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These rules are an unofficial supplement to The Babylon Project.
A Role PlayingGame by Chameleon Eclectic. This setting for this game is based on the Babylon5
television show by Warner Bros.
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The following section is by Valimirwith and additional section of Ship's Control Sheets byLuca. I am simply mainting their work so everything can be kept together at one central location. Great Thanks for their contributions to these pages.
These rules are designed for engagements where individual fighters are the primary ship involved. I envision them as being preferred when a single flightof Star Furies is sent to rescue a freighter from a handful of raiders oreven for individual ship to ship battles.
Each fighter will be treated separately, essentially as a miniature capitalship. There are two ways to do movement. The first the quick and dirty methodwhich is essentially a variation of the simple fighter movement rules givenin the game. Alternatively each fighter could be given its own vector basedmovement. I would suggest not requireing fighters to write their orders outbut rather to move any way they want to the limits of their thrust afterthe previous turn’s vector has been carried out.
The variations between the races fighters are translated from Babylon 5 Warsby Agents of Gaming, and are designed to reflect strengths and weaknessesof the fighters in that game. Each fighter has 4 types of systems: Weapons(usually 2 fired linked), Fighter Fire Control, Cockpit, and Engines. Thenumber of Engines are strictly for thrust calculation purposes and do notreflect the number of thrusters the fighter may possess. Minbari ships also possess jammers as a fifth system.
Based on B5W, the number of Engines came from a relative comparison of ThrustPoints, the Damage Boxes from the number of Structure Points, and the ThresholdLevels from different armor levels.
Star Fury: 2 Fighter Pulse Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control, 1 Cockpit,6 Engines
Centauri Sentry: 2 Fighter Pulse Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control, 1Cockpit, 6 "C" Engines
Narn Frazi: 2 Fighter Pulse Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control, 1 Cockpit,5 Engines
Raider Deltawing: 2 Fighter Pulse Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control,1 Cockpit, 4 Engines
Minbari Nial: 3 Fighter Beam Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control, 1 FighterJammer, 7 "G" Engines
Minbari Flyer: 3 Fighter Beam Cannon, 1 Fighter Fire Control, 1 FighterJammer, 5 "G" Engines
This set of control sheets are designed for Valamir's alternate fighter levelrules for TBP. Included are sheets in GIF format for:
Note that these sheets have been designed to print onto half A4 sized paperat 600 dpi. As a result these images are HUGE!!!(350-450k) The resolution of each image is: 4336 x 2900pixels indexed greyscale. The reason for this is that there's nothing worsethan pixilated printouts.
The second variant of the Nial has criticals that differ from the rules publishedby Valamir. The reason for this was to make use of the beam critical systemreleased by Chameleon Eclectic's TPB. To use this variant simply use theBeam recharge rules (ie: every turn the BPS will be at full charge of 2 unlessdamaged). However rather than using the standard beam damage use Valamir'sversion (x,1,1,2,2,3+reroll). This will give the same game performance specsbut with beam criticals.
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Special Thanks to Valamir for an awesome extension to The Babylon Project.Files Constructed from TBP sfsships.pdf. The originality of these sheets is theirs, all I did was use them as templates. So thanks should alsogo Chameleon Eclectic. These Files were constructed by Luca Gnezda(gnezda@netadvantage.com.au)
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Pilots are based on The Babylon Project RPG skills and attributes. The skills of importance would be Piloting (Fighter), and Tactics, Ship Combat (Fighter). The appropriate attributes are most often Coordination for Piloting and Insight for Tactics.
TBP assigns average racial scores for these attributes but we can assumethat Fighter Pilots would be above average at least +1. Also I make theassumption that before a Pilot would normally see combat duty he should haveat least level 2 in Piloting. Tactics would likely be reserved for FlightLeaders who would have at least level 1.
This gives us an average Pilot Score of 11 (including Fighter Specialty Bonus)or 10 for Centauri. Maximums would be 14/13 and minimums could be as lowas 4 but realistically would be at least 8 unless someone is desperate forpilots. I assign various bonuses or penelties to Pilots whose scores areabove or below this average. Assume most non PC pilots to be average unless desired different for the scenario.
| Pilot | Skill Effect |
|---|---|
4 |
Effects of 5, 8, & 9, plus +2 to opponents d6 weapon rolls |
5 |
Effects of 6, 8 & 9, plus -2 to d6 weapon rolls |
6 |
Effects of 7, 8 & 9, plus +1 to opponents d6 weapon rolls |
7 |
Effects of 8 & 9, plus -1 to d6 weapon rolls |
8 |
Effects of 9, plus -1 MU per impulse / -2 Thrust |
9 |
Range to Target treated as 1 higher |
10-11 |
None |
12 |
+1 MU per impulse / +2 Thrust |
13 |
Effects of 12, plus +1 to d6 weapons rolls |
14 |
Effects of 12 & 13, plus -1 to opponents d6 weapons rolls |
Tactics Skill is used only by Flight Leaders to give Initiative Bonuses to Pilots in their Flight. At least 1 level of the Actual Skill is required before any bonus is recieved. If the Flight Leader’s bonus is used, then if the Flight Leader is lost all fighters in the Flight suffer an immediate -3 penelty to Initiative (as well as loss of the bonus) which decreases by1 per round. If there is a second pilot in the chain of command who alsohas the
Tactics skill the penalty is only -2. The round following the round wherethe penelty reaches 0, the bonus from this new Flight Leader takes effect.Squadron Leaders can apply their Tactics skill in 2 ways. The InitiativeBonus can be used for any pilots in the leaders direct command. Plus, theBonus can be added to the Tactics skill of all subordinate Flight Leaders thereby increasing the Initiative Bonus they may provide.
| TACTICS SKILL | BONUS | TACTICS SKILL | BONUS |
|---|---|---|---|
1-2 |
0 |
10-11 |
+2 |
3-4 |
0 |
12-13 |
+3 |
5-6 |
0 |
14-15 |
+4 |
7-9 |
+1 |
16-17 |
+5 |
Optional rule: for those who don’t think Flight Leaders should be able to lurk in the back and use their bonuses, reduce any bonus by 1 per 10 MU ofrange between pilot and his leader.
All Fighters roll 1d6 and add their Pilot Skill and any Initiative Bonusesfrom tactics. In this order each pilot has the option to spend a fortunepoint to bump his initiative position to first. Play then proceeds in initative order with each fighter in turn selecting any fighter on the board to makethe next move. Thus, if a Player has 6 fighters and 3 of them have the 3highest Initiative totals he will select the first 3 fighters to move.
In the game rules, fighters move either 20 or 30 MUs with no regards to facin gor turns. This modification attempts to make the fighter moves somewhat more "dogfightish" with the turn’s movement divided into 5 impulses during the Move Fighters phase. The maximum distance a fighter can move is 1 MU per engine per impulse, plus any piloting bonus. Thus, a Starfury with 6 Engines and an average pilot, can move 30 MU. Damage to the engine systems, or poor piloting skills will, of course, reduce this.
During each Impulse, Fighters are activated according to Initiative rulesand move up to their allowed MUs for the impulse. Following their movement each impulse they may immediately fire at any valid target (see attacking capital ships for Anti-Fighter weapons and Screening Fighters). Fighters may fire only once per turn, but it can be taken at the end of any impulse.
Faceing is important for weapons fire and direction of travel. Changing faceing costs 1 MU per hex side.
A somewhat more realistic way of doing fighter movement employs the vector movement rules from the game but does not require written orders. Thrust points are 2 per Engine giving fighters plenty of thrust to move around at speeds of 20-30 and still maneuver reasonably well.
Duing the Fighter Movement phase, move all fighters according to their previous turn’s vector. This can be done with arrows and written velocities as normal. Alternatively each fighter can be represented by 2 counters. 1 counter is left at the fighter’s starting position (face down to avoid confusion) and the second is moved to its ending position. The following round it is a simple matter to lay a tape from the first counter to the second and project out the fighter’s course. Move the first counter (leapfrogging the second) to the new position and flip the counters over. [Note: I’ve found this to work with capital ships as well, and helps avoid "spinning arrow" effect.]
After all fighters have moved their previous vector they are activated as per the rules for Initiative. The active fighter now moves by spending Thrust points exactly as for a capital ship, except for three differences. 1) No written order is necessary, the fighter can declare how he spends its thrust in any manner desired, 2) the rotate orders still rotate the ship 1 face which due to the hexagonal counter is 60* instead of only 30*, 3) pushes to port and starboard are not allowed [at least I don’t remember seeing a fighter pull this off].
After all ships have moved, fighter targets are declared and activated for weapon’s fire exactly as for the normal ship rules.
A fighter may be declared to be tailing in the simple movement rules at the end of any impulse, or in the vector rules at the beginning of fighter movement before any fighters have been moved. Tailing must be reestablished each round. If using impulse movement, once tailing has been established it can be maintained for the entire turn as long as the arc requirements are met (i.e. it doesn’t require additional rolls).
Tailing status interrupts the normal Initiative Flow. If Fighter "A" is tailing Fighter "B" it may Pass a Move or Steal a move according to the following parameters.
If Fighter "A" is activated by an opposing player, "A" may Pass its activation on to Fighter "B" if desired. Initiative then returns to normal.If Fighter "B" is activated by an opposing player, "A" may steal the next activation if desired. This means the next person in Initiative order is required to activate Fighter "A".
In Vector Movement, there are also parameters that allow for the interruption of Weapon Fire Activation.
If Fighter "B" is activated by an opposing player (either directly or by activating a ship the fighter is attacking), Fighter "A" may Steal the Fighter’s activation and take its weapon fire instead. Order then proceeds as normal, with "B" being activated at a later time.
Since Fighters have been given additional damage boxes they must likewise inflict greater damage on other fighters. This is reflected in the new Dogfighting Table. This table does not cross reference the opposing ship because the varying toughness of fighters is already reflected in the damage boxes.
Under these rules facing is important, and the fighters have a forward fire arc determined by drawing an "X" between corners.
Since each fighter has two cannon, it rolls 2 d6 on the table below. The table is an extrapolation of both the fighter’s offensive bonus (how likely it is to hit) and damage (how many points it causes if it hits.
There is also a table for assaulting capital ships which reflects variation in fighter weapons as opposed to simply treating them all as pulse cannon.
FIGHTER |
-1- |
-2- |
-3- |
-4- |
-5- |
-6- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Starfury |
x |
x |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 + reroll |
Centauri |
x |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Narn |
x |
x |
x |
2 |
3 |
3 + reroll |
Raider |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Minbari |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
3 + reroll |
Flyer |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
2 |
3 + reroll |
FIGHTER |
-1- |
-2- |
-3- |
-4- |
-5- |
-6- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Starfury |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Centauri |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
Narn |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Raider |
x |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
Minbari |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Flyer |
x |
x |
x |
1 |
1 |
2 |
Minbari Jammer: Firing on a fighter with a jammer is the equivalent of firing without a functioning Fire Control system.
In the rules an anti fighter weapon fires on a group of fighters and can kill up to 4 fighters with a "single" shot. Under these rules with fighters treated as individuals, each Anti Fighter weapon must thus be allowed 4 shots at up to 4 separate targets.
When using Impulse movement a single fighter can only be attacked once per impulse (but may be attacked again on later impulses. Any capital ship’s anti fighter weapons may be activated in addition to activating a fighter. As many AF shots as desired can be taken in a single activation (at separate targets). The ship may be reactivated each impulse until all AF shots have been taken.
When using Vector Movement, all Anti Fighter fire occurs immediately following the final movement of all fighters, exactly as normal. Roll 1d6-2 for each shot. If 0 or less the shot missed. Each positive number destroys 1 complete row of damage boxes on the fighter (regardless of how many points are remaining). Thus, it is still possible to destroy a fighter in a single shot (a 6 destroys 4 rows of boxes) but this is not automatic.
Against fighters equipped with jammers roll 1d6-3.
In the rules both the fighters and the anti fighter weapons have a range of six. This rule provides for some variation. The modifier is to the d6 roll for damage. Poor pilots treat all ranges as if 1 MU farther. Round all fractions to the nearest MU. Note, with a -4 modifier, only Centauri and Minbari (with their superior targeting) have a chance to hit at a range of10.
| Range | Modifier |
|---|---|
0-3 |
+1 |
4-6 |
0 |
7 |
-1 |
8 |
-2 |
9 |
-3 |
10 |
-4 |
Under Vector Fighter movement, Screening is handled exactly as in the rules.In order to declare a fighter as screening, however, its current velocitymust be equal to or less than its available thrust while the fighter is within3 MU (otherwise it will fly right by).
Under simple movement, a fighter which attacks a capital ship at the endof a movement impulse must immediately face the screening fighters. The Screeningfighters may decline to engage, saving their interception ability for a laterimpulse against a different attacker.
WEAPON: Loss of 1 weapon means only 1d6 is rolled when attacking other fighters. Against Capital ships the d6 roll is at -1. Loss of both weapons means the ship can’t fire.
COCKPIT: Loss of the cockpit means the pilot is killed, the ship can be removed from play. A fortune point can not be spent to avoid this critical but can be spent to guarentee successful ejection. Two seater fighters would have 2 cockpits.
FIRE CONTROL: Allows the fighter to use computer targeting against a single enemy at which both weapons are fired. If lost the fighter must rely on visual targeting only. The fighter suffers a -1 to all d6 attackrolls.
ENGINES: The ship loses 1 MU of movement per impulse under the simple rules, or 2 points of thrust under the Vector rules.
JAMMER: The fighter loses the protection of the jammer.
Fortune points can be spent in the following ways. It is assumed that only PCs or important NPCs have Fortune Points
Skills function as normal except that since all fighters have a pilot rating,all fighters may attempt them PC or not.
Flight Leaders may also attempt other skill uses. If they are non PCs they may only try those requiring the Tactics skill. If they are PCs they may attempt any applicable skill they have the skill for.
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