For starters, what system could have some interesting interactions with this concept? Obviously you'd want players to be either crew of a single such machine, or pilots of smaller aircraft launched from it, or potentially interceptors tasked with fighting them. Mechanical considerations are largely the same either way. I feel like systems that do things in autistic detail would not be good for it and something rules-light like FATE would be better.
You could play as vehicle crew in Only War, but that was more for tanks, I don't know about ace fighters.
>>94398572As long as the players are in positions of major&important control (so helmsman, gunners, etc) I suspect the mechanical framework will be much the same for a tank or for a flying superweapon.Likewise with the other variations, if they're pilots stationed there then it likely won't matter all that much that it's a superweapon compared to a naval carrier or even a regular airfield. So you "only " need the rules that cover them being fighter pilots in general. And as for being pilots attacking it, well, it's a defended position to attack, probably not any real mechanical difference compared to going for any other decently well defended target like a warship or ground target with AA installations.
>>94398597If space fighting simulators are to be considered, attacking a large ship/structure is usually just a matter of positioning to destroy defences, sub systems and other critical weakpoints, I don't know of systems aimed for piloting fighters, maybe some mecha system with flight rules could be useful. Otherwise games like x-wing or areonatuica imperialis come to mind, if you want to keep it more abstracted. I imagine that trying to be simulationist with dogfights might very quickly spiral out of control.
>>94398597yeah, I guess part of the problem is that there aren't a lot of good RPGs that handle vehicle combat and especially air combat. because of the highly technical nature of it, I've generally come to the conclusion that trying to make it granular at all won't work; anything that tracks movement any more closely than highly abstract "zones" will get obnoxious. I think the way to do it is with a loose system like FATE, so you focus on the man-vs-man element rather than machine-vs-machine.
I personally hate "crew" mechanics that amount to "pilot role, gunner role, etc." because they divvy up the combat experience so each player only gets a scrap. Imagine if we did that with something like a character in D&D, where one player controls movement, one player decides attacks, etc.Unfortunately, I haven't found a better system that gives players more agency in a "zoomed out" combat scenario.
>>94402590The experience is definitely different but if everyone is up for it I don't see what the problem could be. I mean, having different roles is already expected in most games, like the rogue would be the one doing sneaky shit, if everyone agrees to play a vehicle crew I don't think they would complain about having different specific roles. That said, you could always make it so that everyone is the vehicle commander with NPC crews and the party is a squadron.
