do so requires a roll of 8 on 2D6. If successful, the cloak comes into effect on the following Conn Phase.
To activate the cloak, the ship diverts power from its other systems to the cloak. This means that the ship will remain stationary and cannot fire weapons. This effectively gives the enemy ship(s) one "free" shot at the ship while the cloak is powering up.
When the cloak is active, the ship cannot be detected in any way. It can move as normal, but may not fire weapons until it decloaks (see below). The enemy ship(s) can move as normal, but will not be informed as to the position of the cloaked ship. Info on distance and position will be PMed to the cloaked player.
A cloaked vessel can attempt to decloak during the Conn Phase. To decloak requires a roll of 6 on 2D6. Decloaking does not affect movement or weapons, meaning the ship may move and fire in the same turn it decloaks. Once it decloaks, any other ships in the game will be alerted as to its position, but will suffer a -2 "to hit" penalty if they attempt to attack it during that Tac Phase (this represents the tac officer panicking and firing off shots rapidly as the vessel suddenly appears on his sensors).


--------------------

And there's the mechanics, and how the game's played.
For the first battle we wer thinking of testing it out by pitting a Bird of Prey against a Miranda. Any volunteers for captains?

[Mark]

Wow, the system is actually a bit complicated. But I'd give it a try as the skipper of the Miranda.

[stitch626]

I'll try the BoP. And this is much more complicated, and cool, than I thought it would be.

[Mark]

And there you go.............two volunteers


BTW, I don't know if it will matter, but I'll call my ship the USS Cluster

[Lt. Staplic]

sounds cool, just a couple questions

what's with the +1 ect.
ex. 2D6+1: two regurlar dice + 1 to the sum of the roll or what?

How do we roll?

[Mark]

2D6+1 is the sum of the roll +1, giving you an outcome of 3 to 13. (unless things have changed since my gaming days)

[Lt. Staplic]

that's what I thought, just wanted to make sure...

now how do we actually roll these dice online?

[Mark]

There may be a random program........I dont' know.

[Lt. Staplic]

well when we get that figured out, I voulenteer for round two. I'd like a Defiant please.

[stitch626]

I think Rochey knows... either he actually rolls, or a "random number generator".

[Mark]

well when we get that figured out, I voulenteer for round two. I'd like a Defiant please.

Versus a Prommie, perhaps?

[Lt. Staplic]

Thanks for ruining my sure victory Mark!
I was thinking an NX class

[Mark]

Ha........just sneeze at an NX with a Defiant, and you win

[Lt. Staplic]

that's what i was thinking

[Tsukiyumi]

I'm interested to see how this turns out. I'd love to play, or mod, at some point.