Introduction
ASC is a space combat game based on the GDW products Space Combat (the space combat system included in the 2300 boxed set) and Star Cruiser (a stand alone space combat game for 2300). It comes about from my general dissatisfaction with Star Cruiser but not wanting to abandon the system altogether.
The universe of 2300 is a bleak future, with man struggling to the stars, individual nation states carve out territories on distant worlds, and a vicious alien race called the Kafers intend to exterminate a divided mankind. The ships used by humanity are propelled by the stutterwarp effect. This acts as both the stardrive, and the insystem drive (at lower efficiency). Such drives are expensive, and require rare materials. There are extremely few privately owned starships, with only the most wealthy nations and their corporations having access to Starships. To be able to move on the board the ship must have a stardrive, vessels that don't have a movement of 0.
There are 3 main offensive systems. Beam weapons are mounted in starship turrets, and offer reasonable close ranged firepower and close defence, they come in 2 main types; lasers, which are accurate, and particle beams which are powerful. One shot from these weapons represents several dozen actual shots, but the chances of hitting are so low that these are all represented together. The big hitter weapons at this range are submunition launchers, these are essentially nuclear pumped X-Ray lasers on a chemical rocket. They may only detonate in the hex in which they were launched.
For long offence and defence, combat starships carry stardrive equipped missiles. The price of these weapons is extremely high, with the cheapest in excess of the equivalent of $15m, and the most modern types in excess of $50m. These weapons are controlled from the starship, and have no targeting systems onboard (indeed, they couldn't function with the systems onboard, as the massive weight increases would slow the missiles down so much as to make interceptions impossible). The warhead is either a conventional laser, or a Nuclear X-Ray laser. In the case of the latter, the missile is destroyed when fired, and a small portion of irreplaceable tantalum lost. For such reasons, the majority of missiles in circulation do not have an X-Ray laser head, and instead have a conventional laser head.
For defence, the main system is screens. Screens are (for traveller players) basically Sandcasters, they launch large clouds of ablative chaff within the vessels warp bubble that absorbs energy from incoming laser strikes. However, the fields used in this system are extremely noisy (in the electromagnetic sense) and so increase signature.
The other main defence is to avoid being seen or hit, in this way some smaller vessels such as frigates have an advantage over larger ships like cruisers.
Definitions
One hex = 30,000km in diameter, 0.1
light seconds
One turn = 1 minute of game time
Starship = any stutterwarping object,
be it ship, fighter or drone
Vessel = any man (or Kafer) made object
in space, including starships, buoys, or satellites
Remote = any vessel that is unmanned
and control from a distant location
Advantaged/ Disadvantaged Player =
The player with the better Admiral, or with a better starting position
(such as ambushing the other) is Advantaged, the other is Disadvantaged.
Sequence of Play
ASC occurs in a number of turns, each split into a number of phases.
Sensor Commit Phase
Detection Phase
Disadvantaged Side Movement Phase
Advantaged Side Movement Phase
Fire Phase
Damage Control Phase
In the sensor commit phase, both sides make a secret note of any ships using active sensors, and their screen settings. In the detection phase the ships may attempt to detect each other. The Disadvantaged Player (determined before the battle) moves their ships, then the Advantaged Player. Next both sides fire, including det weapons, and finally both sides may attempt to repair their ships.
Facings and Arcs
Each ship must always face a hexside. In ASC there are only 6 weapon arcs (unlike SC where for some reason there are 8). Weapons may only fire on objects within their own arc, which is an adjacent hex. All weapons may bear upon hostiles in the same hex as the shooter.
There are 4 kinds of turret mounting. Normal turrets, which may fire into 3 arcs, Masked turrets, which may also fire into 3 arcs (the difference is at the design stage), Jack turrets are partially recessed into the hull and have some protection against weapon fire, but may only fire into 2 arcs, and Gun Towers, which are normal turrets mounted on pylons to give them a superior firing arc of 4 arcs, at the cost of greatly increased profile.
In ASC, there is no distinction between lateral and radial profiles or signatures.
Movement
All ships, fighters, missiles and mobile drones have a stardrive for propulsion. They have a movement allowance equal to their warp efficiency x2 (round nearest). Vessels without a stardrive have a movement allowance of 0.
Movement allowances must be used in
the players active movement phase, and may not be conserved. Each point
of MA allows a ship to move forward one hex. Turning is a function of the
ships manoeuvrability, it may cost more than one movement point to turn
one hexside.
| Manoeuvre Class | Movement Points to turn one hexside |
| A+ | 0 (all mauvering is free) |
| A | 1/3 |
| B | 1/2 |
| C | 1 (CSC turning for everything) |
| D | 2 |
| E | 3 |
The turning is coincident with forward motion, i.e. if I'm commanding the Prince of Wales (manoeuvre class D) and I want to turn 2 hexsides to port I spend 4 movement points to make the turn. These points may also be used in forward motion if I want too, I move 2 spaces forward, turn 1 hexside to port, move another 2 spaces forward and turn another hexside to port or I could just stay in place and turn the 2 hexsides or anywhere in between these 2 extremes.
In general, each ship, or stack of ships should complete it's move before starting to move the next ship (to avoid confusion). In the case of stacked ships, their speed is equal to the slowest in the stack, and their manouverability is equal to the least manouverable.
All Stop: Any ship may declare itself at "All Stop" before it has moved. It has a movement allowance of zero, but may turn to face any face in it's current hex. The vessels passive signature is halved, but the vessel may not use Submunitions or Screens. In this mode any attack is counted as a direct strike (c.f. below) and automatically hits, and inflicts 10x the normal damage.
Sensors and Detection
All vessels are initially represented by "bogey" markers, either an actual marker, or (more simply) by turning the ship counter onto its face. This marker represents the fact that any stuttering vessel is automatically detectable to any warship within 150 AU's. However Gravity wave detectors cannot pinpoint the signal to less than 1 wavelength, and Gravity Waves have wavelengths measured in 10's to 1000's of kilometers, thus Grav sensors do not provide sufficient information to formulate a fire control solution on.
Only tactical sensors have sufficient resolution to resolve a fire control lock. Tactical sensors come in two types, active and passive. Active sensors are narrow band high energy phased radar arrays operating from the millimetric to decimetric ranges. Millimetric is better for resolving fine detail, while metric and decimetric cause resonances within the hull structure and cause the bogey to emit low frequency radio waves. Passive sensors search for electromagnetic (EM) emission in several wavebands. The bands that are searched include ELF radio (molecular rotation within the hull), LF and HF radio (noise from operating power systems etc.), IR (heat from the power plant and environmental systems, molecular stretching within the hull), Visual (using high power telescopes) and X-Ray (hard quanta from a nuclear fission, and/ or fusion reactor). To simplify matters, each ships sensor arrays are simply reduced to an active and passive rating.
The signatures of vessels depend on a number of factors. For active sensors, the main concerns are the size of the hull, and the material it is composed of (or the material the outer layer is composed of for laminate hulls). For passive sensors, the main concern is the output of the ships reactor(s) and the efficiency of the ships heat sinks (masking).
Signatures: The signature vs active and passive detection is calculated during ship design. For vessels with masking, the passive signature is in the format x(y), x is the signature of the masked vessel until battle damage renders the masking inoperable, y is the signature thereafter.
If the target vessel is operating screens, then the screen value is added to the passive signature.
Sensor Ratings: The rating of each sensor is the maximum normal detection range of that array, if the target's distance is less than this rating then there is a chance of gaining a detection.
Committing Active Sensors: This is done in the first phase of a turn. Any vessel which does so is automatically detected by any other vessel on the board. For this reason, active sensors are generally mounted on sensor drones (sensor platforms with a stardrive) or bouys (sensor platforms without a stardrive).
Detection Procedure: Each sensor may attempt one detection every detection phase. Once a detection is made the fire control system locks on a smaller sensor array dedicated to tracking the target (called a Target Tracking Array). If the target vessel goes beyond the range of the vessels active sensor array, then the lock on is lost and the target returns to being a bogey.
To make a detection is (in 2300 terms) a difficult task, with sensor skill and the targets relative signature as modifiers. This boils down to:
To make a detection: 10+ on a d10, adding operator skill and vessel signature to the roll.
Effects of Detection: If the detection attempt succeeded then the targets counter is turned face up (or black globe replaced with counter/ model) and the target may be attacked by weapons of the detecting ship, any remotes controlled from her, any fighters in contact with her and any other friendly starships, their missiles, fighters etc. that are in contact with the detecting ship (c.f. Command and Control rules below).
Multiple vs Redundant Sensors: A ship may mount more than one of each type of sensors, and may use each every turn, but one sensor operator may only use one sensor. Each sensor may also have one (or more) redundant antenna sets. These allow a sensor to continue operating after the antenna is wrecked, but do not allow additional sensor lock on attempts.
Firing
All of the weapons commonly mounted on starships rely on directed energy beams to inflict their damage, the 3 types in use are UV lasers, Neutral Particle Beams, and Nuclear Pumped X-Ray lasers. The beams themselves are not particularly powerful, but are concentrated across an extremely small timespan. The effect is to cause a portion of the hull or whatever to explode, and most of the actual damage is done by fragmentation. Missiles are small pilotless starships intended to carry one (or more) weapons into "Harms Way" without the mothership having to endure fire from the targets turrets. Missiles are extremely fragile, and are generally killed by any hit (they are so small that any hit is bound to damage a vital component, so hull reinforcement (Armouring) is not an option). Submunitions are small X-Ray lasers (or in some cases Chemical lasers) carried on small chemical rockets designed to boost away from the mother and detonate their nuclear (or chemical) laser head.
Firing Procedure: After both sides have completed their movement, players may fire their weapons. Fire is considered to be simulaneous (except point defence fire, c.f. below), and damage does not take effect until the damage control phase.
Target Engagement: Only detected targets may be engaged, and only if the attacking ship has a TTA locked on target. For simplicities sake in large engagement, the rule is that a ship, and it's ordnance, may not engage more targets than it has TTAs.
UTES: Universal Target Engagement System (UTES) was developed by France in the 2270's for their fighters, and is now standard on larger French and American ships, and used on some other countries ships. It sacrifices versatility for resilience and stealth. UTES is essentially a TTA on the same mount as a weapon, because of this, the ship doesn't have to worry about fire control management as much. The disadvantage is that a laser (or PBWS) always must be targetted on any object that a lock on is required, such as a missile target, and this can weaken point defence.
Weapon Parameters
Each weapon is described by a number of parameters. These are:
Targetting: This is a combination of the weapons Rate of Fire (ROF) and any additional fire control systems. Standard lasers have no target modifier, but modern types have improved capacitors that allow a higher ROF for the same energy input, these have a +1 to hit bonus. By the same token, older lasers (such as those of the Alpha Centauri War and 1st Rio Plata War) have much less efficient capacitors, and suffer a -1 targetting penalty. Particle Beams (PBWS) naturally have a much lowe ROF, with the most modern types having a -2 penalty, standard types having a -3 panalty, and ancient types having a -4 penalty.
Mounting: Most turrets hold a single laser, but some may contain multiple lasers to simulate the effects of a more modern weapon and allow a higher ROF. A turret with multiple mounts only fires once, but with improved accuracy. Damage is as per a single turret. Double mounted turrets give a +1 bonus, triple mounted turrets, a +2 bonus, and quadruple mounted turrets (the largest humanity fields) a +3 bonus.
Strikes: Normally, each weapon, upon hitting, will inflict a single strike, possibly of more than one point of damage, but all delivered to the same location. Some weapons, however, may inflict more than one strike. Most of these weapons are Nuclear X-Ray laser weapons and have a damage format of AxB, where A is the number of strikes inflicted and B is the damage per strike. These weapons will inflict multiple strikes per hit, each with its own damage location. Do not roll for each seperate strike, either you got the fire solution right or you didn't.
Example: The Hyde Dynamics SIM-14 missile has a 10x2 warhead, if the weapon hits, it will roll 10 times on the damage location table, with each damage location hit taking 2 points of damage.
Damage: Some weapons are more damaging than others. Damage is formatted as xB where B is the amount of damage the weapon inflicts to the target location. Most weapons are x1 weapons, but more power human lasers and some human det lasers are x2. PBWS may have damage ratings of x3 or higher, but do suffer from a lower accuracy.
Rounds Carried and ROF: Submunitions launchers are essentially small hangars loaded with chemical rockets. These rockets kick the warhead beyond the motherships warp field, where they can fire safely. Most submunitions are nuclear, but some chemical powered 1x1 devices are also in use. All Submunition Launchers have 2 statistics that most other weapons do not have, Rounds carried and ROF. Rounds carried is simply the number of subminitions carried in the launcher, and is the maximum number of shots that can be fired in a battle. ROF is the rate of fire for a launcher, in most cases this is 1 (can launch one submunition per turn) but in some cases may be less than one, indicated as a fraction. For example, 1/3 indicates the launcher may fire once every 3 rounds.
Atmospheric Targets: Det missiles and submunitions may not fire at targets in the atmosphere (their beams will not penetrate) but UV lasers and PBWS's can, albeit with a penalty. Shots at atmospheric targets may only be taken from with the discharge zone of the planetary hex (an extremely dangerous place to be), and suffer a -2 to hit penalty. The effects of these attacks are discussed in Planetary Bombardment below.
Range: The maximum range of any weapon is one hex, this applies to all turret weapons and all det weapons. There is a targetting penalty of -2 at this range.
Procedure
To hit a target, 7+ on d10. Modifiers are:
+ Crew Quality (does apply to missiles).
+ or - Target's Target Profile
+ or - Weapon Targetting Rating
-2 at 1 hex range
+1 if double-mount turret
+2 if triple-mount turret
+3 if quadruple mount turret
+ or - Ship's Targetting Computer Rating
Notes: In Space Combat, a targetting computer is required for each weapon carried, in Star Cruiser it's one per ship. Ships specifically designed for ASC will have one Target Computer for each Fire Control and Remote Pilot workstation on every TAC, excluding any dedicated drone communicators (which should be labelled as such).
To get a standard TC rating of 0 before modification, military grade workstations, and specialised fire control software must be installed, civilian ships, and some pre-1st Rio Plata War starships will have negative TC ratings.
Screens
Screens are the one passive defensive system available (other than minimising target profile and signature during design) that actually stops the target ship being damaged. It consists of large clouds of ablative particles shaped by powerful electromagnets, and is directly equivalent to Travellers Sandcasters. Screens may be rated from 1 to 9, ratings of 10 are impossible, as it requires total coverage. Human technology has reached rating 6, although Ylii technology (pirated by the Kafers) has reached the theoretical maximum of 9.
When a ship with active screens is hit, a die is rolled. If the die is equal or less than the current screen rating then the attack is blocked, and the screen rating is immediately reduced by the damage rating of the blocked attack. In the case of det weapons, each pulse from the weapon arrive instantaneously, so all face the same screen rating, with reduction occuring after all shots from the warhead are calculated.
In the Active commit phase, each player chooses whether to energise or deenergise their screens. Screens are completely tunable, and may be set at any rating from their zero to their maximum. The current screen rating is added to the vessels passive signature for the turn, however.
Screens may not be used if their is not sufficient power available, or the vessel is at "Full Stop".
Hit Location
For each strike that connected, and made it past the screens, roll a d10 for hit location on the following chart:
General Hit Table
1-4 Hull
5-6 Power Plant
7 Damage Control
8 Surface Fixture
9 Turret
10 Critical
Surface Fixture
1-2 Sensor
3 Remote Communicator
4 Screen Generator
5-6 Missile Bay
7-8 Hangar
9-10 TTA
Critical Hit Table
1 Computer
2 TAC/ Flight Control
3 Bridge/ Flag Bridge
4 Accomodation/ Ships
Troops
5 Engineering
6 Cargo Bay
7 Drive
8-10 Continuing Damage
General and Surface hits are exterior explosions, with most of the damage caused by fragmentation. Critical hits are those in which the beam penetrates the hull and causes an interior explosion, effectively destroying one section of the ships interior, and killing the majority of people in it.
Armour: Space Combat does not have armour, while Star Cruiser does. In ASC armour does exist, but it does not block strikes in the same way. If a critical hit is inflicted then an armour save is made. Roll d10 and add one for each point of damage beyond one the strike does, if equal or less to the armour value then the hit is converted to a hull hit.
Jack Turrets: These turrets are partially covered, and an armour save to convert to a hull hit may be made.
Damage Effects: The effects of the various hits are listed below. Each strike inflicts damage to this location equal to its damage rating.
Hull: For hull hits there are 3 thresholds, one at 25% of the maximum, one at 50% and one at 100%. After the hull has recieved 25% damage it has suffered a minor breach, masking is no longer effective, and the higher unmasked radiated signature is used, and for all ships their radiated signature is raised by one. Hull armours value is halved (round down).
After 50% damage, the hull has suffered a major breach and may no longer maintain an atmosphere (although combat ships are usually depressuried in battle). Radiated signature is doubled (so a masked ship with a 4(7) radiated signature has a radiated signature of 8 after a minor breach and 16 after a major breach). Hull armour offers no further resistance to critical or jack hits.
After 100% damage, the hull collapsed, the ship is destroyed.
Power Plant: Power plant hits have 2 thresholds. The first is at 20%, and second at 100%. After 20% damage, the power plant shuts down. The ship may not move, make active sensor locks, or fire energy weapons. Battery power is maintained to the computer and other vital systems (although only for hours, not days) and the ship may still use passive sensors, control remote objects etc. It also suffers all the effects of an "All Stop".
Damage Control: One Damage Control Party is killed, and so one DC dice is lost.
Turret: A weapons mount is hit. If a mount is a Jack turret it may make a saving throw to convert to a hull hit. The turret may not be used for the rest of the battle. If the turret had UTES, then the UTES may not be used either. Weapons mounts include submunition launchers and missile packs, as well as turrets.
Sensor: One sensor array (determine at random) is damaged and may not be used for the rest of the battle. If the hit array has redundant antenna(s) then cross off one antenna, the array may still function until all the antennas are destroyed.
Remote Communicator: A tight band laser comm to your missiles (or suchlike) was destroyed. It may not be used to control a remote object.
Screen Generator: A screen generator was hit, reduce the maximum screen rating by one.
Missile Bay: A missile launcher was hit, it may not be used for the rest of the battle, for each hit inflicted one missile in the bay is destroyed (important for campaigns).
Hangar Bay: A hangar for small craft was hit, it may not launch small craft until repaired. One small craft in the bay was damaged and is unflyable.
TTA: One TTA was hit, and is unuseable for the rest of the battle.
Computer: The central databus has crashed. The ship may not fire, move, control remotes or maintain sensor scans and target locks until the databus is restored. If a backup databus is available then it may take over in the Damage Control phase.
TAC/ Flight Control: The Tactical Action Centre is destroyed. The ship may not use weapons, maintain fire control locks, make new detection attempts, communicate with fighters or control remotes unless a backup TAC is available, which takes over during the Damage Control Phase. For Carriers, the fighter control function is split off into a seperate compartment, roll to see which was hit.
Bridge/ Flag Bridge: The main bridge is destroyed, the ship may not change course (although it can continue moving forward in a straight line), or communicate with other ships unless a backup bridge is available, which takes over during the damage control phase. For flagships, the communication function is split off into a seperate compartment, roll to see which was hit.
Accomodation/ Ship Troops: One of the habitation units was hit, destroying it. Each hit destroys 100 quarters, or half the total (whichever is less). If there are personnel (such as passengers) in them then there are killed. If the ship carries marines, then 100 marines (1 Company) are killed.
Engineering: The central engineering section was hit, no further Damage Control attempts may be made.
Cargo Bay: The Hold was hit, and 1000 tons of cargo was destroyed.
Drive: The stardrive has been hit, the vessel may not remove until it is repaired, no human starship carries a backup drive.
Continuing Damage: Fires, electrical flashes, burst plasma tubes etc. have effected the ship. Every damage control phase the vessel suffers 1 damage until this is repaired.
Damage Control
In each Damage Control phase, engineers may attempt to repair internal damage. Only power plant, missile bay, hangar, computer, drive and continuing damage hits may be repaired during battle. Each DC team may roll one d10, and add the following modifiers:
+4
repairing power plant hit
+ or - crew quality
Results of 11+ repair one point of damage. Note that Continuing Damage hits are rolled after Damage Control.
Ship Design Differences
There are several design differences between ASC and NAM. ASC uses NAM as a baseline and adds a few bits.