Star Frontiers: how to play Knight Hawks (as requested)

[@whataboutrob442]

These videos instantly take me back to 1982/83.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I wish I could get taken there too ..... got room in your time machine?

[@Dracopol]

Masking screens: well of course the water will not form one unified crystal barrier, but a cloud of micro-crystals dispersed everywhere around the ship, and the ship can't accelerate or it will out-run or fall behind its own screen. In Traveller RPG, lasers are deflected by "sand-casters" instead.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

cool!

[@menion2599]

You always suck me in with Star Frontiers. Not many talk about it! Thanks for taking the time to play through all the math. Great stuff!

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

My pleasure, I just wish I hadn't goofed on the Laser Cannon hitting the Assault Scout ... the battle may have ended differently

[@anarchist_rationale]

I loved that size comparison with the pan lid standing in for Jupiter - wow!

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I know, right????? SCIENCE! 😊

[@mikekopack6441]

I always wanted to automate the space combat in computer games so all the roles, steps, etc. are all automated. I've made several attempts since high school back in 1991 to various stages of success. Would love to do a new version with a client/server arrangements so players can log in, control 1 (or more) ships, with voice chat and such so people could play together from around the world.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

That would be amazing Mike if you could get it running. I know a ton of folks on the Star Frontiers Facebook group who'd live it.

[@user-ci1wg5gh2t]

Yes! More Star Frontiers goodness :D Great video as always! Hope you keep making SF vids.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Definitely will be doing more K and more often

[@timothyherko3242]

Did anyone else notice that if you use actual skill levels for the crews, you use the shaded to-hit columns, not the clear ones? At any rate, I enjoyed the video right up to the bitter (for the UPF side) end...

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Thanks Timothy! I enjoyed making it .... Up until I noticed I screwed up hitting the Assault Scout with the Laser Cannon when it was clearly two hexes outside of the width range (facepalm)

[@jonnybionic]

Good video, I did not have this SF space battle game, always wondered how it works. Thanks.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

my pleasure Jonathan, I can only apologize I goofed some of the moves while playing (filming was distracting me)

[@robhannum]

1. Love the space combat. Since turns are 10 minutes, I would give the players time to escape their ship and then get picked up later. Unless every ship on their side died, then they had a chance to get picked up. 2. You (the player/user) really need to play several times to get a good feel at what your ship can do. If you are a small craft, move it or lose it. Never sit in front of a destroyer and never turn your back to them? 3. They should of seen the Sathar coming a lot sooner so they could get up to battle speed needed so they are not sitting there getting pounded the whole time, no? Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

My pleasure Rob and thanks for the feedback. Good points all round.

[@MrfnordTim]

Only rolling once for initiative in D&D was a 3rd edition innovation. I'm not sure I'd ever seen a game where you only rolled initiative at combat start before 2000.

[@richmcgee434]

Re: Assault scouts being too fragile - they aren't the kind of ship a PC can buy. They're extremely high-tech military hardware used by governments and major corporations, and represent one of the major advantages the UPF has over the Sathar, who can't build them, period. When PCs do get their hands on them it's usually because their employer has assigned one to them (often along with a pilot and other crew) for a specific mission. The KH campaign in the box where the PCs serve as crew on one has them serving in the planetary defense force, not as adventurers. For the most part the enemies they come up against in space combat (as opposed to boarding actions, of which there are several) are either lightly-armed freighters, scrub pirates with fairly low-damage weapons and clumsier ships, or Sathar fleet elements that face the PCs with a number of other assault scouts and frigates as backup so the GM can ease off on just murdering the party with focused fire unless they do something stupidly dangerous - or brave. Now, if you wanted a more plausible ship for a small party, look at the armed freighter in the Dramune Run module as a guideline, or maybe a pirate corvette from the KH campaign, or the Eleanor Moraes exploration ship from teh eponymous module. They're tougher than an assault scout so you don't have to be quite as careful about TPKs in space combat, they aren't an existential threat to large military ships (a single assault rocket can one-shot a destroyer, and menace anything that flies) so there's limits to how gonzo the PCs can get, and they've got more room for NPCs, robots, gear, and cargo so adventurers can do more with them. That isn't to say space combat is ever going to be safe - a few bad rolls can ruin even a large ship - but KH does have rules for surviving shipwrecks and most spacers are likely to look for survivors, if nothing else to ransom them or sell them to some slave-using corp. Even the Sathar might want to interrogate people, and then the PCs can deal with a prison break session. Also remember that the skills required to operate even a simple starship are something that you'll only get by using the KH character generation rules or playing straight SF for years - and spaceship skills even at low levels are bundled with mid-to-high levels in one or more regular skills. Anyone capable of crewing a ship is *way* more skilled than a starting SF character can be.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

all valid points, but thanks for watching

[@richmcgee434]

@@DowntheRabbitHole0 It was an enjoyable watch overall, if a bit painful in spots (oh, that poor assault scout..). You do raise some good points about how ships can easily lead to campaign-wrecking casualties, which I think can be partially blamed on SF's design process. The original box had zip for starship rules beyond liner ticket prices and it was a good year before KH came out, which always made ships feel like an afterthought added after the core was complete rather than a well-integrated part of the game. That probably contributed quite a bit to SF's failure to compete terribly well with Traveller or the FASA Star Trek RPG or WEG's Star Wars or even the lesser known FGU games like Space Opera or Starship & Spacemen. I recall reviewers at the time flaying TSR for making a scifi RPG with no starship rules baked in and i really don't blame them.

[@Dracopol]

Like you, I didn't try much Knight Hawks because Star Frontiers was set up to be more about the exploration of unknown worlds, and transportation to a new world was secondary (and starship details were not mentioned in the original boxed set "Alpha Dawn" except to assume you did somehow have access to space taxis...) I hate to say it, but for a more well-rounded SF experience about action, adventure but also Jumping around space, starship maintenance headaches and trade, you could get classic Traveller. Just don't try to grapple with their suggested "vector-based" starship movement system. There were starship combat boardgames derived from Traveller as well. In Knight Hawks the physics is not so good. The hexes are 10,000 km wide, but the Earth is 12,756 km wide. It mentions that some things like space-stations don't really move but are in fixed orbits around a planet. A starship with no speed also has to move enough to orbit around the planet to stay aloft. If you are in the nearest ring of hexagons around a hexagon with an Earth-sized planet in it, and you orbit, your orbital speed is given as "one hex per (ten-minute) turn". So after an hour, you have orbited six hexes, once around the planet. If you do the actual orbital math, though, based on this scale, you are 10,000 km above the center of the planet and the speed in the book is 3 times faster than what you get in actuality. As you may recall, space-stations right up close to the Earth still take at least 90 minutes to make one orbit, and this first hex-ring of 6 hexes is higher up with an altitude of about 3,000 km. The speed will also go down sharply using the Radius-cubed equals Orbital time-squared rule that Kepler discovered, so in a circle of hexes much further out you are doing far less than one hex per turn. But of course the greatest physics sin is that, no matter what speed you are in a small, nimble fighter, you can do a 180° turn in a single turn of combat, whereas if you had to use the acceleration/deceleration rules and decelerate to zero and then accelerate in the opposite direction, this would in fact take many, many turns depending on your initial speed. So you are expending two different levels of physics effort to achieve the same result, and the Cosmos cries foul! Maybe they had a magical circuitry to just toss their momentum (a vector!) into another direction! But this seems against the spirit of the game where there are no anti-gravity floor-plates, and characters must bear whatever acceleration forces are created. Whichever direction the ship is accelerating, the opposite direction becomes the "floor". So they are not standing on a ship looking out a big window at their destination, they are on separate decks and their direction of acceleration is overhead...As you said, each ADF change of 1, if spread evenly around the 10-minute turn, represents 2.83 gees, almost 3. I guess, of course, they wanted a more fun game of "dog-fighting" rather than a long boring series of knights on horseback accelerating at each other in a joust, contacting briefly for an exchange of fire, then slowing down and turning around again for another go.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I agree, I think TSR found a decent balance between small fighter combat and also capital ships but these rules were so condensed down to make the battles fast but at the cost of losing a strong connection with your ship. If someone could tell Han Solo his Millennium Falcon would only have 15 hull points I doubt he would take into any dangerous fights. I tried Traveller once in the 80's but found it too complicated so I guess I'm more of a Knight Hawks guy.

[@wulfbak]

I remember in the 80s when I was in 8th grade, my friends and I were hypothesizing a cross-universe war between the Star Frontiers universe and Star Fleet Battles (basically an alternate-universe Star Trek). Trek would easily demolish Star Frontiers. By way of comparison, to most sci-fi universes, Star Frontiers would be extremely low tech. Technically, the ships did not have shields in the usual sense. Instead, they had "screens" that would give limited protection against specific weapons types. Most sci-fi universes would easily rip apart a UPF fleet. The Imperium of Man in Warhammer 40k would easily demolish every race in Star Fleet Battles combined, so there's always a bigger fish! I loved Star Frontiers. It was easily TSR's most fun RPG system outside of AD&D. I think a lot of what made Star Frontiers unique was that the designers were trying to be a little more scientifically plausible than other universes. For instance, ships in Star Frontiers actually had decks that were designed to provide artificial gravity due to applied thrust from engines as opposed to other universes, like Star Wars, that simply say that artificial gravity exists and that's why ships are designed the way they are. Part of the charm of Star Frontiers is that the designers at least tried for a bit of plausibility. Versus Warhammer 40k where they say, "A floating gothic cathedral in space as big as a city with crew of a million people? Sure! Oh, and the ships fight in space by going broadside and unleashing their cannons like the age of sail? Go for it!!!!"

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I agree, Star Frontiers was "primitive futuristic" sci-fi compared to most but the reliance on real science made it compelling

[@GojiKaichou]

I imagine you can simulate a "run silent" tactic with a masking screen, and utilizing a planetary ring system. Just lower forward thrust to match the speed of the ring's ice chunks, and you can theoretically evade enemy ships.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Good tactic, I don't think we ever tried that in our campaign but the logic behind your idea holds up.

[@patrickwilliams9717]

Are you sure about the damage in the advanced game rules? I understood it differently- if you score a hit then roll on the Damage Table, adding the weapon's Damage Table Modifier. I don't think you do any hull damage at all unless the roll on the Damage Table indicates "Hull Hit". At least half of the Damage Table is system hits, which we always thought was pretty cool. It made the characters learn how to fight while hurt. There were campaign rules about decompression due to ship damage and escaping a 0-hull point, destroyed ship too. I always liked Knight Hawks. It seemed to be more science-based than cinematic (while maintaining some playability) and I got a new "The Expanse" feel from the rules having gone back to them after so many years now. Fighting in space is dangerous and characters learn that fast... Great vid, thanks for the memories!

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Good point Patrick, you are probably right about the hull damage. One thing I discovered in making this video (as well as the how to play Alpha Dawn rules video) is when the camera is rolling I am more concerned about keeping the chat flowing and I forgot several rules. You can see my edits pointing out what I messed up about. Ugh. Lesson learned for me.

[@patrickwilliams9717]

@@DowntheRabbitHole0 Ya, no worries. It's hard to get all the rules right in these old games. I just wanted to be sure that I wasn't doing it wrong also.

[@richmcgee434]

Ye gods, what an unflattering way to show off what's basically a decent if somewhat unrealistic (in physics terms) game. If you were going to skip on playing the scenario as written (which, for those who don't know, is a fairly tight evacuate-the-station mission, not a simple fight) why didn't you just pick two identical forces and at least make an even match of it? Moreover, when you killed the assault scout you didn't even roll on the damage table, just automatically had the hit score hull damage Given that 55% of laser weapon hits score system rather than hull damage, that's a big deal and really made the mistake about the cannon firing arc a game-breaker. That frigate move right after is just painful to watch too. You could have floored it and maneuvered to hit the upper destroyer from range 4 and outside its cannon arc, a prime torpedo shot with no counterfire but a couple of battery weapons with -20% range diffusion. As you proved later, torps are incredibly dangerous and you should be looking for any opening to use one without eating too much defensive fire. Yeah, ICM's reduce their accuracy a lot (and you didn't use yours when the frigate died, although your attack roll was so low it wouldn't have helped even using all 4) but they're a limited resource as well. Also, while I'm not 100% sure after all these years, I'm pretty sure that at 55:00 non-applicable damage chart results don't count as hull damage, they instead slide up one row (toward the lower end of the table) on the chart until you hit a result that can be applied.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

yeah sorry Rich, this is the second "how to" I've done and I'm too prone to messing up given I also need to move things along for the sake of the video. Not sure I'll be bothering with a "how to" for Zebulon's Guide even though folks have asked me to

[@richmcgee434]

@@DowntheRabbitHole0 Please don't be discouraged. I appreciate the effort, but playthrough vids are hard unless you do a lot of editing to trim time - or just let it bloat and do a two hour vid. I know some creators do the filming silent and then tack on an audio track with commentary done from notes, which feels more polished and lets them talk tactics and rules minutia. But again, that's a lot of work.

[@AltairZielite]

I always added a zero to hull points and didn't bother with any defensive systems except icms. Also, I only applied hull damage when the advanced hit table said to.... This turned out to be unbalanced because with so many hp, the ships almost never got destroyed, and their damaged systems took them off the edge of the map... As DM, I compensated this error with the fun of boarding actions.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Good solution Altair. Yeah the hull points in the game needed tweaking compared to the way they released these rules. Imagine working so hard to get an Assault Scout only to have it explode after three or four shots

[@connormckevern9471]

Great video. But you forgot the use of ICM to be used against missile weapons. Plus, you are using skilled gunners, you have to use the shaded column for the base hit %. And if you are using skilled gunners, you have to consider skill mods for pilots, and heavy use of DCR. Granted nothing could help that Scout ... but I would have peeled it off so it wasn't head on with that destroyer. LOL.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Oh I agree Kurt, trying to remember all the variables while the camera is rolling has turned out to be harder than I thought so I won't be doing any more of these. But I appreciate the views, thanks :)

[@connormckevern9471]

Yeah I definately love these star frontiers videos. I wish I could get a local group to play.

[@SevenDeMagnus]

Thanks, nostalgic (also with Top Secret from TRR as well).

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Thank you for watching! I played Top Secret ... once (our referee was extremely lazy)

[@chameleondream]

I don't know whats come over me, but for the last week I've been retooling the Knight Hawks system into a variant I've been calling Light Hawks, and I've watched this video at least three different times as a reminder of how it's supposed to run. I agree with you about how neat it is scale-wise from a scientific perspective, but I can't help but feel like it needs to be smaller, such as a 100 km hex and a 6 second turn (I think KH uses 10000 km hexes and a 10 minute turn). Consider the battle at the end of a New Hope. The original Death Star is supposed to have a 120 km diameter. If you were to try to replicate that in Knight Hawks you would have a Pringles stack of chits all in one hex and it would be a nightmare to try and keep track of. It's a hard line to draw between what should be there and what the game needs to have there. Thanks once again for making this video.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

My pleasure Jerry. I can only apologize I made a few goofs during filming. Hard to run a scenario while the camera is rolling. I remember once considering some kind of "short range" combat rules inspired by the scene in Star Trek II Wrath of Khan where the Reliant opens fire right up close to the Enterprise but I never fully fleshed it out.

[@robmckee5295]

Being one-shotted by an enemy that you never see seems pretty realistic to me. Wouldn't make a great movie, but might make a pretty good novel.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

very good point, stuff that makes for good story isn't always visual

[@mikekopack6441]

Also, as far the frailty of the ships... It's no different than the real world - a Frigate doesn't go toe to toe with a Battlecruiser! At least not successfully - not unless it 1) has numbers 2) can use it's speed and maneuverability to do hit and run attacks against the bigger enemy, or 3) concentrate on the smaller supporting ships closer to it's own size.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

True true. It's just that when I watch starship combat like in Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan I keep thinking man a ship in Star Frontiers with only about 20 hull points sure wouldn't last as long as we see in that film.

[@mikekopack6441]

@@DowntheRabbitHole0 sure but consider the scale - Enterprise and Reliant had crews in the 100s, an Assault Scout has a crew in the 10s. Enterprise would be considered a light or heavy cruiser. Even the Defiant from DS9 is quite a bit bigger than an AS. The few times we have seen much smaller ships in the ST universe they’ve often been 1 shotted by the big boys…

[@user-ci1wg5gh2t]

These videos are so helpful man! i keep coming back to them. My campaign hasnt hit the Knight Hawks box set yet, still on Volturnus, sorry, i know you dont like that word ;) Im still trying to figure out if i will use the "boardgame aspect for flight and space combat during our campaign. When you ran your campaign and your guys finally got into the ships and took off, how did you handle it?

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Thanks man! We did combat straight out of the rule book but I had to keep reminding them every turn was ten full minutes. Made for some weird situations.

[@CaptainHarris-ip2kg]

8:38 That's SFB scale. Interesting. I'm betting that was intentional.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Very likely... really puts the universe into perspective though

[@clamchowder5426]

D and D match video!

[@spencerjohnston3903]

See, I think Knight Hawks was Star Frontiers big mistake. It had a cool name and cool graphics but it feels like they quickly grafted somebody's idea for a mass-combat in space game onto the system without considering how it fits in with the rest of the game. You did a great job showing off the ridiculousness of how frail an Assault Scout really is. I also think it's annoying just how distant the game puts you from all that is going on. It basically reduces you to a slow moving blip on a very big screen and then oops - tpk. TSR should have done better.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Thanks for watching Spencer. Yeah Knight Hawks was ... an unusual choice to put it nicely. I appreciated the level of hard science behind it but it sure made combat simple yet clunky for the characters living in it.

[@NefariousKoel]

If you want more realism in your space combat, you could always pick up Squadron Strike from Ad Astra Games. Has full 3D representation, Newtonian physics (optional), and the rules to whip up your own custom weapons & ships. It's rather unusual so the learning process may be slower than most 2D hex & counter types you're used to. Not tied to an RPG though. I've seen the old Star Strike, an addition to Spacemaster (Rolemaster in spaaaace!) praised for it's space fighter combat, but never tried.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I'll have a look for that Koel, thank you :)

[@davedogge2280]

Ship to ship combat for an RPG ... Bioware and your Mass Effect series .... TAKE NOTE OF THIS !

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

LOL right on

[@warrenokuma7264]

Net video. So, pilot skill does nothing for defense? Can engineering skills be used for repairs?

[@warrenokuma7264]

Oh, ships don't use armor?

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I know right? Weird system. Pilots can evade but that was going to add even more complexity I didn't want to pester with. And engineers can definitely repair though it takes longer than this fight lasted (pour one out for the Assault Scout)

[@SevenDeMagnus]

New subscriber here.

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Awesome! Thank you very kick and welcome aboard

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

I mean "very much" ... silly auto-correct

[@stefanjhill]

Really unrated space combat game. Page 37 of the RPG book explains that a destroyed ship is not, and I quote "an automatic death sentence" for PCs... Oh and on page 33 of the RPG it says 1 ADF is roughly equal to 1 g. Still means a Frigate can pull 4 g's!

[@DowntheRabbitHole0]

Hi Stefan, yeah according to the rules 1 ADF is 1g but according to math in order to travel as far as 1 ADF would get you in 10 minutes, the crew would be pulling 3g's so I had to invent a piece of sci-fi tech to "absorb" the extra g's