• Registered: 2011-04-23
  • Posts: 31

Topic: Destructible Terrain

Having been inspired by my love of verdant environment, the pristine wonders of space, and an eternal desire for peace, I'm presenting rules for how to blow up planets for Starmada.   big_smile  I'd been working on such things for a little while, but with the discussion of planetary assault scenarios I thought I'd spice the pot a bit.  Note that these rules are not for every game, and are slanted in favor of ships being able to ransack or annihilate planets if constructed for such a purpose.  Go ye not here for realism.

Asteroid Fields:  Asteroid fields may be cleared as a minefield of equivalent size.

Black Holes, Dust Clouds, and Nebulae:  Not going to happen.  Dust clouds and nebulae are too diffuse and widespread, and black holes absorb all attacks directed at them without incident.

Asteroids and Planets:  Weapons might be useful in destroying unwanted terrain features such as these.  These terrains have “Hull Points” that must be destroyed in order to destroy the feature.  The weapon used need only strike a hex containing the terrain - it needn't reach the center hex.  In some cases, destroying the feature may have additional consequences, which will also be noted in the results.  Attacks on a terrain feature gain a +1 bonus to ACC rolls.  All terrain features have a certain resistance to injury.  Whenever one would normally roll for damage results, the die is rolled as normal, but keep in mind that terrain has no systems other than hull to injure.  In addition, terrain is considered to be Armor Plated, and so a roll of 1 does no damage.  Thus, every damage die has only one chance in three of inflicting damage.

The Hull Points of these features vary by its size.  As a "flavor text" rule, a living planet that has suffered half its Hull Points in injury is no longer a suitable place for colonies, life, or really any other purpose than slag mining.  If reduced to zero Hull Points, it is replaced by an asteroid field of a size equal to the planet's size.  An asteroid is simply removed from the map when destroyed.

Terrain Size | Hull Points
Asteroid | 5
Planet (1) | 10
Planet (2) | 30
Planet (3) | 60
Planet (4) | 90
Planet (5) | 120

  • Registered: 2011-04-23
  • Posts: 31

Re: Destructible Terrain

As an addendum to the above:  It occurs to me I wrote this for a specific setting, and a few variables might be desired.  For those people wanting to make it a little harder to kill a planet without taking away the option entirely, a few possibilities.

Increase Hull Points:  This is one solution, but might not be favored since the numbers will get quite large (you're already looking at 120 Hull Points for the largest planets).

Give Them Shields:  This will reduce the effect of Increased IMP (which would otherwise make an excellent Trait for planet killers, especially alongside things like Catastrophic, Continuing Damage, and Extra Hull Damage).  However, this doesn't map very well to what I tend to envision Shields as being.

Improved Armor:  Instead of the normal damage system, make them only take damage on damage rolls of 1.  This will cut the amount of damage they suffer in half unless the weapon has Extra Hull Damage, but still map well to things like Continuing Damage.

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Destructible Terrain

Hmm...  I guess my first thought is one of balance, and my second is of realism.  What we've noticed since we started using terrain is that having something to hide behind really helps shift the advantage away from the long-range G-arc only fleets that people complain about here sometimes.  If you make it so that cover can be destroyed, then the advantage goes back to them, which seems an undesirable outcome, especially given that the best / most prevalent form of cover in our games (asteroids) is easily destroyed in a single turn of shooting (use the +1 ACC to offset Directed Damage, and the fraction of hull hits goes up to 5/9 rather than 1/3, and then you only need to deal about 10 combined impact / damage to a shields 0 target, which is not hard). 

The realism issue is one of scale - one of my opponent fields Imp5 Dam4 weapons on almost all of his ships.  Under these rules, those weapons are capable of destroying moons and/or small planets in a single shot (even a planet-1 only takes about 18 points of directed damage to destroy, which is a single shot), and several of his ships firing in tandem could likewise destroy a Planet-2 in a single turn.  I feel like that's a bit much - I, for one, make a general policy of not fighting species who can trivially destroy my planets. 

I think I may borrow these rules, but if I do, I will likely increase the hull on the planets and astermoons sufficiently that attacking them with Catastrophic weapons is the only way to destroy them in Gamelength turns, or perhaps give them Damage Reduction of some sort (maybe that they reduce the number of hull hits inflicted per damage die that comes up Hull by 1 - then they're only damageable by EHD and Cata, which seems reasonable).  Or I might make Planet-Killer a special equipment with shortish range and a warm-up time (ie, only usable against static targets); I'm not sure having them operate on even the same rules as starships is a good solution, because it skews the scale.

  • Registered: 2011-04-23
  • Posts: 31

Re: Destructible Terrain

That is, of course, provided you use directed damage.  However, your point is taken, and I did write the original set of rules under the principle that TL+0 involves some seriously advanced materials science and high energy dynamics.  Consider using the Improved Armor option, which cuts in half the chances of doing damage (rolling a 1 on 1d6).  Directed damage will still increase this (chances become 11 in 36, close to 1 in 3).

In both cases, Continuing Damage wil incease the chance of Hull Hits, so directing damage on a Continuing Damage weapon will amplify chances of damage.  On the other hand, building a weapon as a planet killer isn't really the problem.

One of the problems with destructible terrain is that, while the rules might simulate any level of technology, rocks don't gain in technology, so rules that work for a planet getting destroyed by a Lensman primary might not work if they allow a clockwork cannon to do the same thing in your setting.  (Note - I have no idea what tech levels you're working on, I'm just making examples.)

EDIT:  Also, one thing to point out is that terrain itself is an optional rule.  While you may dislike G-arc (or AB-arc) primaries, the core of the game gives you nothing to hide behind against them.  You are skewing the game by allowing for it, and these rules push the game back a bit.  I'm not saying this to say that one way is better than the other, only that both ways exist for a reason.  The G-arc primary features as death in the making in most of the games I play, and we often don't use terrain.  It requires maneuvers and prediction to keep from falling into those arcs.

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Destructible Terrain

I'm pretty sure there's a caveat against directing Continuing Damage.  That'd be quite scary otherwise.

And yeah...  we don't really have a setting.  There are just fleets, who sometimes have a flavor (usually via weapon and ship names - there's one fleet with mythic Norse names, one with religious-sounding names, one with mythic Greek names, one that is converted entirely from Star Control II, and my 40k / Battlefleet Gothic fleets).  So we don't really have a scale, either.  Everybody's started using TL2 on everything to fit stuff into small hulls, but I feel like our use of TL is not at all connected to perceived technological superiority (and rather that it's used because it's there).  I dunno; guess I'll have to ask the rest of the group how hard they think destroying planets should be.  So it goes with houserules.

And yeah, that's true about G-arcs being legal...  but Cricket has mentioned several times that they seriously considered implementing pricing by arc usage (with A and B > C and D > E and F).  It doesn't help that we play with an oversize map (nine sheets of hex paper taped together, each tiled with 3/4-inch hexes - about 44 hexes by 34 hexes, rather than 23 by 22) and tend to start out at the edges, so it's quite easy to keep an enemy's ships in long-range forward arcs.  Personally I prefer "Cloak and get right behind them" as a solution to long-range forward weapons, but it's nice to have hiding places for when you have to decloak midway through crossing the map.