Megatraveller Journal 2 included a 'beginner's luck' article regarding
ship-to-ship combat, and made it seem quite straight forward and reasonable.
They also included an errata sheet, which might help. The biggest problem
is containing the number of tasks required, so as to allow the action to
flow. I incorporated the tables on pp 97-101 in the Ref's Manual into
about six tasks. These didn't include things like meson attacks, as this
really does not apply to the small scale combat I usually engage in. The
damage results are a mess; for small vessels, the high number of critical
hits makes 'running repairs' a joke, while some of the rulings on the
damage tables make no sense; for example powerplant -1 reduces the
powerplant hit points by 10%, ie if you have 40 hitpoints, damage reduces
them in 4 point steps, but if you have 80, they are reduced in 8 point
steps. Thus, different sized powerplants are destroyed at the same rate
by a given hit! Also, the starship weapon stats given in the Players'
Manual prevent many weapons from being effective a space combat ranges,
while inflicting tremendous damage if they do penetrate amour.
Stewart [email removed]