Condensed vehicle skills

[Starbeard]

Being new here, I thought I'd contribute something small while I revisited all of the threads.

These days I prefer the more concise 1st edition skill list. Actually, I'd like to make it a bit more concise, and the past few times I've played I tinkered around with different revised skill lists. My most current work in progress, only partially playtested, removes the distinctions between vehicle, starship and capital ship skills. Instead, there are rules on how the skills work for each scale.

Like I said, I'm still brainstorming this and haven't had the chance to playtest it very much. Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome!


The condensed skills are: Astrogation, Gunnery, Piloting, Scanners, Shields, Technology, Vehicle Tech, and Weapon Tech.

Vehicles and Starships: These use the same skills (e.g., piloting to fly, gunnery to use weapons).

Repairing Starships: To repair starships, use the lower of vehicle tech and the appropriate skill (except piloting, ignore that). For example, repairing the hull or engines would require only vehicle tech, while repairing weapons would require the lower of vehicle tech and weapon tech. Repairing shields would be vehicle tech and shields, hyperdrive V.T. and astrogation, and so on.

Capital Ships: These use the lower of the appropriate skill and technology. For example, flying a capital ship uses the lower of technology and piloting, using capital scale weapons uses technology and gunnery, etc.

Repairing Capital Ships: Because of the way the 'lower of' requirements stack, repairing capital ships uses the lowest of technology, vehicle tech, and the appropriate skill.

[Raven Redstar]

Interesting!

I'm also using a condensed skill list in my games now as well. I unfortunately did not come up with my current list I'm using, but I may ask his permission to post it and share.
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RR
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[Whill]

[Raven Redstar]

[Starbeard]

Thanks for the input, both. And yes Raven, if you can manage to share your list, I'd like to see it too.

The original idea was simply get rid of capital ship skills by making them an average of various skills, on the rationale that capital ship skills require not only familiarity with flying starships, but also familiarity with big instrument panels and crew protocol.

In the end I ditched averaging skills in favour of the 'lower of' rule, because figuring out an average die code every time I wanted to make a capital ship roll wasn't very expedient — and that led to writing them down for future reference, turning them back into recorded skills after all.

I also tried adding one extra skill per scale, but eventually ditched the idea. It went something like this:

- vehicles use the skill as is
- starships use the lower of the skill and technology
- capital ships use the lowest of skill, technology, and command

However, the extra skill needed for starships meant that starfighter pilots tend to have their skills a little too low (and their technology skill a little too high); and there's the issue where capital scale weapons only shoot well if there's an officer with high command at the trigger—and if your command is that high, you'd be better off on the bridge, well, commanding.

[Raven Redstar]

Okay, it looks like the link is public, I just had to do some searching through Google Drive to find the folder. I'll post in a separate thread with the updated skill list I've been using.
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RR
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