My PCs are on board a ship/craft in a game of Rogue Trader I am GMing, and soon will need to defend an area ("You shall not pass" style) against other ship/craft.
I have recently read the The Angry DM series about combat.
But so far I don't find air/sea/space battles fun, and don't see how to apply that advice in my case…
The turn decisions are quite low, and player actions every turn boil down to:
- Pilot/sail the ship/craft
- Support the ship/craft
- Shoot
It feels repetitive and more like throwing dice than really fighting after some turn.
How can I improve it to make it fun and compeling?
The other parameters are:
- It is only battleship against battleship, spacecraft against spacecraft,…
- The map is usually quite empty with sometimes area of low visibility (obstacles and cover not often)
- PCs are leading officers on the same ship/craft
- I am not yet good about describing actions/interaction between crafts/ships, especially after 10 turns
- English is not my native language; please excuse typing errors
Related: How can I efficiently manage Ship to Ship Tactical Combat and Boarding?
(Answers are expected to be primarily based on real experience, what you did in this situation and how it worked for you – demonstrate how your recommended technique or course of action is effective for the problem.)
Best Answer
Take an leaf from (historical) fiction
Das Boat's convoy attack is a good example of a submarine fight. The book is very good too. You could easily adapt this to a space opera setting. The Master and Commander film (and book) are another good example where ship-to-ship combat. Finally, Midway is a great film focusing on both the air and naval sides of the battle. Space opera generally tend to see space as either submarine warfare (The Expanse) or glorified air plane combat (Cowboy Bebop, Star Wars). Of course, all of them take their inspiration for real life™. You could do that too: Raid on the Medway for example.
So, do what these guys do: use limited information to build tension, raise the stakes, and then explode in a fast ball of fire! Repeat.
Why the battle matters?
The game should be about the player characters, so that is where your focus should go. Ships blowing up are good special effects that can be seen but rarely interacted with.
Why are the players there?
What are they trying to achieve?
Once you have an answer to that, you can make combat more interesting by focusing on what the players do, not the ships. It is the hundred of small decisions in the middle of the battle that matters: Do we support ship X or attack ship Z? Do we keep firing on ship A to sink it, or do we allow it to flee? Do we move to intercept T or just fire some torpedoes? Do we try to disengage or keep close to their capital ship? How are we dealing with damage to the ship?
Finally, combat takes a long time (hours/days), which is generally not modelled well by RPG systems: so use more descriptions rather than tactical info dumps. You can, of course, focus the action from time to time where critical events happen.