Before the VBB went down, I mentioned a tabletop FS2 game I was working on. After nearly two years, I'm finally close to finishing it. It started out with Warhammer 40k-type rules, but now it's totally different and much better. Rough version history follows:
v1.00 The very first attempt. It used D6-s exclusively, meaning about 40 or 50 dice per round of dogfight. Hit points were hooked directly out of the game files and divided by 10 (coz I'm lazy), so advanced maths was required to resolve a laser hit. Game balance was nonexistent, because the 'timing' for fighter battles was much faster than capship battles. The result was that Erinyes fighters could vaporise a Rakshasa in two turns, while an Aeolus struggled to scratch it. Beam charge times were astronomical, so you'd loose track of how much longer (in hours) it was before your beloved Beam could fire again. I played one game of this, and altered the ship stats to strengthen the Shivans, who were at a severe disadvantage. After the next game (which the Shivans won by a massive margin) I ditched the rule set permanently and the game idea for four months.
v2.00 The next step was to D20-fy the rules. I changed the fighter rules to treat a fighter wing as a whole rather than as individual ships, which sped up dogfights no end. This also enabled me to use lower numbers of hit points for capital ships (about 25 for a Corvette, instead of 8000). Fighters had 4 hit points each, two of which were 'rechargable' shield points. Weapons came down to Firepower ratings (to penetrate shields/armour) and Damage ratings. Capital ships had one 'Laser' rating and one 'Flak' rating, instead of thousands of turrets, which also sped up play. Subsystem targeting was simpler, and they just had an armour rating that would be added to the capship's basic armour rating to determine if they got hit or not. Beams charged faster, so it was actually possible to get in more than one shot in a game. The 'to hit' chances were still stuffed, though, and the Firepower ratings meant that ships were either too hard or too easy to damage. I dropped this out the window after two games, neither of which went as planned.
v3.00 I hit on the 'ultimate' game idea about a year after I began the project. This time, I decided to abandon the idea of massive fleets and stick to a 'Privateer: The Darkening' type of game. This meant that I could go overboard on the detail and make each ship more characterful. Each player would only have a single vessel under their command! Games would be smaller, etc, etc...
It didn't work out quite that way. I put together a rule system that involved multiple hull sections for ships, multiple armour layers and facings, and individual gun turrets. I even worked out ship and system masses, with the intention of doing accurate collision rules. Beams would actually be able to cut bits off ships, and you'd be able to run a roleplay-like campaign where the players could buy ship upgrades. I'd finished most of the rules and got as far as drawing up the Argo transport before I hit upon a problem.
It didn't work.
The rules were fine, but depending on how you looked at them they were either too complex or too simple. The players would have great fun in the campaign, but the poor Games Master would have to invent Quantum Maths in order to run the campaign. So I looked back at version 2, cut some extraneous detail out of version 3, and merged the two.
v4.00 The capital ship rules were lifted straight out of version 3, with the elimination of ship masses and the reintroduction of the 'Flak rating' idea from version 2. This means that big battles are again possible, but with really cool details. Fighter rules are also fairly close to version 2, except I dropped the 'rechargeable hit point' shields when I noticed that the Armour of a capital ship was very much like the shields of a fighter. Two separate Penetration values were required (not my original intention) but they worked well. Subsystem depth, profile, and random hits all came from version 3. The Beam Hits table would have come from version 3 if I'd finished the Beam rules before moving on. This is definitely the best version so far, but I dare say it can be improved.
Playtest for v4.00 is tomorrow, I hope. If the people at my local wargaming club like this game, I might be able to persuade them to join the FS2 community!
PS. My username on VBB was BlackDragon, the same guy trying to write a FS2 novel. That project has reached about thirty-something pages, but hopefully the next 30 won't take a whole year...
