Starships
Starships are vehicles capable of interplanetary and interstellar travel.
For a list of known starships (pre-3.2), see Starfighters, Space Transports, Capital Ships.
To create your own starship, see Starship Creation.
Starship Basics
Properties of a starship:
- Size: Simply put, how big it is.
- Level: Level of advancement. Some ships are built to perform, others to just get you from A to B. Analagous to character level.
- Manufacturer: Something like the "race" of the ship.
- Role: Something like the "class" of the ship.
- Frame: The chassis of a starship, before modules are added.
- Power System: Reactor(s), capacitor(s), and power distribution--very important.
Attributes:
| Attribute | What it does |
|---|---|
|
Maneuverability |
Very important, applies to many things |
|
Firepower |
Multiplier for all damage modified |
|
Capacitor |
Expendable resource for all things a ship can do |
|
Reactor Output |
Recharge rate for capacitor |
|
Hit Points |
The structural strength of the ship; at 0, the ship is totally destroyed. |
Attack and Damage Model
- Hitting and Missing
- Ships don't attack. Gunners do.
- A gunner can control one or more guns. There is no upper limit (generally), though fire-linking guns does not give them the ability to hit in arcs they cannot target, and there are stacking penalties the more guns you link.
- Gunners use their own ability to fire ranged weapons (normal personal combat rules), modified by the agility of the weapons they are firing. Big guns = slow = big penalties.
- Gun agility for coaxial (pilot) guns = ship's maneuverability.
- Gun agility for turreted weapons is usually higher than the ship's maneuverability.
- As a rule, bigger guns are less agile. Ex: for the same size turret, a quad laser has worse agility than a dual or single laser, but of course does more damage.
- Ships do have defenses: Reflex, Fort, Will. Guns generally target Reflex (though some might target Fort, such as an ion cannon).
- Reflex Defense is determined primarily by Size and Maneuverability. Big ships have terrible Ref Defense (negative numbers), small ones have very high defense. This is countered by matching modifiers to gun agility.
- Fort Defense is determined mainly by size. Bigger ship = more mass = harder to hurt with the same force.
- Will Defense is determined by the ship's computer system and other factors.
- HP
- Structural HP are ship-wide. Lose too many and you're going down. Will suffer other systems failures when a hit damages structural HP. Somewhat analogous to "bleeding out" and injuries.
- Armor HP is Absorption. For larger ships, armor may be chunked up into several locations. A hit on a specific area without armor can inflict structural damage, even if other areas still have armor.
- Shields use the Resist mechanic. They are not depletable. Typically, shields be be configured to be stronger in one area than another, or to be spread evenly.
- Damage Types
- Same damage types as personal combat.
- Armor and Shields react differently to different types of damage.
- Armor comes in many flavors. There are flavors that offer equal Absorb to all types, and flavors that strongly favor one at the expense of another. In general, it is easier to make armor strong against Kinetic damage than Thermal, and EM protection is almost impossible.
- Shields in Star Wars overwhelmingly favor plasma weapons; few to none are effective against kinetic attacks.
- Structure does not favor any particular type of damage.