As kids, we played day-long sessions of Car Wars at card tables, sixty cars, four maps taped together, and nobody sneezed or the hurricane destroyed the map. The hobby has a strong desire to simulate something as complex as multi-car vehicle combat, or even starship combat.
We want to be Luke Skywalker, flying into the Death Star trench and fighting off TIE fighters heroically in our X-Wing. That myth is as strong in our souls as the World War II fighter ace was for another generation. In the modern era, most of it is still a myth and has been eclipsed by drone warfare and cruise missiles fighting the wars, but the imagery and desire to be the pilot going in guns blazing still proves the myth is stronger than reality.
But, given a roleplaying context, what is "ship combat?" In a narrative sense, it is a skill roll, like a character in a movie: roll extremely high, and you do something amazing. Want to make your submarine quieter than the one hunting you? It is a captaining roll, followed by a helm roll, and maybe an engineering roll to silence the boat's engines and pumps. That "making the sub silent" has nothing to do with a wargame subsystem, but narratively it is three skill rolls, modified by how quietly the sub naturally runs.
I didn't need submarine statistics or a fully designed GURPS Vehicles design to figure that out.
World War II destroyer versus frigate? Well, the destroyer will outgun the smaller ship, but lucky shots happen, so I am going to put the outcome of this fight on 1d6: on a 1-4 the destroyer wins, and on a 5-6 the frigate wins. Roll a reaction roll at the end of the battle to see how catastrophic the damage is to the loser, and another to see if the victor got away unscathed.
Character skill rolls do play into this. If the characters are crewmembers on the frigate, they will need to get creative and roll very high to shift the battle's outcome. If someone makes an amazing gunnery roll and beats the roll by 8 or more? That may win the fight with a lucky shot to the other ship's magazine. A successful helm roll may reduce the damage the frigate takes. Engineering may lessen the impact of damage once taken.
None of this needed hardcore ship statistics. Just knowledge of statistics and a rough approximation of odds in a ship-versus-ship battle. Then it layers a narrative fiction layer on top of that and says character skill rolls matter and affect the outcome in realistic ways.
Doing a torpedo run on a battleship? That is a floating island fortress filled with AA; nine out of ten times, you get shot down. High skill rolls are the only thing that changes the narrative outcome, and they fit the mythic fantasy of the fighter pilot we have in our heads.
Again, I don't need battleship stats or even the torpedo bomber. Just a rough idea of the likely outcome, and the realization that high skill rolls should change the narrative path. Reaction rolls can serve as a "reality check" on the outcome: what is expected versus what actually happened.
Similarly, in Cepheus, two similar-sized ships: one a pirate ship versus a free trader? That pirate ship is designed to pick off merchant ships all day, versus a free trader with 60% of its space filled with cargo. That pirate ship will win that fight 5 out of 6 times, especially if it doesn't have to haul off cargo; it can just call in a pirate hauler to clean up. Versus larger cargo ships, the odds drop, since the smaller pirate vessel can't do enough damage to disable the merchant freighter, only damage it and peel off before help arrives.
This doesn't need starship designs or a ship combat system, just logic and fairness.
The dice take it from there.
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