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Whill
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 Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:08 am Post subject: Starship Repair? |
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In 1e we had one starship repair skill. Then in 2e they not only split it up into three different kinds of ships (capital ships, space transports, and starfighters, like they did for the piloting skills), but they also made another change we haven't talked about as much here. They also split off ship weapon repairs from the ship repair skills, so we got capital ship weapon repair and starship weapon repair skills. In 1e, starship repair covered the weapons too.
Some of you started off with 2e so the change didn't seem so weird. And they have a repair skill for weapons that might be on non-space vehicles: blaster repair (for blaster-tech based weapons anyway). Blaster repair includes speeder- and walker-scale blaster weapons. I started with 1e but splitting off the weapons from the vehicle repair skills doesn't really seem weird to me.
But has anyone ever thought what all kinds of technology the starship repair skills still cover? Like shields and hyperdrives? Not too many repulsorlifts and walkers have shields, and no walkers or speeders have hyperdrives. Don't the starship repairs skills seem to be broader and deeper than walker repair and repulsorlift repair? And speaking of repulsorlift tech, all starships have at least three different engines: repulsorlift, sublight, and hyperdrive. The starship repair skills cover it all as super-skills.
Should a starship's repulsorlift engine need to be repaired with the repulsorlift repair skill, not starship repair? And although non-hyperdrive capable spaceships would appear rarely in space opera stories called "Star Wars," the universe they take place in must have a very large number of them. These would be very common because most sentients would never have any reason to leave their home star system. Technicians for shuttles that take you to the moons and back wouldn't need to know how to repair hyperdrives. Should the miraculous and unique hyperdrive technology need its own repair skill? Should combat shield technology need its own repair skill? It could maybe cover shields of all scales. Splitting these off from spaceship repair would seem to make it more analogous to repulsorlift repair, walker repair, and the other vehicle repair skills. And repair skills seem to mostly be the domain of specializing droids anyway, so high Technical sentients would still be very valuable since they have everything with base attribute.
Starships just have such a wider range of technologies than all other vehicles. Thoughts?
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 1:09 am Post subject: Re: Starship Repair? |
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| Whill wrote: | In 1e we had one starship repair skill. Then in 2e they not only split it up into three different kinds of ships (capital ships, space transports, and starfighters, like they did for the piloting skills), but they also made another change we haven't talked about as much here. They also split off ship weapon repairs from the ship repair skills, so we got capital ship weapon repair and starship weapon repair skills. In 1e, starship repair covered the weapons too.
Some of you started off with 2e so the change didn't seem so weird. And they have a repair skill for weapons that might be on non-space vehicles: blaster repair (for blaster-tech based weapons anyway). Blaster repair includes speeder- and walker-scale blaster weapons. I started with 1e but splitting off the weapons from the vehicle repair skills doesn't really seem weird to me. |
Since i started in 2e, then backtracked to 1e games for a while, then shifted back to 2e games, that shifting over, to ME, was not so weird.. Though i did find it strange that fighter scale weapons are repaired 'differently' than cap ships are...
| Whill wrote: | | But has anyone ever thought what all kinds of technology the starship repair skills still cover? Like shields and hyperdrives? Not too many repulsorlifts and walkers have shields, and no walkers or speeders have hyperdrives. Don't the starship repairs skills seem to be broader and deeper than walker repair and repulsorlift repair? And speaking of repulsorlift tech, all starships have at least three different engines: repulsorlift, sublight, and hyperdrive. The starship repair skills cover it all as super-skills. |
Shields, hyperdrives, hull, and engines.. Repuslors to ME, come under their OWN Repair skill...
| Whill wrote: | | Should a starship's repulsorlift engine need to be repaired with the repulsorlift repair skill, not starship repair? And although non-hyperdrive capable spaceships would appear rarely in space opera stories called "Star Wars," the universe they take place in must have a very large number of them. These would be very common because most sentients would never have any reason to leave their home star system. Technicians for shuttles that take you to the moons and back wouldn't need to know how to repair hyperdrives. Should the miraculous and unique hyperdrive technology need its own repair skill? |
Since it has it's own skill to operate it (astrogation), maybe it SHOULD also have its own repair skill..
| Whill wrote: | | Should combat shield technology need its own repair skill? It could maybe cover shields of all scales. Splitting these off from spaceship repair would seem to make it more analogous to repulsorlift repair, walker repair, and the other vehicle repair skills. And repair skills seem to mostly be the domain of specializing droids anyway, so high Technical sentients would still be very valuable since they have everything with base attribute. |
Shields i'd leave as is..
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Whill
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 1:24 am Post subject: Re: Starship Repair? |
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| garhkal wrote: | Repuslors to ME, come under their OWN Repair skill...
| Quote: | | Should the miraculous and unique hyperdrive technology need its own repair skill? |
Since it has it's own skill to operate it (astrogation), maybe it SHOULD also have its own repair skill. |
That's a good point. Repulsorlifts have their own operation skill, and spaceships have a sublight drive operation skill, and courses through hyperspace using the hyperdrive are programmed though the astrogation skill.
| garhkal wrote: | | Shields i'd leave as is. |
Another option is to have a separate skill, but allow overlap. Shields repair repairs shields of all scales (including rare speeder or character shields), but the starship repair skills still include combat shields for starships. And another option is to allow the starship repair skills to repair the other components at a small penalty, like -1D, so if your spaceship repair skill is more than 1D over the other skills, there is still a benefit of using it and it wouldn't require the other skills. But you could also have people who specialize in repairing Shields systems and hyperdrives.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:28 am Post subject: |
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Dividing up the skills by systems might be interesting... blaster repair will cover everything from the DL-44 to a turbolaser, while "shield system repair" will cover the navigational shields on a shuttle and the magnetic shield on a Death Star.
However, it does tie into something I've noticed with a lot of late 80s/early 90s games... skill explosion. More skills, and more specific skills... Hovercraft v. Hovercycle v. Vectored Thrust Vehicles, which appear in different books (a Palladium example). More recent games have, IME, tended towards fewer, broader, skills... much, apparently, like 1e.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 10:33 am Post subject: |
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I suppose it depends how granular you want this to get. There's going to be a lot of cross-branching and overlap of skill sets.
Advanced Skills might be an option; have basic system repair skills (Repulsorlift Repair, Hyperdrive Repair, Sublight Drive Repair, etc), then assign them as prerequisites to the higher-level (A) Type Repair Skills.
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 3:32 pm Post subject: Re: Starship Repair? |
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| Whill wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | Repuslors to ME, come under their OWN Repair skill...
| Quote: | | Should the miraculous and unique hyperdrive technology need its own repair skill? |
Since it has it's own skill to operate it (astrogation), maybe it SHOULD also have its own repair skill. |
That's a good point. Repulsorlifts have their own operation skill, and spaceships have a sublight drive operation skill, and courses through hyperspace using the hyperdrive are programmed though the astrogation skill.
| garhkal wrote: | | Shields i'd leave as is. |
Another option is to have a separate skill, but allow overlap. Shields repair repairs shields of all scales (including rare speeder or character shields), but the starship repair skills still include combat shields for starships. And another option is to allow the starship repair skills to repair the other components at a small penalty, like -1D, so if your spaceship repair skill is more than 1D over the other skills, there is still a benefit of using it and it wouldn't require the other skills. But you could also have people who specialize in repairing Shields systems and hyperdrives. |
Thanks for the cudos.
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Yora
Lieutenant Commander
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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I think I read REUP first and 1st Edition second, and I immediately thought that the much smaller skill list seemed like a so much better way to go.
I've not tried it out yet, but I feel like there really only need to be two skills for vehicle repair. Spacecraft repair and planetary vehicle repair. (With spacecraft being split into starfighter, transports, and capital only for piloting skills.) Having different skills for aquatic, submersible, wheeled, walker, landspeeder, speederbike, airspeeder, jetpack, rocket pack, starfighter, transports, and capital ships is of course total overkill, but I don't see more than two or three vehicle repair skills as useful in any way.
In what circumstances would a PC ever put points into submersible opperation or ground vehicle repair? You might come acoross them a few times, but in most campaigns you'd expect them to be a waste ot character points.
I also feel like having armor repair and weapon repair as separate from equipment repair seems unnecessary. It might partially depend on how many CP you give the players between adventures, but if an engineer character gets enough points to put in these obscure skills with rare uses, you also give the same amount of points to gunslingers who really just want blasters and dodge.
Repair skills are my number one pick for where skills really can be merged together. Together with piloting skills, they make up about all the skills that I consider candidates for merging.
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Ray
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Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Sol, Western Arm, Milky Way
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| Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2020 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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Repulsorlift Repair: Fixing that beat-up old Pick-up your grandfather has left laying in the front yard for a few decades.
Starfighter Repair: Fixing that A-10 Warthog that landed with half-a-wing and one engine.
Capital Ship Repair: Fixing the HMS Tim Hortons. Er. The HMS Toronto. |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 12:56 am Post subject: Re: Starship Repair? |
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Those are some good Earth analogies, Ray.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | I suppose it depends how granular you want this to get. There's going to be a lot of cross-branching and overlap of skill sets.
Advanced Skills might be an option; have basic system repair skills (Repulsorlift Repair, Hyperdrive Repair, Sublight Drive Repair, etc), then assign them as prerequisites to the higher-level (A) Type Repair Skills. |
I am very resistant to making spaceship repair itself be an advanced skill. I think the spaceship repair skills are broad in RAW, but spaceship repair should be a normal skill, which is why I am considering other options of separating hyperdrive and shields from it.
In my opinion, the advanced version of starship repair is an engineering skill. I handle engineering as a general advanced skill with many possible specializations, and the engineering specializations each have the main engineering skill and other normal skills as prerequisites. (A) engineering: starship would have all the appropriate components as prerequisites.
| garhkal wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | Repuslors to ME, come under their OWN Repair skill...
| Quote: | | Should the miraculous and unique hyperdrive technology need its own repair skill? |
Since it has it's own skill to operate it (astrogation), maybe it SHOULD also have its own repair skill. |
That's a good point. Repulsorlifts have their own operation skill, and spaceships have a sublight drive operation skill, and courses through hyperspace using the hyperdrive are programmed though the astrogation skill.
| garhkal wrote: | | Shields i'd leave as is. |
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Thanks for the cudos. |
Shields also have their own operation skill.
| MrNexx wrote: | Dividing up the skills by systems might be interesting... blaster repair will cover everything from the DL-44 to a turbolaser, while "shield system repair" will cover the navigational shields on a shuttle and the magnetic shield on a Death Star.
However, it does tie into something I've noticed with a lot of late 80s/early 90s games... skill explosion. More skills, and more specific skills... Hovercraft v. Hovercycle v. Vectored Thrust Vehicles, which appear in different books (a Palladium example). More recent games have, IME, tended towards fewer, broader, skills... much, apparently, like 1e. |
1e achieved fewer in two ways. Some skills were broader, and a lot of skills were just left out. (IAG took the skills on the 1e character sheet and knocked off a few.) 2e not only added a skill for everything, but some of them were very narrow in scope.
My overall system is closest to 2e R&E, but I do agree 2e went too far with the skill explosion. I was inspired by 1e and IAG to reduce the skill set to something in between by both merging some skills and expanding the scope of some. I merged brawling and melee combat with their respective parry skills like IAG. I expanded blaster to cover all energy weapons. I merged dodge and running and included general feats of balance. I merged grenade and thrown weapons into a general throwing skill. Pick pocket includes general sleight of hand. I merged bureaucracy and law enforcement into a general law and organization skill. I merged business and value and added general knowledge of economy. I expanded planetary systems to include general knowledge of interstellar phenomena. Beast riding got general animal handling and empathy added to it. Con includes general deception. Gambling got general gaming added to it. I remarried hide and sneak as they were in 1e. Command includes general leadership. I added charm from D6 Adventure to persuasion. And more below...
| Yora wrote: | I think I read REUP first and 1st Edition second, and I immediately thought that the much smaller skill list seemed like a so much better way to go.
I've not tried it out yet, but I feel like there really only need to be two skills for vehicle repair. Spacecraft repair and planetary vehicle repair. (With spacecraft being split into starfighter, transports, and capital only for piloting skills.) Having different skills for aquatic, submersible, wheeled, walker, landspeeder, speederbike, airspeeder, jetpack, rocket pack, starfighter, transports, and capital ships is of course total overkill, but I don't see more than two or three vehicle repair skills as useful in any way.
In what circumstances would a PC ever put points into submersible opperation or ground vehicle repair? You might come acoross them a few times, but in most campaigns you'd expect them to be a waste ot character points.
I also feel like having armor repair and weapon repair as separate from equipment repair seems unnecessary. It might partially depend on how many CP you give the players between adventures, but if an engineer character gets enough points to put in these obscure skills with rare uses, you also give the same amount of points to gunslingers who really just want blasters and dodge.
Repair skills are my number one pick for where skills really can be merged together. Together with piloting skills, they make up about all the skills that I consider candidates for merging. |
Small point: landspeeders, speeder bikes, and airspeeders have always been the same skill - They are all repulsorlifts.
In 1e, the blank character sheet and every template had all the "core" skills from the skills chapter listed. Other skills existed, but the ones that wouldn't come up too much in the game could be added on a blank line. In 2e, there were two many "core" skills in the skills chapter to list all of them on the blank character sheet, and the templates only had the suggested skills for each specific template. I was inspired by 1e and IAG to make a blank character character sheet that went back to listing all my "core" skills on it. Skills like archaic starship piloting and ground vehicle repair aren't very useful for PCs to have, but there is nothing wrong with these uncommon skills existing. They just don't need to be pre-listed on the character sheet. (Aquatic vehicle operation is very useful in my game though as Earthlike planets tend to have more water than land, and I put things underwater.)
I merged communications and sensors into com-scan à la IAG. I merged blaster artillery, vehicle weapons and all non-space and non-hand-held missile weapons into a Mechanical skill called heavy weapons. I folded swoop operation into repulsorlift operation. I merged jet and rocket pack operation with powersuit operation to become a general personal conveyance skill. (I likewise merged their respective repair skills and added armor repair to that.) I merged computer programming/repair, droid programming, and droid repair into a skill called computers/droids. I merged all weapons repair skills (except specialty things like ligthsaber and bowcasters) into two skills weapons repair skills, drawing the line and space and non-space.
I expanded starship shields to include all shields, even though character, speeder, and walker shields may be rare. I merged space transports operation and starfighter piloting into a skill called spaceship operation, and made capital ship operation an advanced skill with spaceship operation as the main prerequisite. I likewise combined the space transports and starfighter repair skills.
D6 Space combines vehicle operation and vehicle repair skills into two skills each, with the line drawn a flying/non-flying. You might like that. That is a bit too broad for me. And I just see spaceship repair as having being more broad than even my other repair skills as starships just have so many different technologies in them.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:07 am Post subject: |
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| Yora wrote: | | Having different skills for aquatic, submersible, wheeled, walker, landspeeder, speederbike, airspeeder, jetpack, rocket pack, starfighter, transports, and capital ships is of course total overkill, |
I can see jetpacks and rocket packs combining, but i can't see wheeled vehicles having anything in common, repair wise with a submersable or space transport.
| Quote: |
In what circumstances would a PC ever put points into submersible opperation or ground vehicle repair? You might come acoross them a few times, but in most campaigns you'd expect them to be a waste ot character points. |
As a player, i've had acquatic vehicle ops and repair on ONE character. A quarren. Other than that, i've never seen anyone even USE the skill..
| Quote: | | I also feel like having armor repair and weapon repair as separate from equipment repair seems unnecessary. |
Ive never seen an equipment repair skill..
| Quote: | | I expanded blaster to cover all energy weapons. |
But, you Must have a separate skill, for BFG's!!. 
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Yora
Lieutenant Commander
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 4:43 am Post subject: |
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Equipment Repair is in REUP. Don't know where it first appeared.
I had assumed that hovercraft operation meant landspeeders and swoop operations meant speeder bikes. But at a closer look, hovercraft are air cushion vehicles (which immediately gets my vote for most useless skill in the game), and somehow there's a difference between speeder bikes and swoops.
Looking at it again, REUP also has podracer operation and power suit operation, and a total of 16 different piloting skills. 1st edition has three.
In the same way REUP has 17 listed repair skills against 1st edition's four.
These are the extremes in both directions. But since I don't regard Star Wars as being The Racers & Mechanics Roleplaying game, I favor much more leaning to the lower end.
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MrNexx
Rear Admiral
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 8:44 am Post subject: |
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Kind of wish Star Wars had something similar to Shadowrun's skill tree... yes, I can fall back on my Technical to repair or Mechanical to pilot, but if I'm the best Space Transports mechanic in the galaxy, I should be more than middling if it comes to a speeder or capital ship.... there should be some knowledge crossover.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 12:21 pm Post subject: Re: Starship Repair? |
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| Whill wrote: | I am very resistant to making spaceship repair itself be an advanced skill. I think the spaceship repair skills are broad in RAW, but spaceship repair should be a normal skill, which is why I am considering other options of separating hyperdrive and shields from it.
In my opinion, the advanced version of starship repair is an engineering skill. I handle engineering as a general advanced skill with many possible specializations, and the engineering specializations each have the main engineering skill and other normal skills as prerequisites. (A) engineering: starship would have all the appropriate components as prerequisites. |
The thing is, there's no reason you can't have multi-tiered Advanced Skills, as in, have the basic System Repair skills, with (A) Craft Type Repair as prerequisites, and then have (A) Craft Type Engineering with (A) Craft Type Repair as a prerequisite.
That way, you'd have the system basics, which would be applicable to any system of that type, then the (A) Craft Type Repair skill to represent a character's more specialized expertise at how that basic system knowledge slots into a specific field, and then the (A) Craft Type Engineering skill where the character can now take that knowledge and innovate with it.
Alternately, seeing as how Advanced Specializations are a thing, you could have (A) Repair as the main skill, with Specializations like (A) Repair: Space Transports, or (A) Repair: Capital Ships under it. The (A) Engineering skill is already set up that way, with each of the (A) Engineering sub-types having their own prerequisites.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Yora wrote: | | But at a closer look, hovercraft are air cushion vehicles (which immediately gets my vote for most useless skill in the game), |
Perhaps hovercraft are mostly used on planets, that for what ever reason, disallow repulsorlift vehicles??
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:39 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Perhaps hovercraft are mostly used on planets, that for what ever reason, disallow repulsorlift vehicles?? |
Hovercraft are specialized for niche environments or conditions. It's also possible that they're stealthier than repulsorlifts (perhaps the air cushion mechanism makes less of a sensor footprint than whatever anti-gravity effect a repulsorlift would make to support a vehicle of that mass).
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