NiS/Ship to Ship Combat

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Ship Stats

Speed:
The speed stat represents how quickly your ship flies, the power of its conventional engines, and the power of its warp drive. The faster a ship is, the less time it is in the air for something to go wrong. Also, a fast ship is helpful when you’re trying to escape from that Imperial destroyer who has mistaken you for a notorious pirate.

Maneuverability:
A good captain will tell you that the key to winning any naval engagement is to put yourself in a place where you can shoot your opponent, and your opponent can’t shoot you. A ship’s Maneuverability functions in ship-to-ship combat the way weapons skill functions in hand to hand.

Armor:
This value represents how think the ships hide is. Armor is a ships toughness in ship-to-ship combat.

Reliability:
Reliability represents how prone a ship’s systems are to malfunction, and how much damage they can stand up to before they fail. In ship-to-ship combat, reliability checks are taken to keep damaged systems online. Also, reliability checks are required when travel events cause ship’s systems to malfunction

Offensive Capabilities:
Given the large number of pirates who sail the black abyss, even merchantmen pack a substantial battery of weapons. The OC stat is the punch that the ship packs. It functions like strength in melee combat.

Batteries:
Batteries is the number of weapons emplacements the ship has. A ships batteries characteristic function like attacks in melee.

Communications:
Communications are a measure of the ship’s ability to raise radio or vox contact with ground forces. Consequently, the communication’s statistic isn’t used much during ship-to-ship combat.

Sensors:
Sensors

Security:
The security value is how defensible the inside of a ship is, and how secure its systems and compartments are. The Security characteristic is used to ward off boarding actions, and it is also use to prevent prisoner escapes.

Overview

Ship-to-Ship combat works just like hand-to-hand combat. Each player rolls a D6 for each battery on their ship and adds their Maneuverability to the highest roll. 1s count as fumbles and every 6 after the first counts as a critical. The ship who gets the highest inflicts the difference in hits. For each hit, compare winners OC to loser's Armor on the to-wound table.

In case of a tie, each ship hits the other ship once. Roll to wound as normal.

Experimental Rule: Return Fire. Sometimes, even a losing ship can get a couple of licks in a combat round. For every six that the ship rolls, it automatically causes one hit to the opposing ship, even if it lost the round of combat.

Damage

Critical Hits

If the attacker rolls a 6 to wound, roll the die again: if the second roll also wounds, you have scored a critical hit. If it doesn't, the shot wounds as normal. Critical hits always do +1 damage that penetrates even if the ship makes its reliability save.

Damage Table

For every wound that is scored, roll a d6 on the following table. For every location other than Crew and Armor, the effects of the hit are determined by how many times that location has been hit. The first time a location is hit, it degrades by one point, the second time, two points, etc. Note: the location is the first d6 roll, so if you are hit in the sensors once, and then get hit in the comms, you will take two points of damage to the comms, because they are each in the command and control location.

D6	Damage
1	Crew Compartment: The shot penetrates through to the crew compartment and injures a randomly selected crewmember. To see the extent of his injuries, roll a further D6.
	==========	1-2:	Stunned: if the crewman may not add any stats to the ship for the remainder of the engagement. Otherwise, he is unharmed.
		3-5:	Laid Up: the crewman is not seriously injured, but he is knocked around pretty good. He may no longer add any stats to the ship, and he misses the first encounter in the following game. However, if he passes a toughness test, he may be brought in as reinforcements for later encounters.
		6:	Serious Injury: The crewman many no longer add any stats to the ship, and he must roll on the serious injury table. However, he may participate in the next encounter if he survives and passes a toughness test.
2	Command & Control: The delicate electronics in the bridge is hit. Roll a d6 to see which systems are effected.
		1-2:	Sensors
		3-4:	Comms
		5-6:	Security
3	Weapons: The fire control and/or weapons batteries are damaged, reducing their effectiveness. Roll a d6 to see what is effected:
		1-3:	Offensive Capability
		4-5:	Battery
		6:	Both Offensive Capability and Batteries
4	Armor: The ships armor is degraded by one point. No reliability save.
5	Control Surfaces: The ships maneuverability is degraded. Reliability Save.
6	Engine Room: The ships engine room takes a hit; roll a d6 to see what was effected:
		1-3:	Speed
		4-5:	Reliability
		6:	Both Speed and Reliability

Reliability Save

Whenever damage is sustained to anything except for the Armor and the Crew, the ship can make a reliability save to see if the "bucket of bolts can stick together for just a little bit longer." If the save is successful, the location takes no damage, but it still counts as a hit for the amount of future damage.

Out of the Fight

Ships can only take so much damage before critical systems fail, and the ship is dead in the water. If Speed, Maneuverability, or Offensive Capability is ever reduced to half its original value, then the fight is over, the ship is dead in the water, and the crew should prepare to be boarded.

Fighters

Ships which have a vehicle bay can house and deploy any fighters it may have in combat. Fighters have all the same basic characteristics as ships.

In combat, if each side has an even number of fighters, the fighters pair up and fight their separate combat. However, if one side has more fighters than the other, multiple fighters and ships are ganging up against a single opponent: treat this as you would multiple combatants (that is, every fighter after the first gets +1 to Maneuver, and +1 battery).

Note, however, that when facing off against a ship, a fighter may forego the multiple combatant bonus to try to strike the opposing ship’s Achilles heal. This is called a Pinpoint Strike: if the fighter wins the combat, and the HQ ship makes a successful Sensor’s check, the fighter can either take +/-1 on the location roll, or it may treat the opposing ship’s armor as 2 less for this round of combat.

Since fighters are smaller targets and much more maneuverable than their ship counter-parts, they are exceedingly hart to hit with a ships main guns. As such, they always receive a 4+ unmodified save when they are attacked by the ships main guns. However, if hit, all damage against them counts as critical damage.

Running

Ships will not always want to stand and fight: discretion, the better part of valor, and all that. If one ship decides to run, and the other decides to chase, each ship rolls a d6 and tries to beat the opposing ship’s speed characteristic. If both ships pass, or if both ships fail, the distance between them remains roughly equivalent: the runner doesn’t widen the gap, and the chaser doesn’t bring him into weapons range.

If, however, the runner succeeds but the chaser fails, he increases the distance to long range. If he was already at long range, he escapes clean and clear.

If the chaser succeeds and the runner fails, and the ships are at long range, the range is reduced to close. If the ships are at close range, the chaser closes the gap to bring his weapons into range: fight a round of ship-to-ship combat. Note, after the round of combat, the range automatically returns to close.

If the runner is caught and engaged in combat, he is sorely at a disadvantage because most ships have no aft guns, so the most he can do is attempt to avoid the oncoming fire. Make the maneuverability opposed roll as normal, but if the runner wins he is unable to strike back. Instead, he simply succeeds in keeping the opposing ship from bringing its guns to bear.

Boarding Actions

For the sake of convenience, it is assumed that all off-story boarding actions against the player are repulsed, eventually. (It’s bad form for the GM to enslave a whole ship because of a few bad dice rolls) The only question then is, how much stuff is taken or destroyed in the boarding action. To determine the extent of the damage, roll a d6, make a security check, and refer to the table below. (Note: For boarding actions that are part of the plot, the GM may want to play it as a special scenario rather than rolling on the following table.)

D6	Security Ck	Result
1	Pass:	The boarding action was repelled with extreme prejudice. The attacking ship is repelled and flees the scene, and d3 randomly selected defenders gain d6xp.
	Fail:	The boarding action is repelled
2	Pass:	The boarding action is repelled
	Fail:	The attackers managed to penetrate a cargo bay (or some other income generating compartment) and stole 1d6x10 cr. worth of cargo. In your next trading phase, your income is at –1d6
3	Pass:	Lose 1d6x10 credits of cargo
	Fail:	Lose 2d6x10 credits of cargo
4	Pass:	Lose 1d6x10 credits of cargo
	Fail:	Lose 2d6x10 credits of cargo; roll once the ship damage table.
5	Pass:	Lose 1d6x10 credits of cargo
	Fail:	Lose 3d6x10 credits of cargo; roll once the ship damage table.
6	Pass:	Lose 2d6x10 credits of cargo.
	Fail:	Lose 3d6x10 credits of cargo plus everything in your stash (including equipment); roll once on the ship damage table.

Repairing Ships

When a ship’s been beat to hell, it doesn’t just repair itself, but usually a good grease monkey will be able to get her up and running again. For every location that has been damaged, you must assign a crewman, juve or some other character with the Mechanic skill to repair the location (Captains, Elite, and Specialists are usually far to important to fix the leaks). To see how much damage they can fix, make a leadership check against the assigned crewman’s leadership: every point you pass the test by repairs 1 point of statistic loss. If the roll is failed, or if not all the damage is repaired, you have to roll on the repairs table below. If you roll a 2, the crewman is a natural at it, and picks up the Mechanic skill, and for now on can roll on the Engineering skill table. If you roll a 12, the crewman has botched the job, and inflicts an additional point of damage to the location. (For instance, if a crewman, LD 7 rolls a 7, he passes the check but repairs no damage and therefore has to roll on the Repairs table. If he rolls a 6, he passes the check and repairs 1 damage, so he only has to roll on the repairs table if the location has 2+ damage on it.

For the damage table, roll a d3 and add the amount of damage remaining on the location. In addition, add +1 if the crewman failed his repair roll.

D3==========	Ship Repair Table
1-2	You got off lucky; all that is needed to bring it back to ship-shape is dirt-cheap, common parts. If you assign a mechanic to work on it as his post-game action, the damage is repaired.
3	You must pay 10 credits per point of damage to repair the location.
4	You must pay 15 credits per point of damage to repair the location.
5	Unfortunately, the parts that you need to fix your ship aren’t readily available, but with a little looking they should turn up. To repair you ship, you need to make a Rare 6 roll, and pay 10+d6credits per point of damage. In addition, any upgraded systems that operate off that characteristic are disabled until the damage is repaired.
6	Rare 7(9); 15+d6 credits per point of damage, and the statistic is reduced by –1 permanently unless you can find the extra rare parts.
7	Rare 7(9); 15+d6 credits per point of damage, and the statistic is reduced by –1 permanently unless you can find extra rare parts. All upgrades that operate off that characteristic are disabled until the damage is repaired.
8	Rare 9; 20+d6 credits per point of damage, and the statistic is reduced by –1 permanently.
+1 per point of damage +1 if repair test was failed

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