Giving and Receiving Damage in Space Ships

This is linked to the Combat page. This is strictly for Space ship combat. To learn more about spaceships visit the Space Ships Page and Ship Equipment page.

This is for advanced Space Ship combat and different tactics such as Swam combat (When more then 1 ship is targeting the same ship), Specified Targeting (When a ship attempts to target a specific component of an enemy ship), as well as how range and size effects combat. Single Crew Fighters, Hacking, Counter Hacking, Drones, and Special Weapon attributes are also included.

Giving and Taking Damage

Ships do not have Hit Points (HP) instead they take Battle Damage. A ship can only take so much Battle Damage before it becomes crippled and disabled. The amount of Battle Damage a ship can take is determined by ship size. 0 thru 5. The Colossal has 5. Gargantuan and Huge have 4. Large and Medium have 3. Small and Tiny have 2. Diminutive has 1. Fine has 0. A ship can only take 1 Battle Damage per round of combat. Ships that start with 0 Battle Damage are destroyed (not disabled or crippled) when successfully hit. Most common are drones, escape pods, and some fighters. A ships Battle Damage Difficulty Check or BD-DC is what a Weapon's Officer needs to roll against to confirm a hit.

During the Action Phase the Weapon's Officer may attempt to deal Battle Damage against 1 or more enemy ships. They can target as many ships as they have active weapon Hard Points. They do not need to do an accuracy check. A Weapon's Officer uses d10s to roll against a target's Battle Damage Difficulty Check or BD-DC. The default difficulty an attacking ship has to beat in order to deal Battle Damage is 4, 4. Or beat a 3, (roll 4 or higher) on at least 4 d10s. The number of d10s a Weapon's Officer is allowed to use is determined by the number of active weapon Hard Points committed to the attack.

A ship has Structure and Shields to improve its defense. Shields increase the number a d10 has to roll in order to count as a success. While Structure increases the number of d10s that have to be rolled successfully. A ship with +2 shields and +1 Structure would require an attack to roll at least 5 d10s with a 6 or higher to succeed at delivering Battle Damage. Likewise, a ship also has improvements to attack. A ship Sensors and Weapons. Sensors are the counter to Shields while Weapons is a counter to Structure. The Sensor mod can be added to the d10s, if the Sensor Officer has done a successful Scan for Ship Weakness action against the target. The Weapons mod informs how many successful rolls can be rerolled for a chance at another success. Example: Sensor +1 would provide +1 to all d10s that are rolled. While Weapons +2 would mean that if there were d10s that were rolled with the success they could be rolled again up to 2 times to add more possible successes. That is not each d10 but a total of 2 re-rolls can happen. A successful re-roll still counts as a successful die and thus can be re-rolled again if the Weapon's Officer still has re-rolls left.

The Sensor Officer can perform a Scan for Ship Weakness on 1 target ship. If successful provides a bonus for the Weapon's Officer for that target ship. If the enemy ship is clocked or in stealth and thus cannot be easily detected then the Sensor Officer's Scan also becomes an accuracy check. So a Scan acts as both an Accuracy Check and a Scan for Weakness. If the Accuracy check fails then the Weapon's Officer cannot attempt an attack.

A Sensor Scan can have a critical success. In this instance, a successful d10 now counts twice. Critical also allows the Weapon’s officer to reroll 1s and 2s. If the Weapon’s officer already can re-roll this just adds to the range of numbers that can be re-rolled. If the Weapon’s officer rolls enough successful d10s to count for twice the BD-DC +1 then the ship automatically gets another Battle Damage. This is the exception to rule 5. The second battle damage is automatically considered a die roll of 7 for the Battle Damage die. In a swarm situation where you are one of the multiple ships the critical still counts and is added with the die from other ships.

Battle Damage

Whenever Battle Damage is received special effects may occur. Two d6s are rolled by the GM or by another willing player. This is called the Battle Damage Roll. The more likely a number is to be rolled the lower the DC to repair the damage. So 7 is the lowest possible DC. Some Battle Damage rolls cause side effects such as rocking a ship and causing characters to be dazed or exploding consoles.

Please consult the Battle Damage Chart to determine what the Battle Damage repair DC will be and any side effects.

Swarm Combat

Swarm rules apply when multiple ships share the same target. In a swarm, the attacking ships put their successful d10s into a Battle pool. Successful d10s now go into a d10 pool and if the total number of d10s beats the BD-DC the target ship receives Battle Damage. Ships of different sizes in a Battle Pool have restrictions on how dice go into a pool to account for the Size rules. Ships that are smaller have to subtract 1 successful d10 for every successful d10 the ship adds to the pool until their size penalty is spent. A Ship of bigger size gets to reroll 1 failed d10 for each successful d10 until there run out of size bonus.

A ship can perform Pilot maneuvers against the Swarm as a whole. However, the sensor scan is still only for one ship at a time and its bonus is applied to the Point Defense of the ship if it has one.

Specified Targeting

Specified Targeting is when a ship attempts to target a specific part of an enemy ship. For example, the ship's Cargo Bay, or its Engines. All ship attributes except Structure can be specifically targeted. All Hard Points can be targeted unless specified otherwise. Any ship Bay that has an external component such as a Docking Bay or Cargo Bay can be targeted.

Ship attributes ‘hit points’ is its Score. A ship attribute becomes disabled once its score reaches 5. If it reaches 0 it is completely destroyed and cannot be repaired in space.

Ship Hard Points, Bays have 8 hit points. They are disabled after losing all 8 hit points and are destroyed if they reach -8. Some things such as a Cargo bay have alternative effects. Such as blasting a hole in a docking bay to force your way in can also happen after all 8 hit points are gone.

When doing Specified Targeting the ship Structure doesn't count but Shields still do. Large size disadvantages also don’t count when doing specific targeting. (Small size disadvantages still do) Sensors are also automatic. An accuracy/sensor check can still be attempted to see if a Critical happens but it isn’t necessary for Sensors to be applied. Every successful d10 roll counts as one damage against the specific target. The maximum total damage anyone ship system can take per turn is 5 unless it is a critical hit in which case the max is 9. A Critical also provides an instant 1 point of damage and allows rerolls like a normal Crit.

Point Defense

A ship can have a Point Defense system installed in one or more of its Hard Points. These are designed to counter Missles, Drones and ships 4 sizes small or smaller. By default Point Defense systems can launch 3 small (relative size to the ship that is) missiles designed to counter fast agile targets. If used to attack Drones or small ships then they are treated like normal Weapons just that they can only be used to target those enemies.

If used as Point Defense against incoming missiles then whenever missiles are fired at the ship roll 3 (or more depending on the Point Defense Classification) d10s. Line up your highest roll with the enemies highest roll. Only the number on the die counts not bonuses provided by sensors or other things. If the die roll exceeds the enemies missile die roll then both missiles hit and are destroyed. If the missile meets or exceeds the roll then the point defense missile is lost and the enemy missile hits its target. This continues with your second highest roll against the enemies second highest missile roll and so on.

A Point Defense system can only be used once per round. Special attributes or Crew functions can allow other Hard Points to be treated like Point defense however they only get to fire 1 shot, (roll 1d10) instead of 3.

Special Weapon Attributes

There are 4 different kinds of Ship Weapons. Kinetic, Laser, Rocket, Plasma. To learn more about each type and their special abilities, as well as special ammo, go to the Ship Equipment Page.

It is important to know what armaments your ship has. But it is often overlooked to scan the enemy ship too determine what the enemy ship is packing as well. The information could lead to a winning strategy.

Hacking

Hacking is a Ship function available in different levels of functionality to different Crew Positions. A Hack can also do Battle Damage. However, only 1 Battle Damage per combat can be caused by a Hack and it takes 3 rounds to deal the damage. Each round the enemy ship has the chance to defeat the hack forcing the Hacker to start over. Hacking can also deal damage to consoles or ship systems. Please review the Hacking page for more information.

Repairing Damage

During the Response Phase, the Engineer and Medical Officer can act. If the Engineer chooses to repair then they can choose to repair the effect caused by the Battle Damage or they can choose to repair the Battle Damage itself.

Repairing the Battle Damage takes two rounds where the Engineer works on the problem. If the Engineer stops to do other work then they have to start over again. The DC is determined by both the dice roll and the enemy’s Ships Weapons Mod + Weapon’s Officer’s Wisdom or Dexterity score (whichever they prefer). For example, a Battle Damage roll of 7 has a base DC of 7. So it would be 7 + Ship’s Weapons Mod + Weapon’s Officer’s Wis or Dex. Repairing the effect of Battle Damage is always a DC of 15.

Stealth

A Ship's size determines its Detection DC. However, a ship can attempt to be stealthy by disabling its ship's shields. This is referred to as 'Silent Operations'. It's Stealth DC is Detection DC + Electronic Mods. This means a Ship's Shields are disabled. (It takes 1 round to turn them back on). It also means a ship cannot send out any signals or perform any scans of there own just receive signals or messages. It also means a ship cannot use any Ship function that requires Engines. A Ship can still move but only slowly.

A ship has sensors. The Passive Sensors is 10 + Sensor Mod. A ship cannot target an enemy ship that it cannot passively detect. If that is the case then the Sensor Scan check now acts both like an accuracy check and a scan for weakness. If it fails then the Weapon’s Officer cannot attempt to fire.

Ships can improve there Detection DC with Stealth modifications.

Distance in Combat

There are distances in combat. Short, Medium, Long, Huge, Vast, Astronomical. A ship that is being targeted from a Huge distance away gains a +2 to both Detection DC and AC. At Vast the bonus is +5 and at Astronomical it's +9. These means that the targeting ship will need to have better and better sensors in order to be able to hit ships at further and further distances. The range is also limited by weapons and this cannot be affected or changed by the ship itself. For example, lasers have a max range of Long and simply cannot hit a target further away.

Attempting to ‘close or widen the gap’ between the enemy vessel requires a successful pilot check. Also, different ranges may take longer. To change between Short to Medium or Medium to Short it is just 1 turn. To Medium to Long or Long to Medium takes 1 turn. From Long to Huge or Huge to Long also takes 2 turns. From Huge to Vast or Vast to Huge it takes 8 turns. From Vast to Astronomical or Astronomical to Vast it takes 256 turns. (Basically, don’t do it without FTL.) Astronomical is considered roughly 1 AU of distance. FTL is not usable in any distance roughly 1 AU or smaller. And it is dangerous to use FTL to close the gap from Astronomical to something smaller. However, an FTL upgrade can make Vast and Astronomical jumps possible and safer.

Small Crewed Ships

In ships with only 2 or 1 crew member such as a fighter hull configuration, there is no Captain. The pilot will have to choose which phase they want to act in. This will likely always be the Action Phase. Sensor/Accuracy is part of the pilot check. And the Pilot can also control weapons and thus roll for all. They can choose to instead perform a Science Officer action in the Support Phase or repair the ship as the Engineer in the Response Phase. In this situation, a buff provided by the Science Officer will follow over into the next round. And if the Pilot chooses to switch back to being a Pilot again after a successful Engineer repair check the Pilot can then switch back to the Engineer next round without having to restart there repair as long as they choose to continue repairing the same thing.