Rail Gun: Crew Quality and a ship's data card

Playtesting for Rail Gun has ramped up in the last week or two, with numerous games played testing out the overhauled system. I'll start discussing aspects of the game with this post, which will examine Crew Quality and look at the "data card" for a destroyer.

Speed	Type DESTROYER I.D. ANTIETAM Damage OO			CQ 3	Stress
	Acc 4	Man 2		Def 2
	Pro F/S/R  -2/+0/+1
	Weapon	Arc	Rng	Str
	Mssl	FLR	20	3
	Guns	F	3	2

Rail Gun is now built around "Crew Quality" (CQ).  Each ship has a CQ of 1-5, with 1 being poor quality civilian crews and 5 being elite veterans.  Quality 3 is "normal."  Many situations in the game require a ship to take a CQ Test, which requires them to roll their CQ or less on a D6 to succeed.

CQ can be modified by your ship's Stress, which is primarily a result of damage.  Stress is deducted from your CQ before rolling, resulting in your "Modified Crew Quality," or MCQ.  You try and pass MCQ tests to hit enemy targets, avoid damage, fire off your defense systems, and the like.

The main modifier to CQ is Stress.  Whenever your ship is hit by enemy fire, you roll 1D6 per hit.  On the roll of a 6, you take a point of Damage and 1 stress. (Most ships only have a few damage points and thus can be destroyed quickly if too many 6s are rolled. In this context, Damage represents critical damage to the hull and bulk of the ship.)  If you roll your MCQ or less, your ship has no effect. If you roll higher than your MCQ, but less than 6, you get one point of stress.  This means that ships with excellent crews are unlikely to suffer from stress until their ships have been shot up, and that ships with poorer crews may be rendered combat ineffective without suffering any actual damage.

Stress represents light damage, crew casualties, chaos and confusion, and crews being forced into crash couches during extreme maneuvers.  Stress significantly affects your ship performance because it modifies your CQ.  If your MCQ is 0 or less, MCQ tests can only be passed by rolling a 1 followed by a 1-3, and the ship counts as Ineffective for the purpose of fleet morale tests.

Stress can be removed during the end phase by rolling 1D6 per stress point, -1D6 per point of damage.  Each roll that passes your CQ (not your MCQ) removes 1 stress.  For example, if your ship had 2 stress and 1 point of damage, you could roll one CQ test and try to remove 1 stress.

Furthermore, ships can opt, at the beginning of the turn, to "Conduct Repairs." This means they are unable to do anything offensive during the turn, but can use a better method of removing stress.  This is one thing I'm currently trying to balance out in playtesting. I want the price of Conducting Repairs to be high (losing a whole turn of offensive operations from one of your ships) but the reward also high (remove a fair amount of stress).

Here is what the ship data cards look like now: pretty simple stuff, with only a few notations.

Speed	Type DESTROYER I.D. ANTIETAM Damage OO			CQ 3	Stress
	Acc 4	Man 2		Def 2
	Pro F/S/R  -2/+0/+1
	Weapon	Arc	Rng	Str
	Mssl	FLR	20	3
	Guns	F	3	2

This destroyer, ID'd as the Antietam, has a Crew Quality (CQ) of 3 (average).  It has a Damage  of only 2 points.  Its Acceleration (acc)  (ability to change speed) is a 4.  Its Maneuvering (Man) (ability to change facing) is a 2.  It has 2 Defense Systems (def).  Its Profile (Pro) is a -2/+0/-1, indicating the to-hit modifier when attacking the destroyer from the Front, Side, or Rear.  

It has two weapon systems: Missiles (Mssl) and Guns (Guns).  The firing arc for the Missiles is Front Left Right; the arc for the Guns is Front.  The missiles have a range of 20 (inches or centimeters, depending on player preference/table size), the guns 3.  The missiles roll 3D6 to hit (Strength 3), the guns 2.  

On the left side of the chart the player tracks the ship's Speed, which carries over from turn to turn and changes with acceleration.  On the right, the player tracks Stress, which changes as the game goes on.

More about the game in the coming weeks as I continue playtests. 

If you are interested in the playtest version, it is available at the Wargame Vault for $1.99..  You get the whole thing and I will keep the playtest version updated with the full version for perpetuity---so if you get the cheap playtest version you get to have the final version too. And it comes with cool print-and-play 2-d ships by Andy Nelson like the destroyer seen in this post.