Let's talk Ranges: Remote Combat and the Casaba Howitzer

Something hitting from Remote range strikes me as best used as a plot device. - Brett Tamahori

First, let me apologize for my lack of posts lately.  My wife's having a rough pregnancy which means I sometimes need to step in, and this is happening more and more lately, so I get in posts when I can.  I'm almost finished with the rules, and I have one last "playtest" I'd like to post and then I'll move onto something much more fun, I promise. In the very least, I've been looking forward to it.  In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to post something I've really wanted to since I saw a discussion on my discord channel, so if you'll humor me, I'd like to jump in and tackle it.

I feel like the ranges offered in GURPS Action and GURPS Dogfighting and my own system are pretty abstract.  What is Remote range anyway? For that matter, what is "Extreme" when it comes to space combat?  And what sort of ranges should you allow in your games?  As a bonus, I wanted to talk briefly about the "Casaba Howitzer" that one poster brought up, and whether it "breaks" Psi-Wars.

What Ranges are What?

So, GURPS Action and its derivatives offer a variety of "range bands" which I've expanded a bit to include "Remote" which is one step beyond the "Beyond Visual" of GURPS dogfighting, which is two steps beyond the "Extreme" of GURPS Action.  What, exactly, do these ranges mean in space combat?

To answer that, let's turn to Space Combat games.  I spun up Everspace, Strike Suit Infinity and Rebel Galaxy.  The first definitely measures in "kilometers," while the second measures in some unnamed unit while Rebel Galaxy uses "SM" as its unit of measure, but it seems likely that the unit of measure in Strike Suit Zero are "meters"and Rebel Galaxy seems to line its SM up with kilometers, assuming this is the case, then:

Remote to Beyond Visual

This is about 200,000 yards, or about 100 miles.  It's actually farther than that, by a bit, but it's roughly on the edge of Remote.  It's possible to see the asteroid belt where the target will be.  If we push to the inner edge of this, it becomes possible to make out targets.

These are closer than the minimum 50,000 yards, or about 25 miles, putting this just inside Remote and into Beyond Visual.  It gives you a sense of what Remote Combat might look like: Essentially, everything is via targeting as targets are too small to really make out.

You can almost make out a large "satellite"in this image, which is 11km away, or just over 10,000 yards (if you can't see it, it'll become clearer in future picture), putting it on the inside of "Beyond Visual." In principle, larger vehicles are definitely "visible"at Beyond Visual.  A fighter definitely isn't though.

Distant

The target fighter here is around 8000 yards away, putting it in "Distant." The drive signature is visible at this range, and combat might be possible, but a blaster is going to have a scant chance of hitting.

It's very difficult to see, but there's a relatively small fighter at about 5,000 yards lurking in that asteroid tunnel.  It's much easier to pick out if you have radar running, but it's just barely visible, which is typical of these ranges: engagement is possible, but difficult, though a missile could certainly do it.

Extreme and Long

The ships here are about 1000 yards away, putting them definitely in the Ëxtreme range.  As you can see, I'm being fired upon, and this is a pretty decent attack range.

This is actually long, the fighters here are less than 500 yards away, and it's a very hard range to catch an opponent at when it comes to a screenshot.  This is closer to what we think of as a "close in dogfight,"and it is, indeed, quite close, which highly visible targets.  We can get closer, though:

This target is about 200 yards away, which puts it on the shorter end of Long (at less than 100, we're in medium).  Here, the opponent fighter is clearly visible, but again, we rarely keep targets this close for long.  Nonetheless, we can clearly see that in "cinematic" Star Wars fights, this is also "close."

The Cinematic Dogfight Range

If you look through the screen shots or play through a space combat game with fighters, and you'll notice you almost never engage targets farther than about 5000 yards, and usually closer to 2000 yards, which means most combat occurs at between Distant and Long ranges.  I definitely include ranges longer than this, but should you?

If you really want the "cinematic" Star Wars experience, the answer is clearly no.  The main purpose of "Beyond Visual" is escape from combat and maybe first scanner contact with the enemy.  You can handle this by simply starting all combat at either Beyond Visual (with no shots possible) and actual combat engagement at Distant or closer.  This will give you a fairly decent experience:

• Beyond Visual is the range when you first start to ping targets, maybe
• Distant is where you might be able to fire on targets, assisted with your radar which highlights your opponent.  Missiles mostly at this range.
• Extreme is "distant" dogfighting ranges
• Long is "close in" dogfighting distances, where you really have to fight to keep your target this close (thus your difficulty in hitting the target is more based on how quickly he moves rather than how far away he is).

If you want to go this route, note that I ran my calculations assuming "Extreme" as the most common distance, so everything should work just fine.

Why Remote? The "Realistic" Dogfight Range

Nothing in Psi-Wars space combat is really realistic, but it does touch on some realities.  In truth, aerial fights don't happen at the "knife-fight" ranges that we often see in cinematic combat.  Most Rebel Galaxy fights get very serious at about 5000 yards, or solidly in the Distant range, and this makes sense giving the considerable size of its ships.  When you see a battleship firing its massive cannons, it's not firing them broadside at a target right next to it, but at a target on the distant horizon.  They are artillery craft, and most naval ships are about projection of power, not standing toe-to-toe with an enemy.

We get a glimpse of this in Top Gun where the final battle is about handling a MiG at stand-off ranges, hundreds of miles away armed with an anti-ship cruise missile that could take out the carrier.  I imagine Psi-Wars battles operating in a similar way.

A Psi-Wars battle does not actually begin when two ships meet at Distant range, but far sooner.  The moment a ship "drops"out of hyperspace, your ship will pick it up, and the maneuvering begins. This is a strategic phase, with ships "beyond Remote." That does not mean they don't know about one another or care, but rather, that the fight at this point is in planning stages, with commanders showing up in briefing rooms.  At this point, fighter squadrons might launch, because while enemy ships are "beyond range," they're not beyond a fighter strike.  What's critical to grasp here is that a Psi-Wars space battle is not like a D&D fight scene where combat begins when initiative is rolled. It's an unfolding strategic encounter that will get "hot" once your enemy enters firing range.

If the ships close on one another, they'll eventually reach "Remote" range.  This range is only relevant if you want it to be, and if the ships involved have firepower capable of attacking one another at that range: battleships and dreadnoughts do.  You can also typically adjust your force screens to take the hit, and most such attacks are sufficiently long-ranged that few will hit. If you have a super-weapon or you're an especially vulnerable ship, the battle can be decided at this range.  If the battle is between a carrier and a dreadnought, the purpose of the bomber squadrons is to kill or cripple the dreadnought before it even reaches this range.  Technically, when the fighters or torpedo corvettes reach this range with the dreadnought, it can fire on them, but it's unlikely to hit.  Fighters can usually cross from Remote to Beyond Visual in a single turn; corvettes might do this.

 

Beyond Visual is when the fight begins to become interesting because almost all vehicles involved have the sort of firepower necessary to attack one another here.  This is more an "Artillery and missiles"fight, and torpedoes have been designed to struggle to function at this range, though ships might struggle to really land seriously damaging hits at this range.  Even so, a battleship becomes fairly lethal at this range so, again, if you're a carrier, the idea is to send a sortie long before it ever reaches this point.  

Once we hit Distant, we're in familiar "dogfight" territory, and Distant and Extreme are where torpedoes come into play and fighters can begin to engage one another, and we're back to our "cinematic"fight.  It might be worth it for capital ships to engage one another at this range, but this is more typical of Destroyers vs Corvettes than Battleships vs Battleships.

What's critical to grasp here is that carriers, battleships, dreadnoughts and other "large"capital ships operate more on the "Remote and Beyond Remote" level.  They have the space for large ops centers so they can make strategic decisions.  They are the launching platforms of fighters that can reach out and attack a target from hundreds of miles away, or they are artillery platforms that can punish a target from 100 miles away. A capital ship is designed to be a slow-moving war-platform rather than a major, close-up tactical asset.

This suggests that there's a "strategic" chase level, and this is actually true, sort of like how at some point, the fugitive from the law leaves the "close up" chase rules and turns the "chase" into a contest of hiking, stealth and tracking rather than running and driving.  However, rather than suggest hard rules here, I'm going to suggest this is best handled with ominous pronouncements of things like "One hour until the Arc of Dominion is in firing range,"or the captain suggests diving his carrier deep into a nearby nebula to escape the approaching attack force.  You can handle large-scale strategic concepts with dice rolls if you want, but make them rolls of Strategy and Navigation, and give them sweeping results rather than tense, nail-biting moments of cinematic glory.  The strategic layer gives context to and sets the stage for the tactical moments of cinematic glory.  They are the space equivalent of a general chomping a cigar in his tent while looking over maps and a shot of artillery firing that both lead to a zooming close up of the hero fighting in the trenches with explosions around him.  Naturally, the game focuses on the hero in the trenches (the starfighter pilot dogfighting), but there is still a broader role for the general in his tent (or the Officer on his bridge).

The Casaba Howitzer

Casaba-howitzers break /any/ SF game setting.... -Innocence Achieved

So, in a recent discussion, someone brought up the Casaba Howitzer.  What is it?  I didn't know, so I did some research.  It turns out to be a nuclear shaped-charge, an idea that arose from research into the Orion Drive.  Will Psi-Wars crumble under the power of the Casaba Howitzer? Probably!  But one of the ideas behind the Isomeric Torpedo was that it could compete with a nuclear weapon, so that Psi-Wars could at least sort of approach the sorts of energies we might expect from a Sci-Fi setting.

From what I could find, we expect to see the following energies from a Casaba Howitzer:

• Small Howizter: 2 TJ (about 7000 damage)
• Large Howitzer: 200 TJ (about 50,000 damage)
• Super Howitzer: 800 TL (about 70,000 damage)

For Psi-Wars, we have:

• Small Isomeric Torpedo: 3500
• Large Isomeric Torpedo: 5500
• Capital Isomeric Torpedo: 14,000

Only the Capital Isomeric Torpedo compares, but none of these are "directed charge" weapons.  We could easily double their damage, in which case the Small Howitzer is comparable to the small Isomeric Torpedo. The small howitzer also has ranges between 1-10 km, which is in the Distant ranges; a super-dreadnought scale pulsar does about 12,000 damage at much longer ranges, so Psi-Wars does edge into the scale of the Small Casaba Howitzer.  It's not disdainfully brushing aside all of these examples of technically TL 8-9 technology with its mighty TL 11^ tech, but it's not so far off that it's completely laughable either.