Yet another shot at making starships...

[ZzaphodD]

Ok, I have this thing I cant get out of my mind. I want to have a decent starship construction system. Or at least a system for altering ships that is not overly simplistic like GG6. I aim at a size range from courier ships to medium freighters, but I really only need courier ships and light freighters if the system becomes to complicated.

Ill work with metrics as an abstract representation of weight and space. I want to have a 'power mechanic' where different system requires different amount of energy to work properly. Things will also cost you cash of course.

So, to start with, what ship systems are there (starting with a general overview, we can fill in all the extras later(differnt engine types etc))?

Hull
Courier Ship: Metrics: 50, Interior: 125. Cost: 10.000 Cr.
Light Freighter: Metrics: 100, Interior: 300 metrics. Cost: 20.000 Cr
Med. Freighter: Metrics 200, Interior: 750. Cost: 40.000 Cr

Hulls may be armoured. Ill add this later with a list of materials and their cost and weight.

Crew stations
Crew Stations: 2 metrics. Cost: 5000 Cr / Crew.
Additional functions per Station: +1000 Cr / function. No weight/space.

This includes controls, the actual crew position and space. This is for pilots, communication, gunners, etc. The actual number of crew stations is mostly up to the designer. However, few stations means that they will have to cover several functions (for example both Communication/Sensors).

CrewPassenger living areas
Small Staterooms:
Standard Staterooms: 5 metrics, 2500 Cr. / Crew/Pass.
Luxury:

Here Im really grasping for straws. Very hard to come up with 'reasonable' numbers for weight (mostly space actually). Includes 'standard' areas such as a gallery, refresher, and corridors. Do NOT include Medic bays, Workshops or other special luxury items (see the ship with a pool in it for example).

Life support:

Power Core
This is completely new. A 'medium' power core is what a YT1300 has. Ill go through its systems and apply a Power rating (perhaps system requirements +20%).

Medium Power Core: 10 metrics, 12.000 Cr, Power: ??

Sublight Engines

Modified versions of the GG6 engines.

Hyperdrive Engine

Modified versions of the GG6 engines. Basically faster engines will be faster, and there will be several speed levels (not just x0,5, x1, x2, etc).

Lateral Thrusters

Fixed systems with a Thrust rating. This compared to ship mass will give Maneuverability.

Shields

More or less GG6.

Sensors

This will require a complete overhaul. Basic sensors will give you range and Sensor bonuses. Added sensors will give you new ways of detecting stuff (GG6, but with higher prices).

Weapons

GG6 with a tweak.

Cargo space

Well, empty space more or less. Perhaps modifications will follow, secret, cold storage, etc.

Any more?
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[ZzaphodD]

HULL

Ill start with a Light Freighter (very) similar to an YT1300 as a reference ship.

It has a 100 ton (metric) cargo capacity. Given the size of the cargo holds, what would the total ship space (again, in metrics) be do you think? Remember, we only need a reasonable number to work with.

For example
YT1300-ish Hull: Cost: 20.000 Cr, Weight: 100 metrics, Space: 300 metrics.
Cost: Well, rather obvious. The cost includes basic control systems and general systems.
Weight: This is added on top of the total 'interior' metrics which is the hulls Space capacity. Other than Hull weight all weight/space will come from the Space capacity when fitting other systems.
A ship with either no cargo space, or fully loaded cargo bey will weight 100+300 metrics. This weight will then be compared to engines and thrusters to get a speed / maneuverability value.

EDIT: Threw in some materials Im working with from an old thread..

Materials
-Recycled Durasteel (Old hull plates welded to own hull. Cheap, heavy)
-Durasteel (Normal ship armor)
-Crystally Aligned Durasteel(Lighter, stronger durasteel)
-Bronzium (???)
-Quadanium Alloy (used in the Death Star hull).
-Duranium (???)

-Chromium Alloy coating (Naboo ships): Adds only protection vs lasers/blasters and Ion weapons, extremely expensive. Need a drawback (except price, perhaps physical attacks damage it).
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[CRMcNeill]

In a previous discussion, the idea was put forward that a ship's cargo capacity is a measurement of mass, so you could do something similar here, in that a ship's engine can push a certain amount of mass without any loss of performance, and all the various pieces of equipment that you add has a specific mass value, measured in metric tons.
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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

[ZzaphodD]

[Bren]

[vanir]

This is all my outlook, based on our gaming set in this period in past campaigns. Much of these are just house rules from that campaign.

If you're talking Old Republic era ca.4000BBY then you'll have separate hull and ray shields, with particle shielding taking the form of actual armour plates, often suspended from the hull so as to protect against shaped warheads. Concussion projectile launchers are a favourite assault weapon and few privately owned starships are equipped with expensive ray shielding so that pulse cannon are very effective.

The shield dice translate only to ray shielding, particle shields (durasteel armour plate) is given as a separate shields die value (in rebellion era they are incorporated into the normal hull strength or have an equal value to the normal shields rating depending on house rules). They used a different kind of particle shielding in earlier times, pulse weapons would probably struggle to damage the hyperalloy hulls of the Rebellion era.

This is the age of romanticism.

Automated systems were also in their infancy and relatively small vessels had large crew requirements. Starfighter-class starships had particular problems such as limited power outputs due to the level of technology. Starfighters in this period will be short range and fairly low powered (a Z-95 stats would be extreme performance), generally used as a simple point defence system but small cruisers really rule the space lanes and airspeeders are cost effective planetary defence.

Turbolasers and super-sized ships are outside of reasonable budgets at this tech level (late Information age transitioning to Space, hyperdrives were introduced to the Core Worlds by an alien species). Repeater type blasters, turbolasers and other specialised energy weapons are experimental and unavailable, laser cannon are heavy starship sized weapons typically fitted to capital ships, which themselves are hulking, slow umanoeuvrable vessels with massive crews which strafe each other in broadsides using short ranged weapons, in epic space battles of attrition. One large cruiser battle can last days above a planet, starfighters generally won't be taking part in them as they are virtually incapable of damaging a capital warship.

The smallest vessels with any kind of intragalactic range are the Courier ships. The Imperial HoloNet did not exist at this time and the beacons were used for navigational purposes (only the most expensive cruisers featured limited-navicomputers and astromechs were only just being invented). In particular subspace communications was range limited by power and required boosting stations for contact between sectors and regional commands, as such there was an increasing lag for communications across vast distances which could be weeks or months long. Courier ships were used for direct communications so were designed to make short hops throughout the colonies as far as the frontier (basically everything from the expansion region should be treated as unnavigated wildspace without specific star charts, the Inner Rim was the Frontier and the Colonies were the outlaying regions).

For deepspace travel some Jedi Masters made a home away from home aboard customised light cruisers, some maybe capable of docking smaller craft. Space travel was neither quick nor uneventful in past millennia and these would be heavily armed and armoured starfighter class vessels the size of small corvettes, capable of spending months from dock.
It is important to note that space travel was often more expensive in earlier millennia.

Some other important notations are that energy weapons are a fairly recent technology and still cumbersome and fairly basic. Personal blasters are oversized and expensive, projectile weapons like firearms are common and vibroweapons are certainly a common backup. The finest hyperalloys and transparisteel technologies are not yet available and very large spaceframe structures are extremely difficult to manufacture, usually very bulky durasteel semi-monocoque designs with massive crew requirements, which in turn limits operational range for a given mass and raises the power requirements.

Starfighters are usually the expensive whimsy of aristocratic planetary governments or used as a point defence system for flagships, they are not very high performing and are severely limited with weapons. For these you might want to construct a good combat airspeeder and then convert it to starfighter scale to get a representation of a lower tech. For speed capabilities you might roughly halve conventions, a move of 4 is average, 5 fast and 6 very fast. Most transports would move at 2 or 3 and high powered light cruisers and courier ships might move fastest of all once running at maximum reactor output. Starfighters will not have ray shielding or hyperdrives, in deepspace they'll be encountered from the hangars of flagships and rarely otherwise.

Concussion and proton style weapons are unguided and low yield. The heavy damaging energy weapon of the period is the pulse weapon in personal and artillery form which performs similar damage to equivalent blaster weapons but would be turned by later hyperalloy technologies. These are however very damaging to durasteel and flesh, but have large power requirements. Blaster weapons are at -1D damage for their size (meaning a blaster "pistol" in this era has the heft of a carbine but the stats of a pistol, the standard blaster rifle is like a repeating blaster and all have reduced magazine capacity), so pulse weapons are used which I think are ostensibly a cross between firearms and blasters, using perhaps the caseless ammunition of a transitional weapon using traditional projectile magazines.

The main governer of starship bulk is really crew requirements and consumables provision in this particular age of starship construction. You would increase the starship classification for every average consumables range and cargo assignment as a rough guideline, so that a small freighter with a 2 months consumables range would be the size of a small corvette and probably referred to as a light cruiser. It would have a crew requirement in the 6-30 range depending on overall power requirements which would also dictate mass alongside hull armouring. Items like shields are extremely expensive and oversize objects (double all weights and costs for installed equipment). Maximum sensor capabilities in this age are Passive and Scan at the kind of speeds at which even sluggish starships operate, Search and Focus arrays aren't available.

Due to the occasionally prohibitive crew requirements independent operators of medium cargo haulers (which have the cargo capacity of later era light freighters), will often use large numbers of droid crewmembers to perform basic ship functions. They are generally unsuitable for use in starship combat however, unless specially designed to do so. Nevertheless many budget transports are designed to use an early model R1 style Astromech droid with IIRC up to 2 preprogrammable hyperspace coordinates. Limited navicomputers with 2 or 3 preprogrammable waypoints are very large, power hungry pieces of equipment suitable only for large ships and large budgets.
These kind of 'small' cargo vessels tend to have a few weeks worth of consumables range for the minimum crew requirement and operate over short ranges. For long range deliveries mid sized cruisers and deepspace cargo haulers are required which can be prohibitively expensive and prone to pirate attacks.

Courier ships you should construct as scout type vessels but impose the consumables restriction and remember to adjust crew requirements and factor in automation at double cost and complexity. You might have something which has 3D hull plus 2D physical shields and 1D energy shields, so it appears as reactively armoured and adorned with defence systems. Each piece of starship technology is slightly exaggerated in this age. A manoeuvrable Courier ship with good atmospheric performance might have very elaborate S-Foils and stabilisation fins. A turreted weapon would be a major feature of the design, which would be constructed around preserving or enhancing its field of view (placed at wingtips for example, with an access tunnel to the main hull.

Cargo areas would be shuttle sized and in the 10-25 ton class, accommodations in the light transport class and very workmanlike. Often it will be operated at a skeleton crew and the systems will be designed for this, so that the crew listing for such a vessel, superior in its class might be something like 3 (skeleton: 1/+5).
Consumables range would be as per a heavy starfighter class or around 3 weeks. Hyperdrive navigational processors are such that primary hyperdrives are roughly as later backup drives. Obviously only cruisers travel long distances without port hopping.

Hyperdrive ratings:
x10 Old Republic era, x1 Rebellion era
x12 Old Republic era, x2 Rebellion era
x15 Old Republic era, x3 Rebellion era

Space ratings:
Cruisers keep average move ratings in space due to high power outputs so are as fast as most starfighters.
Custom light craft like Courier ships may raise their move ratings using normal starship modification tables making these probably the fastest starships in realspace.
Starfighter-class vessels are roughly halved,
4 spaces Old Republic era, 7-8 spaces Rebellion era
5 spaces Old Republic era, 9-10 spaces Rebellion era
6 spaces Old Republic era, 11-12 spaces Rebellion era
Most scoutships use starfighter-class realspace engines but are equipped with hyperdrives.

That's all I can think of relative to starship construction (and some general tech level tips), off the top of my head.

[vanir]

Of course if you're talking Yavin era then Courier ships have been replaced by scouts and light transports, which have the same capabilities with improved systems or cargo space.

The Old Republic era ca.4000BBY+ had different engineering requirements, construction materials and technological equipment.
Crew requirements were central to starship design and limited it.

In the Yavin era it is mostly mass and hauling capacity which governs designs. There is technology to suit almost any purpose. Overall designs are governed by cost-benefit ratio, only in the militant Empire would flagships the size of super-class star destroyers be constructed.

In terms of what you want to build the only qualifer is credits. Anything could be built, but a million credit apiece starfighter force is simply well out of the reach of most systems governments and even the Empire strictly governs costs for menial tasks like starfighter screening.

The starship construction guidelines in the Starship Pricing Pdf file I downloaded at one of these d6 support websites recently seems to work perfectly well as it is credits based.
Using this as a guideline I began constructing a very realistic and very balanced Mandalorian Battlefleet.

[Bren]

[vanir]

Well that is to say their engineering requirements are no more prohibitive than ours and the stark reality is that anything in physics is achievable but the only engineering limitation is cost.
I like the way Ken Crosswell puts it, mankind could've gone to the moon in the 19th century but the cost was more than the US could afford, but the technologies developed to do so were done during and through the project and an existing military budget, the affordable part was mostly the industry capable of building them or being adapted to.

And after all SW exists in a galaxy where we can say, now I want a Star Destroyer bigger than a fleet of super-class with a superlaser and starfighter scale defences...

Credits is the real limiter and really the only one. But this doesn't mean wealthy dudes can make teleporters, its theory may not even exist in SW-physics. But where SW tech is concerned it is all very much about how many credits are available? Want a CEC Corvette? A few million and it's yours. But consider the average starport budget for things like defensive formations and you get a couple of squadrons of cheap starfighters and a small frigate, we talking under ten million. What are they going to do, suddenly order a fleet of battlecruisers? With credits from where?

Then can you drydock them or will have to rent berthing? Can you afford to operate them, do you have a trained navy? The whole exercise is a credit-pit.

[Bren]

[Fallon Kell]

[quote="Bren"]

[vanir]

Bren I think you're missing my point stipulating that it must be physically possible, but if it is possible in physics, if the math works then the technology itself is absolutely wholly and only dependent upon funding. But the costs are often unrealistic, like contemplating going to the Moon in 1895, industry was in a much better position in 1955. But the physics for it were there in 1895, it was entirely possible, but probably would've bankrupted the United States, I think Ken's estimate was in the order of the GNP for several decades to bring industry subsidised up to scratch, some of these costs were offset by new metallurgies through wartime experience for example, but developing them from scratch is fine too, it would just cost unimaginable amounts to achieve. But doubting this is to doubt things like the Manhattan/Silverlight project which were indeed taking the approach of developing a new technology and placing it into industrial production simply by throwing money at every problem. And it worked, and did so in the time alotted.

This is the same argument here. You can have the anything-ship, the game breaker, the ultimate, but the credit cost is prohibitive, just the development project to build such a monstrosity is well beyond reach, the research centres to develop new technologies alone would take massive funding in the order of an entire, wealthy sector.

On the ship building scale you're dealing with exactly the same thing. A player can have any specification he wants that he can afford and if it is available at his dock.
He can custom design a starship if he wants but this is a ridiculously expensive undertaking, it is by definition a new class ship if it is completely custom designed from scratch. It is extremely difficult to get without bugs and ridiculously expensive, it is effectively a prototype. In some cases it can wind up many times the cost of a similar class of vessel new, particularly where you want several high powered features.
This is a great limiter, once your custom designed light freighter starts topping the 8 million credits mark you just start asking yourself why not just buy a Corellian Gunship?

Generally it works out that the most cost-effective way for players to have the ships they want is to modify an existing, used model. So in terms of game balance the credit system seems to work well for starship construction, at least for me.

By that what I mean is I built a few ships using that ruleset and I found the way to govern starship construction is to stick to around the average listed cost of various class of starship, because it's very easy for your little Corvette to wind up as expensive as a full sized cruiser if you try to spec it up to act like one in combat.

When I just made nice conservative little ships and tried to cut costs everywhere I could, not only did it feel more like a galactic profit organisation like starship manufacturing, but it also made very well balanced starships which compared well with others in its class and around the same cost.
As soon as I started making sort of boosted ships like we all like to, the cost of them was just ridiculous. I had one heavy starfighter come out to 5m credits apiece and just scrapped it and started over thinking, okay so that's why so many starfighter stats are on the uninspiring side.

[Random Numbers]

For building ships in game your point is not valid. Maybe if your campaign spanned +100 years or your characters had unlimited access to every mind in the galaxy trough a hive mind device and could also process the information.

Credits is not the only limited factor. Unless you have a time device, time is also a factor.

Just because you throw 100000M credits on a ship builder won't get you the Heart of Gold...
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Random is who random does...

[ifurin]

[Bren]