Last Emperor: Starships

This is a the Last Emperor guide to converting D20 Dragonstar to the NWoD/Storytelling/Mage system used for the new game. This article discusses Starships including construction, operation, and combat rules.

Description

Starships have a number of statistics in common with other vehicles and an additional set. Base statistcis are Durability, size, structure, acceleration, and handing. Starships do not have a top speed or safe top speed. New statistics or abilities are sensor rating, Steath rating, crew size, weapons list, and equipment.

Durability

The ability of the ship to resist damage from weapons and other attacks. Starships start with a durability of 5, to resist radiation and micrometorites.

Size

Starship size is measured in spaces, a rectangular prism about 5' by 5' by 10' (1.5m x 1.5m x 3m). This space comfortably holds one medium size (Size 5) creature and their control systems. Spaceships range in size from about 10 spaces to 20,000 or more. A 10 space starship is about Size 15 (on the WoD scale). Each space is about 1 ton when empty, 3 tons when filled with cargo, and 8 tons when filled with equipment (e.g drives, armor, weapons, etc.)

Structure

Structure is the measure of the damage capacity of the ship. Starship structure is not calcuated by adding Durability and Size, but is a function of number of spaces of the ship and construction.

Acceleration

Acceleration is the rating of how much engine power is availble to move the craft. Unlike other vehicles, the starship acceleration is an abstract measure of how well it accelerates compared to other ships. Ships with higher accelerations have an advantage in combat.

Handling

Handling of a starship is how well it can make small changes in course over a short period of time to avoid obstacles. Most starships are not capable of handing well, and have a significant penalty to their pilots skills.

Sensor Rating

Starship sensors are it's eyes and ears. All starships come with a standard set of sensors, but some have significant upgrades, with much more sensitive systems.

Stealth Rating

Some ships, usually warships or smugglers vehicles, have modifications to make them less detectable by other ship sensors. By default, ships have a stealth rating of 0 (no penalty to detect), but it is possible to improve this.

Crew size

While small ships require only one crew member (the pilot), larger ships require larger crews sometimes into the hundreds or even thousands.

Weapons

Ships mount weapons for piracy defense, as weapons of war, and to discurage competition.

Equipment

Each ship also has a list of equipment and other special features, These include cargo spaces, passenger cabins, workshops and labs, hanger bays, fuel tanks, escape pods, and any number of other things.

Operation

Operating a starship can seem like a complicated taks, but the automation of many tasks make the entire job much simpler.

Piloting

Normal space navigation requires an Intelligence + Sciences (Space Navigation) roll, generally with one sucess to make sure the ship arrives at the place desired. In general the ships auto-pilot can take care of all the boring details.

Starcaster teleport plotting requires an Intelligence + Sciences (Space Navigation) roll, Every 10 light years of distance imposes a =1 penalty on this roll, as the uncertianties of chages at a distance can cause unexpected results.

Takeoff and landing under difficult conditions (e.g. through a storm) requires a Dextrity + Drive (Pilot) roll. Under normal conditions this can be automatic.

Sensor operations

Object size	Successes required
Planet	5
Planetoid or Moon	10
Starship	15
Human	20

In general sensor operations requires an Intelligence + Sciences (Sensor Operations) roll. When doing scans for pirates or other ships, a scan adding the sensor rating of the ship, and subtracting any stealth rating of the ship(s) beening sought.

If you are scanning an entire system for a specific object, the sensor operation becomes an extended action, requiring a number of success which depends upon the size of the object being sought. Scanning a planetary surface to make a map or find specific objects also requires a extended sensor scan. Each roll takes about an hour to perform.

Combat

Starship combat, in general, works like the standard ranged combat from the nWoD book. Inititative for each ship is determined by the Dexterity + Composure of the Captain of the ship.

Space combat has four abstracted combat ranges; Long, Medium, Short, and Boarding. Weapons fire at long range has a -4 penalty, Medium range has a -2 penalty, Short and boarding ranges have no penalty. Combats always start at long range.

Space combat turns are longer than normal combat turn, generally a few minutes.

Piloting

The pilot may change ranges of a starship by making an opposed Dexterity + Pilot + Handling roll, with the Acceleration of the ship providing automatic successes to the roll. The winning pilot may shift the range band by one in whatever direction they want. Once a ship has gone beyond long range, they are out of combat range.

Weapons Fire

Gunners use Intelligence + Firearms (Ships Weapons) to attack their enemies, as most weapons are computer controlled, with each success doing a point of damage to the target. Ships have a large durability rating, making starship difficult to damage, with starship weapons having a increased penetration for their large size and power.

Some weapons, particularly magic weapons, have different or additional effects to causing damage. These effects are noted with the weapons.

Damage

As with other objects, a starship has a Structure rating. As weapons do damage through the Durability of the armor, the Structure goes away. Once the ship reaches 0 Structure, it stops working. The engines stops, life support shuts down, the ship is leaking atmosphere, the power plant is becoming critical, and unless fixed, the ship will fall apart.

Damage Control

As the ship gets damaged, the crew may attempt to repair it. Damage control teams may use a Dextrity + Crafts (Repair) check, with each success reparing one point of damage. Damage control repairs take 30 minutes each (10 turns), but large teams can make a signficant amount of repairs. However, there is a limit to how many emergency repairs can be performed before the accumulated damage exceeds the abilities of even the most talented engineers. Damage control can only repair the entire structure of the ship once, and can not repair any further damage in combat. For example, an explorer with Structure 40, the damage control system may fix up to 40 points of damage before they can no longer fix anything in combat. If the total damage at any one time exceeds the structure rating of the ship, it breaks and shuts down.

Construction

There are two general approaches to constructing a starship. First is to select a hull size and fit all of the equipment into this select hull size. The other is to select all the equipment, see what size of hull is required, and wrap that around it.

Hull size

Military Name	Civilian Name	Size (spaces)	Structure	Handling	Max Sensor	Crew
Fighter	Shuttle	10 - 50	10 - 30	-0	+0	1
Escort	Yacht	50 - 150	30 - 50	-2	+0	1 - 2
Corvette	Explorer	150 - 500	50 - 65	-4	+1	2 - 7
Destoryer	Trader	500 - 2,000	65 - 85	-6	+2	7 - 14
Cruiser	Freighter	2,000 - 10,000	85 - 110	-8	+3	15 - 30
Battleship	Carrier	10,000 - 40,000	110 - 130	-10	+4	30 - 60

When selecting a hull, either as a starting point or as because you have a selection of equipment you need to enclose, select the hull size in spaces. The approximate size of the hull determines the handing and maximum sensor rating. The exact size of the ship determines the basic structure rating and the minimum number of crew required,

Armor

All ships come with a basic armor rating of Durability 5. Additional layers of armor may be added to improve the Durability. Each layer of armor takes a certain percentage of the existing spaces in a ship for the additional bulkheads, bracing and mass of the armor.

Drives

The normal space drive provides both acceleration and handling. Drives are rated in point, each point providing a +1 to either acceleration or handing. This boost is usually decided at design time, though some drives may provide dynamic bonuses, allowing the pilot to shift the point in the drive from acceleration to handing or back. Each dirve point takes a percentage of the ships hull spaces,

Weapons

Weapons require weapons mounts, a combiation of hull reinforcements, power routing, and control connections specifically designed for weapons. A ship has 1 mount for each 100 spaces for free, and additional mounts may be added, each mount takes 1 space. Weapons don't take any additional space, though some weapons will require more than one "mount" to emplace them on a ship.

Sensors

Sensor Bonus	Size
+1	100
+2	200
+3	400
+4	800

All ships come with a basis set of operation sensors and controls. The main limitation of sensors is the area for the sensor antenna, which require large ships to effectivly mount, even if the equipment isn't of large size.

Crew and Passengers

A ship may have any number of crew, but must have at least as the minimum crew requirements shown on the hull table. The minimum crew is all engineering and command staff, and if additinal crew are requred for damage control parties, gunners, stewards, they must be added.

Ships intended for short term use (like fighter craft or shuttles) require one space for each crew member. This include the seat, all required controls, life support system, and access hatch.

Ships inteded for long term use require five spaces for each crew member; one space for their control station, one for their bunk, and three for common access space (fresher, corridors, bunk room access). This space include the life support system with air, heat, lights and water. There are airlocks for access to the ship (one per 10 crew, minimum of 1).

Short term passenger access requires two spaces, one for the passenger seat, plus one for the passenger to access the seat. This include the life support, basic heat, light and air.

Long term passengers require six spaces, three for common access space (corridors, etc) and three for a small room. Many ships combine these small passenger rooms into two or three passenger suites.

For more luxurious craft additional passenger space may be added.

Equipment

• Cargo: This is simply empty space designated for carrying cargo.
• Stealth:
• Workshop and Lab space:
• Hangar space
• Escape pods