Wing Commander RPG

Damn straight.

EDIT: Finished the Gimle missions today - my kid has not stopped talking about Gimle 3 (the great Dralthi turkey shoot; where you face Dakhath) all damn day. It's getting kind of annoying, actually...
 
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capi3101 said:
Damn straight.

EDIT: Finished the Gimle missions today - my kid has not stopped talking about Gimle 3 (the great Dralthi turkey shoot; where you face Dakhath) all damn day. It's getting kind of annoying, actually...
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Just think of how you'd be if you were in the same position. Could you honestly say you wouldn't be as excited? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. :D
 
I've been trying to get him to try out the CCG or TacOps - you know, something we could play together (he and I have been playing Wings of War lately and he's gotten pretty good at it). He's not interested yet, but I'll keep trying...
 
Have you ever considered a rule set for miniature combat? I'm toying with the idea of adapting the old FASA Crimson Skies rules for it, would seem like a nice fit. If I ever find anything that resembles time these days, I might try playtesting it with my old pencil and paper group.
 
DefianceIndustries said:
Have you ever considered a rule set for miniature combat? I'm toying with the idea of adapting the old FASA Crimson Skies rules for it, would seem like a nice fit. If I ever find anything that resembles time these days, I might try playtesting it with my old pencil and paper group.
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The combat section of WCRPG's Core Rules was deliberately set up to be very generic, so that folks could do the fighting however they felt best doing it. The system is capable of handling miniatures combat pretty easily; just this past week I used sections of the rules to make it possible to play Battlefleet Gothic on a hex grid. Didn't require much work, either - just the angle calculators and a conversion factor from centimeters to hexes (1 hex = 5 cm in this case; an SFB hex board does the trick pretty readily). BFG utilizes an "abstract grid with turn-based timing", if you want to use the terminology in WCRPG's General Combat Rules.

If you want to test out a WC miniatures game before you go about getting miniatures, you might check out the token sets I created a couple of years back. I've used them to play a couple of games of TacOps my own self. And then I know that Astro Commander has released miniature models in the past; I couldn't tell you if those are still available or not.

Actually, you might check out TacOps if you've never heard of it; I've never played the Crimson Skies board game my own self but from what little I can ascertain about it it looks like a similar game. TacOps was started by some forum members a few years back; my first foray onto the forums here at CIC was a jump into a playtest they were running back in 2011. Best I can tell the game was never completely finished (they didn't have completed campaign rules for one), but the game was playable. Fun too.

For what it's worth, WCRPG can also do hex grids...
 
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Thanks - I downloaded the tac ops manual and will give it a read.

The interesting part about crimson skies is that the damage model is less abstract. you basically have a grid overlay of the generic fighter type and use templates to mark off damage. it's D-10 based so it'd fit into the existing rules set. but in a nutshell, when you hit the target, you roll to first determine location (left wing, fuselage, etc) then roll a column 1-10, you then apply the appropriate template for the weapon on the column and mark off the boxes accordingly. Internal hits aren't as random after you've punched through the armor. In fact, the higher your character's gunnery skills, you get the ability to shift damage 1 or 2 columns left or right to capitalize on previous breaches. It becomes a bit problematic on shields, since they are sort of a general armor layer, but you could either just count off the appropriate boxes for the weapon type and apply it against the shields or have the shields act in a similar manner as armor.
 
DefianceIndustries said:
The interesting part about crimson skies is that the damage model is less abstract. you basically have a grid overlay of the generic fighter type and use templates to mark off damage. it's D-10 based so it'd fit into the existing rules set. but in a nutshell, when you hit the target, you roll to first determine location (left wing, fuselage, etc) then roll a column 1-10, you then apply the appropriate template for the weapon on the column and mark off the boxes accordingly. Internal hits aren't as random after you've punched through the armor. In fact, the higher your character's gunnery skills, you get the ability to shift damage 1 or 2 columns left or right to capitalize on previous breaches. It becomes a bit problematic on shields, since they are sort of a general armor layer, but you could either just count off the appropriate boxes for the weapon type and apply it against the shields or have the shields act in a similar manner as armor.
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Sounds a fair bit like Star Fleet Battles, though even SFB just used a generic "internal damage" chart once you cracked a ship's shields on a given side.

I had considered putting a damage system like the one you described for Crimson Skies in WCRPG initially; the only source material I could find for a system like that from the WC games came from OOGWC4 (p.95). Wasn't really enough there to fill out a chart.
 
Ah yes Starfleet Battles! The game where you spent each round hoping they wouldn't hit your engines...

Attached are working ideas around what a CS-style sheet might look like and early guesstimates at damage templates. It should give you a better sense on how the damage system works. It's sort of a hybrid between Battletech and SFB.

CS_F44A_RapierII.JPG WC_CS_Dam_Template.JPG
 
I was going to ask about how damage from missiles would be applied to that Crimson Skies SSD for the Rapier. Do missiles follow special rules? I really should see if I can find a PDF of the rules somewhere so I can better understand how the system works; it definitely looks interesting.

Would the internal systems template be pretty similar for all craft, or would some of them have more damage boxes than others?
 
capi3101 said:
I was going to ask about how damage from missiles would be applied to that Crimson Skies SSD for the Rapier. Do missiles follow special rules? I really should see if I can find a PDF of the rules somewhere so I can better understand how the system works; it definitely looks interesting.

Would the internal systems template be pretty similar for all craft, or would some of them have more damage boxes than others?
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There are templates for different classes of craft, so for example the rapier is based off a light/medium rear engine fighter template. There are additional templates for heavy fighters, heavy fighters with rear turrets, and heavy bombers w/multiple turrets. Capships would be represented by Zeppelin rules in CS, but I'm still toying around with the templates. The WC versions would need to be more detailed and include additional critical hits the CS rules for Zeppelins really only deal with engines, turrets, and gas cells, not all of which are applicable.

Some of the template internals are static, like wing spars for example, but the main fuselage internals vary quite a bit.

Missiles have individual damage profiles as well. In CS there are several types of missiles, beeper/seeker combos (essentially a homing missile - you fire the beeper, and if it hits you can fire the seeker next round); Drill rockets, aerial torpedoes, and flack rockets. It would require some changes to make new templates for WC missiles like FF's and IMRECs, but they would likely be variations on the beeper/seeker templates.
 
Hey all. I'm looking at my log for this past week and I'm saying to myself "I haven't accomplished anything at all this week", so I'm going to go ahead and skip tomorrow's update; next update will be sometime between 12-14Z on October 12th.
 
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