While larger vessels like a Galaxy or Nebula class doesn’t need to concern themselves with the number of torpedoes, a smaller ship, such as a Nova Class or Defiant Class does. For example, a science vessel such as a Nova Class only carries a total of 55 torpedo casings, of which 30 are Photon Torpedoes and 20 are science probes of various types; 5 are shells, to be made into any torpedo or probe, as needed. This limits the number of Torpedoes that can be fired in combat, and the Gamemaster has to keep an eye on it. (Each tube can fire 2 torpedoes at once, for a total spread of 4 torpedoes from the two forward tubes.) The Nova Class does have 11 Phaser Arrays dotting the hull, on the other hand, and can thus fire two or three arrays at once, at cost of power. The editors at Modiphius made the combat rules very generalized, even bland, probably because more than a handful of ships in combat would drive the GM crazy. Starfleet, however, is NOT the Rebellion fighting the Empire–at most, only the PC’s ship is in combat with 1, 2, or even 3 enemy vessels, so the rules of combat can be made more detailed at the option of the Gamemaster.
And the question?
I like the combat rules. STA is not a space combat simulator. The intent is to capture the flair of what we see on the TV shows and movies. And I don’t recall any instance where the number of torpedoes was ever relevant. Except of course Voyager, but even there it was ignored pretty quickly.
But feel free to drop your suggestions on making combat more detailed. I’m always curious to hear other people’s house rules.
im still new to Modiphius and i can see how the combat rules could come across as very generalized,
but as a GM it falls on us to work with the rules to make the game / story less choppy im with Shran.
this is far from a simulator but i think the system dose a very good job of making it feel like what we see on the TV shows .
as for torpedoes it never hurts to know how many are in the ships stores and if there secured just in case of hull breach.
We have talked about this in my gaming group as we’re kind if split between the narrative and simulationist players. Our in head canon for not keeping a count of torpedoes is that they can be replicated, constructed, or restocked in between battles at a sufficient rate that the exact count is unnecessary to keep track of. Starship battles in my game have been few and usually are duels or in the worse case has been a two verse three battle that was a boss battle climatic encounter. They have several in game weeks or even months between battles so it has been assumed there is plenty of time to have restocked.
I find it helps immensely to not think of STA as a Star Trek game, think of it as a Star Trek TV show game.
That’s your prerogative, of course, but I think you’re shortchanging both yourself and the game.
I can count how many torpedoes have been fired by my players easy enough, even after approx 2 years. I dont even need 2 hands…!
I gave my Players a Payload of 250 Photon Torpedos for their Constellation Class and it does not matterd, until recently the Klingon Emprire kicked Starfleet out of Narendra Station.
The kan produce everything for their Torpedos (as Probes have the same Hull) but not the Antimatter Warhead. They now have 242 Phton Torpedos and no possibility to restock until they find one.
The idea is to make the game more realistic. I’m from a group that used to run LUG Star Trek (which was designed and created by Joe Sanchez, then sold to what became Last Unicorn.) A Galaxy Class carried literally a hundred torpedoes, and if we fired the maximum of 10 torpedoes per round, we quickly depleted our magazines! (And I always preferred the original LUG rules to Decipher. They were simpler, while giving realistic rules.) While my group doesn’t count every single detail, we do tend to watch things like how many torpedoes we have left, how much power is left for phasers, maneuvering, etc. At full impulse, or 0.25c, the ship can move a maximum of 6 hexes on the board (which includes up and down.) This affects the Threat vessel’s dice rolls in trying to hit the player’s starship, if they are taking evasive. Long Range of the Torpedoes/Phasers is about 30 hexes, which is factored into the dice rolls (you add Difficulty.) To maneuver the ship, fire weapons, and adjust power levels takes TEAMWORK on the part of the Bridge officers, which is the whole point. I’m going to try to upload a photo of Joe Sanchez, a very nice guy when he was alive.
