Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[steelbrok]

Nor me

Yep, I said that would be the problem!
However even in the sci-fi tool kit it says that slot sizes are somewhat flexible, especially between different size categories (IIRC it gives the number of slots needed to carry each ship size and they seem small unless you take this into account).

One idea I had concerned weapons.

Say a laser takes up 2 slots

Fitted to a small ship the damage is 2d4
on a medium 2d6
by the time you get to gargantuan that 2 slot laser weapon gives you a damage of 2d12

Just a thought

[Sitting Duck]

[steelbrok]

Nothing wrong with that but I was trying to keep as close to normal character generation as possible

[Chaosmeister]

[steelbrok]

Edited because it was far too long and was really getting away from being FFF

Weapons
I suggested linking weapon damage to a ship’s strength.
To develop this further:
No changes to missile weapons (these don't draw power from the ship)
Missile weapons are only limited by the space available to carry them.
Beam weapons require a power source and are limited by the ship's strength die. Here is a base example

Type/Range/Damage/ROF/Slots
Laser/75/150/300/2 x Strength/1//2

Ships can only power one beam weapon with damage dice equal to the strength die
Ships may double the number of weapons powered by lowering the damage dice a step (so a ship with Strength d10 could power 2 x d8, 4 x d6 or 8 x d4 weapons instead).

If the ship wants to carry extra weapons then the slots used for the weapon are doubled to allow for extra power systems needed.

[steelbrok]

Ok, rereading this and thinking about it last night I ralised that this was just getting far too complicated, definitely not FFF.

I propose:

Ships get Strength x 5 slots (x8 with the Well Built edge (equivalent to Brawny))

All ships need a source of income, for warships this comes from the navy but might come with the orders hindrance

Add this modification
Cargo: Ships with this modification can earn their own living, covering all routine expenses. This costs half of the base spaces of the ship.

At the end of each voyage the Purser makes a co-operative streetwise roll. With a success the crew receive their normal pay. For every raise they receive a 25% bonus. On a failure they receive only half pay and on snake eyes cannot be paid anything!
The engineer makes a co-operative repair roll for routine maintenance. This takes one 1/2/3/4/5 days depending on the ship's size. If he succeeds all is well, with a raise he halves the time taken. On a failure the ship acquires a temporary minor hindrance that lasts until the next successful maintenance roll. On snake eyes a temporary major hindrance is acquired.

(End of the voyage could be changed to month/week etc, whatever fits the setting)

Most ships don't earn experience points, once they are built they keep the same performance.

Characters may take the following edge:

Shipwright
Requirements: Novice, Pilot 6d+, Repair d6+
Shipwrights have an eye to getting the best from their ships and are always trying to improve them.
Whenever a shipwright levels up he may take and advance for his ship too. A ship may only benefit from one shipwright at a time
(I would consider making this a roll at -2 instead like the Tinkerer/Artificer edges in some settings)

[Chaosmeister]

Hm Lets see. I napped the idea for the military captain and freelancer differentiation as Edges. I am not yet sure about the Strx5 thing, I will really have to ponder the numbers some more. I like the similarity to the carrying capacity. The idea with the weapon damage is also good, but it just does not feel right to me. In my min the weapons have always been the same as for characters: Stuff to buy. And one type of weapon would be boring or? I could create Variations on this with different attributes like ROF AP etc. I fear also linking damage to Str. in addition to slots might make Str a too powerful stat.

I like your really short quick and dirty way for maintenance. Maybe I use this as the base and leave the whole KEF system as the optional adventure generator. Needs more pondering.

The last part with the shipwright edge is a good idea as an alternate rule. My idea for spaceships as their own characters centers around the fact that they do level. I appreciate your effort to reduce the separate rules subsystems and keep it FFF. It just does not fit with my idea of this system. I really need to think about this some more.

*sigh* Rewriting material is hard!
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[steelbrok]

I think that comes down to how quickly you want ships to level up and that really depends on the setting. I could go with either the shipwright model or the regular level up model depending on the setting

[steelbrok]

I only intended the lasrer as one example. I would have others with more dice of damage for more spaces (say 3 x strength for twice as many spaces) and longer or shorter range for more or less spaces too.

[steelbrok]

One thing that did cross my mind was that I was wrong about making all of the modifications into edges. If the ship is a character then it should have some starting cash and uses this to purchase its gear (modifications) and weapons.

The amount would depend on the price of mods and weapons and could not be spent for anything that was not permanently built into the ship.

[Chaosmeister]

Yea the similarity to characters is also the reason why I am so hesitant to change weapons. Linking damage to Str is also an issue for fighter type ships. d4 damage is not much.
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[steelbrok]

I was thinking slong the lines:

ship's Missile weapons are equivalent to firerms that don't (generally, not always) have a strength limitation

beam weapons (powered by ship's powerplant = strength?) are equivalent to hand held and thus are limited by a ship's strength.

Nothing would stop a fighter carrying a torpedo that might make a called shot - to a reactor exhaust port IIRC? - on a Gargantuan ship, avoiding armour and gaining +4 damage

same fighter's lasers do say 2d4 which are OK vs other fighters but no real threat to capital ships

By the way,

I wouldn't give ships any inherent armour (as the SF tool kit does) just their basic Toughness. Any armour has to be bought from the ship's starting cash and uses some of the strength x 5 spaces (-50% for Cargo ships)

[Chaosmeister]

That is really an interesting take, I did not think about the toughness, thanks. I understand where you are coming from better now and I really start to like it. And I think your torpedo example almost sold me. I Have to just beat my lazy bone now to get to the rewrite.

Overall I am done with everything but this section and the whole thing currently sits at 45 pages. After I finish the rewrite I only have to create a Character sheet for the ships and I am good. Final Draft Tuesday/Wednesday? Lets all press thumbs I do not have much to do tomorrow!
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[steelbrok]

One thing the ship as character system does is break a major SW rule

So far all weapons, armour etc have been to a single scale from swords and daggers up to tank guns and armours.

the system has gotten away with this without starting to roll huge numbers of dice (does anyone really roll 16d6 for an FGMP15 in Traveller?) by having big armour and armour piercing values.

In my collection these get biggest in Necropolis where some weapons and vehicles are hitting 100 armour/AP

now I do like that all weapons are to the same scale, makes life easier
I'm not fond of the whole armour and AP thing (really just the AP part) though I do understand how it has enabled all damage to stay to the same scale

Now in ships as characters there will be a need for a conversion between nornal SW personal/vehicle and ship scales

In the Serenity RPG they have three scales; personal, vehicle and spaceship which have factors of 10 between them (so 100 from personal to spaceship). this allows them to keep stats the same between different scales

In Mongoose Traveller there you multiply starship weapons by 50 to get damage on a personal scale

so the question is what is the ratio between normal and ship characters for their toughness, armour and damage?

This doesn't break the system or negate the various comments on this board but does need some thought. Fot myself I think that even small ships should have a decent (say 50%) chance of harming tanks in the setting.

So 2d4 (if you accept my argument for beam weapons) or some other figure (if you prefer another way ) needs to have agood chance of wounding a tank.

Figure a ratio from there depending on how powerful the other vehicles in the setting are.


Oh, I'd consider having higher power weapons use the S/M/L burst templates too.

[steelbrok]

I had an idea about this

It isn't a perfect solution but it is very FFF

Starship weapons ignore ALL armour and damage is always applied against the base toughness of the character/creature/vehicle being attacked.

Similarly when a Starship is attacked by a none-starship the attacker gets no benefit from AP, the full ship's armour always applies

[Chaosmeister]

Hm Vehicles do not play a huge role in my game. Generally I always assumed the Heavy Weapon tag took care of the pistol shoots tank thing? I would simply multiply it if neccessary. Something like ship vs vehicle 2x and Vs humans 3x or similar simple thing. But I am not convinced that is necessary.
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[steelbrok]

Size/Strength
When I initially read Chaosmeister’s document I assumed that he was using strength d4 to be a small ship (a fighter, say) up to d12 Strength being Super Star Destroyer or maybe even Death Star.

I realised this was the wrong approach at about the same time I realised this wasn’t what Chaosmeister meant in the first place.

This Ship as Character is specifically for the small-medium ships typically owned/used by ne’er do wells. Obvious examples are Serenity and the Millennium Falcon.

As Chaos says in his latest version, fighters can just squeeze into this system.

I think part of the confusion (for me anyway, maybe no one else was ever confused!) is that the strengths have been linked to descriptions of size

D4 small
D6 medium
D8 large
D10 huge
D12 gargantuan

These seem to be a hold over from the SF gear tool kit and I would recommend dropping them for character scale ships.

Instead I would use the terms Small/Large/Huge/Gargantuan as they refer to creatures in SWD/SWEX and specifically use them for large warships and megafreighters (modifying these ships’ Toughness and having the to hit DMs as given in SWD/SWEX). Small could be used for fighters and shuttles or thit could be decided that these just slip in to the default (medium) range.

OTOH

You could have ship characters relate to capital ships in the same way that normal characters relate to vehicles

[kronovan]

[Chaosmeister]

Hm did never think this would cause confusion, my apologies. I always intended the size scale to be the same as for monsters but It seems I totally remembered it wrong. I will have to rewrite this whole section to make absolutely clear what I mean.

Capital ships are not in this scale window it is not meant to create capital ships. You cant have a freighter and a capital ship use the same stat scale in my opinion, not with a system like SW with its broad strokes. It just is not granular enough.

For scale I may simply create my own.

D4 Transport
D6 Small Freighter
D8 Medium Freighter
D10 Large Freighter
D12 Cruiser/Frigate

Something like that. The point is to have the ships in inches on the table.

D4 Fighter = 1x1 Inch
D6 Small Freighter 2x2
D8 Medium Freighter 3x3
D10 Large Freighter 4x4
D12 Cruiser/Frigate 5x5

As steelbrok suggested elsewhere I could then use the Small/Medium/Huge /gargantuan scale with the respective toughness str and to hit modifiers as templates for other types of ships than player controlled. Say these all fall under Medium size, fighters would be small, Battleships Huge and really Capital Ships simply Gargantuan.
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[Chaosmeister]

Ok, I went with the scale written above and for now left out the small/medium/large scale out of it. ATM my brain is fried from this and the rules are workable as they are. I will have to find a way to deal with fighters and cap ships but I think this has to wait. I need to work on other stuff or my main modern horror campaign will go up in flames

I will let it simmer for one or two days more and see if inspiration strikes. If not I will release as is.
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