Phoenix Space Combat System for Dummies - Part Two The Need for Speed


Painting by Dragos Jieanu - It is rare that you will need a warship to do this on a planet - if ever


In game there are five very different components to speed that all impact a combat ships usefulness. Using my simplified example of a standard Line of battle ship I stated that speed was the minimum possible so speed tends to be more an issue for smaller ships.  

The five components are as follows 

Manoeuvre speed - Uses thrust engines and controls in normal operations your landing and taking off times. Most LOB ships don’t do a lot of landing/taking off so this tends not to be an issue 

ISR Speed - Controlled by the size/amount of ISR engines. This allows ships to move between rings and around solar systems. The larger the ISR drive (1 being the fastest and largest) the less time units taken to move around. ISR drives have only a small impact on combat operations and this is because ships with better ISR drives can respond faster to enemy operations and escape easier. Also note that should enough ISR engines get destroyed then your ship might not be able to leave a combat at all therefore some combat navies carry more than required or armoured versions (I think only ISR 4 can be armoured currently). Most LOB ships are ISR 4 only as why waste the weaponry space to 'move' faster (which puts you at risk of being split up)1 

Jump Speed - uses jump drives and has no relevance in combat except that if your jump drive is destroyed you are stuck in system and can be hunted down so many combat affiliations carry a backup drive and sometimes an armoured jump drive (or both) 

Combat Speed - Combination of the Manoeuvre speed (so thrust engine provided) and combat engines (which only apply to combat speed). If this is fast then the ship can board/avoid boarding (not relevant in a mass fleet fight).  

You tube clip of the Roccinante using directional thrust to change position then accelerate away

(one of my favourite space series that matches Phoenix closer than many)

Dodge Speed - Basically the combat speed plus any Inertial Dampners equipped. This affects the accuracy of any shots and makes rail/photon type weaponry more likely to miss. Usually not an issue as most officers in LOB ships have all their points in 'Accuracy' and most LOB ships carry a large amount of targeting computers specifically to prevent this being an issue. 

Now Combat speed is important for pinning and avoiding combat but as we are discussing fleet actions where both sides 'want' to fight this is not an issue. If you ships are on their own more often or not or against similar sized smaller craft without space for many top mark targeting computers then speed can become useful to play with. Plus a design with high level ISR that can 'respond' and 'get' to engagements faster could be useful in itself but here you would be prioritizing mission more than combat strength.  This is not to say that very fast warships cannot be useful it's just that they are not useful in a line of battle design designed to turn up and stand and fight for several days.

Going back to my default LOB ship. It would have ISR 4 drives with 1 or 2 extra in case of damage. Enough thrust engines so that when it did dock it did not take over 200 tus and often that's it. 

The next article will be a brief overview of point defence. One thing I should note is that most information for these posts are gleaned from the GMs own articles and empirical observation and tests of fights to validate black areas in that GM knowledge. As such if mistakes occur then they will be my own and please feel free to contact me in game (or here) and I will adjust any glaring errors that occur.

1 When in close proximity to an enemy fleet a lot of fleet's turn into the equivalent of chess pawns. They move one ring or or one quad a day. Never more. Let me give you a practical example of how breaking this rule can hurt. Way back when I had control of the DEN fleet at the Solo stargate. The Empire were attacking a DEN base on a planet in a different sector whilst the Imperial fleet shadowed my one with HEX allies (for the DEN) close by.  I decided one day to take a risk and move the DEN fleet over more than one ring to try to get to the planet where it would be more than capable of dealing with the normal hulled crap guarding the transports that were moving around the Empires army.

Allowing I 'missed' the Empires fleet on the way down and 'if' the Empire was also doing the one quad a turn I should get a turn of battering the transports before escaping before the enemy fleet arrived. Anyway - the best laid plans etc.

On the same day I decided to move multiple quads/rings the Empire did exactly the same (impressive intuition on the Imperial commander or bad luck for me). My fleet was organised in squadrons and the first squadron moved off and got into orbit of the planet and started engaging the enemy normal hulls. The empires main fleet then moved to outside the orbit of the planet. My second squadron then moved but since the Empires main fleet was sitting outside the planet it was stopped and engaged by the Empires main fleet (that's 64 ships in a DEN squadron of the times versus around 800 ish which is admittedly nothing near the Empires main strength). Finally my 3rd squadron moved and managed to get tagged and stopped by a different Empire force (I cannot remember now - it might have been a small CIA squadron but this was years ago and my memory does suck with details). Anyway from being together I was now fighting three different engagements in three different sections of the same system.  So you only move a hex as the chances of your forces getting accidentally split increases. You could get round it by issuing orders for the 'entire' fleet as a squadron but you cannot easily issue specific targeting orders which is a tactical mistake (and will be covered later). 

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