GURPS: Star Frontiers, Part 3

Oh my fnord, Interstellar Wars space combat is awful.

It killed my GURPS: Star Frontiers game.

Here was the setup, two starfighters on a training mission simulating a dogfight. Fly towards each other, accelerate, vector, use sensors to find the other ship, fire weapons, and go to the next turn.

Only both pilots blew their sensor rolls for TL 10 ships. Where is the other fighter? I don't know. Well, maintain speed and turn towards where you think they would be. I did, and they turned towards each other (random roll determines turn direction, so I got lucky), and blew the sensor roll again for both of them since the range was more significant.

Where are you?

Well, this is a combat simulation, no cheating telling each other where we are, so keep turning and scanning. I got unlucky in the turn direction where they thought they would be, and due to the speeds involved, they were on the opposite sides of a map with 10,000-mile hexes - 30 hexes apart.

So spotting a starfighter the size of an airplane 300,000 miles away in space with sensors that only go out 4 to 6-hexes at best.

Where are you?

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

Hello?

They will be lost in deep space and halfway to another planet before they realize this is pointless and give up. This is two fish trying to find each other on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.

Okay, time for a reset. I add a "space station" guiding them and telling them which way to turn since the one in charge of training wants them to at least have a shot at each other.

The RoF of the weapons is like 20 shots in a turn, pouring lasers at each other in a 20-minute turn. You get any number of hits, and the laser's armor divisor cuts through the other ship's armor like butter, and one side will be vaporized. GURPS at any high-tech level has these insane armor divisors on attacks that make you want to put the "hardened" option on it so the divisor doesn't apply (B46). I tend to assume high-tech armor is military grade and hardened, so no armor divisor applies - and still, damage will get through.

I stopped playing after this.

I could see all ship combat devolving into pointless, where are you, circle strafing as the ships flew further and further apart.

I am going back to Knight Hawks combat. I will roll GURPS to hits with skills and will apply a -1 per hex range modifier to hit, and keep the max ranges in KH. ADF/MR and maneuvering will be as per KH. Ship damage will be KH.

Yes, that means breaking out the d10s but I will survive.