Characters' Starships

Getting a starship is always a problem, particularly if the character wants the ship to be, you know, spaceworthy. How do you deal with getting your characters their ships?

This is also a place to posts the stats of various ships if you want.

My pcs currently have two starships, a Modified YT-2400 called Amidala and an Assault Shuttle Morning Star. The Amidala is an interesting ship because the characters bought it for next to nothing in order to ditch an Imperial Transport they stole in their first mission. The vessel was barely spaceworthy, but they stole a bunch of equipment, including the hyperdrive from the old Royal Cruiser on Naboo, and managed to make it quite the versatile vessel.

Amidala Craft: Corellian Engineering Corporation YT-2400; Class: Space transport; Cost: 130,000 (new), 32,000 (used); Size: Small (21 m long); Initiative: +4 (+1, +3 crew); Crew: 1; Passengers: 6; Cargo Capacity: 50 metric tons; Consumables: 2 months; Hyperdrive: x.5 (backup x12); Maximum Speed: Ramming (10 squares/action); Atmospheric Speed: 950 km/h (16 squares/action); Maneuver: +12 (+1 size, +11 crew); Defense: 21 (+1 size, +10 armor); Shield Points: 90; DR: 20 Hull Points: 120; DR: 10.

Weapon: Laser cannon; Fire Arc: Turret; Attack Bonus: +8 (+1 size, +5 crew, +2 fire control); Damage: 5d10x2; Range Modifiers: PB +0, S -2, M-4, L -6.

Of course, if they find they need a bit more firepower, there's always the Morning Star to fall back on. They stole this ship after its crew attacked them when they were disabled after Alderaan's destruction. Totally unmodified as yet, it's simply a shock vessel when needed or a large transport.
I won't post its stats because they are available in both Starships of the Galaxy and The Rebellion Era Sourcebook.

 

Please... all of our characters are sitting on millions of credits (billions in one case). Gambling heavily on the Mirulakan swoop racer we KNOW to be Force Sensitive is a Good Thing(tm).

My character's had several ships built at the Mon Cal shipyards and is now contracting Sluis Van (under a Sith Lord's control) for a "special order"...

 

My players have a lot of credits... not millions yet but a few hundred thousand. All are part of the New Republic Navy in our EU so fighters and supplies are pretty easy to come by.
They do have their own ship though. The one they kept after we did Tempest Feud. It has been heavily modified though and looks a lot better than the run-down version they were given by the Hutt.
They also turned the Tempest over to the NR, so on really big battles, they always have that for support.

 

Heh, that's it. I don't give out credits very freely. If they want money, they have to earn it the old fashioned way; theft or other illegal activities. I make sure that the characters can get a week in a studio apartment building or buy a few good drinks at a cantina, but they won't be just buying starships anytime soon. In any case, I don't like the idea of just throwing credits at a starship. I prefer the aspect of scrounging for each upgrade. The galaxy seems more fun when they're always on the back end of it.

 

Do it the Han Solo way, win a barly usable ship and steal/lie/cheat to get it above "factory standards".

There are lots of ways to make this a very fun, abet a bit dangerous, experiance. Lets say that the person they won the ship from had an illegal cargo, and as soon as the papers were in the hero's name, he reports the cargo to the athorities. If the hero's are lucky enough to escape, they have a valuable cargo to buy their first set of upgrades with. If not so lucky, they are captured, the cargo is confiscuated(how ever you spell it), and it is finaly decided that the previous owner was responsable and is arrested. Either case, the heros have a ship.

How about the person that bet the ship didn't really own it, it belongs to a hutt that he was working for. The hutt kills the preavious owner and chases the heros all over the galaxy. After every battle they have with the hutts minions, let them get their hands on a piece of equipment for the ship. Eventualy the Hutt will realise that trying to get the ship back is costing him more than the ship is worth. He will respect the heros for evading him for so long and offer them a job in exchange for forgiveness.

There are many ways to go with this, most of them are stupid, dangerous, and funny, but hey, isn't that what RPG are about?

 

well... in the old days .. there was always being indebted to a crime lord to pay off a ship...

in addition.. theft was always an option... " but we stole it from a bad man"

nowadays my players have gotten more savvy.. flying cargo on someone elses ship... lol.. the problems this can cause

in addition.. i have a higer level npc that bout a ship which my characters often use... however sometimes "dad"will take the car for himself

 

I have a group thats woprking in the NJO, and i'm the GM.

Well anyway, their still leve 1 and it is about 6 months - 1 year before the events of Vector Prime, and something weird is going on on the outer-rim. It seems that this previosly unknown race has begun to prey upon the merchant and private ships that ply the spacelanes. The Hero's find themselves upon Dubrillion/Destrillion and, needless to say, Lando isn't happy aboput the whole deal. They don't even know what is causing this sudden increase in piracy, so the hero's go to investigate.

This is the stats of the Light Crusier of this Race....

Dragon-Class Light Cruiser:
Class: Corvette
Cost: Not Available for Sale (Cost to build: 5,650,500 Credits)
Size: 65 M Long, Head to Tail
Crew: Minimum 1, Optimum 7
Passengers: 4
Cargo Capacity: 150 Metric Tons
Consumables: 1 year
Hyperdrive: x1 (backup x8)
Sublight Speed: 90 SBL
Shields: Same as Nebulon B Frigate
Hull: Same as Corellion Gunship
Weapons:
2 Turbolasers, Forward Firing
1 Tractor beam, Forward Firing
2 Medium Ion Cannons- Forward and Sideways Firing
1 Concussion Missile Launcher- Rear and Sideways Firing

Other: Incredibly sophisticated Maneuvering System

The Dragon Class Light Cruiser looks exactly like its namesake, a Dragon. It is Highly Maneuverable due to the Maneuvering Fins, Lateral thrusters, and a whole slew of other, Maneuvering Boosting, equipment. The head contains the 2 Turbolasers and the Tractor Beam. The beams rarely miss due to the ability of the ?Neck? to move about 35 Degrees either way. The Ion Cannons are mounted on turrets below the wings, so both can fire forward and one can fire on either side. The tail is what makes this craft distinct. It can move almost 60 Degrees any way and contains the Concussion Missile Tube. The minimum crew can fire nothing but the forward facing Turbolasers, and cannot move the head or tail. At optimum crew each gun has one gunner, a captain/pilot, and an engineer. The main cargo bay in is the belly of the dragon, and can contain one Shuttle if emptied, however, it is normally used for the regular cargo.

Or in RPG Terms.....

Dragon-Class Light Crusier: Unknown Ship Profile; Class: Space transport; Cost: Not Availiable for Sale; Size: Medium (65 m long); Initiative: +2 (+2 crew); Crew: 1/8; Passengers: 4; Cargo Capacity: 150 Metric tons; Consumables: 1 year; Hyperdrive: x1 (backup x8); Maximum Speed: Ramming (9 squares/action); Atmospheric Speed: Unable to enter Atmosphere; Maneuver: +6 (+4 Manuvering Package, +2 crew); Defense: 20 (+10 armor); Shield Points: 200; DR: 20 Hull Points: 350; DR: 20.

Weapon: Light Turbolaser (2, Fire-Linked); Fire Arc: Front; Attack Bonus: +10 (+2 Crew, +8 Fire Control); Damage: 5d10x5; Range Modifiers: PB +0* S -2 M -4 L n/a
Note: Due to the placing of these weapons if the ship has a tractor lock upon another ship the PB Modifier becomes +6.

Weapon: Medium Ion Cannon (2); Fire Arc 2 Front, 1 left, 1 Right; Attack Bonus: +6 (+2 Crew, +4 Fire COntrol); Damaghe: Special; Range Modifiers: PB +0 S -2, M -4 L n/a

Weapon: Concussion Missle Launcher (6 Missles); Fire Arc; Rear, Left, Right; Damage: 8d10x2; Missle Quality +12 (Good)

Weapon: Tractor Beam; Fire Arc: Front; Attack Bonus +6 (+2 Crew, +4 Fire Control); Damage: Special; Range Modifiers: PB +0, S -2, M -4, L n/a

 

I have a Duros who lost his ship (Barely a few months after paying it off) defending Yavin 4 from the ships involved in a darksider raid. Luke still owes him a starship for that.

-LP

 

Depends on the character. Most will settle for anything that has sublights and a hyperdrive (life support, barely optional). These are usually the ones who don't having much in the way of flying skills.
For the dedicated pilot types, they try and get it all. If they can, a 2400 factory model with some "select" mods. You know, up the hyperdrive, overpower those sublights, a couple of tons of hidden cargo space, maybe a pop out EWeb for those annoying collections agents. Most figured out that upgrading the hull is both obvious and a sign that the ship is up to no good. Few try to bring the shields up 1d or so. Dedicated psychos try and add a second turret and either proton torpedos or concussion missile tubes to thier ships. These are often the same nutjobs that will go on a mission with a bandolier of thermal detonators and wonder why everyone died when someone threw a concussion grenade at them!

 

Well, there's something exciting about having a really really powerful ship, even if odds are you'll never use anywhere near half of its capacity. It's like having a car with an engine capable of going 210mph fully knowing that you're gonna drive that thing during rush hour.

 

Most annoying character I ever had to deal with: Bith Pilot with 5d Mech, spend 2D on Piloting.

Was a pain in the butt to shoot him down with 7D piloting (He eventually got it up to 8D!).
Now, the down side to a Bith Pilot is the vision limitation, but that's where flying by instruments came in. UG! He had a massive HUD unit installed.
So I had to create a ship with a jammer so that it looked bigger than it was.

Finally managed to make those starfighter chases exciting by introducing a sabateur to the ship who posed as a crew member.

The ship they ended up with was an HT1200, just like the HT2200, only not as fast. They soon fixed that.

When I have to deal with characters and ships, there's either one assigned to them with an NPC pilot, or there's the matter that they work for the Rebel Alliance, and don't have lots of credits to spend on upgrades. The prizes they bring in earn them labor and tech support, as well as assistance in repairs, but seldom actual credits.

 

Depending on the type of game I'm running I don't let PCs own their own ships. Typically if I need to get them from point A to point B I either have an NPC with a ship or have them RP to get a spare seat in a cargo hold.

I used to allow PCs to have any sort of ship they could justify. I'm a big proponent of making my players justify everything the character has or does in terms of the story. I ran into a problem of the characters being more concerned with their ships than with actually playing the game. Opposing characters ended up in arms races against the others to get the slightly better ship or higher Piloting bonus. All sorts of excuses were used to get the character's ship into the games. This often times led to very munchy play. Instead of sneaking through the ventilation ducts to get into the Imperial base or scamming their way in with fake code cylinders and uniforms they'd fly their ship up to the blast door and shoot it with their miniature turbo laser. I also ran into the problem of characters never wanting to leave their ships as they were filled with all sorts of gadgets and equipment. Well prepared PCs are no fun for a GM.

Eventually I enacted my ban on PC ships unles the game was specifically meant to involve a lot of air and space combat. Even then I assign ships to the players rather than let them use their own. I know how fun it is to have your own ship bristling with damage dealing goodies. Pretty soon all problems can be solved with technology rather than role playing. Blast doors aren't obstacles to starships with miniature tubolasers that do 5D10x5 damage or concussion missles.

If you're on-planet there's rarely a true need for a starship and in logically only a handful of people can afford to own them. They're like airplanes or boats to us. They cost money to maintain and operate. They're also expensive or dangerous to aquire. If you steal a ship it is worth enough that someone is going to be coming after you. If you buy one you're going to need to have some sort of business to pull in the money to keep it up and upgrade it. Sure mercenary pilots and bounty hunters might have starships but they have jobs that pay the bills on them. A soldier or fringer probably isn't going to make enough money to even keep a ship fueled.

said concerns are the main reason I relegate starships to my NPCs. The characters can still pilot and man the guns of the ship but don't have it to use at their leisure. The characters usually work for the NPC and so can't exactly take inordinate risks with the vessel. This lets me incorporate space battles in an otherwise ground based campaign but doesn't let the NPCs run wild with their own starships.

 

The Starships of the Galaxy sourcebook has upkeep costs for starships. For a small ship, the cost (which includes fuel, maintenance, everything) is 900 credits every six months or twenty jumps at the utter outset with no proper facility.
And why are the character's using a starship weapon to blast some blast doors? When blast doors are encountered in my games, they're either inside a building, totally unguarded, or have some sort of turbolaser nearby. A chance to use a starship weapon on a blast door never happens. They either have to use a lightsabre or some detonite.

 

The maintenance rules in in SotG only cover routine upkeep costs. That price doesn't cover upgrade or repair costs. It also doesn't take into account a Small ship can only carry at most 6 months worth of consumables. The Barloz class light freighter only carries two months of consumables. A hyperspace trip across an entire sector will easily take a couple weeks without a modified hyperdrive. Stopping to resupply and refuel is going to cost money, as will passing customs and all those other little nasties.

Repair costs also cut into the PCs pocket books. A run in with a bounty hunter or an Imperial patrol will likely require a good number of repairs on the ship. Say the shield generators are destroyed. The repair DC is 20 and requires a full day to repair and as per the repair skill requires 1/10th the price in parts. Back to the Barloz class freighter. It has 30 shield points which amounts to 3 construction points. A Barloz is about 59 construction points so each CP of shield generator will be 6,000 credits. That's 600 credits in parts for just losing their shield generator. A mean GM can easily make that 1/2 price in parts on the Repair check. A much more tweaked out freighter can easily require several thousands of credits worth of repairs.

I try to keep complex numbers like that out of my games but I do have several tables drawn up for when I need to give characters a repair cost. Repairing a ship is easily an adventure in and of itself. TPM used such a plot device. Qui-Gon Jinn had to scrounge up enough local currency to fix the Royal Starship's hyperdrive. I don't tend to run games with extraordinarily rich PCs so repairs easily segue into adventures.

As for why a blast door was on the outside of a building, the point is moot. The important thing was the characters began to see their starships as solutions to all their problems. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Having characters not wanting to leave their starships or wanting to use them to solve all their troubles quickly gets boring. It can also be quite a chore to make sure the PCs have legal and non-munchy starships. Starship munchkinism is an epidemic among SWRPG players. People pick up SotG and tweak out a YT-1300 until it can take on an SSD with a reasonable chance of winning the fight. That sort of gaming isn't fun for most players.

 

The way to deal with starship arms races is to change the place of the ship and the players in the game...

Each player/character must have their own place, their own shtick, and feel secure in that things. For example: in my game we had a young senator, a Jedi Knight, a free trader and an archaeologist.

The senator had access to entire fleets but the Free trader only had a single freighter (a yt-666). But they knew that the Coral princess (the freighter) was the heart of the chronicle, and so it was more exciting to own and run than the entire fleet of battleships available to Senator Aquila.

This operated in the same way that everyone knew that the Jedi was heinously powerful in combat, but this would not mean that he had more story time than the others. Sure he could carve up Sith Pirates at a rate of knots, but that didn't mean the others felt left out, because they also got to shine at their various times... indeed one of them will get to shine posthumously when in one of my laters games, his research that he did waaay back in the first game will help save the galaxy.

 

My Jedi character Korath Lorren, has a modified CEC YZ-900 transport called the Jedi Star. It has the same stats as the White Wing from SW Gamer #2, except that it can only carry 10 passengers instead of the normal 14. He converted two of the 2-man rooms into a variable-gravity physical/lightsaber training room, Added work tables and tools for lightsaber construction to the lounge, and turned the conference room into a library. Deck plans for the ship can be found here

 

"If you're on-planet there's rarely a true need for a starship and in logically only a handful of people can afford to own them. They're like airplanes or boats to us. They cost money to maintain and operate. They're also expensive or dangerous to aquire."

How exactly do you explain the sheer number of models out there for a tramp freighter to buy? I'd rule they are nothing like aeroplanes today. In fact, costs are comparable to sports cars if you go dollar for credit. I do agree that there aren't much reasonable needs for a ship on planet, unless your ship is lodging, and transporting between cities. In that aspect a freighter should be thought of more as a defensive RV. Of course, if they trick it out with guns and gear, the authorities might be inclined to disagree.
As a house rule, starship maintainence was required after every 10 hyperspace jumps, to keep the motivator properly aligned. Not cost, so much as time and a low end moderater Starship Repair roll. Restocking perishables will cost, but shouldn't be super expensive, as buying in bulk is always cheaper. What usually amounts to a sizable expense is docking fees and time sensative permits. Between them and bribes, PCs know it's never a good idea to go planetside broke.

 

Despite the larger number of tramp freighter models available they still aren't exactly common items. There's a thousand thousand (million) or so worlds known to the Empire. Even if you had one ship for every planet that's a lot of ships and thus a lot of ship models. There's also the upgrade phenomenon. Older ships get ditched for newer ones but as long as they're spaceworthy someone will buy it and fly it. The Barloz and YT-1210 are good examples of this. They were popular before the advent of the YT-1300 and so a lot of them remain in service. The YT-1300 is popular but will eventually be superceded by the YT-2400. That's four different models over the course of about seventy five to fifty years time, and only CEC light tramp freighters. With several large ship manufacturers, Rendili Stardrive, CEC, Kuat Drive Yards, SoroSub, Republic/Sienar Fleet Systems, Gallofree, etc, and tons of subcontractors the number of possible tramp frieghter models in use during the Rebellion era could be quite numerous.

I like to incorporate starships into my games when I feel they'd be useful but like I said i usually assign a ship to a party. I usually give my parties ships that will get them from point A to point B but never with so many weapons they want to fight their way out of everything. The ships I give parties tend to be more like the Millennium Falcon than a miniature warship.

I think personal starships are hard things to justify as PC possessions. A new light freighter will run about 100-120 thousand credits unmodified. That is a lot of cash for a character to come up with, even in very heroic settings. I understand some GMs really want to let their players run around in starships but I personally find them to be a bit munchy in far too many situations. Like I said, I've had too many players end up focussing more on their ship secs than role playing. For the times you just want to run a shoot 'em up flying game that's great, I'll run those to keep things interesting. In ground based adventures a ship, even if the party does have one ought to be more of a scenic locale than a major player in the game, unless the story calls for it.

One of the worst examples I've experienced with this was a character that never left his ship if he could help it. Everything the party came across became a target for his turbolaser turret. It was a PITA to put obstacles in front of the party that could withstand the weaponry on the thing. The player was a jerk and wouldn't ever ditch the ship. Finally an NPC I spent two days working on had the piloting and gunner skills needed to down the ship for good. The final dogfight was pretty fun for all involved but afterwards the adventures were much more interesting. They were less about the gadgets and more about the sotry and gameplay. I'd drop all my SW stuff and grab the Star Trek RPG if I wanted to run gadgetry based games.

 

I'd say the reason they aren't common items is because most people are tied down to something, and as such can't afford to give into wanderlust, even if it is a job. In game mechanics terms, it's not especially difficult to get the skills necessary to pilot a ship. So even your average 12d schmoe could be spaceworthy given enough time.
Now, I understand your point on generating that kind of cash, however, as a member of a veteran Cyberpunk group, my squad of gamers can pretty much ramble off half a dozen quick cash schemes easy. I won't deny them a chance to score some cash if thier plan is well thought out and executed. And the cash is thiers to do with as they please. However, money has consequences. That guy that wouldn't get out of his ship, in my game he would've been the victim of a planetside ship-jacking. Especially if the vehicle is so tripped out it is head and shoulders above the crowd.

 

Money having its consequences is a good point. While I enjoy GM'ing I also have several PCs to play in other people's games. In one game the GM had few if any restrictions on anything so everybody but me was decked out in powersuits, battle armor, AT-PTs, Slave II clones and the works. It wasn't a very fun game and I made a couple adventures just to be antithetical to the munchy equipment barons. For a couple of the players the game was a blast but for two of the guys from the other GM's group that joined us it was a rout.

A couple turbolasers to docking bay 105 from an ISD in orbit ended the life of one of the ships. The other crash landed after losing a fight against several TIE Interceptors. The other players knew how to get along without a bunch of munchy equipment, the players from the other GM's group did not. While the people i usually played with made a lot of Move Silently and Hide checks the other two guys were making a lot of Attack Rolls. This was also a battle where the medium Battle Armor the munchies had did more harm than good. An ACP of -5 meant when they caught on to the Move Silently skills their comrades were using they were sitting ducks for the Scout troopers.

I just want to keep the game fun for the players and me as a GM. I don't like having to work around a character's handheld E-Web or masterwork Kaiburr great lightsaber.

 

Having a beefed up ship is very dangerous. Having a ship that can out-fly the Falcon and out-shoot the DeathStar can definatly be a problem. One of my PCs made a ship that used three Longshot Quads mounted on a single turret. Dealing around 15d10x2 on an average hit. That and the Mini-TurboLaser under the cockpit made for a very interesting challenge. He neglected to install a larger power generator though, so fireing the quads drained the capicators and blew fuses. That was great, "Hey, do you smell something burning?"

 

One great thing you can do is introduce an NPC with a slight harmless criminal bent. Like say a kleptomaniac driod. With a ship, it could be something like an R2 unit that developed a case of Grand Theft Starship. After all, he puts in so much time interfacing with the ships computer, why should some two bit fleshie keep the ship that is too good for the likes of a smuggler, fringer, etc etc. If the R2 unit thinks of the ship as a "girlfriend" it would definately take exception to the pilot constantly using it for danger.
Diverjkc, that's a great idea for screwing with that ship. Now, take it to the next step. Innocently enough point out that they can probably jury rig it so the power is fed in directly from the hyperdrive. After all, it's not like they can use both at the same time anyway. Then fry the capaciters! Oops, no guns or hyperdrive, that's a damned shame.

 

I made an announcement to my players at the start of my game. This is the rough idea...

Star wars is not about toys and acquisition. Technology is either a common thing or it is something so rare to be a MacGuffin.

Take for example, a blaster. A blaster is a gun. You can call it a blastech d-45 or a merr-sonn Intimidator, but it's still a blaster. It makes people dead. It's just like a six shooter in a western, you don't see Clint eastwood looting the bodies of his kills for their revolvers, do you?

Pick a signature weapon and style, and stick to it. Do not go looting corpses for their "superior guns".

Ships are the same. For most of you, a ship is just a way from A to B. Only for the characters who live ships, should ownership be an issue. For them, the ship is their livelihood, and they should be expected to tinker with them and maintain them. BUT ship maintenance is not a driving issue in the campaign, we're telling heroic stories, not playing Colin McCrae rally, upgrading and improving your ship will occur at my discretion and only when it serves the greater plot.

 

Take for example, a blaster. A blaster is a gun. You can call it a blastech d-45 or a merr-sonn Intimidator, but it's still a blaster. It makes people dead. It's just like a six shooter in a western, you don't see Clint eastwood looting the bodies of his kills for their revolvers, do you?

Yes and no. Sometimes it's knowing your situation as well.

Han, Chewie and Luke ALL took Stormie rifles off the bodies they dispatched on the Falcon.

However, Obi-Wan never once touched anything other than his lightsaber.

 

Bendu, I agree that the game is about heroism, a certain amount of "ninja looting" is necessary for players to have fun. After all, only a fool leaves a 500-1000 credit item lying around for someone else to swipe. Also, a jedi should be thinking "what if a child were to get his hands on that weapon?" At the very least the items should be destroyed so as to deny potential enemies the chance to use them against you.