There are many maneuvers that ships, even large ships, can perform in space. Some maneuvers are important for offense, other are important for defense, but all are useful in one way or another in space. This document provides a list of new combat maneuvers that can be used by spaceships and is compatible with the rules presented in the Revised Combat for Large Vehicles document. If using those rules, please remember that initiating or stopping a maneuver requires the use of one combat action.
When a ship begins evasive maneuvers, it enters into an almost random pattern of movements that makes it hard to lock-on to and hit with weapons. Unfortunately, unless reset, most targeting computers can compensate for the evasive maneuvers and negate any bonuses provided by it. When a ship is undergoing Evasive Maneuvers, it gains an additional +3 ECM against targeting weapons like missiles and all direct fire weapon, such as lasers and particle beams, suffer a penalty of -4 to strike the ship, but these bonuses are lost after 1D6 melees as targeting computers compensate for the ship's erratic maneuvers. Beginning or ending Evasive Maneuvers requires one ship combat action. To reset the Evasive Maneuvers, an additional ship combat action must be spent, although it can be spent at any time and will immediately reset the amount of time for target's to compensate for the ship's maneuvers.
As a last ditch effort to avoid taking damage a ship can perform an Emergency Dodge. Similar to a regular dodge in hand-to-hand combat, the Emergency Dodge suddenly activates the ship's engines in an effort to move the ship out of the way of weapons that are being used against it. This action can be used at any point during a melee round, but it takes up the ship's next ship action, even if it is forced to take up the first ship action in the following melee round. This dodge can only be used to dodge a single attack and the attack can consist of any number of volleys, but the dodge cannot be used against guided missiles of any kind. For example, if at the same time, an attacking ship fired a volley of lasers cannons, a volley of particle beam cannons, and a volley of guided missiles, the Emergency Dodge maneuver could only be used against the volleys of lasers and particle beam cannons and would not be applicable to the guided missiles.
When used, this maneuver allows the ship to roll a dodge with a penalty of -5 to dodge, in addition to any other bonuses or penalties to dodge that the ship may possess, and attempt to roll equal to or above the attacker's strike roll for each of the volleys that were part of the attack. For each volley where the dodge roll was equal to or above the corresponding strike roll, roll the percentile dice to determine the percentage of the volley that was dodged, rounding all fractions up. For each volley where the dodge roll was less then the corresponding strike roll, the entire volley strikes the ship as normal.
For example, a ship is being attacked simultaneously by a single ion cannon with a strike roll of 10, a volley of thirteen laser cannons with a strike roll of 12, and a volley of thirty particle beam cannons with a strike roll of 19. The defending ship attempts an Emergency Dodge and rolls a 15 to dodge. This dodge roll is sufficient to dodge the ion cannon and some of the laser cannons, but not enough to dodge any of the particle beam cannons. The defending ship does not need to roll the percentile dice for the ion cannon, because since there is only one cannon to dodge. The defending ship then rolls the percentile dice for the volley of laser cannons getting a 43, which means that 43% of the thirteen laser cannons were dodged, this translates to be 6 lasers cannons (13 * 43% = 5.59 = 6). The end result of the Emergency Dodge is that seven of the laser cannons and all thirty of the particle beam cannons hit the defending ship, while the ion cannon and the six of the laser cannons missed.
This is a basic space maneuver that almost all ships are designed to perform. This maneuver involves rotating the ship in a particular direction, while not altering the direction that the ship is moving in. This is useful to bring certain weapons to bear against a target or to present an undamaged section of the ship, although with the invention of the Variable Ship System, the value of this maneuver for greatly lessened. By using a single ship action, a ship can be rotated along a single axis of rotation. For example, a ship could be rotated upside down or to present its forward second backwards. This maneuver does not alter the direction that a ship is going in, so a ship that is moving away from a planet that turns around to point the front of the ship towards the planet will still be moving away from the planet. This maneuver is especially useful when a ship wants to bring powerful, forward facing weapons against an opponent behind it without slowing the ship down or attempting to get behind the following ship.