Playtesting the Ship Rules
I finally got the chance to playtest my spaceship combat rules with some friends. I’d say it went… pretty well.
The good news:
Even for our first time playing, the flow of combat felt fast and snappy. We went through eight rounds in just over an hour, including frequent breaks for using the bathroom, getting food, and checking on something for work.
In that time, my players traded missile volleys with the enemy, scrambled to contain their ship’s rising temperature, did first aid on injured crew members, and attempted (in vain) to patch their damaged radiators. There were too many fires to put out, forcing them to make difficult choices about what to prioritize.
Oh, and they decided their ship had a crew of swashbuckling space Cajuns.
Heat was a constant danger. The players’ ship overheated once, and the enemy ship twice. I think, because it was our first time, none of us really got the strategy with heat. In practice, we all found it really easy to let it get out of control. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s worth keeping in mind for next time.
But still, on a basic level, the game worked. Fantastic!
Now for the bad news:
During the battle, each ship took one hit from the enemy’s weapons. That one hit, along with overheating, caused so much damage to their crew stats that by the end of the fight, any given roll had at best a 30% chance of success.
Floundering in desperation, my players decided the best thing to do was ram the other ship (I don’t think ramming is or should be a thing in this system, but I decided, what the hell?).
On one hand, this was certainly entertaining. It reinforced the dangerous, vicious nature of war in space, and it felt right as a consequence for letting heat get out of control. On the other hand, I think I want ships to last a little longer before getting to that point. I’ll just have to play with the numbers.
Although I’m considering decoupling crew casualties from check rolls. I’m not sure how I’d go about that, if I decide to do it.
There was another moment when the players took system damage to their radiators, halving their heat cap, causing them to overheat, causing them to take crew casualties. That’s two d8 for system damage, one d6 for overheating, and three d6 for the crew casualties. That’s… quite the chain reaction of dice rolls.
The Dump Coolant action doesn’t feel decisive enough to me. I like the idea of relief now in exchange for it being easier to overheat later, but I’m starting to think you need to lose a lot of heat for that trade-off to be worth it. And maybe I can come up with another way to reduce heat, too.
I’m not sure if the range bands are meaningful enough. This one is going to take more testing, but if I find that players aren’t really thinking about how far they are from the enemy ship, then I’ll have to make some adjustments.
Really, I just need to play more, see what feedback different people have, see how the game feels. But I feel good about where I’m at so far.
The next step after that is to start thinking about the other half of flying a spaceship: earning money, getting into debt, making repairs, and managing a large crew of people who might not all like the way the captain is running things. But that’s going to take some time.
[EDIT: I wrote about money and the crew in part 2.]