"Asteroid Wars" Topic

I'm knocking up some home-brew rules for combat inside an asteroid habitat on my blog.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

At some point I'll actually have a game of it and put up a battle report.

felonmarming.blogspot.co.uk

Holy cow, Batman!

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I love the idea. It might even work for a Khan vs Kirk scenario within that astroid or planeoid where the Genesis device was first tested.

Fantastic.

Dan
TMP link

I think you're exaggerating the coriolis effect. 75 kph (okay, 77, or roughly 45mph) isn't going to have much effect on a guided or stabilized weapon built by anyone competent (how low your lowest bidder goes is up to you – but they did get you into space). Most automatic weapons have a high enough muzzle velocity (around 1000 m/s or so) and big enough beaten zone that it won't matter all that much for them, either. Remember that you'll get to keep more of that
muzzle velocity due to the lower pressure – it reduces leakage to leave some of the inert atmospheric gases at home.

It's either going to be really easy or really hard to find hard cover. There's no serious weather, so walls don't need to insulate or resist strong winds. This means that the buildings may be much like pre-war Japan. On the other hand, there's an awful lot of rock laying around, so stonework (glass bricks?) may have some cost advantages. The former may be more prevalent on an L5 artificial cylinder vice a hollowed asteroid.

MI style jump jets could get interesting – there's no "real" gravity, so as soon as you counter your centripetal force, you're in freefall. Landing could get interesting, since the ground is moving at a speed normally associated with motor vehicles, but it'd be a lot like landing a helicopter on a ship.

Mr Rubber Suit Theatre,

Yep, your right. I was forgetting that autofire would deviate by more than the 1.6m per 6" that a 1000m/s would deviate due to the coriolis effect. I'll still keep an effect for low velocity (sub sonic) rounds as I think they would be affected. The asteroid miners that would be one of the sides are equipped with zero-G snub weapons (if you know your Traveller, you'll know what I mean), and these are low velocity weapons with HEAP rounds.

I think Coriolis effect would still mess up the aim of someone not trained to operate in such an environment, as when you are standing you don't notice it, it only comes up when you throw something (or shoot something).

So the Space Marines would be trained (much like they'd probably be trained to operate in zero G better than a member of the Planetary Defense Force) but not some random dude who's never been in space before.

Battle report and photos now up on the blog

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