[Diaspora] Designing a Mine Field for Spaceship Combat

[Brad Murray]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Sam Friedman <safriedman at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have this story in my head of a paranoid system, or what's left of it,
> leaving behind a vast swath of a mine field.  Think looking up from Earth
> and seeing the faint band of the Milky Way... that's the mine field.
>
> How could I go about representing that in spaceship combat?  If I want a
> scene whose purpose is to illustrate the rough time the characters have
> navigating their ship through this minefield to get to whatever their goal
> happens to be, how do I represent this stationary mine field without letting
> the V-Shift of the characters' spaceship allow an easy escape?  Also, how
> might I represent the mines detonating on impact (or proximity)?
>

Sam, as soon as I read your title my first thought was to represent the
minefield as a space craft. Then I read your post. :D I think this is
exactly right -- basically represent the minefield as a spac ship one or two
technology levels below the deploying culture (presumably a ship is always
better if a crew is running it, barring perhaps a T4 ship).  You also went
for all Torpedo, which would have been my choice as well, though of course
there are fun ideas in EW minefields as well! maybe both, so there's an EMP
blast nuclear weapon or something.

I'd try it with v-shift zero to make escape relatively easy as well as ramp
up the points available for initial explosion, but give the minefield a high
"navigation" skill for the initial detection roll to represent its
stealthiness. That makes the player's high nav roll awesome too as they
detect the minefield just in time and skirt it briefly, or arrive unprepared
in the middle of it. If they wind up at range bar zero on the detection roll
they are going to be stuck in it for at least a couple of rounds and that
will suck.

I wouldn't worry about balance -- if you use the design rules you'll get
balance for free by technology, and even if it's too hard, failure will be
interesting too.

I think your stress track choices are right, though I'd maybe drop the heat
track down to zero and use those points for more boom or frame.

Anyway, this is awesome. Consider posting it in the Diaspora forums at
rpg.geekdo.com too -- lots of folks there who would dig this.

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)
VSCA Publishing
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