"Space Viking ship-to-ship combat gaming?" Topic

Having recently reread Space Viking for the umpteenth time, I was thinking of playing some spaceship battles in that setting. I like the idea of the spherical ships, and I think I could put together some interesting rules for them. The movement would need to be vector to fit the source material, and the ships themselves would be interesting to model, particularly with regard to damage, which would either peel them like an onion or strike straight in radially towards the sensitive core (housing the engines, etc.).

Has anyone else fiddled with this idea?

Thanks,
Doug

Full Thrust would work well. Lots of Missile armed ships with Armor would work.

GDW Mayday?

link

FT might work (as would Starmada), but I'm thinking I might want to do something with more detail that that.

Mayday looks interesting, too, but it seems (from the little info available) to be more of a Traveler oriented game than one originating directly from Space Viking, so it's sort of a generation removed from the source.

I think I may have to whomp something together of my own.

I'm envisioning a SSD with a top down circular view divided into 6 pie wedges (to fit a hex grid), and concentric layers (perhaps more for the larger ships). The interior layer(s) would contain life support, engines, etc. while the outer would contains weapons, boat bays, and so forth.

Tactically, the goal would likely be to concentrate fire on a section of the ship already hit, and penetrate to the fragile core, which would make maneuvering and facing critical. Close range guns would probably have a limited firing arc based on their position on the ship, while missiles would be omnidirectional (it would not matter which side of the ship they launch from, since they would all be tied into the ship's sensors).

Given the generally low number of ships involved in the battles, the complexity should not be overwhelming.

Oh – and I've been thinking of ways to transform various sizes of spheres (marbles, Ping-Pong balls, etc.) into the ship models, mostly with assorted pieces of paper or styrene added to the surface to give the impression of panels, and perhaps some greeblies from the bitz box here and there.

Doug

The Attack Vector: Tactical engine models it pretty closely, particularly with each facing having its own damage table and ships having "hull depths" that give the number of damage points that a facing absorbs before the damage penetrates to the core (with its own table). Lasers with the Armor Piercing trait penetrate faster. Oh, and the core has a depth as well, so you could blow completely out the far side of the ship.

The problem is that AV:T doesn't have a publicly-available ship design engine.

AV:T sounds interesting. I've never really looked into it, because I've mostly been interested in fleet scale games in the past few years. I wonder if they'll ever put out a ship builder for it?

Doug

Ken's addressed that, and the short answer is "no."

The longer answer is that the spreadsheet is incredibly messy, undocumented, needs background knowledge to use and understand, and would take too much effort to clean up, document, and maintain if it's made available to the public. It's just not economically viable.

The second part of the long answer is that AV:T isn't a "build a thing, munchkinize, and try to break the design engine" system in the same sense that you don't design your own ships for Harpoon. If you look at the ships in the game, a lot of them are designed around the sort of real-world considerations have influence wet navy vessels at least since the beginning of the true ironclad steam vessel. Some ships are designed for long endurance. Some are short-ranged. Some are designed for independent action, while other are designed to operate as part of a squadron or fleet. Some designs are influenced by procurement politics and others are attempts at doctrines that just didn't work out. Overall, these are ships that make you work to cover their flaws, and to take advantage of the flaws in your opponent's ship. Yes, you could probably design some sort of "perfect" ship, but that would reduce the flavor of the Ten Worlds universe and actually result in more boring battles.

(Not completely IMHO, since much of this is paraphrased from Ken.)

On the other hand, you might be able to convince Ken to do a Star Viking supplement …

AV:T sounds interesting. I've never really looked into it, because I've mostly been interested in fleet scale games in the past few years. I wonder if they'll ever put out a ship builder for it?

According to Ken, you need to be able to do calculus in order to use the AVT design system. And I don't consider Calculus to be very fun.

Get Squadron Strike, it's a bit less detailed but allows you to handle more than 1-2 ships per player. It also has a functional and published design-your-own-ships system with an Excel spreadsheet to do the math for you.

Space Viking…. never heard of it. But free on Kindle right now. :)

Many years ago we played out some battles based on SV, and it was a hoot. We used a pretty basic rules set (don't remember if it was FT, or some freebie or less known product) but a damage system similar to Renegade Legion, where each weapon type had a template and you had to place systems within certain spaces in your ship. So, weapon type, facing and angle of hit would show what the hit took out, and how deep into the layers it went. Lots of fun, and just detailed enough.

The things I remember from one battle was that one of my ships was hit in the same general area a few times and lost it's canteen (and bar!), and another had a massive internal explosion when the ammo storage for the ground assault vehicles was hit. An enemy ship lost it's bridge and then was taken via boarding, which was a fun skirmish game we decided to break down into…

The second part of the long answer is that AV:T isn't a "build a thing, munchkinize, and try to break the design engine" system in the same sense that you don't design your own ships for Harpoon. If you look at the ships in the game, a lot of them are designed around the sort of real-world considerations have influence wet navy vessels at least since the beginning of the true ironclad steam vessel. Some ships are designed for long endurance. Some are short-ranged. Some are designed for independent action, while other are designed to operate as part of a squadron or fleet. Some designs are influenced by procurement politics and others are attempts at doctrines that just didn't work out. Overall, these are ships that make you work to cover their flaws, and to take advantage of the flaws in your opponent's ship. Yes, you could probably design some sort of "perfect" ship, but that would reduce the flavor of the Ten Worlds universe and actually result in more boring battles.

Wanting a ship builder (or similar tool in any other game) does not mean wanting to "make perfect ships" or "break the system".

Sometimes we just want to try out our own – even deliberately inferior – designs. And that's perfectly fine.

Sometimes we just want to try out our own – even deliberately inferior – designs. And that's perfectly fine.

Which you can do at any time by just assigning numbers, weapons, damage boxes, etc.
Making stuff up has the advantage that being "official" is not required.

According to Ken, you need to be able to do calculus in order to use the AVT design system. And I don't consider Calculus to be very fun.

Nope.

The spreadsheet does calculus, though. An impressive and frightening bit of code.

Space Viking…. never heard of it. But free on Kindle right now. :)

Always free at Project Gutenberg. In multiple formats. link

Up one level and there are 38 more of his books.

Many years ago we played out some battles based on SV, and it was a hoot.

Gotta say, that sounds tremendously fun!

which would either peel them like an onion or strike straight in radially towards the sensitive core (housing the engines, etc.).

For just that part, you could look at the systems in the Renegade Legion games, later used in Crimson Skies.

Doug

Mayday looks interesting, too, but it seems (from the little info available) to be more of a Traveler oriented game than one originating directly from Space Viking, so it's sort of a generation removed from the source.

As Piper's Space Viking is clearly an inspiration for Traveller, it might be closer than you think. At least two of the ships in Traveller are based on Piper's spherical craft, and the Imperium mirrors the aristocratic structure Piper sets up for his interstellar society. And Traveller includes an overt reference to Space Viking in the famous "Sword Worlds subsector." Other elements, such as communication being limited to the speed of light or messages carried in FTL courier vessels (at least in the original Traveller) also fit, if I recall my Space Viking setting correctly (it's been a while, but I think that's why the protagonist argues that any interstellar centralized government system will eventually fracture). Been awhile, so i might need to read it again!

Yup. My understanding is that the sword worlds setting in Traveler was Piper inspired, and then Mayday was Traveler inspired … hence the one generation removed.

I'll have to take a look at Squadron Strike and Renegade Legion. I downloaded and browsed the tutorial for Attack Vector, and it doesn't appeal to me much.

Doug

And I forgot to say 'DAMAGE systems' above. Each weapon had a template to put against a grid of defender armor. As the weapon might have a long narrow or wide 'cut out', it could either penetrate deeply or widely.

As the center of the template could be moved to the bottom of a 'hole' already present, if wide, it could undercut some armor. Widowed armor was a chunk that had empty space around it, and was considered blown away.

One could make the whole ship display like that.

Also, check out the wilburys-style penetrating electronic damage in Interceptor. You can hear the circuits snapping and smell the ozone.

Doug

Talking with a buddy lastnight, I think the game we played was a stripped down version of Star Cruiser 2300 or maybe Brilliant Lances from GDW. It was vector, and heavily tweaked to make it quickly playable without hexes…

I could totally see using Starmada or FT as a basis for the combat and movement engine, then using the Renegade Legion damage system like we did. Lightning Strike might even work better for the movement and combat engine, where it's all about not being detected until you have an advantage…

@DSG So sorry I missed your earlier post!

I never had a lot of luck doing deep hit followed by wide hit in same column of armor, but when I did, it could be pretty thrilling!

Doug

Star Cruiser 2300 is very much not vector--you turn off the engines and you just stop.

Detection doesn't seem to have been a problem in Space Viking.

Space Viking ships have got to be the easiest to kit bash at this time of year thanks to the availability of cheap plastic DIY Xmas ornaments…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Space Viking ships have got to be the easiest to kit bash at this time of year thanks to the availability of cheap plastic DIY Xmas ornaments…

Great thought! I think a trip to Michael's and the dollar store may be in order!

As for rules, thinking about this more, I'm beginning to think that something cool could be done with a modified version of Starfire (2nd edition, with a few things borrowed from 3rd). In fact, if I'm willing to accept a high enough level of abstraction, the system would need relatively little in the way of modification. Using Starfire as a base would even be "keeping it in the family," in a way, much like using Mayday would be. Starfire was influenced by "The Mote in God's Eye," which was written by Niven and Pournelle, and Pournelle was a friend of and influenced by Piper.

The intertialess movement system would need to be replaced with a vector system, but that's not too hard – I already have a vector system I whomped up for Starmada that I like, and it should be adaptable. Hyperspatial travel would not be dependent on warp points, and I'd want to separate the normal space drives, the jump drives, and the power generation systems into independent components. The map scale would also probably need to be smaller, since most ship-to-ship actions in the book take place within the vicinity of a planet and are at closer ranges.

Some of the stock Starfire weapons will need tweaking, but that should be easy enough to do. The weapons systems available in Space Viking are limited pretty much to guns and missiles (no beams, that I can recall), but there would need to be some differentiation of the missiles (i.e. steal some of the larger missile types from 3rd edition). The REALLY big and slow missiles could be represented by small suicide ships (and I'd need the ships to be able to carry smaller ships anyway – pinnaces in Space Viking are fully functional ships in their own right). There might also need to be some modifications to the datalink rules, to allow missiles to be fired at ships in LOS of one of your fleet, but not necessarily in LOS to your own ship.

For damage, the Starfire system already sort of inherently handles the whole "damage from the outside to the inside" thing with it's left-to-right text string SSD system. What it does not handle is the quick strike to the core through an already damaged spot. This seems important to me, since ships in Space Viking seem to get blown to mc^2 rather suddenly. It could be handled with some sort of critical hit mechanism (maybe something like the way primary beams work in Starfire). With the smaller map scale, I could also probably justify damage from a nearby exploding ship, which might discourage the typical Starfire "all 700 of my ships are in THAT hex" tactic. I never liked that, as much sense as it made in the context of the game.

I'm very tempted to add facing implications (as mentioned above) for firing and for damage, and that could possibly be done fairly easily by stealing a page from the old "All in the way she's put together" article in Nexus magazine eons ago. On the other hand, if you assume that the ships can pivot at will, and that thrust is not dependent on facing (and from my reading of Piper, the Abbot lift/drive system is not necessarily a linear thrust system), this might be an unnecessary complication.

I think I'll give it a shot at the higher level and see how it feels, then add more detail if it seems necessary. I suppose one could even play it at either level (once both were developed) – more abstract for fleet actions and more detailed for small actions.

Doug