An Overview of the Starship Rules To start a battle I roll one die for each side to randomly select the fleets involved. Starting on turn 10, I roll two 10-sided dice to see if the Reserve Fleet joins either side. On turn 10 a roll of 99 is needed. That improves by one number each turn until I hit 90. I don’t let it get better than a 10% chance of having the Reserve Fleet arrive. The scenario is pretty much always the same. Sensors have picked up an attacking Entomalian fleet coming out of Hyperspace and the local Terran fleet must intercept. If you are interested in a Campaign version, it becomes critical to maintain control of the space where the battle occurred as only the side possessing the field can recover the damaged ships. Power Units are everything. You must consume Power Units for all aspects of ship life so you cannot allocate more PUs than you have available. All ships have a top speed of 5 factors, equaling 15 inches. But to get to full speed, you must use 25 PUs. In other words, the number of power units consumed when allocating factors to speed, offense and defense is the square of the factor. For example, let’s say that an Entomalian new Mantis, power factor 235 is traveling at speed factor 5 into combat with a Terran Battlecruiser. At speed 5 we have to deduct 25 power units leaving 210. We also always have to deduct 1 PU to cover life support leaving 209. The Mantis has a maximum offensive capability of 18, but that requires 324 Power Units (18 squared) so at this speed the most she could use offensively is 14 (196 PU) leaving only 13 power units for defense or a factor of 3 (3 squared is 9, but 4 squared would require more than are available). At first glance you might think that if you just cut speed you can use other units for offense and defense, but the slower you are, the easier you are to hit. (see table) Ranges Sensors 60” Heavy Lasers 48” Particle Weapons 20” CIDS 18” Attack Craft Lasers 8” Attack Craft Missiles 12” At half range add ten to the dice roll Firing Table Defender's Speed Attackers Speed 1 2 3 4 5 1 51 47 43 39 35 2 46 42 38 34 30 3 41 37 33 29 25 4 36 32 28 24 20 5 31 27 23 19 15 Damage Table Attacker Superiority factor 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Power units lost per hit 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 21 23 25 27 All Particle weapons and missiles inflict 10 PU damage. In our earlier example the Mantis used an attack factor of 14 against the Terran GB. The GB was using a defense factor of 7 (49 power units) and a speed of 4 (16 PU) leaving 25 for defense…but wait, we need 1 for life support so we can only fire 4 offensive factors. The Mantis needs throws of 20 or less on the 2 ten sided dice for hits and gets to throw 7 times (14-7=7). The throws are 72, 65, 39, 19, 44, 02, 67, for two hits. With a superiority of seven each hit causes 11 power units of damage or 22 PUs. For the next turn the Terran GB will only have 68 PUs. Our Terran throws one pair of dice looking for 19 or less and misses. But all is not lost, the Battlecruiser carries 15 attack craft which now attack the Mantis. Star Fighters and Star Bombers always travel at speed 5. No more than 12 attack craft can attack a single target. The Mantis’s 6 Star Fighters attempt to defend her. Both sides are looking for 15 or less. The Entomalians shoot down one Terran and lose three of their own. There are 14 Terran Star Fighters left but only 12 can attack this turn so 2 will have to wait for the next turn. The 12 attack. First they have to get through the Mantis’ CIDS defense (Close In Defense System). The mantis has a CIDS of 50% and it will roll 10 (max number it can defend against) pairs of dice looking for 50 or less each time. She scores 5 hits, but that still leaves 7 Star fighters left to launch missiles. (Star Fighters carry 1, no reloads; Star Bombers carry 4 with 8 reloads Terran and 10 reloads Entomalian. Terran SBs have 6 light lasers, Entomalian 4). The Terran Star Fighters launch from a range of 4” and are looking for 25 or less (15 plus 10 for being at half range). They score 3 hits causing 30 power units of damage leaving the Mantis 205 PU for the next turn and costing her 1 CIDS factor. The number in ( ) behind the CIDS% is how much damage it takes to reduce the number of attackers it can defend against by one. In other words this Mantis could now only roll 9 pairs. Particle weapons and Missiles also roll for Special Damage 0-10 reduce maximum offensive factors by 2 11-20 reduce maximum defense by 2 factors 21-85 no effect 86-94 reduce targets calculated speed by one factor. If you commit 25 PU you can only get a speed of 4. 95-99 target loses 40 additional PU Battles in the Stars Sci-Fi Solo Rules Introduction Entomalian Formations Overview of the Starship Rules Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior # 148 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com