High Guard "1 Plus"

[robject]

In the Proto-High Guard thread, I engaged Mike and Flykiller a bit about conceptual High Guard rules that go beyond what proto High Guard must have been. I want to follow those lines of thought, and I'd like to try to do that in this thread.



Many years ago, I saw Don's draft of High Guard 3. True to its roots, it was a direct descendant of High Guard 2, and yet the updates I saw didn't really impress me. In being too tight with HG2 and yet adding the complexity of (for example) MegaTraveller's extended TL tables and additional weapons, you get something that really does feel quite big. At that point, you've lost a major draw of HG2 to begin with. I'm not arguing against modeling the OTU more fully, but I am saying that HG1 had some compelling low-complexity solutions that are worth considering today.


1. Bake Attack Factors into the USP

Battery factors were a compromise between attack strength and the ability to attack multiple targets. In losing the "attack factor" feel of HG1, they lost something that capital ships needed, and were forced to tack on statistical rules for mass battery fire that essentially became Attack Factors.

One thing I prefer in HG1 to HG2 is that there was an attempt to bake the number of weapons into the USP factor rather than having a massive number of batteries.

The latter means either a lot of dice to roll or use statistical resolution [which can be pre-computed, which in turn suggests just using an attack factor, which is back to HG1].

This means, for example, that if you have 50 Particle Accelerator bays, you record the Attack Factor of the total number of PA guns on the USP.

Aside - for a future version of HG I would go back to a minimum number of dice rolls, so weapon factors should have batteries bearing built into them

This may mean, for example, that the Attack Factor for every weapon type except the spine is reduced by the Ship Size Code, or some number indexed by Ship Size Code.


2. Define Attack Configurations

Variant attack configurations can be defined at design time. This (by the way) is related to point 1 above.

one may designate at construction time not only the main battery configurations but also sub-battery configurations. say, 10 turrets may be pre-configured to one factor 9 or two factor 7, or a spinal to one factor T and three factor J. etc. probably the best way to maximize player input while minimizing time spent doing so.

These sub-configurations would be recorded with the USP. Auxiliary codes? Could be confusing if done wrong.


2a. Custom Attack Configurations

...What's more, it's also reasonable to assume that composition and distribution rules could allow veteran players to customize an attack.

This assumes that there are standard rules for breaking one factor down into two smaller factors. (Which is a reasonable assumption).


3. Setting aside EPs for now

If energy point allocation could be made organic to the decisions made during combat without slowing down play I would be all in favour.

I have never liked the EP rules in HG2 as they are not tracked as damage accrues. Without an easy tracking system you would be better off just getting rid.

4. Book 2 Drive Percentages

I suspect there is one very good reason HG uses its drive percentages, and that's to give battle riders a bit of a drive burden. Otherwise, they'd be even more powerful. Note how early the drive percentages changed, and that's Marc's rules. Someone (maybe Marc) got Marc thinking about battle riders in 1979.

However, there are other ways to "manage" battle riders, and us Book 2 freaks tend to think that drives should all "be the same". Yes, drives in HG are considered custom Navy drives, while Book 2 drives are clearly off-the shelf prefabs. But still.


5. Get Fighter Wings to Work With the OTU

Fighters are still used even at TL15, but they can't be so powerful as to pose a threat to capital ships.

 

[robject]

High Guard space combat is a lesson in the power of layered defense.

Lasers which hit must penetrate sand, then the black globe, and then armor. In High Guard, to-hit is a roll, sand is a roll, the globe is a roll, and armor is a DM added to the damage roll; its job is therefore in mitigating damage rather than absorbing it (not completely unlike Book 1 personal combat). At least two rolls, and up to four rolls, for one successful laser battery attack.

I don't see this going away. I can see defenses rolled into other rolls, but not always. For example, the initial to-hit roll is modified by the target's Agility, so 2D + Laser Factor > 8 + Agility, or whatever.

I can still see Hull Configuration being a DM to meson gun fire, of course. 2D + Meson Factor > Hull Config, for example (where "Hull Config" ranges from 10 to whatever).

But you can't glob multiple defenses into one roll with HG1 and HG2. You could change what the roll is all about: instead of a task to penetrate defenses, it could be re-tasked as an "attack" on incoming energy at short range and limited time by a defensive emplacement. That might change the way the task is rolled (maybe). But you still have to make the rolls.

Perhaps you could glob multiple defenses IF the statistical probabilities of layered defenses were maintained. In other words, there were some cool way to roll together two sequential defense factors into one probability "on the fly" which takes into account the current state of those defenses... in a way that's faster or more satisfying than just rolling twice.

Example: Your Factor 7 Sandcaster Battery and your Factor 5 Black Globe both defend against a Factor 6 Laser Battery. Your rolls are something like:

2D + Laser Battery > 6 + Sandcaster Battery [2D > 7 = 55%]
2D + Laser Battery > 6 + Black Globe Battery [2D > 5 = 73%]

Arriving at a 42% success (21/36) x (26/36) to represent these two task rolls is something High Guard does not do...



I also have a narrow view of damage these days, and find it hard to see armor used as a DM on a damage table. I tend to see armor as soaking damage. But of course that has its own can of worms.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm vehicle armor should be more like it penetrates, or it doesn't. May do spall or turret jam or mission kill directors or whatever, but not absorption.

The only way HG2 armor makes sense to me is a spaceship version of all or nothing- a scheme like a submarine in that the critical vitals are all under an inner pressure hull, maneuver drives poke through this hull to the outside, weapons are mounted on the outside as they need to fire out to targets, and fuel tanks fill in the rest of the exterior and act as an ersatz secondary armor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_or_nothing_(armor)

Highly armored ships then put on more exterior armor which limits the damage done to externally mounted maneuver, weapons and fuel.

 

[robject]

And that's kind of how High Guard's damage tables work: armor is a DM on the damage table.

 

[flykiller]

fuel tanks fill in the rest of the exterior and act as an ersatz secondary armor

armor is a DM on the damage table

perhaps jump fuel could add to this dm.

 

[McPerth]

1. Bake Attack Factors into the USP

Battery factors were a compromise between attack strength and the ability to attack multiple targets. In losing the "attack factor" feel of HG1, they lost something that capital ships needed, and were forced to tack on statistical rules for mass battery fire that essentially became Attack Factors.

This means, for example, that if you have 50 Particle Accelerator bays, you record the Attack Factor of the total number of PA guns on the USP.

Have you taken a look at MgT (1Ed) HG barrage system?

I see it as an elelgant system to solve those massive attacks with a single dice roll, featuring on it the relative potence (attack dice) of the weapon , PDs, armor, computers (FC programs), and even crew quality...

Of course, I don't know any IP problems there might be...

 

[kilemall]

And that's kind of how High Guard's damage tables work: armor is a DM on the damage table.

I'm providing a visualization of what HG2 ships need to be built like in order to deliver the results on the tables.

It matters for what I was looking at doing, a direct 'locate initial damage point' on a floorplan and blossom out, doing additional damage based on adjacent areas/systems according to how much joules/EP/factor was left to deliver.

And if I wanted to get into other protection schemes, like say an overall armor shell, or specific components, or heavily bulkheaded so damage comes in but is highly contained even if meson, then I have to figure out how to render that differently then default HG2.

Or, go to a pen/no pen type resolution altogether and ignore the HG2 tables.

 

[robject]

Similar to the damage-adjacent locations is a ship abstract sheet, which places components in two layers of tables. Yeah, it requires effort, but damage is at a location, and spills over to adjacent locations. So even designing the ship's layout affects combat.

 

[robject]

Have you taken a look at MgT (1Ed) HG barrage system?

I see it as an elelgant system to solve those massive attacks with a single dice roll, featuring on it the relative potence (attack dice) of the weapon , PDs, armor, computers (FC programs), and even crew quality...

Of course, I don't know any IP problems there might be...

No IP problems at all, since this mechanic is also how the T5 Core Rules handle mass fire.

 

[flykiller]

These sub-configurations would be recorded with the USP. Auxiliary codes? Could be confusing if done wrong.

not if it's done with individual ships or (what I would call) battlegroups. and a game anything like hg2 with scores of ships I'd rather program than do by hand. what kind of game exactly are you trying to set up?

 

[robject]

Well as all these conversations do, the scope widens and has free range. The original intent was to cook up a variant High Guard 1 that clung to Book 2 drives and "fixed" shortcomings in a non-HG2 direction... while still being HG1.

Part of the value of this discussion is seeing what sorts of directions that might mean.

 

[robject]

Another good point from Wil from the proto-High Guard thread:

Monolithic batteries have the simulation issue of needing then rules for massive battery versus squadron, or else fighters suddenly become massively overpowered by taking forever to swat. (The Starfire solution was to not count fighters against the tracking limit if only engaged with point defense...)

This directly impacts High Guard 1-style rules. In short, fighters have interesting features. They superficially resemble missile salvos, and also resemble weapon batteries.

And, fighters are still used at TL15... but they probably ought not pose a problem to capital ships. This probably means fighters have battery limits, are engaged as a group, and when damaged, may suffer dramatically... and yet still serve a purpose. Of course they can serve as a screen, but they have offensive uses as well. For example, attacking escorts. Maybe cruisers?

 

[mike wightman]

Fighter squadrons in HG1 looks like another place the rules were not developed enough on printing.
From the intent implied by the ship design system a fighter squadron would be the unit, not the individual fighter.

 

[robject]

Which is exactly how I view them... and seems to be the only sane view... Hey, that reminds me a bit of the mass combat rules in Mercenary.

 

[robject]

Consider: Let fighter wing size map its guns on the battery factor table, but halve the result. Thus we are essentially defining a mobile battery.

Pro: Fighters are not as powerful as ship batteries; this limitation can be tuned so that capital ships are typically immune except in outlier cases.

Pro: This also works hand-in-hand with the ability to split a battery in half, with two attacks at half factor. I.E. we automagically get the ability to split and combine fighter groups (of the same size and TL).

 

[kilemall]

Fighter squadrons in HG1 looks like another place the rules were not developed enough on printing.
From the intent implied by the ship design system a fighter squadron would be the unit, not the individual fighter.

Which is in line with HG being the design the ship version of Imperium combat.

 

[aramis]

Another good point from Wil from the proto-High Guard thread:



This directly impacts High Guard 1-style rules. In short, fighters have interesting features. They superficially resemble missile salvos, and also resemble weapon batteries.

And, fighters are still used at TL15... but they probably ought not pose a problem to capital ships. This probably means fighters have battery limits, are engaged as a group, and when damaged, may suffer dramatically... and yet still serve a purpose. Of course they can serve as a screen, but they have offensive uses as well. For example, attacking escorts. Maybe cruisers?

HG, to a fighter, there's no practical difference between a cruiser and a battleship. 50KTd+ has plenty of room and budget for a peak TL computer.

 

[mike wightman]

As there is in any escort class vessel too...