Converting Consumables to Endurance Dice

[Argentsaber]

That high cinema feel might well be able to use the same system, merely saying "the rebels see to your ship while it's in the base" or similar, making "resets" much more commonplace. This would preserve the mechanic for use when appropriate to the story.. and allow one to set up the players for resource raids to help the rebels at the base who are so forthcoming in most other adventures.

The reliability trait seems like a good one. I suggest a cumulative die code which is secretly rolled against the repair skill of the character. In this way, there can be no perfect assurance that everything is flawless (particularly if a wild die is used on the die code). Not really certain how to set this up, but I'm going to be mulling it over for my own ruleset.

[CRMcNeill]

A random thought on this one...

We already have an official rule in place for ships potentially taking damage if they travel at Full or All-Out Speed for extended periods of time. What if one were to piggy-back maintenance / break-down issues onto something like that? As in, the longer a ship goes without regular maintenance, it has to roll its Hull dice against increasing Difficulty or else take Damage? Additional options would include allowing the ship's Engineer to add bonuses to the Hull roll based on good Repair rolls, as well as a reliability modifier applied to the base Hull dice when making rolls. An obvious extreme low end would be the Falcon, which would need a -4D or -5D (extremely unreliable) rating to be realistic.

Thoughts?
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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

[Whill]

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

Added an expanded Conversion Table to the Rule Post.
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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

[CRMcNeill]

The more I think about the Conversion Chart in the Rule Post, the more problematic it becomes. As I'm trying to add House Rule notes to my stats, I'm finding that a lot of the Endurance Dice results are only off by a pip or two, which defeats the purpose of some ships sacrificing heavy weaponry in favor of greater endurance.

The biggest hassle of the Conversion Chart in the first place were the outlier stats at the upper end, like the ISDs and SSDs with 6 years of Consumables. What I'm thinking of doing is drastically scaling back said ships (capped at 1-2 years Consumables, perhaps), then using the resultant smaller ranged to redo the Chart in such a way as to provide a more concrete Endurance advantage to the longer ranged ships.

And so, for the moment, I'm going to not include Endurance Dice on the House Rule Notes I've been doing.
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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

[CRMcNeill]

Honestly, I'm thinking of throwing out any sort of Conversion Formula altogether and just making up numbers that fit ship classes. Historically, the larger a ship was, the greater its fuel bunkerage.

The thing that's hung me up is that the Endurance Dice as written don't follow the 1D = x2 progression I've been using everywhere else, but use a more arithmetic progression instead, where 4D is twice as much as 2D, 6D is 3 times as much, and so on. Trying to do a straight conversion on those terms would give an ISD with 6 years of Consumables ~300D or more
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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

[Raven Redstar]

You could give Endurance dice Scale Modifier added on if you want to give yourself the granularity of differentiating between models of ships within a class.
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RR
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[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

So, after sleeping on it, I'm going to abandon any sort of straight conversion formula, for a variety of reasons. Instead, I'm going to make an arithmetic progression from 1D to 24D, divided roughly like so:

1D-3D = Starfighters
4D-9D = Space Transports
10D-18D = Frigate-Scale Ships
19D-24D = Destroyer-Scale Ships and up.

There will, of course, be some overlap, as required by circumstances. Obviously, at the higher levels, there's almost need to roll such large amounts of dice, as any sort of Endurance issues with ships so large will be primarily story factors.

Also, some ships are going to be shifted relative to their standing with other ships. The Nebulon B, for example, doesn't need two years worth of Consumables, as it's primarily a convoy escort intended to operate with regular access to fuel at various ports. That's just one example.
_________________
"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

[CRMcNeill]

A brief thought regarding the Endurance Dice system...

Because of the way the system is structured (as in, tracking fuel consumption cinematically rather than arithmetically), it wouldn't be inappropriate for some ships to have an Endurance of 0D. Since the need to re-fuel and re-stock is only calculated at the end of the gaming session in preparation for the next gaming session, a ship with Endurance 0D (like, say, a TIE Fighter) could very easily perform all the functions required of it in a single mission, then automatically fail its Endurance roll at the end of the gaming session and immediately require replenishment before the beginning of the next game. Ships like the current crop of Alliance starfighters would be in slightly better position with Endurance 2D, still having a decent chance of being usable without replenishment in the next session.
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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

[Argentsaber]

[CRMcNeill]

[pakman]

TLDR Version:

Regardless of the selected mechanic - I would reduce the consumables durations of almost all craft (some drastically) - as they feel very high, and would have many implications for in universe logistics.

Longer Version:
Been watching this topic for a while - and I can absolutely see the value in both "a narrative or gm fiat" based consideration - but I can also see a value in a mechanic for it being something players feel they have more awareness and control over.

One consideration on my part however - is, sadly, like many of the stats in our beloved 30 year old game and others - the consumables ratings of the ships feel absurd to me. Just how much room did they dedicate to food and fuel which could have gone to ammo or more weapons or fighters?

Ammo, fuel and food are the key limiters to most modern vessels (depending on type etc.).

Space is at an incredible premium in any vessel - even more so in military vessels - that it would seem silly to me to stock enough food for a crew of thousands when in theory the nearest port is a hyperjump away (yes, breakdowns - I know....).

However, most campaigns are not based around a star destroyer - so this is meandering a bit - but I do overall feel some of the consumables are a bit long - unless of course - we want to say those are emergency rations - vs. actual food.

Moving on to stats...
I am in the middle of a large house rules overhaul of my game, and will be working on ships soon - so this topic (and many others covered by our community here) have been in my mind a bit.

I am going to list consumables as an abstract of air tanks, common replacements parts, necessary maintenance items, emergency food and etc.

I am thinking that I am going to do fuel differently just have not worked it out well - but we see fueling up a ship to be a thing in star wars - so I may try to keep it traditional - I.e. you usually don't carry more than a trip or two worth. Unless it is maybe a ship designed for longer range (compare a regional jet vs. a long haul).

As always, we face the struggle that movie creators are looking for the minimum amount of detail to support a narrative - whereas those of us trying to model a consistent universe for a gaming setting are very different scopes of work...

be well my friends, and may the dice be with you.
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SW Fan, Gamer, Comic, Corporate nerd.
Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon....

[Argentsaber]

Okay, I haven't had any real issues with endurance dice so far, but the characters have stayed reasonably local, and have a good method for supplying the starfighters, which are the only ships that would probably need it. After the next big battle there is likely to be more in the way of traveling and such, and I will have better data then.

On a partially related note, I can no longer find the houserules thread on Reliability dice, and the in text links aren't working for me at all.. any help?
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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
G'Kar, Survivors (Babylon 5)