"I realised why sci-fi rules are not sci-fi enough for me" Topic

Last night I had an epiphany about why I think sci-fi rules are not sci-fi enough.
I have always felt they are just generic rules using a sci-fi setting.
(My own KR 16 rules being just as guilty)

The thread can be seen here:

link

I am not saying this is a new thought, just a new thought to me, and I am so pleased I have finally been able to scratch that itch I thought I would share in case anyone else was itchy…

It is similar to the definition that Analog Magazine use for Science Fiction stories – if you take the science away there should be no story; i.e. the story will not work as a western, etc.

In this case the rules shouldn't work without the SF setting and concepts.

Mike

I don't have much of a dog in this fight since I'm not a SF gamer, but I'm fascinated with the question nonetheless and look forward to other comments. Long ago I remember playing the boardgame StarForce (see link). It had a 3D map of stars that alone created a game mechanic essentially unique to SF. Air combat games have 3D movement too but there up and down have meaning (not so in space) and the only landmarks are on the ground. I also recall reading rules for starship combat, again many years ago, that had interesting mechanics for FTL movement and different types of futuristic weapons. I'm sure there are many such examples.

I'm not so sure I agree entirely. I can see what you are getting at, but I'm not convinced that it is possible to produce SciFi skirmish rules that don't have a very strong element of commonality with those covering current warfare.

People are people whatever setting you put them in and behaviour on a 'man-to-man' level can be enhanced by technology and altered by environment but not significantly changed.

Changing the setting and the environment AND the rationale behind the conflicts is, to my mind, the more important aspect of good SciFi games.

If you consider a comparison between standard mid-19th century rules and colonial skirmish then the latter has a very different 'feel' and character that is often exagerated by the rules used. That is how I'd see SciFi skirmish compared to 'regular' skirmish.

Maybe more complex reaction rules for situations that are non-military or weapon/vehicle restrictions due to local conditions. Tactical choices limited by (say) high background radio interference disabling comms systems – that could have a big effect on modern small unit tactics.

I could go on but … I don't do SciFi skirmish. I do read SciFi books though and don't agree with the Analog definition either, I have read too many books where the story was what I enjoyed and the science was there to set an appropriate scene. Analog did publish some REALLY bad stuff at times.

More scratchy.

Some great points there. Yes most stuff we play is generic. Even starship combat is just modern naval war. Yes to make it more sci-fi you need to add elements like AI. I think cyber punk elements like hacking computers, electronic warfare, cybernetic implants. That's the sort of thing that adds to sci-fi. To my mind those elements come close to fantasy gaming. And I don't mean that in a negative. But hi-tech is almost like magic. I think its worth looking at some of the stuff in fantasy rules for some inspiration. In my own rules I have cybernetic implants and clones. If your character dies and you have the little implant removed from your head you can be down loaded into a new clone body all outfitted with extra abilities. I intend to have some AI characters in my next campaign that live within the computers on board the ship but can leave the ship via robot units that the AI uploads part of itself to.

I am very slow to the party, but I now get "Playing the period, not the rules".

Insightful thread there. I love engaging the brain cells this early!

I tend to agree in terms of game rules, but how does a human writer achieve this? For my latest simple Bughunt rules the To Hit roll was eliminated. It's not much, but more than many rules do. Citing advance target acquisition technology, hits were assumed automatic. I had players roll what was basically an armor save roll to see if any damage had been done. The rest of the rules were pretty traditional. The story however, the scenario, was based on several traditional military/guerrilla missions.

However, with literature, I tend to disagree with the Analog magazine definition. I would argue that if you write stories based on this criteria you will not have a story understandable, or enjoyable by humans. Stories are after all based on the Human condition and even if they are populated with AI driven robots, and non-humanoid aliens there will be some kind of human element. Stories should be interchangeable between genres. They should succeed despite the presence of science or magic. I believe this ability to transcend genres is what defines a truly great story.

Not sure there is an answer to all this, but I have enjoyed scratching the itch along with you! Thanks.

@ coporalpat. I like that no to hit rules. I will think on that for my own rules. This is indeed an interesting and thought provoking thread. Thank you AB.

@ corporalpat.

Interesting, I guess you could have advanced tech that disrupts the target acquisition and requires a regular to hit roll.
Maybe they have some sort of high tech camo, or maybe they can ECCCCM the target designator and disrupt it.

When used to hitting every time through technology, encountering an enemy that can negate this technology would indeed make for an interesting game.
Though that should be nasty baddy alien tech!

:D

but if you take sci fi away, Star Wars and Star Trek are both westerns…

This is my take on using a generic set of rulers for SF
link

"Wagon train to the stars" was Rodenberry's description of Star Trek.

Alhough he was wrong – any "exploration" story is essentially just a relocation of "The Odessey". Ship travels on a journey to mysterious islands, meets strange new civilisations and boldly goes where no Greek Hero has gone before…

And even that was a ripoff of Ug the Caveman's story about what there was over the next hill…in unknown regions anything might exist.

I agree that in SF games it is the setting and not the rules which usually make the game SF but SF rules can have movement and combat which differ from current warfare. In starship combat games what can distinguish starships combat from naval combat is the types of weapons and their effects, and types of movement. The same can be applied to ground combat. Take movement as an example. Power armor and jump packs allow infantry to move over a building, area of bad going, etc. without a movement penalty. In doing so the jump trooper may be more vulnerable to enemy fire. Stealing from the starship games the concept of hyper jumps I would consider incorporating into your games something I call blink displacement. Soldiers or vehicles with a blink displacer can move from their current location to anywhere else on the table in one move without the opponent being able to fire at them during the transit. Until jump packs/blink displacers are invented this is an element unique to an SF setting.

I do not see the idea of all hits being automatic with a saving DR as any different than a to hit DR. You can view the to hit DR as being whether a save occurred or not. I mean that when your to hit DR fails it means that you actually hit the target without having any effect. Technology which negates a targeting system which hits every time can be a DR modifier. Another way to make fire combat more SF like IMHO is simply to make the weapons more powerful or give them certain characteristics, ie. if you hit the target it is dead. A variant could be that if it takes two hits to kill a target perhaps some weapons inflict two hits on a to hit DR at either close or long range or at long or short range can never kill a target though may cause some type of reaction. Michaels KR 16 rules have tables for the effects of hits on vehicles. Similar tables could be used for infantry also. Different SF weapons could have different effects. You could probably come up with effects which are different from what happens in current combat.

I do not believe that SF cannot be different from current or past combat.

In most sci-fi games there is no sense of change. Force organizations look like 1938 Germans. Sometimes the vehicles look like hot rod versions of German tanks. GW's Rhino is an M113!

I spent 7 years developing new technology for the Armed Forces. I saw many interesting game changing technologies that were quite ready for the battlefield proper but were being tested. Some of these improvements had to do with the digital age. Communications, maintenance, weight of equipment, size of equipment, etc. all improved. Some of the Force XXI advances made platoon management in urban environments MUCH easier. Then there was the pure science improvements. The updates to the Predator from 1999 to 2009 (and eventual production of the Reaper) were really amazing. Programs like Gorgon Stare improved sensor balls on all of these platforms. We even tried implementing robots on the battlefield with the Talon series, which met great challenges but still, at least the first attempts were made.

In a Sci-fi game, robots usually are just troops. No difference. Hell, in 40K losing robots causes morale checks. As a long time Tau player I have always questioned that.

What is the role of infantry in the future? Who is doing the fighting in the future? It's possible that fighting forces will be very small groups, with high stealth, using electronics to pinpoint the enemy and call in remote or loitering forces instead of engaging them head on.

The weapons get more accurate. Night becomes a non-issue. Communications improvement mean you can spread your troops out to such a low density and arm them with the ability to designate targets for smart weapons.

Look at the railroad bridges of North Korea. Many, many, many F2H Banshee bomber waves were sent to destroy them. It took hundreds of bombs to finally disable them. Pilots actually had to aim their aircraft so that ballistic bombs would hit their target. They had to get in close and face Triple-A the whole way in and out! Today an F-35 pilot can target the bridge on a computer, fly in it's general direction and then loft glide bombs that depart from the aircraft when the computer says they should and then they course correct on the way. Two 2000lbs bombs later the bridge would be gone. That's from the last decade. What will the next 2-3 decades bring?

The problem with sci-fi is that is isn't different enough. There isn't enough brave thinking about how things will change and what the battlespace will really look like. Tomorrow's War does a good job of adding in cyberspace into the battle but the conventional forces are still basically WWII organizations.

Economics is a factor.
My rules and figures are aimed at skirmish (no reason you can't use the models for massed battles though, just buy more of them!)
This means a single customer does not need a lot of my product to play games.
This means small sales.
If technology means that future battles will only require a handful of troops then wargames companies are not going to be able to push lots of models onto a single customer.
That means smaller sales and less money.

To some degree wargames companies that make models will always favour bigger battles as they sell more product, this kind of means no recognition of new tech allowing one man to do the job of a WWII platoon.

So it isn't SF gaming unless it's incomprehensible. Sounds like fun.

I suspect you might be the sort of person who is not happy, unless they are unhappy.
-Kle.

So it isn't SF gaming unless it's incomprehensible. Sounds like fun.

I suspect you might be the sort of person who is not happy, unless they are unhappy.
-Kle.

Who, me?

I have thought about this too with regard to aliens.

Inevitably aliens are just "rubber suits" – humans with tentacles or whatever. I am wondering how to have aliens that don't just act like humans? Specifically with regard to tactics. But all of ours equate to human analogs: bugs are a horde army (Zulus?); Robots usally feel "Roman" to me; Centauri Lizardmen still fight in squads and platonns….

Aye.
A while back I came up with an idea for an 'alien' race.
Alas it meant that gamers could use any models they already had and there was no point in me actually making anything, so I gave up on that one for commercial reasons!
I liked the idea though.

:D

Sci-Fi and Fantasy are such big houses that there's always something for everybody. The question is: are people willing to think outside their genre or preconceptions?

For every person who is frustrated by the fact that Sci-Fi seems to be stuck in 20th century thinking, there are other people who deliberately want to turn it back to 18-19th century settings, like Lovecraft, Steampunk, or whatever.

We all grew up with things like Star Trek and Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, and we came to accept that "spaceship battles" would basically be like early 20th-century dreadnoughts, with weapons mounted in batteries, or on turrets, and so on. How many spaceship games have I seen in which they spend pages and pages fretting over things like a weapon's field of fire!

And yet I've got an iPhone that can transmit and receive in any direction, from any surface. Do we really think that 100 years from now, weapons (especially beam weapons) will need hard points and turrets and fields of fire??

Many people think that the problem is the lack of a 3-D environment, but I suspect that far-future combat won't care about 3-D at all, because all weapons will be "smart" and able to launch-and-go in any direction, or will be 360-arc, able to shoot from any surface of the platform.

And of course we're all accustomed to the scene of the "bridge" in which the captain gets information told to him by some subordinate looking at an instrument panel, and then he orally gives instructions to some other subordinate… right out of the mid-20th century. Yet we're already seeing drones delivering smart-weapons on the opposite side of the world, taking orders from a satellite. In another 100 years anything the human brain could think or the human mouth could utter, would be so hopelessly slow that we'd all be killed before we could think and speak and act on the information. Future battles will almost certainly be robot-vs-robot.

That might not be flattering enough to our egos to make the premise enticing, but I don't see why it would be any less interesting as a game.

---

The funniest thing is that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are supposedly the parts of the hobby in which reality and history don't matter. Yet I often see people much more limited in their thinking and imagination, than I do in historical games. I know historical gamers who have no problem fighting Japanese Samurai against 100 Years' War French. "Flames of War" guys routinely fight with British-vs-Soviets, and so on.

But I don't know many Sci-Fi guys who would be comfortable with Klingons vs. Cylons… or who are willing to step too far out of the Tolkeinesque world and its races, logic, etc.

Even starship combat is just modern naval war.

There's a reason I wrote my own spaceship game. It, at least, has "real-life" movement rules.

Players run off the board edge like they're playing Asteroids the first time they play, but everybody adjusts quickly.

Obligatory link: link

@corporalpat

There is no reason that Science fiction stories cannot reflect the human condition – the best of them due that through the consideration of the appliance of science to our way of life. What does it mean to have teleportation, for example.

Science doesn't mean that something has to be from an alien viewpoint or not understandable by humans.

What SCIENCE fiction means is that the science should be plausible and at the heart of the story. Otherwise you have fantasy or science fantasy such as Star Wars or a Western such as Star Trek masquerading as Science Fiction.

In the same way, in SF games, new technology should affect the way people wage war.

Mike

GW's Rhino is an M113!

I commanded a Real Mech Company of M113s, '87-'89 … maybe that was why I was atracted to GW back then ! As far as rules go …

I agree that in SF games it is the setting and not the rules which usually make the game SF but SF rules can have movement and combat which differ from current warfare.

Save for things like teleportation (which is kind of like a para landing, for gaming purposes maybe without the scatter …)… The paradigm of current warfare with may be advanced weapons, GRAV/GEV/ACVs, etc. … I think both current and future ground game play rules may be quite similar. Think about it … A Slammer M2 and power guns vs. a US M1 MBT and M16 … Longer range, better accuracy, more firepower, etc. … but on the game board is would all be relative. Unless you are using an M1 MBT vs. an M2 Blower … you'll probably lose/die …

And yet I've got an iPhone that can transmit and receive in any direction, from any surface. Do we really think that 100 years from now, weapons (especially beam weapons) will need hard points and turrets and fields of fire??

Yes. The reason is one of energy efficiency. Your iPhone emits a weak omnidirectional signal form a single emitter. About the only way you can hurt someone with an iPhone is to hit them with it. Or sell it to them, then announce you are releasing a newer one the next day.

A beam weapon, on the other hand, relies on a concentrated application of energy at a specific point in order to damage a target. Laser, for example. A laser is emitted from a very specific point and directed to a very specific point. That means hardpoints. It also means turrets if you want that laser to be useful.

You could, however, float a number of satellites around your spacecraft as reflectors. Then you could achieve a 360 field of fire. But those satellites would take time to deploy and align (at any sort of space range, the margin of error is tiny to hit another object as small as a spaceship), plus they would be vulnerable to attrition, creating gaps in your filed of fire just as surely as eliminating guns in a broadside would.

The satellite idea is still a cool one.

Helm: "Captain, we've emerged from hyper."
Captain: "Very good. Tactical: deploy satellites, prepare for battle."
Tactical: "Aye aye, Captain. Satellites deploying. Full cloud in three minutes, and counting."
Captain: "Sensors: deploy ftl skip drones. I want to find those pirates. Now."

I found my group struggled with any sci-fi setting that didn't have some foundation. Tell them it's Star Wars, Star Trek, or Starship Troopers, and they have a place to start filling in with their imaginations. Spend an evening introducing something completely new (imagine explaining Honor Harrington's ship-to-ship realities to non-readers, and don't simply default to "oh it's just like sailing ships of the line"). At least my players will glaze over the first time you try to describe ftl flight.

So, given a setting, say Star Wars, just how much futuristic fumbling can you offer? Blasters, armor, infiltration by Ewok, vague reference to rules about the Force … pretty soon you start making stuff up like "squads" just to give the rules some heft.

Personally, I like a solid foundation to build from. Star Wars, I can imagine. Full Thrust, either everyone needs to go home and read some rules, or you need a whiteboard to give everyone fundamental concepts. And my group isn't terribly strong on everyone going home to read rules.

The most important thing for scifi is to first decide what new technologies there will be and THEN decide how it will affect things. Nano is favorite, everyone has an idea of what it is but guessing what the limits are and what it can really do is interesting at best, same for computer controls and "warbots".

For me science-fiction gaming is so far-fetched in the first place that I don't bother over analyzing the whys and wherefores. I consider sci-fi settings, even the of the "hard" variety to be on equal footing with fantasy settings. Spaceships acting like WW2 battleships are just as ludicrous as magical elves. That doesn't mean that they can't be a ton of fun. As long as a gaming universe is internally consistent, I'm good with it. I see sci-fi settings as trying to evoke a particular feel based on real life. For instance in the movie Aliens it was clear that James Cameron wanted to give the characters a strong Vietnam vibe. However, the setting makes no sense: they're advanced enough to have artificial gravity but not enough to be able to send robotic units on the colony. But I understand the reason why: trying to recreate a zero-g environment would have been costly and having the characters floating around would have been too distracting. And seeing aliens fight off a bunch of robots would have been boring. The same argument can be made for sci-fi gaming.

Part of the problem is that our historical wargames already play like scifi games. Units act with perfect coordination, can respond to unseen threats immediately and efficiently and can direct small arms with lethal effect at distant targets in cover.

These are generally unavoidable things in the nature of a wargame because we like things to actually die when we roll the dice and modelling "friction" is tough at best (even though games like Chain of Command do a good job of it) but it means that scifi starts at a disadvantage already.

For wargaming specifically, it doesn't help that much of the literary genre of military science fiction is basically "vietnam in space" likely due to the age the authors grew up in. Give it 10 years and we'll see scifi novels that will be "Iraq in space" instead.

It's easier to just give them jet packs and power armour.

Too much over thinking and not enough gaming or at least painting/modelling!
A good background for setting the realms of 'feasibility'…..shields and warp in Star Trek for example…..FTL is almost a given n most sci-fi……..in the end if it plays and its fun…..what more do you need?!

AB, you're forgetting Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I'll just run with the example of a kindle/tablet computer. I could drag one back in time to any time that featured writing, and pass it off as a magic book that contains all the knowledge in the world. The user of the book just needs to know how to ask the question.

Barring Culture-tech knife missiles and effector weapons, the primary way of inflicting damage on another person/place/vehicle is likely to be delivering kinetic energy.

robots foighting robots is pobably farther than you would tink. For thirty years we have had the ability to set a firefinder radar to detect shellfire, calculate the origin point, send data to a fire direction center, which calculates firing data for the individual guns and sends it to them. Still need humans to load and pull the trigger. Had Crusader been fielded, then you would not need that part, so automated from start to finish.

But we mostly dont use it. Why, when it is so much faster? Because errors creep into the system. not machine makes mistake, but programers do. S\ituations that are not forseen cause the machine to do unexpected things. As yet, machines cant make judgement calls. And machines are not adaptable outside the parameters of thier programing.

But we are going to get so much better at programing right? Well, maybe. If we knew for sure, we would be doing it now. So we dont know for sure. And remember, back in the fiftys, it was widely thought that Lasers would be the individual weapon of the future. We now know that is very unlikely to happen for a lot ofreasons. But, it didnt even occur to them that watches would have calculators, or that there would be phones hooked to the internet. Or that there would be an internet.

So we dont know what may be wrong with robotsa. And we dont know what we are missing yet, as if we knew what it wqas we would not be missing it.

For fifty years at least people have confidently been predicting the end of tanks and fighter aircraft. yet they are still there. now i am hearing about the end of choppers. Again, I am waiting to see how that works out. I know a grunt who bayoneted somebody in iraq. How outdated is that piece of equipment? Yet on the day it was exactly what he needed, and it worked. It would have been tough to try to strangle the other guy with a cable from a landwarrior set.

Which is why it is so hard to get sci-fi right. Because if we are reaching very far we are guessing. And, I am not at all sure how interesting it would be to robot on robot, or alien vs alien games if they where done right. or read thier srtorys. If they are not rubbersuit humans will i even understand what is going on or what motivates them? Sometimes most of us seem to have trouble reading storys from other cultures and getting all the points. Properly translated alien liturature may be totaly incomprehinsible. One of my favorite sci-fi storys is about a bunch of aliens who are telepaths. No ablity to even speak. no written language that we can percieve as writing. makes it very hard to comunicate. other than blowing each other up.

owen

Part of the problem is that our historical wargames already play like scifi games. Units act with perfect coordination, can respond to unseen threats immediately and efficiently and can direct small arms with lethal effect at distant targets in cover.

That is exactly the conclusion I came to.
That in turn made me realise the are sci-fi enough and the problem for me was not with the sci-fi rules, but rather the historicals.

Bladerunner however deals with artificial life and manmade sentience, this I would argue is sci-fi and the same story could not be told in a historical setting without seeming nonsense, though I await to be corrected.

Bladerunner is just an espionage story… Spyhunter tracking down members of a covert enemy 'sleeper cell'… with the vague suggestion that he himself might be some sort of double agent.
The scifi I've read and like always ends up being about people. There might be bizarre setups, fartech equipment… but in the end the problems that interest me are the human ones.
The stories I've read that are just about technology tend to be less interesting, for me.
If a game is just going to be about robot drones fighting robot drones… all perfect aiming and perfect efficiency and perfect tactics… no thanks. Let a robot play that game.

Bladerunner is just an espionage story…

I must disagree.
The replicants are artificial humans that have an pre-determined expiry date.
It is a life form created through the use of technology that is denied the right to live past a certain date because of its human creators.

Tracking them down is not the crux of the story, otherwise it would have been called, 'can people find androids that dream of electric sheep.'

;)

Not a huge SF gamer, but I played plenty of Star Guard back in the day. I disagree that there cannot be a story without the science. SF stories are still about humans (or some kind of life form) and the human condition.

the comment about battleships in space is a good one, most games don't even try to figure out future technology and instead go with Age of Sail in space (Early Honor Harrington, Star Wars prequals) or WWII in space (Original Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica) or Modern in space (Later Honor Harrington). A good look at a system that tries to put the tech first is Transhuman Space from Steve Jackson Games (a setting for the GURPS RPG). Ships use realistic vector based movement and the primary weapon is shooting vast clouds of radioative stuff (I forget exactly what) at each other.

Interesting discussion – especially the comments re historical rules being skewed towards a more futuristic setting.

But surely the issue (if there is one – I love using sci-fi rules for modern games) is the sci-fi setting or fluff, rather than the rules per se? Historical rules aim to emulate, or at least make an entertaining approximation of, a real-world situation. They're judged on that relationship, as well as their playability. So if it's perceived that a set of rules isn't science fiction-y enough, then isn't that a problem with the setting rather than the rules? If the weapons, units and tactics they're trying to accommodate are vaguely conceived or absent altogether, then how can they ever succeed?

It is similar to the definition that Analog Magazine use for Science Fiction stories – if you take the science away there should be no story; i.e. the story will not work as a western, etc.

That's a legitimate way to look at it. It's not just about the "science" (the new gadgets, tech, etc) in an of itself, it's about science's effect on humanity and our way of life (or in this case, death).

As humans, it all comes down to "how does this change humans or how we do business?" or in the case of aliens, "how are they different from us?"

In the latter case, we usually use cultural analogs for aliens just to make them comprehensible. The problem with most truly alien mentalities is that we can't imagine them in the first place. Simply outside our frame of reference.

Everything else is usually a matter of degrees. :)

Future battles will almost certainly be robot-vs-robot.

The preface to StarGrunt II (or is it Dirtside II?) mentions this, noting that the future battlefield will probably look largely empty, with a few drones hovering about, but that's not really very fun. Thus, game!

And seeing aliens fight off a bunch of robots would have been boring.

Pacific Rim, Real Steel, the Battletech games …

Sure, those all have "pilots" of some kind, but Aliens could have had drone pilots just the same.

Yeah, I know, the aliens couldn't have captured them and used them as hosts, put them in danger, etc.

Although, if the queen stowed away on the shuttle and started chasing down a bunch of drone pilots, that could be pretty terrifying.

Pacific Rim, Real Steel, the Battletech games …

Interestingly, all of those are anthropomorphic robots. Even when not seeing the human pilot, we're looking at what is basically a big, armored human.

Although, if the queen stowed away on the shuttle and started chasing down a bunch of drone pilots, that could be pretty terrifying.

Agreed. But that would essentially be giant spider chasing people, so it all comes back to people.

Wow Great thread!

A couple of people mentioned how fun would the approximation of future war be to game (i.e. drones and super weapons).
It might pose well to a board game (where one can manage one's tech developments) or a card game (with a poker-esque element), but mini's on a board… I don't know.

*Longer range weapons = less minis
*Less minis = more character demanded (see OP's rules and 6mm skirmish fetish! :D )

I love me my scifi, but Trek ground battles aren't enticing (no tanks, no maneuvering).
*I've also wondered why there'd even be ground combat in a sci-fi setting. i Love the idea of colonial wars in the future, but the controller of orbit would just be able to deliver accurate firepower wherever it wanted via accurate sensors.
Not a lot of fun!

And on the topic of "playing the period not the rules" – too right! The most important thing is that ACW captures the feel of Chamberlain's stoic defence and the confusion.

Maybe Sci-Fi games aren't scifi because there's nothing to base that "soul" on, without either history or lore (e.g. ST, 40k).

Great thinking material!
Ben

" Pacific Rim, Real Steel, the Battletech games …

Interestingly, all of those are anthropomorphic robots. Even when not seeing the human pilot, we're looking at what is basically a big, armored human."

With no head, often no arms, and the knees turned the wrong way around (or are they knees? those might be ankles…)
I've seen more than a few rather non-human-shaped mecha, even to the point where a reasonably hominid robot has tentacles and a saucer head roughly 40% of its total mass. Of course you could always reshape a mecha into an alien body shape, and 'mechs in Battletech can also come in a quadrupedal shape (one special Mechwarrior CMG mini had a humanoid upper body but was a tripod from the waist down. That's not even counting all the tank-centaur mecha.)
Perhaps your flavour can come from the fact that some factions use giant robots and others don't, as well as the tech level used to create them and the fact that some specific advantages to each unit can only be used by one force and not another, eg. a robot pilot of a giant robot can immerse themselves into the controls to the extent that they are the giant robot, but an organic robot pilot is in a cockpit inside, or remote cockpit, and therefore subject to the disadvantages of having to watch screens and manipulate controls. Also mecha cannot fight the same way as infantry, no matter what Super Robot anime tries to to tell you.

"I've also wondered why there'd even be ground combat in a sci-fi setting. i Love the idea of colonial wars in the future, but the controller of orbit would just be able to deliver accurate firepower wherever it wanted via accurate sensors."

Trying to reconcile this with the idea that we need troops in the Middle East today. We're not even working at orbit-to-ground ranges.

In most of the generic rules I have there is usually the scope to make your forces and combat style less generic, but it is up to you to do it. Make up a racial-specific rule that governs the way you fight. Organise your forces a different way. Give one side something the other side hasn't and wants to capture, cannot understand or replicate economically and efficiently, or despises due to their religion or code of honour. One side may have situational awareness and the other not. The responsibility for playing in character is left to the end-user.

Phil Phoglio's Phil & Dixie discussed something like this years ago

is there really any difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy?

link

link

I've always found it fascinating that when you read about gunfights in the 1860's, the 1890's, the 1930's, the 1940's, and so on through to the modern day, there is a lot that they all have in common even as the weapons have gone from percussion cap black powder weapons to automatic weapons. Certain changes in technology and tactics do create certain actions that are unique to the "setting" but even today where air strikes, automatic grenade launchers, etc can take part in even a fairly small skirmish we still have fights between just a handful of men with rifles or even pistols (it's important to remember that a lot of skirmish gaming deals with non-military actions, and the difference is even less in these situations in the past 150 or so years).

Because of this I do think your SF set should at its core work and feel like any "modern" (with firearms, essentially) setting… With slight tweaks perhaps even a pre-firearm setting (but at that point the increased importance of hand to hand combat should probably mean you retool the rules significantly).

On the other hand too many people/rules, in my opinion, stop there. There should be an effort to include those new weapons (and therefore new situations and tactics to deal with them) that provide most of the additional flavor.

People are people whatever setting you put them in and behaviour on a 'man-to-man' level can be enhanced by technology and altered by environment but not significantly changed.

I agree with this.
Get the rules to run the people, then add the Pretty to it.

Despite the recent direction of video games, movies, and other entertainment, Pretty is not a foundation for anything.

Give a bunch of Hoplites modern gear and weapons, and in a few weeks they will be the same as any other soldier.

What a great thread! Thanks AB. You have given us a lot to think about.

Ships use realistic vector based movement and the primary weapon is shooting vast clouds of radioative stuff (I forget exactly what) at each other.

The trick to large-scale vector movement is that you have to come up with a way to retain that state data. My solution is an inertia marker that shows where you're going to (if you don't do anything else). It's straight-forward in action, but tends to clutter the table with markers, especially if you include "tracking" weapons like missiles, drones, and fighters. (Which I did.)

Since one of my design requirements was to make the game playable in an afternoon, I abstracted and simplified a great many things. The game still has a touch of things like weapon differences, crew quality, and damage control, but none of these are the focus of the game.

Now, the first, primary point of my game design was to make a playable Newtonian vector-based movement mechanic. The second (and nearly as important) point was to eschew pre-plotting movement and IGOUGO turn order.

If I wanted the game's focus to be something else -- say, damage tracking or energy assignment -- then one or both of those mechanics would have to be simplified or abstracted.

That's the reason why spaceship games look like naval games. A naval game is "stateless" in that you don't have to remember the ship's inertia, and don't have to plot out your move with any extra counters. If you want the focus of your game to be something other than movement, then that's the trade-off you make.

(Or you decide that you're going to play a 12-hour game instead of a 3-hour game.)

A beam weapon, on the other hand, relies on a concentrated application of energy at a specific point in order to damage a target. Laser, for example. A laser is emitted from a very specific point and directed to a very specific point. That means hardpoints. It also means turrets if you want that laser to be useful.

In Task Force Games Starfire, they gave ships almost unlimited fire arcs as they claimed the energy for the energy weapons were routed to specific points on the hull through something like a fiber-optic network. As such, an expendable fiber-optic focus point was but a small item and many of them were all over the hull for redundancy. Now once you hit the main generator for E-beam #1 all mounts that drew energy from that station were useless and effectively "destroyed". Not know anything about lasers, I don't know if one could actually do this with modern lasers, and if so, with a practical energy expediture.

I've always found it fascinating that when you read about gunfights in the 1860's, the 1890's, the 1930's, the 1940's, and so on through to the modern day, there is a lot that they all have in common even as the weapons have gone from percussion cap black powder weapons to automatic weapons. Certain changes in technology and tactics do create certain actions that are unique to the "setting" but even today where air strikes, automatic grenade launchers, etc can take part in even a fairly small skirmish we still have fights between just a handful of men with rifles or even pistols (it's important to remember that a lot of skirmish gaming deals with non-military actions, and the difference is even less in these situations in the past 150 or so years).

In the audio lectures series "War and World History" by Professor Johnathan P. Roth of San Jose State University, he argues that (for the most part) early weapon breakthroughs were more paradigm changing than later developments. Professor Roth notes that for all the development in firearm technology in the 20th & 21st technology are basically upgrades to the original "handgonne". Heck, the basic rifle stock is nearly identical to that of the handgonne. The real paradigm shift was when early gunpowder weapons were first used in warfare. Chemical energy (in the form of gunpowder) is stored for later use, making the weapon independent of the muscle power of the user. There are other military paradigm shifts covered in the lecture, but that was the one most relevant to the current discussion. As RTJEBADIA pointed out above, firearms are not radically different, and if that's what your starship troopers are using, it won't feel that different from modern skirmish warfare. Adding something radically outside our current experience would give it the sci-fi feel.

As for the Analog " if you take the science away there should be no story", that might have good advice in the golden age of science fiction, when it was still concerned with simple physics such as orbital mechanics, and the first successful manned moon landing was still in the realm of sci-fi and not fact. Nowadays cutting edge science is too specialized for a writer to incorporate into a story without completely confusing the reader. Now it has to be the social effect of science on the human condition, be it personal or cultural. As a matter of personal taste, I prefer that both in sci-fi and fantasy. It's not about the trappings, but ideally about believable and different complex tool-using cultures. How would a human culture based on cannibalism work, for example. [Courtship Rites by Donald Kingsbury, if anyone is interested]. Admittedly, an alien or fantasy species cannot be too radically different, or it is unlike that 1) the writer could conceive it and successfully write about it, and 2)the reader can relate to it. Also, within the framework of the story something too different is unlikely to interact meaningfully with humans or human-like species. [e.g. Assume a species of energy creatures that live in the heart of stars. Their lifespan is measured in geological terms rather than our mere years. They might be unable to perceive humans as life. Quite likely, since they need an extremely high-energy environment, they'd ignore planets as utterly useless, so they'd not interact with humans unless we develop technologies which could effect stars or them.]

Anyway, good thread.

I recently took up the sic fi skirmish game Infinity, It includes hacking, EM, Post Humans moving between proxy bodies and quite a lot of other very sci fi concepts, It definitely wouldn't work in a modern setting.

Robert