Tidbits From the Q Continuum: Starship Combat Part 2

Hello, evolved gorillas. It’s Q again to discuss the intricacies of Modiphius’s Star Trek Adventures. Last time I teased you with starship combat. Instead of delivering on the dramatic piloting maneuvers or core breaches, I provided you with a breakdown of everyone’s role on the ship and what they can do during combat. I hope to do you right this time around by talking about the fun of causing a lot of damage to a starship, even blowing it up.

The first thing we need to consider is scale. How big is your ship? How big is the enemy ship? The game provides a scale with runabouts being Scale 2 and a Galaxy-class ship being Scale 6. There’s a handy chart in the book and on the GM screen that tells how many breaches a ship of a specific scale can suffer before it’s destroyed.

A Breach is essentially a wound to the ship. Every starship has an amount of armor called Resistance. First subtract the Resistance from the damage dealt. Remaining damage is applied to the shields and the ship. If the remaining damage is equal to or greater than five points of damage, your fair vessel suffers a Breach. For every five points of damage over the first Breach, the ship suffers another Breach. If the ship is out of shields, a single point of damage gotten past Resistance deals a Breach.

What gets hit when the ship suffers Breaches? Usually, it’s randomly determined using a handy table in the book and GM screen. Sometimes the Tactical Officer targets specific systems. The affected systems can include: Communications, Computers, Engines, Sensors, Structure and Weapons.

When a system suffers a Breach, the system is disrupted until the crew member responsible for that system gets a turn and uses a Minor Action to push a button and restore the system. No big deal. When the system suffers enough Breaches to be Damaged (equal to or greater than half the Breaches the ship can handle before it’s Destroyed), then the system is seriously messed up. Task rolls that involve that system suffer a +2 Difficulty. The Difficulty to fix the system is 3. When the system suffers a number of breaches equal to the scale of the ship, the system is considered Disabled. The scope of using the system is greatly limited until an extended task is performed to repair the system. This works similar to a skill challenge. Finally, if the system suffers more Breaches than its scale, the system is considered destroyed. Gotta replace it. Further Breaches are applied to a different system.

A PC ship can suffer a lot more damage than an NPC ship. These ships have a listed amount of Breaches it can suffer before it’s just destroyed.

Scale is important not just for the amount of Breaches the ship can suffer but how many actions the NPC ships get in an initiative round. For every point of scale a ship has, one crew member gets to act. This prevents there from being three hundred Klingon crew members taking actions on an initiative round. This furthers the tactical strategy of the game. Will the Engineer get a chance to fix a Breach on a round, or will the Sensors Operator go to scan the enemy ship for weaknesses?

Now we know how starship combat works in Star Trek Adventures, it would be remiss to not talk about the type of weapons in play. First, there are phasers. The Difficulty to hit with a phaser is 1. These weapons have a special ability to grant 2 bonus Momentum should the attack be successful. However, it is a drain on Power, decreasing available power by 1 for each shot. Extra power can be sacrificed with an attack to deal extra dice of damage.

Disruptors work similar to phasers. Instead of them providing extra Momentum, they have the ability of dealing extra damage to what the dice roll.

Then there are torpedoes. Hitting with a torpedo has a Difficulty 3. They deal extra damage based on the attacking ship’s Security score (more about that next article). Photon torpedoes have the High Yield attribute. If it deals a Breach, it deals a bonus Breach, reflective of the projectile causing massive amounts of damage.

Now, you’re ready to stick it to the Borg… if you can get past their defenses. From my experience with the Federation versus the Borg in starship combat, you might want to just go to warp and hope you can somehow outrun those bad boys.

Next time we’ll talk about your greatest helper in the game: your ship.