RE: Scum and Villainy Stras Acimovic
Q: When does the ship run out of power for all the ship technology being used in a ship-to-ship scene (or.. does it)? Like if the ship uses deep range scanners, then makes a long range encrypted transmission, then fires weapons, And uses its shields.. can the PCs then also use their jumpdrive to make a getaway without any hindrance?
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You can offer problems with fuel or power as a devil’s bargain or handle it as a consequence.
Jorg is correct. Things can get risky. Power failures can happen on 4-5s. Obviously if they have secondary power sources they can NOPE (resist) with them and so on. There is no hard rule, but the lower their systems, the more likely I am to call for that, or use a fortune roll on a system to gauge.
Intriguingly, this causes me to realize there’s no Engineering/power ship system. I know that features more commonly on Star Trek (i.e. capital ships requiring mega reactors) than space operas, and S&V allows players interested in that enough access to those sorts of narrative details through the mechanic, repairs, maintenance/upkeep, and rig actions.
It’s actually Engines Adam Minnie. You’ll note in every scifi show Engineering is right next to the Engine (where Kailie sleeps, where Geordi Works etc). I think it mentions Power as tied to it in the description of the Engine component. Low Engines, low power.
So I know I would inflict those consequences if I felt like an action a PC took was risky in that way (rigging to do something dangerous with the engines for example), but I feel like there should be an indication of what the ship can do in general that is easy to track, clear, and not as open to interpretation.
I wrote a load system for use with ships before seeing S&V. It follows the model of personal load, but relates to actions aboard the ship and that fictional positioning. It is meant to ease the reading of the fictional fuel gauge, so to speak, and was written for my Blades hack about being crewman on a starship boldly going where no one has gone before… >.>
< .<
So it might be slightly out of fiction but not by much, and I think what I am doing offers food for thought (if nothing else) for its different approach to the method you are using. Do you want to see that, or… would that be too much like the equivalent of another chef coming along to grind his blend of exotic peppercorns over your bubbling pot of soup?
Amigo – you should of course post it! I’m a big believer in cross pollination of designs, and nothing delights me more than seeing what people do with stuff I write (even if it’s not something I’d ever do myself) or in the same vein. Who knows – might be just the thing I need!
But when you have engines that can fold space, and open sails in other dimensions so you can get to the edge of space in a week instead of a year … having the overhead of a fuel gauge isn’t the sort of thing I’m interested in. The Enterprise doesn’t “run out of dilithium”.
You can certainly not have enough engine power to get out of a jam (that’s an engine fortune roll perhaps) when you’re stuck in a Way effect or tractor beam. But I’m way more interested if a non-weaponized smuggler vessel has folks run to put on space-suits and try to leap on the hull to shoot off grapples, than if popping the airlock made their ship batteries run dry. That’s more of an Apollo 13 hack to me than space opera.
Ok, I guess I should then.
I wrote it less for what you describe, and more as an indication when the PCs have truly “given her all she’s got”, or need to adjust their fictional positioning to account for all the ship’s systems currently in use other than engines, which are assumed.
Ship Load. Handled like player load, but decided by the Chief* player before a ship-based mission (most all of them).
*: a defined player role in my game
* Light: The ship is faster, and can blend in with civilian ships.
* Normal: The ship looks like one on a mission.
* Heavy: The ship is slower, and looks prepared for combat.
The systems tracker looks like this:
Light: 3 / Medium: 5 / Heavy: 6
[ ] Sensors [ ] Long range scans [ ] +Max
[ ] Comms [ ] Interstellar comms [ ] +Max
[ ] Warp Deflectors [ ] Shields [ ][ ] +Heavy
[ ] Light Weapons [ ][ ] +Heavy Weapons
[ ] Other (describe)
It’s worth noting this wasn’t a hack of S&V, so what I am doing kind of doesn’t work since you divided up the systems into piecemeal upgrades contributing to a system rating and I didn’t. Like how Documents or Gear for Crews in Blades, the Crews in Final Frontier (tentative title) are either Quality or not. I used Tier as the primary factor in determining overall capabilities for comparison purposes, with the Quality upgrades (Shields, Weapons, Databases, etc) letting it contend in the upgraded area as if +1 Tier.
What I found is players will set their load fairly low, then engineer during the action to mark more load or clear load marks (“redirect power to compensate!”) during scores.
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Interesting idea, Mark Cleveland Massengale. But imho it assumes that players have a base were they can refit ships before going on a mission.
In S&V, the ship IS the base.
The class of the ship defines how it looks. And it also defines the campaign similar to the crew type in BitD.
Your approach is fundamentally different, maybe more in the direction of “Deep Space 9” or “Battlestar Galactica”, where a ship would be considered more as equipment.
Adapting your idea Mark Cleveland Massengale and Jörg Mintel’s comment, instead of ship load dictating speed and look like BitD load, maybe that’s instead just the digital signature/footprint. A higher ship load is much harder to hide at a wide range, while choosing a lower load means fewer systems can run simultaneously, but also you’re more in stealth mode where other ships won’t detect your signatures until much closer to you.
Jörg Mintel I do not assume that, nor do the rules or narrative. So I guess you’d be wrong in this case.
They can go in for repairs, but that is not the usual assumption (they repair themselves while they are out). The ship IS the base of operations both on and off the sheet, and I use part of the cohort rules for that, plus some bits from Like Part of the Family, also a few custom bits.
Your point about the class designation is true enough, but feels moot. Anything in the fiction can override the basics of “how a ship looks,” so :shrug: Like if you activate weapons within firing range of another ship, and they are scanning you, they will respond as though you look like you are going into combat even if you are light load and “just an exploration vessel.”
Adam Minnie Yea. In a ship context, that is precisely what the load descriptions are aiming at. It’s also about obviousness as per usual.
“Slower” and “faster” are also about warp capability which affect fictional positioning for long journeys. Slower means “engines cannot reach warp speed safely” as well as “less maneuverable”- and “faster” is also “engines can reach max sustainable warp safely (typically warp 9)”