Lock All Phasers! (Or, What I Did For Christmas)

 

Just a little disagreement among avowed enemies.

Thought I’d share a few snaps of my holiday seasonal obsession, which was to create a “Captain’s Duel” spaceship combat game. The goal I set was to mimic popular culture, cinematic style one-on-one starship combat, in the same light vein as my previous Generic Outlandishly Big Spacefleets! (or G.O.B.S!). But instead of an admiral covering space with enormous fleets, this game focuses on the view from the captain’s chair, with the captain making all the decisions as to how best use his ship’s weapons, defenses, and maneuverability— plus a few special capabilities.

Exploring A New Frontier, Defining Its Boundaries

I began by assuming the concept of power allocation which often appears in other systems. However, I have chosen what I believe is an easier take. The whole thing revolves around assigning dice, which represent the ship’s power, to the various ship’s systems. And of course, there are more ship’s systems “needing” power than the ship has available. Each captain has a Starship Control Panel (SCP), on which the dice are placed and assigned to the systems the captain wants to power for the “battle round.” Initiative is rolled, and then the captains each in turn use the power they’ve assigned. In some cases the dice are rolled, in others they just represent power “spent.”

The first fight was a standard one-on-one combat between a classic Cruiser and its alien counterpart— the ACRDB (Allied Confederation of Reasonably Decent Beings) Cruiser Gambit vs. the B’ohnh’ehd Empire’s K’kynbuht. (Any resemblance to any non-existent space alliance, empires, or ships is entirely a parody. Duh.)

This one went both ways in multiple attempts (though with considerable rules adjustments in between), but wound up feeling quite fair to me, with neither ship having a clear advantage over the other. 

Adding Some Wrinkles to the Space Time Continuum

Next I tossed in a familiar scenario: A mysterious cloaked vessel with a powerful “super weapon” is out to destroy an ACRDB “listening post,” and the Gambit has to stop it. And then I threw in a twist— the K’kynbuht is hanging around, hoping to snag the cloaked vessel (and its technology) for themselves. Of course, there’s a treaty now between the ACRDB and the B’ohnh’ehd Empire, so they can’t directly attack each other… well, not in a way that seems intentional (if a ship winds up in the blast radius of a torpedo fired at the cloaked raider, well, accidents will happen).

Station, station, who wants the station?

Hey, where'd he go?

Time to play "Whack-a-Ship"

And finally I created the Feranytang Merchant Cruiser Controlling Interest equipped with a “disabling” EMP weapon with the same goal as the K’kynbuht. (Sorry, no pics of that, not that you'd really see anything-- just two ships flying around throwing dice at each other.)

Variety is the Spice of Space Combat

I ran these scenarios multiple times with varying configurations, and wound up very pleased with the final result— sometimes the raider blasted the station and got away, sometimes it blasted and was destroyed, sometimes it was destroyed or captured before achieving its  objective, sometimes after. (I also ran one-on-one duels among the ships as well.) 

Found him! "Stand by to repel boarders!"

We get the bird or nobody gets the bird, pal.

A Successful Shakedown Cruise

One interesting element I found was that it wasn’t that much of a struggle for me to oversee even three or four ships at a time, even in opposition to each other— an unintended result. So this could wind up even being a “squadron” duel, with players controlling more than one vessel.

It’s still not entirely complete— I’m working on rules for Elite Crewmen (like the Ship’s Engineer), original ship construction, and even space fighters and carrier ships.

Yes, Sparky, You Can Play Too

There’s a lot of conceptual overlap with my original fleet game, Generic Outlandishly Big Spacefleets!, or G.O.B.S.!— by design of course, though the combat systems are different (find G.O.B.S.! here). So if it’s in G.O.B.S.! it will wind up with at least a nod in Star Captain— (and yes, that’s the name).

In the spirit of G.O.B.S.!, I’ve now worked up SCPs for:

ACRDB Contumacious (hint: consult your thesaurus— how do you think I come up with these names?)

Battle Carrier FightingSun Universica (with fighters)

And in honor of the season, the B’ohnh’ehd Imperial B’zard class Scout Shyut’yer’ai’owt

Among others, of course— the Avias Maximus, the P’unch’em and the Hissi Galore… if it wasn’t a parody, it wouldn’t be the G.O.B.S.! universe.

Obviously, just me on my table is not what I call “fully playtested.” But if you’d like to give Star Captain a whirl and tell me what you think of it, give me a shout, and maybe we can work something out! (Best way to reach me is use my nom de plume "parzival" and affix that little curly "a" thing followed by "aol" and then a period, and then "com." (Beat that, spambots.)

In the meantime, lock phasers on target, raise shields, and brace for impact (because apparently nobody in the future has heard of safety belts).

-- Parzival

 

And a Few Minor Communiques from HQ, aka "Cue End Credits"

The spaceships appearing in these photos are classic 1990’s era MicroMachines, sadly no longer in production. I’ve got a bunch of these, though all in single ships. Great for a duel game like Star Captain, but not for fleet games like G.O.B.S.! So I’m happy to be able to pull ‘em out.

And yes, I’m aware of the well-known licensed games you’re all thinking of. However, I have never purchased any of these games, nor played them. I only know of their contents second hand or by reputation. These descriptions did not appeal to me, and thus was formed Star Captain.