Demifate Naval Rules

cVW Naval Combat - "Demifate" rules system

Aspects

An Aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it’s attached to. For a ship, they might represent its designed role, battle damage, or the interests and priorities of the crew. An Aspect might also be tied to a strikecraft sortie and its tactical mission, to a feature of a given ammunition or weapon type, or might represent an outcome of tactical positioning.
For the player, Aspects are the main means of interacting with and influencing the battle. As with the original Fate system, Aspects both tell those involved what is important about the scene and help to reinforce character (in this case ship) specialisation.

Rolls, Outcomes and Stats

All dice rolled are 100.
There are no stats. Ship specialisation is provided by Aspects, and all rolls are flat 1d100 unless specified otherwise below. Everything else relies on clever use of the Aspects in play.
There are no set outcomes for any roll, and both players and GMs are encouraged to eyeball the result, but rolling higher is better. Generally speaking a result below 20-30 will be a failure, a result above 70-80 will be a success, and results in between will partially succeed.
In order to avoid godmodding as much as possible, the result of a roll is to be written by the player who was targeted. When writing effects (especially for successful attacks), more (and more creative) description is better - it gives friends and enemies alike more information to work with and makes battle scenes really stand out.

Using Aspects

An Aspect may be used in one of two ways:
1. Rerolls
If your ship has comically failed to do something it should by rights be good at, or if you tried to press a clear advantage and got worse than nothing as a result, you can invoke (spend) an Aspect to try again at a situation with a slight bonus. Roll 1d100+10, and keep the result if it is higher than the original roll.
2. Opposed rolls
If an enemy attack looks to be successful, and you have an aspect that applies defensively to the situation, you may invoke it to immediately roll 1d100. The incoming attack is mediated by an amount equal to the opposed roll - if the opposed roll exceeds the original attack, it is rendered entirely ineffective and counts as a miss/failure.
In all cases, invoking an Aspect consumes it for the remainder of the scene.

Ship Aspect Sheets and Creating Aspects

Aspects tied to the ship are decided and locked in prior to joining the scene - these will always be available to the ship's player (until used up) and will never depend on situation or circumstance.
Ships should have 5 Aspects created for them, including at least one of:

• Ship role as designed, what it is meant to do as part of its navy
• Key advantage or strength, what the ship can do best
• Key weakness that should be exploitable in almost any situation
• Crew morale, priorities, or the commander's tactical style

The template Aspect Sheet for a ship should look as follows:

Ship Name
(Role)
(Strength)
(Weakness)
(Crew)
(Wildcard)
Consequences:

Note that room has been left for 3 Consequences (see below).
In-game, any action taken that changes the state of play will create an aspect. This includes:

• Switching to a specific, distinctive combat strategy with flaws and advantages;
• Positioning, including running in formation with specific ships or close/long range tactics;
• Prioritising crew actions or internal resource management in such a way that it affects the ship's combat operations (for better or worse
• Changing weapon specialisms or specifying a type of ammunition fired;
• Launching strikecraft, and giving or altering the strike package's mission.

NB - Aspects, especially situational ones, should be generated often and expire when not relevant. Reading the flow of battle and making the most of opportunities as they appear is good tactics, and it helps tie the actions of ships to the events of the battle. Even if not using the ship aspects, a player should have something to invoke and/or create no matter when their turn appears.

Protection, Damage and Consequences

Optional Rule - HP & Armour break A ship will have approximately 100 points of plot armour (explained as a combination of shields and evasion). Frigates and more disposable enemy craft might have 50, heavy capittal ships or bosses of consequences might have 200 or more.
For every attack that doesn't fail, subtract the number rolled from the remaining plot armour of the attacked ship (so an attack roll of 57, which players agree lands, would also reduce protection by 57). Any roll passing the 0 threshold doesn't carry over into automatic damage, for fairness's sake - though with a big enough crit or the right kind of Aspect invoked, the damage might go through plot armour as it's broken...
If numerical protection is not being counted, shields should fall when narratively appropriate or when a high-rolling attack warrants it.
When an attack hits and damages without any shields or other protection to mitigate it, a Consequence is taken. Consequences are special Aspects that represent battle damage incurred. Each one can be used (once) by opponents as per a normal negative Aspect.
After all three Consequences are used, any further solid hits will remove the ship from battle (in a narratively suitable way).
Ideally, a Consequence should be reflected in the ship's subsequent actions whether it is invoked or not - battle damage, lost systems and shaken crews are going to be felt.
Additionally, a Consequence can be social as well as physical or mental if the players are negotiating with an enemy or choose to seek a peaceful resolution. It is recommended to note in the ship sheet which Consequences are social rather than combat related, but otherwise the same rules apply and an enemy can be defeated (persuaded, brought to treaty, surrender, evacuate, etc) socially.
Bringing an enemy to violence after applying social Consequences has the potential to remove or change the Consequence Aspects as as result... Drastically changing how you approach a situation is going to have drastic effects on an in-progress solution.

Support Systems

Not everything is solved through direct application of armaments. Stealth, advanced sensor suites, EWar, minelaying and flight strikecraft can all be utilised in the right situation.
Generally speaking, no matter the system, the mechanics are similar. Using them as a ship's action will create a directly addressed Aspect for protecting allies or targeting enemies (as appropriate).
The system will also have narrative effects to be observed seperately, of course - a stealthship that cloaks and successfully evades detection will create an Aspect to its benefit, but will also be effectively untargetable due to the stealth.

Actions and Turns

At the start of combat, everyone involved rolls 1d100 for initiative. Ships then take turns in high-low order.
A turn is one discrete action a ship can perform. Examples include:

• Firing weapons or making attacks;
• Prioritised damage control;
• Repositioning in the immediate/relative battlefield;
• Launching or rearming strikecraft;
• Using support or auxiliary systems;
• Long discussions or speeches.

Speech is a free action, so long as it's fairly short.
Strikecraft take seperate turns at the same time as their mothership, and so are not mentioned in the turn order for simplicity's sake. If a strike package uses its payload (such as bombers attacking an enemy ship), they are then out of play until the owning ship can cycle them.
Strikecraft must rearm at their own mothership or carrier, since standardisation between separate navies appears rare (especially in the largely unrelated civilisations of the Coalition). However if two ships are from the same navy and subject to the same logistics train to carry the same munitions, cross-rearming is always possible.