by ICE

Silent Death is a fast paced, easy to learn game. One of the few games that is literally quick to pick up, and as there is a lot of web support for it, we had to do a conversion. These rules are based on the New Millennium Deluxe Set.

New units:

• Colonial Craft
• Cylon Craft
• General Craft

Ship construction:

All these ships are legal under the proper starship construction system, but even so, I have slightly bent the standard rules a tad. Let me explain.

For a start, the ships are constructed near the lower end of the size scale, so a typical Viper is a 200 ton medium fighter. This was done to keep the amount of hits down so I did not actually have to start employing multiple sets of weapons to take the effect of a single set. Engines are not the quickest in the world, but then to make everything fit, they couldn't be. Defensive Values are not also incredibly high either, but then nothing is weaving around too much, so also not a problem.

Weapons were a bit more tricky. I thought about just using standard pulse lasers, but unfortunately I found that when using them, while being true to Silent Death, was not really true to Battlestar Galactica. Thus I use modified Pulse lasers, which are called Laser Torpedoes. I call them these because normal turbo lasers are used in Silent Death, and a Vipers weapons are also referred to as laser torpedoes at one time, and I did not want to get anyone confused. Note that these have nothing to do with ordinary torpedoes though, and are treated exactly as normal direct fire cannon.

Laser Torpedoes:

Weapon notes:
The weapon table should be pretty self explanatory, but if using the alternate range tables, then ranges become:

Torpedoes:

Torpedo notes:
Being based on the missiles and smart bombs used elsewhere on this web site, stats are changed slightly. Torpedoes function exactly as normal torpedoes, although they do not ever use the variant speed rules. Instead, the Speed column tells the speed of the torpedo. The Turn column is the amount of drive points needed to turn one hex. As can be seen, the Smart bomb, while powerful, steers like a cow. The Cobra however, is a fighter killer.

Rockets should be treated as smart bombs, and mini-missiles should be treated as normal missile racks.

Turbo's

Turbo's increase the drive rating of the craft by *1.5. When activated (which must be stated when the ship is selected to be moved), the craft Must move at least some of it is turbo drive points, so a Viper using turbo's must use between 15 - 21 drive points. Weapons fire is at a -5 when using turbo's, and tight turns are at +4.

When constructing a ship with turbo's, no additional slots are required, but the engine base cost is increased by 25% (round up). There are no additional damage boxes to place on the damage track as the turbo's are integral to the engine, but obviously when an engine is damaged, the turbo bonus will decrease.

Optional Drift Rules: Is using the drift rules, then base the current drive value on what the ship used the previous turn, either turbo's or normal drives. Thus if a Viper who used turbo's drifted the next turn, use a current drive value of 21 for drift.

Inverse Motion

Inverse motion (IM) is a very difficult thing to try and simulate in the world of Silent Death, but we have thought about it, and have come up with the following ideas.

IM is used at the end of all movement. Any craft equipped with IM thrusters may attempt to use them in reverse order of their pilots ability, and provided the pilot did not use all the drive of their craft. Any use of turbo's by the starcraft prohibits it is use of IM that turn. This means that the higher skill pilots will use their IM after the lower skilled pilots.

What then happens, is that each pilot attempting to use IM rolls 1D10, adds their piloting skill, and then takes away 10 from that result (exactly like dodging torpedoes). The end result - if a positive number - is the amount of IM points that the craft can spend. If this is greater than the amount of drive points that the starcraft has left, then reduce the IM value to this. Negative results mean that the pilot was not quick enough and failed to use their IM thrusters properly, wasting the remainding movement.

For example: A Colonial Viper (with a piloting of 6) uses 10 of it is 14 drive points to manoeuvre, and ends the movement phase with a Cylon Raider 2 hexes directly behind it. The Colonial Warrior thinks this is a bad thing, and so decides to use IM to rectify this situation. None of the Cylons can do this, so the Colonial Warrior rolls 1D10 and adds his skill of 6. He lucks out and rolls a 9, which gives him a total of 15. Subtracting 10 from this gives a score of 5 and thus 5 IM points. Unfortunately the Warrior used 10 of the 14 drive points of his Viper, leaving him with 4 left, so his IM score drops to 4.

IM points can be used to move the starcraft in a direct line backwards of it is current position. No turns are permitted, and the facing of the craft also is not changed. A pilot never has to use all of it is IM points, but like normal movement, they may not be saved for later turns.

Installing IM is a subsystem quirk, and as such costs 10% of the starcrafts total cost (round up). Only a few starcraft have this subsystem installed, and then only in small fighters. Shuttles and Cylon craft never have them.

The following fighters do have IM, but the points have not yet been figured into the BPV on the following pages as these rules are still experimental.
Scarab, Viper, Viper-B, Viper-S, Viper-X.

Cylons:

Cylons, with their programming, have more standardised skill levels than their human counterparts. As such, typical skill ratings for Cylons should be as follows. A Silver Centurion has a piloting and gunnery skill of 5, Gold Centurions have skills of 6 or more, while IL Series Cylons have ratings of 4+.

Role-playing integration:

Silent Death only uses two skills in the game, while the role-playing game uses several. Just substitute the relevant GURPS skill for the applicable Silent Death one and use the following table for skill levels.

Silent Death does not make much a distinction between death and wounding, so you will have to be careful with your crew.