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 covers damage in Space Ship combat as well as different tactics such as Swarm combat (when more than 1 ship targets 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 affect combat. Single Crew Fighters, Hacking, Counter Hacking, Drones, and Special Weapon attributes are also included.

Summary:

Battle Damage Difficulty Check: = Xd10s rolled Y or higher. X = 4 + Structure Mod, Y = 4 + Shields Mod.
The total number of d10s used in a check is equal to the number of Hard Points activated for the attack. These d10s are called a Die Pool.
A successful Scan can add Ships Sensors to each d10 rolled during the Battle Damage Difficulty Check.
The successful d10s of a BD-DC can be re-rolled. This is similar in nature to the Exploding mechanic.
The total number of re-rolls available to a Die Pool per turn is the Ship's Weapons Modifier number of times.
A Ship can only receive 1 Battle Damage per round from Weapons Fire unless a Critical or certain Battle Damage is given.
Space Ships can also be attacked electronically using Hacking actions.

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. This is a Ship's Battle Damage Capacity and is determined by ship size and is valued at 0 through 5. A ship can normally only take 1 Battle Damage per round of combat from Weapons Fire. They can also take Battle Damage from a Critical Roll, a special Battle Damage condition, or Hacking. Ships that start with 0 Battle Damage gain the Wrecked status the moment they receive any damage. A ship's 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. A Weapon's Officer uses d10s to roll against a target's Battle Damage Difficulty Check or BD-DC (Also referred to as the target's Battle Damage Defense). The default roll for Battle Damage is 4, 4, ie, 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. These d10s form a Battle Pool. Before any re-roll can happen in the Battle Pool, the Weapon's Officer may choose one failed die to Boost with their chosen Ability Modifier. Likewise, if a Comms/Sesnsor Office succeeded at a Scan and they have the correct Feat, they can boost one failed d10 with their chosen Ability Modifier. d10s cannot be boosted by more than one Player, and a successful d10 that has been boosted this way cannot be rerolled.

A ship utilizes its Structure and Shields Core Attributes to improve its defense. Structure increases the number of d10s that must be rolled successfully. Shields increase the number of d10s that must be rolled in order to count as a success. A ship with +1 Structure and +2 Shields would require an attack to roll a BD-DC of 5,6 or 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's Sensors and Weapons. Sensors are the counter to Shields, while Weapons are a counter to Structure. 1 + Sensor Modifier can be added to the result of each d10 rolled if the Sensor Officer has done a successful Scan for Ship Weakness action against the target that round. The Weapons Modifier informs how many successful rolls within the Battle Pool can be rerolled for a chance at another d10 success. Example: Sensor +1 would add +1 to all d10 rolls. Weapons +2 would mean that if there were d10s that were rolled with success, they could be rolled again. The total number of times a re-roll can happen in the Battle Pool is up to 2 times, which can add to the total possible successful d10s.

If the enemy ship is cloaked 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 against the Target's Detection DC and a Scan for Weakness is against the target's Tracking DC. If the Accuracy check fails, then the Weapon's Officer cannot attempt an attack against that target.

Exploding

Exploding in d10s is different than normal character-based combat. If a weapon grants the Exploding attribute to its d10, then if that d10 lands on a natural 10, or the exploding range specified, the Player can add a fresh d10 to the Battle Pool before re-rolls are applied. This new die cannot explode, as exploding normally doesn't re-explode unless specified otherwise.

Criticals

A Sensor Scan can have a critical success. This is determined using the Critical Success rules for 2d10s found here. In short: Critical success happens when at least 1 die explodes, and the final result is greater than 20. Example: The player rolls 2d10 and gets a 10 and a 5. The d10 with a 10 gets rerolled. It lands on a 6. Then it is 10 + 5 + 6 = 21, and thus is a critical success. The Weapon's Officer gains the following benefits when performing a BD-DC on the target of the Critical Success Scan.

A successful d10 now counts twice.
Can now reroll 1s. If the Weapon’s officer can already re-roll 1s, 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.
The second battle damage is automatically considered a die roll of 7 for the Battle Damage die with no bonus to the repair DC.

Battle Damage

Whenever Battle Damage is received, special effects may occur. The GM or the Player of the Weapon's Officer rolls two d6s. 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. Battle Damage can cause side effects such as rocking a ship, dazing characters, or exploding consoles. These side effects happen directly after the Response phase. The Weapon's Officer gets to add modifiers to the repair DC. This is Ship's Weapons Mod + Weapon’s Officer’s Wisdom or Dexterity score (whichever they prefer).

Repairing Damage

During the Response Phase, the Engineer and Medical Officer can act.

Repairing the Battle Damage takes two rounds, during which the Engineer works on the problem. If the Engineer stops to do other work, they have to start over. The DC is determined by determining the type of damage using the Battle Damage Roll and consulting the Battle Damage Chart, and then adding the attacking ship’s Weapons Mod + the Weapon Officer’s Wisdom or Dexterity score (whichever they prefer). Repairing the Battle Damage also removes any lingering side effects.

Side effects of Battle Damage can be repaired in 1 round. The repair DC is the unmodified value provided by the Battle Damage Chart. All side effects happen after the Response Phase unless specified otherwise. So, for example, if the 2d6 Battle Damage Roll results in an 8, which is a Blown Capacitor, the Weapons Officer has the chance to repair the capacitor (DC10) before it blows a console. Or they can choose to focus on the Battle Damage itself and hope it doesn't do too much harm.

The Medical Officer can help heal wounded Officers, replace an incapacitated Officer, or negate negative effects. A Medical Officer either has to move for one round to the location of the wounded Officer, or the Officer has to move for one round to the Medical Bay. If the Medical Officer knows that the Engineer isn't gonna resolve an Effect that causes harm, they can get into position to heal next round.

Repairing damage to a specific ship system, like a Bay, or a Hard Point, only requires a single check by the Engineer to fully restore it. The check DC is 12 + Damage Modifier. If a Hacker did the same, it is DC 12 + the Hacker's Int Mod. If it were a Weapon system from a ship, it is DC12 + the enemy ship's Weapon's Mod. Damage to a Ship's Core System Attributes, like Engines for example, requires a Bill of Materials and for the Ship to be out of combat. The Craft repair check takes 2Minutes for the player to take 20.

Wrecking SpaceShips

Once a Ship receives the same amount of Battle Damage as the Ship's Battle Damage Capacity, it has zero Capacity left, and it is Crippled. If the ship takes any more damage, its state becomes Deteriorating. The damage is considered Deteriorating Damage instead of Battle Damage and it is handled differently. Once the ship receives Deteriorating Damage greater than the ship's total Battle Damage Capacity, the ship starts Exploding. If the Explosion can be halted, then the ship becomes Wrecked. The Ship can also enter Wrecked if, while taking Deteriorating Damage, all the internal components are damaged; the ship automatically enters the Wrecked state.

Crippled: This status happens when the Ship has zero remaining Battle Damage Capacity. The ship receives the following penalties.

-4 to Engines, -4 to Sensors, -2 to Electronics, -2 to Shields
Disadvantage on all Pilot and Sensor checks.

Deteriorating: This is when more damage is received beyond the Battle Damage Capacity. A Ship can only receive one Deteriorating Damage from any enemy activity with no exceptions. If the ship uses Hacking and Weapons fire, and even if it gains a critical and all of that succeeds, the ship still receives only one Deteriorating Damage from enemy activity. However, at the start of each turn, if the ship is in the Deteriorating state, it automatically gains another Deteriorating Damage before the first phase of spaceship combat starts. Deteriorating always has serious side effects. Read more about deteriorating, stabilizing, and side effects in the Deteriorating Ships page.

Exploding: This is when the ship has reached its maximum amount of allowed Deteriorating Damage (1 more than the Battle Damage Capacity). Or if the ship is Wrecked and is hit again by enemy weapons fire, which results in an Explode d6 roll (more here). The ship will explode in 1 round. The crew must race to the escape pods, beam off, or find another means of egress to survive. Treat this as a 'Change Position' Ship Function for the whole crew. Crew that has already prepared to evacuate does not need to roll. The other option is for a player to use their Engineering/Science skills to repair or contain the Explosion. The DC for this is a flat 8 + Ship Size. If this happens, the Ship automatically enters the 'Wrecked' status.

Wrecked: This is when a ship is completely non-functioning but still, mostly, in one piece. The ship has an Emergency Beacon that the Crew can choose to activate, or it can activate automatically. A Wrecked ship has the following penalties:

Gain the 'Falling Apart' Ship Quirk.
0 Engines, 0 Shields, 0 Sensors, 0 Electronics, 0 Weapons, 5 Structure
All Hard Points are not functioning
All Bays are not functioning
Life Support is not functioning. (In Tech 1-2 Ships, this also means no gravity)
- Only Emergency Life Support is working, with 2 hours before Characters start to die.

To recover from a Wrecked state, the Crew must make repairs. All Repairs have a DC of 20 + (1/4 round up Encounter/Challenge Rating). A Repair can be automatically successful if the Player chooses to take 20 and the Character is able to meet the DC when rolling a 20 + other modifiers. To recover Life Support, the ship must have some Electronics working and either all Bays functioning or at least 6 Bays functioning.

Repairing Wrecked Ships

All repairs require either an Intelligence check or the Craft check associated with that part's construction. Each repair, if rolled for, takes 2 minutes, or the Player can choose to take 20 Minutes to automatically succeed if they have the right modifiers. However, this only counts when a Ship is in the Wrecked state. Once all the Hard Points, Bays, and Core Systems are repaired, the ship goes back to having zero Battle Damage Capacity without the Wrecked or Deteriorating statuses. Normal damage done to a Ship or to a Bay/Hard Point through Specified Targeting is repaired using normal repair rules and requires a Bill of Materials. So if a particular Hard Point was damaged by Specified Targeting during combat, even if the Ship is Wrecked, the repair for that part requires a normal Craft check and a Bill of Materials.

Whenever repairing a Core Systems Attribute like Engines, the first repair check brings the Attribute to 5. A second repair will bring the part to 8 (or to that Attribute's standard value if it is lower than 8). Any repair after that follows standard repair rules, requires a Craft check, a Bill of Materials to be on hand, and only raises the Attribute score by 1 point per successful check. In other words, without Materials on hand, once a Ship is Wrecked, the highest its Attributes can be is an 8 unless the crew manages to have or obtain enough materials to fully repair the Ship.

A repaired, even fully repaired, Ship still has the Falling Apart Quirk unless done at a Ship Yard or carefully (1 Day per repair, instead of 20 minutes).

Taking Damage while Wrecked

This is extremely bad for the already damaged ship. A Wrecked ship has no functioning electronics and cannot be hacked. So any damage it takes must come from external factors such as weapon fire. A wrecked ship is immune to criticals. A wrecked ship is easily visible on sensors, with a 5 for both its Detection and Tracking DC, making it almost impossible for an Enemy Ship to miss. If the opposing ship is hitting a Wrecked ship, their Weapon's officer only needs to dedicate 1 Hard Point to the action, and it is considered an automatic success. Whenever taking damage a d6 is rolled and one of the following effects happens.

A Player automatically dies.
1. The Players 'draw straws' or roll for a Dexterity Save, and the lowest roller is killed or, at the very least, removed from combat and the ship. You can discuss the manner of death, or use a die roll. This matters because a person can be recovered and resuscitated under the right conditions.
One Player gets hit for 1/4 of the character's level worth of their Hit Dice.
1/2 the Crew, rounded up, gets hit for 1/4 of their Character's level worth of their Hit Dice.
The ship re-enters the Exploding Phase at the start of the next round. (Gives two chances to react)
The ship re-enters the Exploding Phase immediately. (Gives only one chance to react)
Nothing. The impact hits a non-critical or already heavily damaged section.

Combined Targeting / Swarm Combat

Combined Targeting is when multiple ships target the same Ship in the hopes of beating its BD-DC. Each ship rolls as normal, including re-rolls, and then adds the total number of successful d10s together in a combined Battle Pool. This combined Battle Pool is what extra bonuses or modifications can be added to.

Ships of different sizes add to the total with restrictions on how many dice go into the pool. Pick the largest ship and add dice normally. Smaller ships must subtract 1 successful d10 for each size they are smaller. The minimum number of successful d10s a Smaller ship can add to the Battle Pool is 1.

Swarm Combat

A Swarm is when a much larger ship is assailed by many smaller ones. To be part of a swarm, a Ship must be more than 2 sizes smaller than its target. A Swarm must have at least 4 total ships that qualify; otherwise, they are just doing Combined Targeting.

In a Swarm, the attacking ships add all their d10s into the combined Battle Pool to be rolled together. The Swarm applies the highest Scan Bonus Modifier if applicable. For a Sensor Scan bonus to work, at least 1/2 of the total ships must make a successful Scan check, but the Swarm applies the highest Scan Bonus Modifier available within the Swarm (regardless of whether that ship was successful at a Scan check or not). For the Weapon's Mod bonus, the available re-rolls are added together, and a Ship's Negative Weapon's modifier doesn't count.

As with the size penalty, if a Ship is smaller than the largest ship in the Swarm, then that Ship removes 1 Die from the Battle Pool for every 2 sizes it is smaller, with a minimum of at least one die. And 1 Weapon's Modifier re-roll for every 1 size smaller; this doesn't create negative re-rolls; it stops once it reaches zero added re-rolls.

A ship can perform Pilot maneuvers against the Swarm as a whole. However, the sensor scan still covers only one ship at a time, and its bonus applies to that ship's Point Defense 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 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 Attribute's ‘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. Blasting a hole in a docking bay to force your way in can also occur 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 any 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.

Flak / Point Defense

A ship can have a Point Defense system installed in one or more of its Hard Points. These are designed to counter missiles, drones, and ships 3 sizes or smaller. By default, Point Defense systems can launch 3 small missiles (relative to the ship) designed to counter fast, agile targets. If used to attack Drones or small ships, they are treated like normal weapons, except they can only 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 enemy's highest roll. Only the number on the die counts, no bonuses from Sensors or other sources. If the die roll meets or exceeds the enemy missile's die roll, both missiles hit and are destroyed; otherwise, the point-defense missile is lost, and the enemy missile hits its target. This continues with your second-highest roll against the enemy's 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.

Attacking Swarms

The Ship simply targets the Swarm as a whole. The Swarm absorbs the successful d10s. Take the easiest BD-DC first. If multiple ships within the swarm have the same BD-DC, the Players in the swarm can decide which ship gets hit. If the firing ship has more d10s than it takes to deal Battle Damage to a ship, then it can spend those d10s on damaging another ship in the swarm.

Standard Weapons as Defense

If the Weapon's Officer has access to Advanced Functions, they can perform Defensive Fire, which allows them to utilize standard Weapons as point defense. If the Weapon's Office chooses to withhold using a Projectile, Laser, or Plasma Weapon Hardpoint to attack, they can instead use one of these to defend against incoming missiles. For each hardpoint, the Weapon's officer chooses to use as defense, they gain 1d10. However, each hardpoint takes a -2 to the die roll unless it is a Laser, which only takes a -1.

Note about Lasers: At Class 1 a laser can be used to both fire on an enemy ship and act as Point Defense. At Class 5, a Laser doesn't have a negative point.

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 cause damage to consoles or ship systems. Please review the Hacking page for more information.

Stealth

A Ship's size determines its Detection DC. However, a ship can attempt to be stealthy by disabling its shields and other systems. 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 its 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 are 10 + Sensor Mod. A ship cannot target an enemy ship that it cannot passively detect. If that is the case, the Sensor Scan check now serves both as an Accuracy Check and a scan for weaknesses. If it fails, then the Weapon’s Officer cannot attempt to fire.

Ships can improve their Detection DC with Stealth modifications.

Distance in Combat

There are distances in combat. Short, Medium, Long, Huge, Vast, Astronomical. A ship from a Huge distance away gains a +2 to both Detection DC and Tracking DC. At Vast, the bonus is +5, and at Astronomical, it's +9. This means the targeting ship will need increasingly advanced sensors to hit ships at greater distances. The range is also limited by weapons, and this cannot be altered by the ship itself. For example, lasers have a max range of Long and simply cannot hit targets farther away.

Attempting to ‘close or widen the gap’ between the enemy vessel requires a successful pilot check. Also, different ranges may take longer. To switch between Short and Medium, or between Medium and Short, it takes 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 to be roughly 1 AU in distance. FTL is not usable at distances of roughly 1 AU or less. 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

On ships with only 1 or 2 crew members, such as a fighter hull configuration, there is no Captain. The pilot must choose which Phase and Action to focus on. Switching Positions doesn't require a roll for the Pilot of a Fine or Deminutive-sized ship.

Scanning on a Fine/Deminutive Ship: Ships can have a Sensor/Targeting AI assistant. By default, any Fine or Deminutive size ship has a Targeting computer. This rolls a Sensor Scan automatically every turn with no bonuses. It also cannot scan to gather information during combat; it can only perform the Scan for Weakness. The Targeting system also cannot provide any additional bonuses to Weapons. If successful, the Ship Sensors Modifier +1 gets added to the d10s in the Battle Pool, and that is it.

Weapons Fire: The ship's weapons, if they are able to fire on a target, can only add their re-roll bonuses if the Pilot succeeds at their Pilot check. The Pilot can also choose to forgo any fancing flying and focus on Weapons fire and thus get to automatically add the Weapon's Modifier number of re-rolls and the Pilot's Dex or Wisdom Modifier to the Battle Damage DC bonus.

They can also choose to forgo actions in the 'Action' Phase and choose to respond to a medical or engineering need of the ship. In this case, there is no Pilot check, nor do Weapons get a chance to fire. A Scan can still happen automatically, though.