DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER

Good afternoon, all ~ Okay, people have been asking for more of a detailed look into the rules on Darkstar – here is the primary QRS that drives 95% of actual tabletop play.

A little rough around the edges from a graphic design perspective, but this thing is constantly being updated as we drill down through the smaller and smaller flaws and tweaks of the 2.0 Edition gameplay.

So along the top is base to hit targets (d10) to hit at certain range brackets.  These are modified by enemy ECM / gravitic shielding (usually -4 through -6).

Along the left is the cost to make a 1-hexside facing change depending on the velocity of your ship.  Obviously the faster you are moving, the harder it is to make hairpin maneuvers.

Tables are also provided for torpedo movement and hit resolution, and of course for mass driver (point defense).  This has been one of the biggest changes in 2.0 Edition.  Whereas before each mass driver would fire separately  (bucketfuls of d10s) here there is a simple chart where a ships TOTAL mass driver value is pre-calculated and rolled on this chart to see how many torpedoes or aerospace craft are hit.  We’re looking a d6 table, with heavy modifiers possible.

Starship elimination table, of “Death Table” follows.  The “Target to Disable” is a d6 roll and enemy commander needs to kill a certain class of ship.  Obviously, for a battleship you can’t roll 19+ on a d6.  But you subtract from that target how critical damage boxes (engines, reactors, magazines) have been hit, and that’s you’re roll.  So knock out 13 critical hit boxes on a battleship (good luck with that) and that 19+ becomes a 6+, remotely possible on a d6.

By way of contrast, a much smaller destroyer like USS Oriskany starts with a 7+.  Hit just ONE engine, reactor, or magazine box and the ship now has to roll a 6+ to be crippled.

If you really beat the hell out of a ship to where that d6+ roll us adjusted to “0+” or below, and there’s a chance the ship simply explodes.

Core damage is another type of damage box, deep within the ship.  While not “Critical” and may not cause the ship to explode, it can definitely cause the ship to be FORCED to break off (first officer takes over, the ship’s AI automatically pilots the ship away from danger, the fleet commander ORDERS you to break off, etc).  These core boxes are usually things like med bays, life support, the bridge, etc.

There are also charts for the collateral damage the ship does to other nearby ships if its explodes.  Controlled fusion is the main power source in this verse, and if that becomes uncontrolled, there’s a thermonuclear explosion that can really damage other ships (especially small ones) if they are too close.

Finally there is a Starship Recovery Table, where players see whether or not their crippled (not exploded) ships are recovered after the battle, or scuttled, or picked off by enemy ships, or captured, or simply “lost in space.”

Tables for Aerospace Craft (fighters, bombers, scouts, assault boats) and the game effects of certain hits within a starship are also listed.

There are many many MANY more charts in this game, but they deal mostly with campaign play, character progression, starship engineering and design, etc.

Meanwhile, we have a pretty big game set up for today!  The full “Oriskany Task Force” is ready for action, a game I don’t get to play very often because these ships are so friggin’ elite and upgraded they’re very expensive to bring on the table (and no one wants to fight against them).  We’re looking at Valcour-class destroyers USS Oriskany (DSGN-791), USS Princeton (DSGN-782), and USS Valley Forge (DSGN-794).  There’s also the Marine assault ship USS Tarawa (ASCV-943), deployed here in a light carrier role, and the torpedo corvette (think WW2 submarine) USS Daggerfish (SSGN-871).  Also shown are the scouts launched from these destroyers (E/S-71 “Hawkeye”), as well as the fighters (F/S-44 “Corsair”) and bombers (F/SA-81 “Avenger”) of Marine aerospace strike squadrom VMF/A-391 “Tigersharks.”

We are heavily outgunned by the enemy force facing up today (commanded by the evil and treacherous “Commodore @Gladesrunner “) – but again, just about everything there is very elite and heavily upgraded, allowing us to really punch above our weight.  We’re also much faster, and all have upgraded thrusts and tactical initiative bonuses, so this will definitely be a game of lightfooted maneuver vs. gigantic advantages in weight, armor, and weapons.

The enemy fleet.  As discussed in previous posts, the “Black Dragons” of the Khitan-Tunguska Free State are made up of colonies that rebelled against the Holy Russian Empire and the Panasian League, so most of their ships are Russian or Chinese in design.  We have the dreaded Zhang Jia and Xin Tian, both Xhia-class light missile cruisers, along with the Nanchong-class destroyer Xianhoa.  The Russian part of the fleet is the Kutuzov-class light cruiser Petranyevska, the Sovnya-class destroyer Gorokhov, the Novgorod class frigate Irynova, and the K-56 class torpedo corvette K-206.

In all, 366 points per side.  I hope to score a win here, not only to give my Americans more campaign points, but a solid win here also ends the “Scorpion’s Tail” war I still have in progress.  From a “meta perspective” I’d like to wrap up this war once and for all so I can focus more on the Duchess Annabel’s War we’ve been posting about lately (and we have another few games scheduled for tomorrow).  😀

WISH ME LUCK!