Combat in the Serenity Role Playing Game is about character decisions and dramatic action. The same is true of battles involving transports. The difference is simply a matter of scale.


SCALE

Spacecraft are armored against the perils of space flight. By the same token, spacecraft in vacuum move much more quickly than vehicles in atmosphere, and spacecraft weapons are designed to do far more damage than a man-portable or vehiclemounted weapon.

To represent these differences, combat in the game involves three different scales: Personal, Vehicle, and Spacecraft. Personal combat is covered in Chapter Five, Keep Flyin’, and includes any battle  ought primarily with hand weapons against people and animals. Combat for armed vehicles and spacecraft uses the same basic rules, but adjusts the ranges and damage factors to reflect the larger, faster targets involved.


VEHICLE SCALE

Vehicles range in size from 20 pounds (a tiny robot) to 100 tons (a large aircraft or tank). This intentionally overlaps with “Personal Scale” and “Spacecraft Scale” at either end. It’s up to the Game Master to determine which scale best fits the action.

In Vehicle Scale combat, ranges are increased. On an Earth-sized planet at ground level, any target beyond about 5 miles is below the horizon and out of sight. On smaller worlds and moons, the distance is correspondingly less.


SPACECRAFT SCALE

Spacecraft range in size from 1 ton and up; there is no theoretical limit, although vessels get progressively weaker for their size at the top end and so as a practical matter are limited to around 10 million tons.

Combat in space can take place at tremendous ranges, and is limited only by sensor and time-offlight lags. Most space battles in the game will take place at the pace of Personal Combat (roughly 3 second combat turns), which sharply restricts the range:


COLLISION DAMAGE

When a spacecraft or vehicle collides with another object, the damage it causes is equal to its Strength. Game Masters should adjust up or down by steps, based on relative speed and angle—a  eadon collision at full speed will do much more damage than sideswiping when traveling at nearly the same speed.


MIXING SCALES

For purposes of figuring damage and Life  oints, Vehicle Scale is roughly 10 times greater
than Personal Scale, and Spacecraft Scale is roughly 10 times greater than Vehicle Scale. When using a weapon from one Scale on the next higher Scale, treat the damage as 0 (that is, only the basic  amage applies). When going from higher Scale to lower, multiply damage points by 10. If using Spacecraft Scale weapons on personnel, any hit is pretty much an automatic kill (unless Plot Points or the GM decide otherwise).

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Trying a new link to my Squidoo Lens. And it worked!

Trying out some different free blogs and this one looks promising. I also tried Blogger , Blogparty  and Squidoo which has a nofollow tag

Also I noted that there appears to be a two link limit on posts here. Perhaps it allows more if a make another post. Will try.