Advanced Skill Armor Design

[tetsuoh]

Okay so theres an advanced skill for armor repair.

Armor design seems to only appear in the Alliance Intelligence Reports book, and with no specifics except being in one or two of npc's skill listings.

And yet theres a skill list going around that lists time taken as being 1+ days.
I have no idea where they got that number and am trying to find out more about the skill without success.

Anyone know if theres details for the skill anywhere?

Asking because we had armor design as armor engineering - and probably still will at least for power armor.

[vanir]

Talking house rules but you might consider powered armour design and prototyping to require some team skills (either among the design/construction team or the PC doing the work), like Armour Repair 5D obviously, but Droid Repair at least 3D and Droid Programming at least 4D (an exoskeleton is basically robotics and software), then of course the advanced engineering skill (A) Armour Engineering with enough to blueprint and construct a prototype at a difficulty proportionate to the finished product.
By and of itself the engineering part is just for the blueprint. Hell it would be best if the construction team had Metallurgy at least 3D (Knowledge skill) and Machinery Operation at least 3D (Mechanical skill).
And don't forget you need tools/equipment/workshop/lab.

It would be much easier to make regular (non-powered) armour, drop the droid skills requirement (saves a lot of prerequisite CP) but retain metallurgy and machine operation to actually go from blueprint to prototype, with those rolls tossed in with the engineering roll for success.

If you just had armour repair and advanced engineering you could basically either repair existing armour really well, arguably reverse-engineer existing suits to a limited extent, but when it comes to designing and constructing a custom suit, with engineering alone you're just talking about blueprinting it.
You could blueprint a terrific suit and sell the blueprints to a company who has the workforce/equipment with the other prerequisite skills to actually prototype and construct the design (such as metallurgy, machine operation, etc.).
Then it gets more complicated with customised additions of course. Advanced optics, built in features, envirosealing, you're probably looking at a construction team with skills in scholar: weapons technologies, scholar: biochemistry, computer programming/repair, etc. depending on the features.

[TyCaine]

[tetsuoh]

agreed

[garhkal]

[TyCaine]

Entirely possible, I think anything's potentially true since things finished with WEG. An R&E Companion expanding the skills and such could have been in the projected future...

Just out of interest, does anyone have access to the D20 versions. either regular or SAGA? Perhaps there's some details there that can be leveraged?

Otherwise I think the rules in H&S give a fair base to start from, and then making the decision whether to have a separate Design skill or have it part of Engineering is up to the individual GM's. Though it's curious with all the vehicle engineering skills around I've never once seen a mention anywhere else for a separate design skill, for example I would expect that for Battle Station construction. but anyway.


T.C.

[tetsuoh]

yeah near as i can tell there is no design skill for anything except armor actually.

watch me have just put my foot in my mouth but anyway.

and we agree that really design work is part of engineering. if you can't read the blueprint you shouldn't be working on it basically.

[vanir]

Hate to repeat myself but IRL engineers usually don't do the construction, the mechanics do. They do the design and blueprinting, and lead the construction team largly in an administrative capacity. They work on the prototype, which is the design concept development phase (after mockup), but even then by "work on the prototype" I mean they tell a mechanic to do this and that and come and check his work, make some adjustments, go back to their nice office and run performance projections.
Engineering is all about design. What it isn't so much about is construction. In this case that would be the armourers and other skilled personnel using skills already mentioned in my last post or others along similar lines.

(what maybe confusing is combat engineers, whose job it is to construct things but that's a completely different thing from materiel engineering)

I realise I can't be relating such details about constructing SWU armour IRL, but I am pretty intimate with some warbird designs from concept to production and development and that's how it works. I could tell you most of Dip.Ing.Kurt Tank's career and major designs and projects from 1938-45 and that's pretty much the story. In fact the Fw-190A he's credited with he really hardly laid a hand on himself aside from concept development until he took up a personal project to build höhenjäger that became the Ta-153/152 concepts. But even his work there was highly specialised, he'd tool around with the blowers and turbos, but mostly his job was in an administrative capacity and team leader. That's what a materiel engineer does.

Anyway I realise my way isn't everybody's way, but that's been working for us very realistically in game as it keeps a balance on PCs taking advanced engineering skills, whilst actually allowing them to gain the benefits of spending the time and effort, in a structured basic system.
Someone wants 4D armour with no dex penalty sure no worries, but you need this and this and this and these skills and this amount of credits and after successful rolls blueprinting it you still need to RP concept development, prototyping and testing, then final construction using a team with aforementioned requirements and facilities.

The primary PC benefit to having advanced engineering skills alone, and using those skills on their own, is coming up with great new technology concepts and selling the blueprints to a major manufacturer, if analogued to how materiel/technological engineering works IRL that's really about all you can do with that skill alone. It's all the other parts involving skilled labour, not engineering, that actually builds the thing. That side of it at most a really involved engineer might do the test piloting himself, and make final adjustments in construction himself, using repair skills combined with his engineering knowledge, the engineering phase is design and blueprinting and administrative/team organisation.

So the secondary PC benefit to advanced engineering skills is you can add it to the corresponding repair value when doing labour tasks involving that type of equipment. Makes him a master mechanic, but also makes him too valuable to have beating alloy plates into shape to fit the blueprint when what he's needed for is designing the blueprint and running projections, then checking other people's work and making adjustments, etc. You can't have your engineer appoint someone else to do those things so he can play with spanners, he needs to do those things and trust his construction team to play with the spanners.
Unless of course he wants to hide in a shed for 3 years to build one simple item that could've been done in a few months if done conventionally...and possibly kill himself testing the first raw prototype because he won't let a proper engineering team help him.
And...even engineers need their work checked by subordinates just as they check their subordinates work.

Anyway a point of view I guess.

[Lancil]

I think you all are not looking at this the right way....I imagine that in the SWU building a custom droid or suit of power armor is somewhat similer to us here in the real world building a custom motorcycle, computer, or car. All it really takes is an idea, some know-how, and and a lot of money. Here in the real world if you want to build a custom computer you don’t have to create a mother board from scratch (which would probably need a computer engineering skill) you just go online and find one that suits your needs and budget and you buy it. Conversely in the SWU if you want to build a custom suit of armor you just need an idea, some know-how, and some credits. You don't have to invent the servo-motor it has been done for you already it already exists. You just have to find and purchase the one that suits your needs. You should not need the (A) power armor engineering skill for what your purpose is. Now if you are trying to create something completely new like a speeder bike that trans forms around its rider to become a suite of power armor (robotech stuff) that could be a different story.

[tetsuoh]

We play our game somewhat in between that.

For us if you want to improve armor ratings including reduced dex penalty you can do this with just armor repair.

But if you want to build a custom fit suit (which in our games means the suit starts at no penalties) you MUST have armor engineering.

Now you may design it out first - and then make improvements to the design before construction, should you wish, which means less rolls to possibly make mistakes. Which falls under the rules for improving armor in the core rules book. But this also falls under engineering since it is required to make the design in the first place.

Construction falls under the repair skill but you may add engineering since it will help you understand the concept you are trying to achieve.
You then simply need to find the materials to build with and begin fabrication, which hopefully you have the right tools for.

NOW if you are trying to do something that is either unknown to you when you begin your rolls or that does not yet exist in the canon, you must design and prototype it. BUT once again if it is something that is a better version of something that does exist - you are simply making improvements which can be designed or straight to the workbench as above.

So we do a bit of both. We find this works rather well. Not too long a process, and yet not too easy.

[garhkal]

As a related q... Who makes those going for getting an engineering like advanced skill have to
A) hunt down someone who has the skill to teach them
B) rp out the process of being accepted as a student
C) spend time out of game learning it?
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[tetsuoh]

[garhkal]

Do you list what (A) skills can be 'self taught'?
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[vanir]

With using repair skills (or combining engineering skill with repair skill) to simply modify the stat-attributes of an armour suit (eg. make less dexterity penalty), keep in mind under RAW it has a mishap modifier as a jury rigged modification.
You have to re-engineer an item to remove the mishap penalty. That's the biggest difference between equipment modification and equipment engineering, eg. my "bounty hunter armour +1D/+2D, -1D dex" I modify for +1D+1 vs energy, +2D vs physical, -2p Dexterity, so I get a +1 catastrophic mishap modifier when hit by energy or moving around; but say I take it to a lab and re-engineer it for the same bonuses, harder to do because I have to use only engineering skill dice instead of combining it with repair dice, but after cost/time/conditions are ruled by the GM, if successful for the mods I get those benefits without any mishap modifier, because it is re-engineered not modified...to the same bonus effect.

This has been working well, but it's harder to get enough dice in advanced engineering to do major changes (is better for game balance anyway like that), so usually you can mod a suit for bigger bonuses with repair but have worse mishaps on an unlucky dice, and re-engineer one for smaller bonuses on average using advanced engineering but no mishap modifiers.

[tetsuoh]

we apply the mishaps tables to anything that has been modified beyond its normal limit and our gm simply changes the occurances to fit whatever the mishap is rolled on.

simply as that.

leads to interesting stories. everything from your standard blaster pack explosion and ship console needing kicked to prismacolored, dicso, jury rigged rave glowrods shocking the wielder to death.