The combat system in Dreadlords was startlingly simple, but it managed to capture some interesting dynamics.

Some things I liked about the DL system:
1. Simplicity.
2. Big-ship weapons help to penetrate big-ship defences.
3. Big ships can run into problems swatting the very small ships.

Some things I consider drawbacks of the DL system:
1. A little too easy to make large ships invulnerable to small ships.
2. Defence was a little too streaky. If your defences roll high, you are good, if you roll a zero on defence, you are toast.
3. A unit of defence on a tiny fighter cost the same as a unit on a huge dreadnaught, while being infinitely more effective on the dreadnaught. This makes is impossible to make small, defensive ships viable without making defences too cheap for the larger ships.
4. The really big ships don't quite feel big enough, in terms of cost compared to a fighter or frigate.


A hobby of mine is to think up combat systems that will never be implemented. So here's my YACS:

1. A ship can only target one enemy ship per turn.

2. The size mod on weapons and defences is zero.

3. Space and hitpoints roughly double for each size class, so a huge is about 15 or 16x the space of a tiny. May wish to adjust logistics costs given 2 and 3.

4. Each hull size is associated with a 'size factor'. The current logistics costs work fairly well: 2,3,5,7,10 for tiny to huge.

5. The total weapon rating for a ship is divided into 'size factor' separate attacks. So a huge with a 200 missile rating would do 10 attacks of 0-20 each. A tiny with a 30 missile rating would do 2 attacks of 0-15 each.

6. The total defences for a ship in each category is divided by the 'size factor'. Defences subtract 0-rating from each attack and don't degrade. So a huge with 400 shields would stop 0-40 damage from any beam attack and 0-2 damage from any missile or mass-driver attack. A tiny with 30 shields stops 0-15 damage from each beam attack. you can mount more shield generators on a larger ship, but they have to cover more area...


If neither side is employing defences, this works pretty much like the DL combat system, except the larger ships are more powerful and more expensive.

The size factor means it's more expensive in absolute BC to achieve a certain defence level in larger ships than smaller ships. The division of attacks into multiple separate rolls, especially for larger ships, means that defences are less reliant on luck and large ship is less likely to be killed by a single low defence roll.

The ratio of ship space to the size factor means that the defences on larger ships are somewhat more effective, and their weapons are up to the job of penetrating those defences. A huge has 16x the space to devote to defences as a tiny, but it's defences are only divided by 10 compared to the tiny's 2, so it can reach 3.2x the defence rating for the same fraction of hull space (and 15x the cost). Similarly, the huge has an advantage in penetrating defences, because at the same tech level and proportion of hull devoting to weapons, its weapon damage will come in packets that are 3.2x the size.

So, large ships can have stronger defences and weapons that are better at penetrating strong defences. However, since a ship can only target one foe in a round, a very big ship can be at a severe disadvantage if it faces lots of ships that are much smaller than it, since it can only kill one per round. Also, since it's defences are divided by a larger factor, it's harder to push it totally beyond the reach of smaller craft.

The upshot of this is that a ship is probably best off facing a ship 1 or 2 sizes smaller than it, so that it can take advantage of heavier guns and shields without running into the overkill problem. Of course, against ships closer to it's own size, its guns and shields are less heavy in comparison, so an advantage in miniaturization, weapons, defence technology or logistics could turn the tables.

The 'heavy weapons/heavy shields' advantage of a huge versus a tiny would be 3.2, dropping to 2.4 verus a small, 2.0 versus a medium and 1.4 versus a large.

I have a few more details in mind, but that's the gist of it.