A question for my learned colleagues here...

[Bobmalooga]

What constitutes the difference between a capital ship and a starfighter/space transport vessel, other than that classification in the book? For instance Vangar's Pirate Corvette (pg 181 of the second edition r/e) is a starfighter scale despite having a 500 ton cargo capacity and a crew of 50+ people and yet the Tantive IV which is smaller in size (by thirty meters) is capital?

So help me figure this out...Would I be justified in converting the Pirate corvette to a capital ship?

Also, is there either a home made or established ruling on how much cargo space capacity is lost when converting cargo carrying capacity and space into a hanger bay?
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[CRMcNeill]

The reasoning is that the design is too light and fragile to qualify as Capital. If you actually factor in the 6D modifier to the ship, you end up with a Hull of -2 and a Maneuverability of 8D.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[aegisflashfire]

The real answer is "It was bizarrely arbitrary"

The Skipray Blastboat is for all intents and purposes a fighter. It flies like a fighter, it can be run by a single pilot, and its combat role is something akin to a torpedo bomber or heavy fighter. Yet somehow its a capital ship. Several of the Corvette class ships are starfighter scale, others are capital scale. The demarcation line was never laid out.

This is something I hope to fix with 3rd edition, but thats a long way off.
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[klhaviation]

This is one of the warts in 2nd edition, although I have seen a lot of house rules for this, few actually do much more than over complicate, or over simplify the issue. I think perhaps the core skill and starshiop mechanics my have to be changed.

[garhkal]

Power output to me seems one of the bigger reasons for whether something is capital or SF scale.
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[Kytross]

Here's my take on it:

Generally anything over 100 meters is a capital ship.

Most capital ships are bulk freighters. 500 tons is nothing. Bulk freighters measure cargo in the tens of thousand to millions of metric tons. They are designed to handle cargo for an entire world. One of the key design considerations here is the ship has to be large enough to have a reactor that can produce the 6D difference between scales.

Starfighter scale ships are smaller than 100 meters, usually much smaller, around 30-50m. Light freighters are built to handle smaller cargo, especially rimward where bulk freighters rarely travel, being concerned about pirate attacks and the like.

The exceptions:

There are two notable exceptions, the skypray blastboat and the Imperial assault shuttle. Both are smaller than 100 meters. Both were created in the short period between version 1.0 & 2.0R&E. I think their stats need an update or qualifier. Neither has the size to build reactors big enough to create that 6D scale difference.

When I use the Skypray I house rule it to starfighter scale and give it one capital scale weapon that has a fire rate of 1/3. Seems to be what they were going for, a starfighter scale ship with one big gun.

When I use the assault shuttle I leave it alone. Yes, including all the maneuverability penalties that come from the scale difference. The reactor necessary to run a 6D difference is heqvy, so the assault shuttle has to deal with that inertia. The way I figure it, the thing is built to take a hit from a capship as it travels across a space battlefield so it can get to its destination, an enemy capship, and launch spacetroopers. I treat it as a short term vessel with high energy consumption. It is not a ship that you want to try and use long-term, it's too expensive to run.

NOTE: 2D of your hull code are particle shields. That means 2D of your hull code comes from the main reactor of your ship

[atgxtg]

I would love to get rid of the scaling. One thing I liked about D6 Space was that each ship had a Scale Factor which gave a smooth progression by size.

The Scale Factor solved a lot of the bugs inherent to D6 Star Wars. But it also introduced a couple of it's own. For instance, since a TIE fighter was slightly smaller than a X-Wing it got a bonus to maneuver and was a bit more fragile (good), but it guns did slightlyy less damage (not so good).

Now that the REUP has incoprated some of the various variant rules for handling large die pools, perhaps we could just factor scale into the die codes?

[garhkal]

So what would the 'scale factor' of say an ISD versus a lonar strike cruiser be?
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[cynanbloodbane]

While I like the idea of scaling the structural capibilities of ships, the weapon damage of a medium turbolaser should be constant no matter what ship it is placed on. I can see reducing the rate of fire for lower powered ships, but not the damage.
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[atgxtg]

[CRMcNeill]

While I agree the scale system is broken, I've never felt the need to throw it out entirely. My fix was to add additional scale levels and move them somewhat closer together. Reducing the 6D gap between Starfighter and Capital Ship is a good place to start.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[atgxtg]

That is what the scale number did in D6 Space. Rather than scaling in big increments of 2D, 6D or more, it allowed for 1 pip incrments in scale.

The real problem with scale is that it was introduced as a quick fix for the stats given in the Star Wars Sourcebook. WEG probably should have just thrown out the values from the Sourcebook when the did 2nd edtion. They did just that when they dropped the Speed Die Codes for Move scores.

The scale system is never going to be "right". Starfighters end up sluggish and poor at dodging compared to a human - just because of the way the scaling system works.

[CRMcNeill]

That's too narrow, AFAIAC. It almost reaches a point where you question giving everything its own stat; why do that when you can just use the same stat for everything and just change the scale modifier. Even assuming it works well in its own universe, the SWU already has a mass amount of stats that are already set up for scale classes. Going through and reassigning modifiers to everything sounds like way too much work.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[DougRed4]

[atgxtg]

Doug,

Don't you ever have situations where Starfighters go up against walkers or airspeeders?

Basically the scaling system makes walkers ponderous vs. humans -which is fine, but it also makes everything else ponderous.