Rules and Mechanics
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 9:38 pm
This topic will be updated as need to clarify any of the rules or mechanics of the game as we go along. For those not familiar with the Second Sathar War (SWII) game rules, you can find the relevant information on pages 55-60 of the Knight Hawks(KH) Campaign Book(KHCB). The tactical combat rules for spacecraft are contained in the UPF Tactical Operation Manual (UPFTOM). Both can be found as part of this PDF file containing the complete contents of the KH boxed set. (warning it's a 21MB zip file).
The game will be played out in the following manner once all the ships are set up.
The game will be played out in the following manner once all the ships are set up.
- The strategic game will happen in no slower than real time - i.e. one game day per real day. There will occasionally be stretches where ships are just moving along and unless someone PM's me saying they want to change direction or some such I'll move things along a bit faster. Once we get to a combat situation, things will slow down
- We'll try to move the tactical combat portion of the game along at a fairly good clip as well. The goal will be at least one turn per week. Combat resolution will follow the following pattern:
- Defender sets up
- Attacker sets up
- Attacker moves
- Defender declares defensive fire
- Attacker declares offensive fire
- Defender moves
- Attacker declares defensive fire
- Defender declares offensive fire
- Return to step 3 and repeat
- We'll have a separate thread for each battle so when multiple battles occur on the same game day we can run them simultaneously.
- I will be the referee for the game and will manage all the maps and die rolling. You just have to post where you want to move your ships and who you want to fire at.
- From the SWII rules we will be using the optional Replacements rule but not the Shatter Drone rule (unless you really want to.)
- We will play out the tactical combat using the Advanced Rules from the UPFTOM.
- We will be using the ship characteristics as posted in the UPFTOM for all of the ships. This means that Heavy Cruisers, Assault Carriers and Battleships will not be able to move at more than Risk Jump 2 speed and Minelayers cannot Risk Jump at all. Assault Carriers can hold up to 8 Fighters.
- Only ships making Risk Jumps are used to determine the risk jump success chance. e.g. if your battleship doesn't actually make the jump you don't get the benefit of it's astrogation bonus.
- Repairing after a battle - At the end of a battle, if surviving ships have any unrepaired damage, the players will submit a list of the damaged systems in the order they want to attempt to repair them. I will allocate 40 repair rolls per day per ship to attempt to repair the damage (20 hours, 1 roll every 30 minutes). For the day of the combat, I will subtract the number of repair turns the ships had during the battle from the 40 available rolls to represent the time already used up.
- Movement and turning - Remember you have to move forward one hex before you can turn and you can only turn one hexside in any give hex.
- When setting up on the combat map, the attacking fleet must set up within three hexes of the map edge they are entering from. The speed of the attacking ships can be whatever the controlling player wants. The ships don't all have to be at the same speed, but the range in speeds for the fleet must not be greater than 10 hexes/turn. updated 12/08/08
- Defensive Fire - We will not be using the defensive fire rule as stated in the UPFTOM. Rather instead of applying the damage immediately we will be letting the attacking ships fire before the damage is applied.
- Small change to the UPF unattached ships list from the printed rules. The minelayer in the unattached ships should be an Assault Carrier. We will play it as such. updated 12/08/08