The Nature of Official Rules

[CRMcNeill]

Power Control (The Far Orbit Project)...

[Mamatried]

To me the still wast list of skills are all very generalistic and covers a very wide area of "know how"

if we look at repair skill to go with RAW then no you can not PILOT or DRIVE a car or starship, at all.

However you can modify repair systems that makes it easier to later pilot the vessel, etc.

As to power rerouting the first thing is a definition before even discussing the ifs and the raws.

What is power rerouting?

I am in combat, I flip a switch to.....
anything you flip a switch to do is operation/piloting skill as well as much more

Now if we think about reducing power from lets say shields and then change up wireing and the like then this will be repair.

Then if power rerouting what I think it is then it is a changing where power is routed, as in the left wing is damaged, we can't repair this now but we can rerout the power and make it not go through the wing, thus restoting power to the sensors. The once a difficulty is determined by a REPAIR check which would be anything with opening up stuff, moving wires and such, then you roll and the power is rerouted.


However flipping a switch to give sytem A power and turn off system B is maybe rerouting of power, but it is flips being switched in the cockpit.


Then the thing about allowing repair to operate.

Picture this, you go into a car, and with engine alone, you effectively turn accelerate, brake and even signal?

Ergo reper can not operate a system, but it can pull wires and put down wires @$$ in bypassing systems and rerouting power

[CRMcNeill]

[Mamatried]

[Bren]

If we want to know what the rules say, we have to read the rules. Power Control is introduced as an optional rule on page 25 of the supplement The Far Orbit Project.* What the rules don't say is that Capital Ship Piloting should be used for attempting to switch power.

So what do the rules say?

As part of the optional rule we are given one example, "Captain Vedij [of the Far Orbit] orders extra power routed to the main weapons and shields." The text goes on to discuss how power control can take (or reroute) dice from one system or systems to augment a different system or systems. No skill rolls are mentioned initially. Then the rules provide a table of base difficulties for transferring power. Immediately after the table the text says

"Power switching takes time, however. When the shield operator rolls as indicated above, compare the result to the table below."

To succeed in switching power, a player must roll above the particular difficulty in the table. The time required for power switching is determined by how much the shield operator exceeded the difficulty in the first table.

So we see that a roll is made by the shield operator. Now clearly Capital Ship Shields is a different skill than Capital Ship Piloting. But it is the roll of the shield operator, not the pilot nor some ship's operation crew person that determines if power can be routed and how long the rerouting takes. (Durations range from 1 second to 2D rounds.)

I think it's clear since the designer didn't list a skill different from shield operations, the intent was that the Capital Ship Shields skill of the shield operator should be rolled for power switching to (and probably from) the shields.


* I didn't find any reference to rules for power switching in Pirates & Privateers.

[CRMcNeill]

Not an explicit statement, but certainly a strong inference. And of all the ship crew duties, shield operation under the RAW bears the closest resemblance to power distribution. Not to mention that the shield operator generally has the least to do in a combat scene...
_________________
"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

[Mamatried]

in the case of the shile operatoor and power switching, was this in RAW an exampla, or the "only" type of power switching.

Can this be exact process, and description be used with the skill names space tansports, can the power be switched only form sields, or can any system operator do a power switch related to his system.

Shield operator shileds
gunner weapons systems
sensor operator sensors
etc etc.

if the raw only states a combat example with blaster then this does not negate any other weapons, but is meant as as an example of how combat or the action is done.

[Bren]

[Mamatried]

A cocpit of a fighter with 1 maybe 2 crew does not have many options to swwitch power or even reroute, but there are still some, like the transfer of auxilary power to sensors, shileds, or power from a non fireing to a fireing systems.

However all this in a fighter cockpit is done by simply flipping a switch, and it makes zero sense and was most likely never the intention of the RAW to demand a seperate skill to flip switches in a cockpit.

That means that unless we scale upp systems and the operational demands, any and all powewr rerouting or power switching is covered by the operatio/piloting skill by flipping switches in the cockpit.

now if we look to a star destroyer we have the large crew pits, each with different system stations, one being sensors, one being communications, gunney etc.

due to these bing at different stations and due to size, the process of rerouting ans switching power is far more demanding than in a smaller cockpit. A small sixe craft/cockpit will be very similar to <one> of the star destroyers systems.


to give this a visual look to apollo 13, everything normally done including power switching and rerouting could be done just fine in any of the two crafts, however since one was almsot out of power and had to server as the lifepod, they had to do a deeper power transfer one that would require repair and not merely operation/piloting. as in they had to do more than simply flip a switch.

[Whill]

Great points here, but this discussion is somewhat rehashing the discussion in the Power Routing (for freighters) from February, which refers back to CRM's Advanced Starfighter Combat thread. FYI so we aren't completely reinventing the spaceship power core here.


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[Mamatried]

Without rewriting what is and and all that.

Even the long fluff text regarding power rerouting/switching is a described example.

If we were to stick word by to raw then this can not be done on any ship smaller than capital ship, as it is capital ship that is written.

So the whole thing is about examples.
The more complex the ship and the larger the sytems the bigger operation it is.

For most frieghters and fighter or what players generally can get their hands on to use this is all done in the flip of a switch in the cocpit.

There is not reference in any canon to indicate otherwise.

ALL power switching retouring to any sytem is done by the flip of a switch
in a capital ship this is done by flipping a series of switches in the right order.

Nothing requiring any form of repair skill whatsoever.

However if a system is destroyed or damaged, and it needs to be repiaerd then repairing here can be used to simply diconnect this sytem, diverting power to the other sytems that is again rerouted/switced by the flipping of switches and pressing of buttonf in the cockpit, that is why the buttons and switches are there.

So what the ruels experpt say is an example on how to reroute ower in a capital ship, Not how to do this in afriehger or a figher at all as for these shipe types the power controls are all in the cockpit and at the flip of a button...using one skill called piloting/operation.

After all power rerouting in it simplest form is tuning on the brights when driving, I have yet to see this requiring any form of mechanical skill.

[Bren]

[CRMcNeill]

I think we’ve all seen instances in the game where there is some task overlap, where it could plausibly be performed by more than one skill. I can also see the logic in allowing an engineer with a high Tech level and lots of skill dice in Repair being able to operate the systems they are responsible for repairing. I can also appreciate people wanting to go their own way for their own reasons (see my signature).

However, it’s pretty clear just from the Attribute descriptions that, under a strict reading of the RAW, any normal operation of a mechanical device falls under the Mechanical Attribute.

It is not contradictory to state “the RAW say ‘x’,” and also state “you are not bound by the RAW, and may choose to do ‘y’, instead.” Heck, the RAW itself makes that point.
_________________
"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

[Mamatried]

This thread is called the NATURE of officila rules.

I think what we should take away from this header is this:

While some tasks are described by ONE skill, they are and meant to be examples.

If we look to the combat section and how combat is described we can argue that the firearms skill do not exist, slugthrowers are firted using blaster skill etc.

This becuse an example on combat uses the balster skill.

This is the same thing.

In short the rule exerpt that spawned this mentioned capital ship shields as a skill for using shields.

This them means that ONLY caital ship shileds exist, smaller ship despite canon and referances do not...etc etc.


The NATURE of the official ruels in all the casees are to be examples and very loose fitting ones.

I dare say the shiled power rerouting described using capital ship shiled, would NOT be possibel in a smaller ship, hence why you use the starship Shileds skill etc etc.


it is examples.

in this case it is as I see taken for granted that in most small ships mst powers are rerouted or switched by flipping switches in a comcpit. I mean we do see them fly their fighters, not stop exit and do mechanics as they ned shileds ot guns.

and that is the nature of the official rules, examples.

like if a task is described using a skill, then this is an example and if in a case of combat and a rule for shooting, ...........then all skills exist even of the example only used blaster

[CRMcNeill]

In context, however, Shield Operator isn't presented as an example, but as part of the description for the result of how well the skill was rolled. Considering the larger context (text also mentions "Power Control" and "power controller"), Shield Operator may have been a typo / editorial oversight.
_________________
"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