Static Discharge Vanes

[CRMcNeill]

I’ve been playing around with a lot of ideas for starships (and vehicles, to a slightly lesser extent) that allow various ship systems to get increased performance out of good skill rolls. While considering the effects of Ionization, I remembered this particular bit of tech (mentioned in The Far Orbit Project, on pg. 28), which is described thusly:

These vanes are used to bleed off any dangerous energy build-ups in the engines. They are not necessary for daily operation, only under certain conditions, such as combat or ion storms*. If somehow lost, the engines might wind up building dangerous amounts of energy, causing a reactor melt-down (assuming the fuel system doesn't explode first).

*emphasis mine.

The Static Discharge Vanes pair with an optional rule (Shielding In Combat, on pg. 31 of Far Orbit) that reads as follows:

If Shield Dice are lost due to a Shields Blown result on the Starship Damage Table, the shields may overload; the shield operators in the deflector module must compensate or risk further damage. Roll 1D per shield lost to determine how difficult it is to shunt the shield overload into the static power buffer (the attempt uses the Capital Ship Shields skill).

If successful, the energy is transferred to the static buffer and discharged, resulting in nothing more serious than ionization of controls (unless the discharge vanes have been destroyed, in which case engineering has a problem). The Controls Ionized result is serious but recoverable.

If unsuccessful, or if the discharge vanes are not operational, the shields overload; roll the number of shield dice lost against the ship's hull dice. The result is taken as normal damage as the energy shoots through the connected systems. If a critical failure occurs (a 1 on the Wild Die) or if the starship damage table result indicates Shields Lost, the shield module itself explodes.

Now, I’m not a big fan of this Optional Rule, as it honestly just seems to invent a problem that requires use of the Static Discharge Vanes to solve. However, the idea does lend itself to other possibilities, specifically w/r/t ionization.

What I’m thinking is for Static Discharge Vanes be fitted in one form or another to all ships, and be the method by which ships dissipate ionization, whether from normal operations, ion storms or weaponry effects. Under normal operation, any ionization is dissipated at a rate of 1D per round; what I’m proposing is letting the ship’s pilot / flight engineer to roll either the Piloting/Operations or their Repair Skill dice in order to dissipate ionization even faster. Say, at Difficult Difficulty, a ship dissipates an extra 1D of Ionization, plus an additional 1D for every ten points of Success. This can be rolled as either a Standard Action or as a Reaction.

Of course, the penalty could be that, on a Failed Roll, the ship retains the ionization the engineer was trying to dump…

Anyway, just wanted to get that out there for discussion before I go back to 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

[Whill]

[CRMcNeill]

Alternate Theory: the system uses static electricity deliberately generated across the ship’s hull to discharge internal ionization. Say the ship has multiple small vanes sticking out all over the ship. When it needs to disperse ionization, the engineer manipulates the polarity in the vane network, using the particle shielding as a conduit. Then the shields do what they do and dissipate the static electricity. This appears as blue lightning arcs playing across the hull, so what we take as a visible sign of ionization damage is actually the ship’s own systems trying to get rid of it.

That way, we only have to depend on one mystery system (shields).
_________________
"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]

So you are saying that the external projections are manipulated to shift polarities and "herd" the energy out of the ship into the particle shields, which then expel it as static electricity? I see two issues with that. One is the problem you raised in the other thread: Electricity can't be discharged into a vacuum. You could discharge it on the ground, in an atmosphere, or gas cloud in space, but not in a vacuum. (Curtis Saxton knew this so invented a way to discharge the energy in space.) And not all ships have multiple small projections that could be said to constitute a "vane network."

I addressed both of those problems in my post above. Neutrinos can be discharged anywhere including into empty space, and neutrinos pass in between atoms of matter without any interaction, so neutrinos radiators could be completely internal and thus not depend on a network of external projections that does not exist on most ships.

In canon, the "static discharge vanes" were a special feature of just one specific ship to address a problem created by the author in the first place. As you pointed out in the other thread, neutrino radiators are already a canon aspect of shield technology to discharge excess energy absorbed by shields. Considering them for this concept was actually your suggestion – I just ran with it.

If it helps, defector shields are generated by shield projectors so all ships with shields must have projectors, but in most cases these do not take the form of visible projections on the ship's hull. In my SWU there is a projector for each arc as my damage system includes damaging a ship's ability to protect that arc to better reflect the films ("Sir, we've just lost the main rear defector shield.") If you must have technobabble representing what the engineer is specifically doing to discharge the ion energy, you could say that they are adjusting the polarity of the shield projectors to more efficiently herd the ion energy into the shield system that already converts excess energy to neutrinos and releases them (according to Curtis Saxton).

This doesn't do anything to make it any less miraculous, but if folding the process into shield tech helps anyone who likes this concept, great. But since most non-space vehicles don't have shields but do have controls ionized damaged results on the damage chart, you'd have to add to the premise that there is no way to lessen controls ionized results early for vehicles, and that they expire as the rules indicate due to the discharge just happening on its own into the ground, water, or surrounding atmosphere.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[CRMcNeill]

Yes, normally electricity would not be able to be discharged in a vacuum. The wild card in the deck, though, is shields. All we know is that shields protect against attacks, and nothing about the mechanism they use to do so. It’d be an easy step to just say the dispersion is part of whatever effect shields already have.

Whichever way you prefer, here’s a revised version of the rule:

If a ship/vehicle takes Ionization Damage, the crew may attempt to disperse it at a higher rate than the normal 1D per round. However, this can backfire, as improper use of the {insert technobabble} system can have the opposite effect, retaining ionization that would normally be dispersed.

In game terms, the pilot / engineer rolls their Operations or Repair skill against Difficult Difficulty, applying the result to the following table:
Result = Effect
Success by 0-10 = Immediately reduce Ionization Penalty by 1D (in addition to the normal reduction of 1D/round)
Success by 10+ = Immediately reduce Ionization Penalty by 2D, plus an additional 1D for every 10 points of success.
Failure by 1-10 = Ionization Penalty unaffected, reduces at normal rate.
Failure by 11+ = Ionization Penalty unaffected, does not reduce by 1D on the next round only.
This is normally declared as a Standard Action, but can be used as a Reaction at +5 Difficulty, subject to declared Actions and MAPs.

_________________
"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]

Giving this a bump with a new thought: perhaps all ships are equipped with a Static Discharge Array (most of which are not readily apparent to the eye), but some ships (like the Nebulon B) are augmented with Static Discharge Vanes that provide a bonus to Deionization rolls.
_________________
"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