OPTIONAL RULES for FASA's Starship Combat Games
These rules are not part of the official game, and vary in quality and completeness.
Last updated on 04/08/06

Heres a handfull of miscellaneous FAN created rules that I have found, most where designed for the STCS. Try them.

Armed Missiles - by David Ramos  4/15/97
If a missile is armed it remains armed until fired, no matter how long that is. But if the missile weapon is hit there is a sixty percent chance the missile will explode and add its damage to the incoming shot. To determine if the missile explodes, roll one die. On the result of 1,2,3,4,5,and 6 the missile explodes.

Movement: Drifting - by Andrew Gelbman  August 12 2004
One of the biggest problems with the FASA combat simulator is that ships don't move very much. In fact most ships are barely capable of moving at all. However, this can be easily remedied without having to change any of the existing starship design rules.

A ship will continue to move the same speed and heading from turn to turn unless energy is expended to change speed (up or down) or heading. This way more agile ships will be capable of changing speed and heading faster than less agile ones while at the same time preventing the game from degenerating into two vessels stop at optimum weapons range and blast away at each other until one or both blows up.

Crippled Ships - by Andrew Gelbman  August 12 2004
When a ship reaches zero superstructure, it doesn't risk blowing up but it is crippled. It cannot move, fire or undertake any action other than to surrender, call for a friendly ship to come alongside to take off her surviving crew or abandon ship. Further damage will push her superstructure score into the negatives. When her negative superstructure score is equal to her original superstructure, then and only then will she blow up.

e.g. a vessel has an undamaged superstructure score of 10. She takes 12 superstructure damage points. She now has a superstructure score of -2. She is crippled. Another 8 points of superstructure damage and she may blow up.

A crippled ship's engineer must make a skill roll against his Astronautics skill to bring the ship to a dead stop in order to allow for evacuation. This is similar to a Cochran Deceleration except that energy is transferred to the structural integrity field rather than the shield system. Failure means that the ship stops but takes additional damage to the superstructure (1 damage point for each movement point currently being used)

Firing Beam Weapons in any Phase by jmsteele
Beam weapons may fire in any phase during which they have power remaining. All power is considered used up after the last phase of a turn.

Torpedo Fire Limit by jmsteele
Torpedoes may only fire once per turn.

Torpedo "Hot Loading" by jmsteele
Torpedoes may be "hot loaded", meaning multiple torps can be loaded in the launcher(up to a maximum number determined by the launcher's designation. A FP-7 cam load up 7 torps max, a KP-4 can load 4 torps, but a RP-1 can only load one torp at a time.)

They are fired in one volley, with the players/GM deciding the number of times the dice will roll to determine hits. NOTE: if the launcher is hit or the ship is destroyed while the launcher is still "hot loaded", all torps in the weapon explode normally...

Warp Speeding by jmsteele
Warpspeeding near planets is dangerous. The number of hexes away from a planetoid determines the maximum safe warpspeed possible. Violations subject the ship in question to one point of randomly rolled damage per warp factor speed in excess of the "speed limit", shields offer NO PROTECTION from this effect.

Warp speed in Nebulas/atmosphere is impossible to do safely. Overriding the safety protocols to bypass them is possible, but results in the ship being destroyed when it attempts to warp in such an environment.

Meteor an Asteroid Combat by jmsteele
Meteor storms/fighting among asteroids is very dangerous. A given body will have 1d10 "Superstructure", and could be traveling from 1-10 hexes per turn. Any ship caught in an "occupied" hex must choose a number(1-10). If that number is rolled, the ship is hit, damage is the asteroid/meteor's structure multiplied by it's velocity. If the collision occurred "head-on", add the ship's speed to the asteroid's velocity. If the two were headed along  the same path, reduce the impact speed by the ship's velocity per turn. Note negative results still count as whole numbers...

Reinforcing shields adapted from ADB's Star Fleet Battles by Michael Chumbler 2002
All ships and bases can perform two types shield reinforcement, general and specific. General reinforcement stops damage from any direction at a cost of one point of reinforcement for every two points of power assigned to this task. Specific reinforcement only protects shields designated during the Power Allocation Phase. The cost is one point of reinforcement per point of power.

Proximity fused photons adapted from ADB's Star Fleet Battles by Michael Chumbler 2002
Any ship or base with a photon can designate them during the Power Allocation Phase as having a proximity fuse. The photon does one-half damage, but adds two to the basic to hit.

Sensor Lock-On Modifications adapted from ADB's Star Fleet Battles by Michael Chumbler 2002
As long as a ship's sensors are undamaged, they produce enough data to provide basic targeting for all targets within weapons range. "Weapons-lock" grants the ability to fire weapons at any target in range, but does not give any information about the target's status either before or after firing. The Sensor Operator may make a skill roll on one target during the skill rolls phase to gain a "Sensor lock-on." A full sensor lock-on grants the ability to ask the detailed questions as stated in the Command and Control rules. If a ship's sensors are damaged, then the Sensor Operator must roll one D6 for each ship within sensor range to obtain a weapons-lock. Each hit the sensors have sustained subtracts a cumulative penalty of -1 to the weapons-lock roll. (I.E. two hits to sensors will require a roll of 1-4 for each potential target within range). As per the standard rules, once a ship has taken five hits to the sensors, they no longer function and any form of lock-on is impossible. If the sensors have taken five hits, or if the weapons-lock roll fails for a specific target, the firing ship may still fire at that target, but will do so using the "blind fire" rules below.

Blind Fire by Michael Chumbler 2002
A ship without any lock on my still fire at a target by having the Weapons Operator roll their skill in Starship Weapons Operation with each ten percent that roll is made by, gives a to hit of one on a D10 rounding any fractions down. (I.E. Skill of 63 and a roll of 38. 63-38=25. 25÷10=2.5, rounded down to 2. gives the Weapons Operator a 1-2 on a D10 of a hit with that weapon). A separate skill roll must be made for each individual weapon or bank fired at that target.

Hull Breech by Michael Chumbler 2002
When a section of hull takes damage, ratio damage against total original hull and that becomes the chance of a hull breech. Example: Ship superstructure 24 and Bridge takes three phaser hits doing one, four, and four points of damage doing the standard three points of superstructure damage. Total the damage from that round, in this case 1 + 4 + 4 = 9 ÷ 24 = 38% that the bridge is breached. A section must take at least 25% of original superstructure before there is a possibility of a breech. Percentage is cumulative per hit, thus the 25% need not be done in one round to cause a breech.

If the section where a PC is located is breached, PC must roll DEX to reach safety. A fail causes 3D10 damage with three fails resulting in fatal explosive decompression. If a PC is rendered unconscious while trying to escape, someone else can attempt their LUC roll once to pull them to safety before emergency bulkheads seal the breech.

The hull breech rules makes ship combat very deadly for PCs, especially for Bridge crew as the bridge is a vulnerable target that somehow seems to take more than its fair share of damage. It should make PCs at least think about a posting to the emergency bridge.

DOGFIGHTING by Brad Hutchinson APR 16,2003
Whereby if 2 ships suddenly occupy the same hex, each ship's captain rolls their ship combat or piloting rating against the other until one succeeds and one fails ... the winner gets the pick which side of their opponent's ship theirs is on (neither ship changes heading). There's a brief pause to allow for any desired emergency heading changes, and both captains roll to see if they can get a +1 to hit from point blank range. There's a little more to it than that, but that's the gist.

CLOAK by Brad Hutchinson APR 16,2003
If a visible ship engages a cloaking device, but the opponent manages to retain a lock, the cloaked ship replaces their ship with an inverted opaque shotglass (the opponent knows what hex they're in, but not their exact heading or orientation). If the opponent loses their lock, the ship and the shotglass disappear entirely. We sometimes relied on a 3rd party referee to take care of all matters involving visibility around obstructions and cloaking type operations.


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