Space Combat & Starship Guns (R230L)
Only starships or boat guns can fire at other starships or fight in space (i.e., in orbit, arriving, or departing from a star
system). Due to the great speeds involved, each combat round is one hour rather than five minutes — it takes that long
because weapons are so inaccurate, despite computer control!
In battle, all space combat is at dispersed zone with ranged weapons. The only exception is that stationary ships (those with
engineering area damaged or destroyed, or indicated stationary in an event) may be boarded, in which case individual
combat inside the ship can occur instead of space combat.
Starships are considerably faster than ship’s boats. As a result, any round after the first a starship can elect to "run away"
from a ship’s boat, with the result that all boats immediately drop out of combat. If you leave your own boat behind during
combat, it is automatically lost.
Firing Starship Guns in Space: roll 1d6 for each tech level of the starship guns. You roll more or fewer dice in special
situations, listed below. If you are reduced to zero dice to roll, a hit is impossible:
- +1d6 roll target is stationary (unwilling or unable to move)
- -1d6 roll firing boat guns
- -1d6 roll target has ECM defenses
- -1d6 roll firing at a target within a planet’s atmosphere<
If the combat is occurring in any planetary land area, it is within atmosphere.
Hit Effects: if the die roll is "1" or "2" a hit occurs. Note that if more than one die is rolled, more than one hit could occur. If
the target has defensive screens (present in some events), only a result of "1" means a hit (2 is a miss). A critical hit occurs if
two (or more) "1" results occur, and/or two (or more) "2" results occur (no effect if the target has screens). If 1s and 2s both
occur, and the target has no screens, two critical hits occur.
Each normal hit does one hit of damage on the target. After ten (10) normal hits a starship is destroyed. Each critical hit
effect requires an extra 1d6 roll, and R237 consulted for special effects.
Note: if a starship or boat has both a pilot and gunner, the vehicle can both move and fire at the same time. If it has only one,
it can either move or fire, but not both.
Escaping Space Combat
There are only two ways of escaping starship combat in a spaceship or ship’s boat. First, you can escape with a hyperjump
(R212A) — impossible for a boat. Second, you can hide on an asteroid, if you are currently "in orbit" in the asteroid
belt (R206). To hide, select one of the asteroids to hide, and move there. Each pursuer then rolls 1d6, and goes to the
asteroid with that number. If a pursuer arrives at your asteroid, the battle continues, if none arrives, you have escaped them.
You can try to shake off your pursuer again by returning to orbit and then going again among the asteroids. This represents
the huge size of the asteroid belt and the many hiding places present.
You can also escape space combat by landing the starship or boat in any area (including a space station) and leaving it.
Unfortunately, this results in the automatic destruction of the starship or boat.
Starship Guns Firing on Planet
Starship guns can be used on planet in normal battles. Since they are computer controlled, the marksmanship of the firer is
not used — instead, they have an automatic marksmanship of six (6) whenever any qualified starship gunner operates them.
Hits are determined using the normal combat procedure (R230D), but if they hit, the result is automatically equivalent to 10
hits on an individual, or 1d6 hits and a critical hit on a vehicle. Note that as a result, a hit by starship guns will normally kill a
person, and usually knocks out vehicles.