Design Monologue 5: Adventures...in Spaaaaaaace!
To succeed, this system must allow for adventures both on the ground and in space.
This can get tricky, as most parties will have one large ship, rather than a small one each.
We could try to avoid this problem by assuming everyone will have their own detachable shuttle, but that's just pushing it.
The ideal system would allow for players to perform roles other than piloting or shooting, which nonetheless seem just as important and are equally fun.
One easy idea is electronic warfare. In a post-Earthgate age, most ships are configured to run "off the wire", so jacking them outright is out of the question. However, numerous other avenues of attack exist. With knowledge of the target system (always the most important tool in hacker's arsenal), you can exploit vulnerabilities. For instance, you might know that the T-22 Caldon transport's spec cluster is very sensitive to gamma radiation, so you could generate a gamma ray burst to temporarily blind the enemy ship.
Effectively, the same approach used in by MMOs and 4th ed can work here: divide the players into roles. On a ship, those are:
- Commander (decides the overall strategy)
- Pilot (performs maneuvers, responsible for active Defense)
- Gunner (can be more than one, if ship has multiple weapons)
- EWAR (4e's "controller", aka crowd control/debuffer)
- Engineer (ship's "healer" and buffer)
In this setup, the commander almost becomes the least important, rather than the most important role. This is suitable for games in which the commander is an NPC, or for more democratic crews. Also, the commander could sit in for one of said roles. The commander probably wouldn't do a lot of actual commanding, because PCs in a tabletop game have the advantage of expanded time, where they can all talk to each other during the combat to coordinate actions amongst themselves...if they bother at all, that is.
Still, a 4e-leader-style buffing commander isn't out of the question, for those who like that sort of thing.
Of course, pilots of small craft can also take independent actions.
On a spacecraft, more so than a renaissance-era sailing ship, it is quite possible for a party of 4-6 each to find a role in ship-to-ship combat.
The Character Sheet
Of course, we aren't the noobs the Star Wars d20 development team was. Nobody wants to devote their character entirely to ship combat or ground combat by means of a class or prestige class, or even feat selection.
Instead, every character's ship and ground combat statistics should be kept separate. Both are derived from a character's base statistics--for instance, a character skilled with computers will be great at hacking terrestrial targets as well as performing EWAR on a ship--but feats and skills specific to one type of combat or the other should be gained separately and equally.