The Babylon Project

The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace . . . .  It failed.

Warfare is a constant in the Babylon 5 universe, as much as cutthroat diplomats and neutral space stations try to avoid it.  And what greater way to simulate the epic and realistic space battles of Babylon 5 than with scale miniatures and dice!  The Babylon Project just happens to be the name of a tabletop game I've been enjoying a lot lately, one which strikes a great balance between simplicity and simulation.




There were roughly four Babylon 5 tabletop games produced, all of which are now sadly defunct.  Babylon 5 Wars, by Agents of Gaming, strove to emulate the detail of the super-complex Star Fleet Battles, with power management, turn counters, and a giant variety of weapon systems and specialized rules.  I some day hope to try this one out.  A smaller-scale miniatures game called A Call to Arms was also made by the same developer.  I'm not clear on that particular game except that it tried to streamline the experience somewhat.  Finally, Mongoose made Fleet Action, another game I'm not super familiar with.  I do know all 3 games were hex-based, which is a system I don't particularly love because it's not very modular.

Anyway, the game I settled on was The Babylon Project, which is actually an RPG system originally.  The Earthforce Sourcebook supplement added a space combat ruleset based on the popular Full Thrust game system.  The rules are realistic but fairly easy to learn.  Battles are decided in a small number of turns but ships still feel huge.  It supports both fighters and capital ships in battle together.  AND it doesn't require a hex map to play on.

In The Babylon Project, play has two essential stages each turn: Movement, and Combat.  In the movement phase, players write down a series of orders, secret from the other players, all simultaneously.  Orders may consist of "main drive 4, rotate starboard 1, push port 1", telling the ship to accelerate forward 4 inches, rotate starboard 1 point (30 degrees), then push sideways to port by 1 inch.  Momentum is tracked and conserved between each round, so the ship will drift in the direction it has current momentum before you get to execute those movement orders.  Ships have certain drive ratings indicating how fast they can accelerate, turn, or slide each turn.  Some advanced ships like the Minbari have gravitic engine systems which behave radically differently, giving even more options for movement.  Ships are difficult to control at high speeds, and it really feels like giant, slow ships lumbering around in zero gravity.  Movement and rotation is essential to getting into optimum firing ranges and firing arcs.  Fighters also move during this phase, but they get free reign without much regards to physics, indicating their superior maneuverability in the scaled-up theater of capital ship battle.

In the combat phase, players take turns nominating active ships, which then get to attack.  A single ship may attack multiple targets, provided they have sufficient fire controls undamaged.  Beam weapons inflict burst damage to enemies in close range, while pulse fire ticks steady damage onto anyone nearby.  Beam weapons take time to charge up, and fall off quickly with longer range, but can be absolutely devastating - very true to the show.  Fighters may also engage other fighters or enemy capital ships, and fighters may even be assigned screening duty to ward off enemy fighter attacks.  Left alone, a group of fighters can be devastating to even large capital ships.

Damage also feels fairly realistic without being too complicated.  When a ship takes enough damage to pass a "threshold" - most ships only have 4 or 5 before they are destroyed - it must roll a die to see if it loses any systems.  In a given turn, any number of ship systems may be knocked out, including weapons, fire control, hanger bays, or engines, although the chance of a system being lost starts off very low, and increases the more damage the ship has taken.  If a ship has taken enough damage in a single turn of shooting to pass TWO thresholds, it has a chance of being ripped apart by a chain reaction and outright exploding!

And that's essentially it.  Ships drift through space blasting each other with beam cannons, fighters zip around, and stuff explodes.  It's chaotic and fun, and feels very much like the battles from the show.

If I needed to make any complaints, I would say it's that the game can feel too chaotic at times, and not quite tactical enough.  There's no way to aim at any specific subsystem, for example, although this is probably true to the show.  Rarely does anyone target subsystems, and accuracy is often not perfect due to ECM systems in use by every ship.  There's also not much of a way for agile ships like the Whitestar to evade the fire of slower ships in the game, like it does on the show - there is no "to hit" roll.  A single dice roll determines what shots hit and how much damage they do, and don't take into account much else.  Finally, I find beam cannons to be almost too strong, or pulse weapons too weak; beams certainly overshadow pulse shots in terms of damage.

Some potential house rules could solve these problems, and the game is very amenable to them.  Perhaps a to-hit roll should precede standard weapon damage rolls, and each ship given some type of evasion statistic to incorporate into this to-hit roll.  Or, at least, the evasion statistic could provide a modifier onto weapon damage rolls.  For example, evasive ships like Whitestars or Drakh ships could gain an evasion roll to try and avoid a beam attack if they had accelerated at least 4 inches in any direction in the previous movement phase.  It may also be a house rule to select a subsystem as a target but give several firing restrictions to make it a risky proposition.  For example, perhaps to target a subsystem, players must both roll a die to see whether the defending ship's ECM can throw off the targeting systems of the attacker (highest result wins).  If the defender wins the roll off, the attacker must use a different fire control if it wishes to target anyone else.  Then, any damage scored is reduced by half, and the subsystem is automatically hit.  Let's say that the defender rolls a die for the affected system: the number on the die is the number of turns that system is disabled, with a 6 being destruction of the system.  Fighters probably wouldn't need to roll for ECM,

Anyway, it's a fun game that's simple to learn, and lets me continue to fight battles with awesome ships in an awesome sci-fi universe.