All my current Space Opera charts in PDF are found on the Summonings page of this blog.
Your typical one-on-one close, personal combat rules in Space Opera are called (section) 8.0 Ground Combat. This is to cover the fact you are supposed to be able to run small party combat actions as well as large mass battles involving thousands of troops. The rules make no bones about the fact they are a continuing treatment of their rules for miniature mass combat Space Marines. It is also a continuing treatment of the shit editing job which went into the rule book. It starts hard and fast; the first action in the turn sequence is to toss for “move or countermove.” WTF happened to “Initiative”, one of the basic characteristics which “all” in-game action is usually resolved? Maybe we will find out, but yeah, your Initiative score doesn't apply here. Or you could drop this step. Space Opera is cool with you jettisoning whole mechanics. Do it, you won't break it. The game sometimes even offers two different methods to resolve the same action. Yes, instead of move/countermove each side writes down their moves and the moves are revealed and played out simultaneously. This is code for Game Masters everywhere that “yeah you will have to wing it”. Just plow through this crap. You know what the rules really mean. Turn sequence 1. Play a hex-map-based-wargame first. This will take at least one other interested player and like forty hours of your time.
Your typical one-on-one close, personal combat rules in Space Opera are called (section) 8.0 Ground Combat. This is to cover the fact you are supposed to be able to run small party combat actions as well as large mass battles involving thousands of troops. The rules make no bones about the fact they are a continuing treatment of their rules for miniature mass combat Space Marines. It is also a continuing treatment of the shit editing job which went into the rule book. It starts hard and fast; the first action in the turn sequence is to toss for “move or countermove.” WTF happened to “Initiative”, one of the basic characteristics which “all” in-game action is usually resolved? Maybe we will find out, but yeah, your Initiative score doesn't apply here. Or you could drop this step. Space Opera is cool with you jettisoning whole mechanics. Do it, you won't break it. The game sometimes even offers two different methods to resolve the same action. Yes, instead of move/countermove each side writes down their moves and the moves are revealed and played out simultaneously. This is code for Game Masters everywhere that “yeah you will have to wing it”. Just plow through this crap. You know what the rules really mean. Turn sequence 1. Play a hex-map-based-wargame first. This will take at least one other interested player and like forty hours of your time.
So
if you are like me this means
you turn to the players and say “Your side lost, bad. What do you
want to do?”
And
if the players know the rules they will say “covering fire.” But
that is sequence #5. Ignore
them. Your players are just trying to make you forget sequence #2.
Indirect Fire. This is a
whole world of random hurt
the StarMaster can literally rain down
upon the players. Tough talk breaking down at the local spacer bar?
PC's smoothly going for their hardware to blast their way out of
trouble? Sorry, StarMaster needs to resolve sequence #2. Full salvo
of APROBDIF Projectors coming in from the
unisex! Oh yeah, the effects are not resolved until sequence #7. Does
that mean between sequence #3. and sequence #6 the PC's could move
away? On space ships? On power cycles? Humping ass burning Wind? Yes
it does. The whole sequence will work to give you hair-breath
escapes, but should only be used when you and the players need to
drill down to that level of detail cause that is where the game has
taken the action. Space Opera is
not going to work for newbies. Folks using this game are going to
have to be confident gamers and know when to role-play and when to
get out the rulebook.
Seriously,
it takes a judgmental asshole like myself to run Space
Opera. You need to be able to
look your players in the eye and say “roll initiative” and get
them not to scramble to the rulebook looking for a way out. Because
the rules are so poorly edited they will find it.
What
I remember from running Space Opera in
the early 80's was constantly
jettisoning combat rules to get to a “roll to hit” situation. And
this is one table and a percentile number. That is it. Again, dead
simple. For Direct Fire/Ranged Attacks you roll 1D100 on the Range to
Target Table. Shooting someone at Short Range 80% chance or less to
hit. Long 15% chance, etc. Now there are six separate tables of DMs
to the Direct Fire Roll, I get that. But use my PDF sheets attached
and you will have the information you want at your fingertips at the
table. Hand-to-Hand, Close Combat is a base 35% to hit for any
attack, subject to a very small set of DMs. No,
in Close Combat Initiative;
deciding who strikes first, has all the multiple DM tables! Space
Opera makes a big production out
of producing your Hand-to-Hand Capability. But
once you have this number, and you need compute it for thirteen
different weapon categories, you only use it for establishing strike
order for each combat
turn! I can see where many folks turn their head, hand out in the
universal symbol of “No thank you” and pass on trying to run the
game. In this instance it asks you to crunch simple, but time
consuming formula for a number which again gets multiple DMs to
consider every time you use it. But it does give a sharp distinction
between Direct Fire Combat. You don't use the same resolution method
for either one of these combats and in real life these are two very
different methods of combat. I will have to go with this as a feature
of Space Opera and not
a bug. Embrace it. And you are going to have to embrace the
Penetration Tables. (p. 43-51) Which
means rolling
on the Hit Location chart.
But who doesn't love Hit Location charts?!? Put the tables on a sheet
durable enough to last at the actual game table and everyone should
get dialed into their Penetration numbers quickly.
Both
these methods of combat funnel back into the same method of
resolving damage once a penetrating hit has been won. In fact, all
weapons do the same damage! Regardless of weapon/attack used damage
in Ground Combat is resolved the same way, roll
for severity and apply the corresponding
amount of damage to the character. There
are additional degrees of complexity you can add in from the rules or
just as well leave out. You have two described methods of achieving
an initiative/turn order for Pete's sake! You can take the Combat
Turn Sequence in its entirety or you can trim it down to only the
steps you wish to execute in a given combat. In each sequence, each
step in the combat “turn” can have additional DMs to add in. The
key to using however many combat mechanics you want is having these
DM tables not in the book but out on the table to use. And with this
reread so far I see nothing which would stop you from scaling the
combat mechanics when considering large engagements of troops. The
resolution mechanics can be both applied to an individual character
as well as an individual combat “unit”. Need to know the rate of
fire of your gun in Close Combat? They have rules for that. Don't
need that level of detail. No worries. Toss the rule entirely and
combat still works.
The
attached PDF file is to make generating these numerous DM tables for
use in one place easier. I believe once these tables are removed from
the book and made more accessible as a two-sided, laminated sheet the
game would become remarkably easy to run.
