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The Case for Hex Maps & Six Fire Arcs
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atgxtg
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:


What if guns can fire in their designated arcs... and in adjacent arcs with -1D fire control?


Why? Generally speaking the fire arc restrictions are based on what areas the weapon can be pointed at. If a weapon should cover a particular arc then it probably should have a fire control penalty. And if it can't move the guns to cover an arc, then it should be able to shoot at targets in that arc.

But going with 6 fire arcs will mean rethinking/reassigning just where some weapons can fire. Basically you will need to decide if a weapon should get a 60 degree, 90 degree or 120 degree arc.
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atgxtg
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Also, I found something interesting. Leviathan uses a hex map, but still uses 4 fire arcs. My tablet isn't letting me screenshot it, and I can't find it on line, but I'll see if I can do something about that the next time I'm home.

Anyway, nice to see that four fire arcs still work on a hex...


I think I have a couple of games that use 4 fire arcs and hexes. It's not that hard to do, especially if you use hex-point facing. Come to think of it I think Star Warriors did.

One thing I wondering about is if you use hexes, how are you working the difficulties for turning?
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 12:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, a funny thing...

More than once in my house-rule-writing career, I've suggested an idea that, in all honesty, I thought I came up with on my own. Then, later on, in some obscure WEG book that I had either never bothered to read or had skimmed through at some point, I find that the rule I thought was original was already written up and officially published. The example that comes to mind for me is the Force Attribute; when I originally conceived of my version of it, I had never of the D6 Space Metaphysics attribute, yet the two very closely parallel each other.

Here's another example: In this topic, I suggested the use of a D6 hex map, borrowing from other systems. Lo and behold, WEG had basically the exact same idea a long time ago. See Star Warriors Rules of Play, page 12, FIgure 8.31.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Man, I regret getting rid of Star Warriors.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Man, I regret getting rid of Star Warriors.

(Very) belated reply, but Star Warriors really isn't the D6 System we all know and love. The Capital Ship Combat rules that The Bissler and I have been working on have had me thinking about this of late, so I just went back and skimmed through Star Warriors. Bottom line, while there are some interesting ideas there for how to move starship markers on a hex map, the rules themselves don't splice over to D6 all that well.

At this point, the hex map itself is the main thing I'd like to port over, adapting D6 Move rules to fit it.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, how would the 2R&E Movement rules translate onto a Hex Map? Obviously, turns are going to be measured differently, with six 60-degree arcs replacing four 90-degree ones. My first thought is that any ship/character has to choose one face of the hex they occupy as "front", and every facing change they make counts as a Turn Action. They can move forward as part of their Move, as well as side-stepping one hex (to the front-left or front-right) every other hex, but any "facing change" counts as a Turn for Action and Difficulty purposes, with each Turn Action increasing the Difficulty of the Move. Maybe +5 Difficulty for every additional Turn Action?
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Whill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Whill wrote:
Man, I regret getting rid of Star Warriors.

Star Warriors really isn't the D6 System we all know and love. The Capital Ship Combat rules that The Bissler and I have been working on have had me thinking about this of late, so I just went back and skimmed through Star Warriors. Bottom line, while there are some interesting ideas there for how to move starship markers on a hex map, the rules themselves don't splice over to D6 all that well.

I know Star Warriors isn't the D6 system we all know and love. I used to own it and played it several times. I think my son may have enjoyed it had I not gotten rid of it.

The early modules all had Star Warrior scenarios and game pieces, but when I ran the modules, we always used the RPG rules. My players and I would play Star Warriors on its own independent of the RPG, like when we didn't have enough players to play the RPG. That and the Assault on Hoth game, which the players of my first player group had given me as a Christmas present. (I do still have that one and my son went through a phase where he wanted to play that a lot.)

Star Warriors is its own system, but the shields system had two arcs (front/back) which somewhat foreshadowed how shields later worked in 2e. I liked it and house ruled a version of into my 1e game. I don't exactly remember how it worked but I do still have some of my handwritten 1e ship stat sheets with the two shield arcs on it.

Quote:
At this point, the hex map itself is the main thing I'd like to port over, adapting D6 Move rules to fit it...

Another difficulty is shields. Do you have six arcs instead of four?

Ultimately, I have never liked using any maps for space combat in the RPG because space is 3D and a flax hex map doesn't represent "above" and "below" the ship. In my experience, theater of the mind works best for that.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I addressed this above, in that in space combat, a capital ship may roll to bring its main batteries to bear on a target, thus creating the two-dimensional plane within three-dimensional space in which the battle will take place. This can, in turn, shift over the course of the battle, and there are other steps that can be taken to represent this, such as allowing ships to occupy / pass through the same hex without striking each other (unless one deliberately intends to ram the other). The theater of the mind can, after all, impart a third dimension onto a two-dimensional map; just picture the space portion of the Battle of Endor, where ships were commonly above or below each other, but still fighting on a similar plane (oriented with the surface of Endor as "down").

Another factor worth considering is that a ship can't just be covered in guns; the main limitation is going to be whether or not it has enough reactor power to fire them, and as such, ships will be equipped with a finite number of them. Further, they can't be too dispersed around the surface of the ship or else not enough of them will be able to come to bear to do any good. As such, ships are going to be designed where it can bring as many weapons as possible to bear on some arcs at the expense of others. This is cited as one of the advantages of the ISD design, the the wedge shape allows clearer fields of fire to the front from both of the side mounted weapons.

As for shields, having six arcs actually works pretty well with what Totally Not An ISB Agent proposed here.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 10:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

All that makes sense. I guess I should have clarified that I don't like maps for the space battles that I tend to run, which usually involve the PCs on a freighter (less often fighters) against some enemy fighters, and/or one capital ship they are trying to get away from.

For capital ship battles, I definitely would use a map of some kind. I just never run capital ship battles. There have been capital ship battles in my adventures, but in those cases the battle is usually treated as a battle field environment that the PCs are flying through. I am not really running the entire battle. I almost never have PCs controlling capital ships. It has happened maybe a handful of times. Some of my players and I used to occasionally run capital ship battles using the rules in the Rules Companion, but those were just for its own game and not connected to any RPG adventure, like when we played Star Warriors.
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