Starships function on most of the same general rules as vehicles and characters, though at even higher speeds and larger scales. There are really only a few basic rules regarding starships and their behavior that need to be discussed. The most basic rule about starships is this: starships behave almost exactly like a vehicle. So, starships follow the same rules as vehicles unless otherwise noted in this section.
Using Starships
The operation of a starship isn’t as straightforward as it is to operate a vehicle. No one person can operate a starship all by themselves. Starships require crews of several people, each performing a specific task, in order to operate at their maximum potential. That being said, each of the separate tasks are fairly straightforward and require only a few skills to perform properly. For game-play purposes, the most important crewmen on board a starship are its commanding officer (needed for their leadership and to give orders), the chief science officer (responsible for making scans, primarily), the chief navigator (who pilots the ship), the chief engineer (responsible for repairing the ship), the chief communications officer (necessary for contacting other spacecraft and bases), the chief tactical officer (who operates the ship’s weaponry; traditionally this role is also carried out by the chief navigator), and the chief medical officer (responsible for healing any injuries among the crew). Any character (even an NPC if no player character is available) can fill out these seven roles. Each role alludes to one or more of the player Disciplines; a player who knows what role their character will play on the ship will do well to maximize as many of the sub-disciplines in their major discipline as possible.
All of the skills in the game can be important for the proper operation of a starship, given certain circumstances, but as a general rule there are a few key skills that a character group would be well advised to pay particular attention to.
The primary skill needed to fly a starship is
Starship Piloting.
Starship Piloting is used to fly from point-to-point in space, and functions just like the
Vehicle Piloting skill as outlined
in Chapter 6.1. The only real difference is the types of "terrains" a starship may encounter as it travels from point-to-point. Space terrains will be covered
in Chapter 8.3. Starship Piloting is also necessary to perform starship maneuvers, which will be discussed in
Chapter 9.4.
As with vehicles, there a numerous
Science sub-disciplines that are useful in operating a ship's sensors, though there are only a few of them that are used most often on board a ship (namely,
Starship Technology, Vehicle Technology (for fightercraft), Planetology, Astronomy, and Sensor Use.) The scanners on a starship work just like any other vehicle; for details, see
Chapter 6.1.
Astrogation is an essential
Navigation sub-discipline; it is used for plotting courses between star systems. More details on FTL flight will be given in
Chapter 8.
Many of the remaining sub-disciplines have specific uses. For details of those uses,
see Chapter 3. For applications of those skills in combat,
see Chapter 9.4.
Finally, all starships have software designed for crewmen to keep their own journals and logs. This includes a general starship log, which is a place the captain and crew may write down thoughts, ideas, and important pieces of information. Any crewmember can check the ship’s log at any time as a free action. In the meta-game, players should be encouraged to keep their own notes as their character would in the ship’s log, in order to help with immersion in an adventure (and help the continuity of a campaign). Keeping such notes may help the players remember events that have happened to them in the past (and past game sessions), mission goals, places they need to investigate, and so forth.
Scales of Action and Starships¶
Starships operate on some of the largest scales used in SFRPG (only space stations are larget). No starship is less than 22,500 cubic meters in bounding box volume, and some are incredibly large: 19.6 billion cubic meters or larger. Starship volumes use the same set of size classes that vehicles do. Like vehicles, a starship is said to be of a certain size class so long as it's bounding box volume is at least as large as the minimum required size for the size class.
Starships also operate on their own scale of damage. Like vehicles, starships can have four HP counts, reflecting SHP and AHP damage forward, aft, port and starboard. Different types of HP damage have different effects on what happens to the starship, similarly to vehicles. The scale of damage done to starships is larger than that done to vehicles. In its simplest form, 1 starship HP is equivalent to 10 vehicle HP, or 100 character HP. Any character- or vehicle-scale weapon that does that amount of damage is capable of damaging a starship. Starship weapons are almost always powerful enough to kill a character or destroy a vehicle outright, should they be hit (fortunately for both characters and vehicles, there is a modifier to HD when facing an attack from a starship;
see Chapter 9.5).
Starships operate on very large scales of movement; they have to in order to reach their destinations within an average sentient being’s lifespan. Starships have two main drive systems: sub-light drive and superphotonic drive. Sub-light drive moves starships between the planets in a solar system. Superphotonic drive allows starships to cover great distances at speeds much greater than that of light. For full details about starship movement,
see Chapter 8.3 and
Chapter 8.4. One of the side effects of the amount and types of weaponry that starships use is an incredibly large combat range. Starships can engage targets out to a range of thirty million kilometers, the range at which most weapons fired from a starship lose so much energy that they cannot cause appreciable damage, or when guided projectile weaponry runs out of fuel. As such, starship combat ranges are typically abbreviated to a 0-18 scale. Literally, this scale is in gigameters (millions of kilometers). For more on starship combat,
see Chapter 9.4.
Finally, all starships provide full cover for characters and any vehicles aboard. It would be a tad bit difficult to operate the ship if it didn’t (what with all the air leaking out and lethal doses of cosmic radiation leaking in).
See Chapter 6.1 for details about cover.
Acquiring and Maintaining Starships¶
Starships are incredibly expensive machines, generally available only to the super-rich (
even the smallest, least expensive bare-bones corvette would run the equivalent of something like 21 million dollars, or roughly the price of two top-model Learjets). The vast majority of starting PCs won't be able to afford this amount, even with a
Wealth trait of 30. Beginning characters may not be able to purchase their own starship, at least not right away. This can be problematic for non-military characters that need to find a way to get to their interstellar destinations. Fortunately, there are several ways around this problem. One, characters can book passage on domestic passenger starships, shuttles, or transports. Two, they can charter a flight. Finally, they can borrow, steal, or otherwise attempt to acquire their own starship.
Booking passage is the cheapest way to go between worlds. The characters simply travel with other domestic traffic. The cost for traveling this way is the same amount for normal charter transport as outlined
in Chapter 5.4. The characters get the same benefits as they would with normal charter transport. In a pinch, booking passage between worlds can cost as little as 2 MU/SP a head. Note that this is good only for worlds that are frequented by normal passenger traffic. The GM may up the prices if the world is a backwater planet with little passenger or commercial traffic. Sometimes booking passage will not be possible, simply because no one ever visits a system, normal traffic doesn’t go to a system, or the system is outside the government’s territory. In that case, the next best thing is charter travel.
Chartering a starship is not cheap. Depending on cargo, number of passengers, and level of personal danger to a charter ship’s crew, the cost can get very high very fast. The GM should attempt to negotiate a price in good faith with the characters (unless the captain of the charter ship isn’t someone who negotiates in good faith). A good starting price for simple transport is 55 MU/SP and up from there. Charter transport in this fashion gives the same benefits as Luxury Charter Transport as listed
in Chapter 5.4, with the addition of confidentiality of whatever cargo the characters may be hauling around and total privacy.
Sometimes booking passage or charter travel is not an option for a character group. In this case, they’ll either have to borrow, steal, or otherwise acquire a starship (
this can involve a bit of story work and lead to multiple plots for the character group).
It may be that the characters will find themselves in the employ of a corporation, or perhaps a crime syndicate group. These groups will probably either loan the characters the cash they need to buy a ship (usually at high interest rates, and/or with the understanding that the characters are in the group's employ), or they may very well give the players their own ship. If the players are given a ship, they may be given something sub-standard, in which case keeping the ship in top repair will be a challenge (and could lend itself to adventures for the group). There should always be some serious strings attached if a group offers the characters a starship in decent shape. Generally, though, the quality of starship offered will be proportional to the amount of influence and/or the reputation a character or character group has over the group they wish to acquire the ship from.
Players of "purist" Starflight campaigns will probably find themselves in the employ of Interstel. In this case, the characters are essentially being loaned a company ship, with the understanding that they are company employees. Interstel pays for all maintenance on the ship, as well as for the basic provisions for their ships and crews. In exchange, Interstel gets to keep all of a crew's profits, though each ship's crew is given credit for the amount of profit they've earned for the company (
through interest on a ship's bank account; see Chapter 12.2). The crew never gets to own the ship, and personnel can be assigned or recalled to a ship's crew without notice. It's very much a
Truck system, but it's mostly honest (
and it looks good on a resume...)
If borrowing from a corporation or crime group doesn't sound like a great idea to a character or character group, they might try their luck with the government (if one exists). The government may elect to grant the characters the use of a ship and subsidize the cost of the ship, with the understanding that the government owns the ship and expects it to be used to haul cargo between certain worlds, and with the government taking half of the ship's gross receipts. If this sounds like a good idea for the characters, they will have to make a down payment to the government (usually about 20% of the total cost of the ship). They will be assigned a cargo route and schedule (usually between 2-12 planets). After 40 years of government service, ownership of the ship transfers over to the character group. Note that with this setup, the government can reserve the right to call up the ship to serve as an auxiliary (a transport craft) in time of crisis, sometimes even after transfer of ownership.
Finally, a character or group can attempt to get a starship financed through a bank. Banks will usually want the character group to pay at least 20% of the total cost of the ship up front. Before loaning the character the rest of the money to buy the ship, they will also often want a detailed financial plan of the ship's activities, to ensure that monthly payments will be paid on time. If the player group is granted a loan, they may buy their ship, at which time the bank takes ownership. The players must pay back 1/240th the total loan for a period of 480 months (40 years). As soon as the loan is paid back, ownership transfers to the player group, no strings attached. Banks get nervous if owners fall behind on their payments; after three missed payments, they'll usually send someone to repossess the ship.
Any of these ideas are good ways for players to acquire a ship. There are, however, other ways of acquiring ships that are not necessarily legal. Stealing a ship is not really recommended, as it will put the characters on the wrong side of the law in an area of space (provided there is law and order in that area of space, of course). At the very least, if the characters intend to steal a ship, it should not be in the same area as the one they want to operate in, as it's likely the ship's former owners will want the ship back and probably won't hesitate to use force in order to do so. Of course, if the characters don’t mind being on the wrong side of the law, this won’t be as big of a problem for them. Prize vessels (ones that are captured in combat) also fall under this general category, though the capture of a prize for use in a foreign navy is often seen as legal, at least by most starfaring governments.
If push comes to shove and the characters simply don’t want to exercise any of these options, there is always space travel using space vehicles such as capsules, shuttles and transports. Indeed, these options may be much more affordable for the characters than going out and buying a full-fledged starship (they just might get into a lot of trouble should an enemy starship challenge them, though, as whatever they wind up with will undoubtedly be no match for their opponent).
Of course, if the GM wants to play it that way, then the characters can be “given” a starship to operate by the military force of the appropriate government, with the understanding that the characters are a part of that military group and work for that government. This may be the fastest and cheapest way for a military character group to get into space, and their early adventures can be used to bulk up the crew’s experience.
No matter how the players get a hold of their ship, they will have to be able to maintain the ship if they want to have any hope of using it. This includes generating enough money for docking fees, fuel, provisions, crew salaries, and routine maintenance. To get a rough estimate of how much is required for maintenance on a monthly basis, take the ship's size class and multiply it times 50. If monthly maintenance isn't paid, the ship acquires one Flaw (
see Chapter 7.2).
Users
As previously mentioned, there are only two different types of users of starships in SFRPG, Military and Non-Military. The only major difference between a military and a non-military starship is the amount and classifications of armament they carry. Military starships can carry as many weapons as their weight can handle, provided there is enough accessory space to mount weaponry on the ship. Non-military ships, however, are limited in their selection of weapons. No special weapons are allowed aboard non-military ships. This rule is limited to those pieces of equipment specifically listed as special weaponry in
Chapter 7.2.2. Of the remaining types of weapons (beams and projectiles), a non-military starship is only allowed one type and one class of weapon, at one-half (rounded up) the normal maximum class allowed for the ship's chassis and weight. It is possible for a non-military user to have a military-designed starship, though these are either starships that have been bought by a corporation for extra muscle, or pirated starships.
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