Below, a consolidated and easy to print version of the extra rules which are going to be needed. The next post in the blog will give a piece of background about the arena.
1. Boarding
Boarding is necessarily simplified because I don't want to take all day over it.
1.1 Boarding combats
Boarding combats are dealt with during the repair phase and are considered to involve any ship which had a boarding element in contact with it at the end of the movement phase of that turn.
Each crew box/boarder box rolls a dice. boxes die on a 4 5 or 6, reroll on 6s. Last person to run out of crew boxes gets to keep the ship. Yes, boarding is scary powerful. The flipside is that it's not going to be particularly easy to get to that point and it will cost quite a bit to do it effectively.
Marines count as two boxes (consider it better weapons or better armour, but this all about simple - we're not playing Space Hulk here)
1.2 Boarding contact
Going to contact is adjudicated completely during the movement phase; PDS systems and fighters engage boarding launches as they move into range and can be engaged in turn by fighters and small craft (see 2 below). Using a PDS during boarding means it cannot be used in the fire phase. PDS fire CANNOT be used against a boarding craft once it's on the hull. Boarding requires contact between vessels; by all means send in a frigate as a boarding launch if you like, but don't try to suggest that you're sending out Marines in suits and jet packs from three inches out. Not possible. An actual ship will count as in contact if it can get to within one inch, because it will be tricky in practice to pick a speed which would allow for exact contact with the target.
1.3 Boarding speed
Boarding contact is automatic when boarders have the same speed and direction as the target. (This seems to me to be almost impossible to arrange in real life)
When the target and boarder haven't matched direction and velocity, roll more than the velocity difference on a d6 to manage a controlled collision. For each box of hull armour on the boarding craft, add another d6.
Velocity difference is calculated as follows - if the approach is through the front three arcs of the target, add the speeds of both vessels. If the approach is through the aft three arcs, subtract the target's speed from the boarder's speed.
The speed of a boarder is, in all cases, the number of inches it moved to make contact. So if you're using an actual ship as a boarder, use your listed speed for the turn. If you're using a dedicated boarding launch, you use the distance actually moved to get to contact, rounded up to the next inch. (I realise that this makes boarding launches far more flexible in flight than proper ships; that's my intention.)
1.4 Marine costs
A box worth of marines needs one hull box of mass devoted to it, whether in a boarding launch or otherwise. While passengers (and normal crew) are both free apart from the cost of the hull space to hold them, Marines are a little bit more useful and will cost one point each extra. Keep in mind that the real cost of marines on a boarding launch is much higher than purely defensive marines because a launch needs 1.5 times its own mass in hull boxes as a launch bay on the parent ship on top of its own construction cost.
1.5 Boarding craft costs
Standard cost for small craft is two points per mass carried. This is assumed to give you a craft with the same range as a standard fighter, no armour and no weapons. Weapons and armour can be added at normal costs of mass and points. If you add weapons, you need a fire control system just like on a real ship. I considered saying that without a fire control you could only fire the weapon straight ahead, but a) I can't face the arguments about straight ahead and b) you're always going to be flying straight at your alleged target, aren't you? If all you want to do is shoot up the defences on the way in, keep in mind that you can use a PDS to do that and a PDS doesn't need a fire control. Real weapons need a bit more.
If you want more flexibility in your launch, you have two choices; either build it as a tiny ship with hull boxes and drives, or apply the multipliers used for fighter points. Those multipliers will apply to the full cost of launch including any weapons and armour. So a heavy launch will cost 5/3 standard, a fast launch (36 inch move) will cost 4/3 and a long range one will cost 4/3. If you want more than one improvement, apply the heavy modification first, round up to a whole number and then apply the other. Heavy launches are just better protected against fire - they don't count as armoured for crashing into targets!
1.6 Weapon hits on boarding craft
Every hit knocks out one marine box (That makes every hit roughly equivalent to a normal hit without requiring too much thought). Armour will stop hits in the usual way. Heavy launches will ignore hits in the same way as fighters.
1.7 Prize crews
To run the captured ship at full effectiveness you need to have the same number of surviving "crew" boxes as the ship originally had. For simplicity's sake, the resource constraint is considered to be decision making human minds rather than skills sets - the ships are considered to have sufficient automation that a monkey could kind of run them, but not enough autonomy to know WHAT to do unless the monkey puts down the banana and gives an order. Ships systems are arbitrarily divided into weapons, drives and support. Support covers shields, PDS, and anything else which isn't clearly a weapon. You need one third of the original crew strength to run each of these, so it follows that if you only managed to get a prize crew on board of one third the nominal crew strength you're going to have to choose between running the guns or steering the ship. Two thirds, you can steer and shoot, but nothing else. It's worth keeping in mind that merchant ships have very few crew boxes (only 40% of a military ship of the same mass) and almost no weapons, so keeping a merchant underway will not require a huge number of marines.
2. Shooting up PDS:
Fighters and armed small craft can attempt to engage PDS systems on the way in.
Method A; shoot to kill within three inches the PDS can be engaged directly and eliminated on 6. (This means that the PDS will get off a shot)
Method B; suppressive fire; all weapons systems can be used to throw the aim of the PDS system; each hit cancels out one PDS hit
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