TheSagaContinues

Being a group that does not do a lot of space battles to begin with - just smuggler chases mostly - my players do not buy any of the piloting feats and maneuvers that are available in the SotG sourcebook.

So to liven up combat a bit and make it more than just a battle of hit points (and the condition track) - I borrowed from my Star Trek rules and brought this into our game. We haven't tested it yet, but our next session will be a Imperial pursuit and space combat game.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-HtkO0-SNNUGmbygogSGcA7nFsDdhcdv/view?usp=sharing

If there are any suggestions or warnings that you guys might have using this house rule, I would love to hear them. We play tomorrow night.

Thanks!

DJ

Thanks, S_S!

I will check these out as alternatives.

I appreciate it.

It does add complexity and time with more rolls and things to record.  As for the house rules I've seen worse.

For your system damage which die roll needs to be 11 or higher?  Looking at the table above should that be 15 or higher?  Once we get to the "other" part of system damage I'm afraid I think those damage values are too high especially with the idea that 1 point of damage getting through to the hitpoints of the ship  can now cause such extensive damage.  Part of me also thinks there needs to be some kind of threshold the damage getting through needs to overcome to have any additional effect before hitting system; 5 points getting through to a Fighter would be a significant portion of hits full hp and thus very likely to hit some system but 5 points of damage actually getting through on a SSD isn't something that is even going to be noticed.  I'm thinking that the damage the ship needs to take before it needs to worry about any kind of System damage should be directly related to the Ship STR score as it should take more to hurt a "strong hulled ship" that it would a weaker one and it makes the effects of ship STR more visible.

Moving on to your System Damage Tracks having some variety in them may be nice but at times it also makes little sense and they probably should mirror the actual CT somehow or else mirror some other mechanic.  Oh, on that note to be very cruel and CT hit the ship actually takes could move every system down instead of just one system although with this we probably should have five spots on these tracks.

Sensors are for Perception purposes.  No need for them to affect pilot checks (and Initiative checks can be tied to those) although I do see where they could/should reduce how much of the ship's INT modifier is available to aid Use Computer checks and provide fire control.

Propulsion:  Here you get where you should knock out hyperdrives and slow the speed.  I'm not sure how much of maneuverability I'd tie into this.
Operations:  I'm not sure this is really a category is StarWars that I'd look at.

With weapons I think system in StarWars have more division than they do in Trek so that you would really have a hard time knocking them all out at the same time.  I also think the modifiers you have are pretty substantial.

Shields:  With shields I think your "levels" could be set to increase how much the SR drops each time it is overcome.  I certainly wouldn't put ship REF DEF in that section although I could see it becoming harder to raise shields back up.

Life Support is a system I'd think long about and may not be overly specific.  Flickering lights would be far less of an issue that smoke and when it comes to gravity loss SWSE already has light and zero-G rules.

Now instead of all of the systems you have I'd bring them more inline with things we already have in ships.  You can have the "DEX System" where damage to that reduces the ships stats (mostly Pilot skill checks and REF Defense) that depend on that.  The "INT System" would be like the DEX System except this reduces the ship's INT which is often primarily fire control but could also include Use Computer Checks which may cover a number of areas.  An Engine system could cover hyperdrive and reduce overall ship speed which isn't affected by other stats.  Under an "operations" heading I may include modifiers that make the checks to increase shields or Regulate power more difficult" although these could fall under some of the other headings.  When it comes to weapon systems attack bonus would already be covered in the INT system so these would most likely be damage reductions for energy weapons and possibly some type of additional check or other modifier to use ordnance.

Now your System Repair times and difficulties drive me a bit bonkers.  I may need to compare them to the time it'd normally take to repair hp damage but those seem tremendously long.  Maybe I'm not understanding them correctly and how they work but generally repairs would move things up one step at a time.  I also wonder how these all work with the standard "Regulate Power" application of Mechanics which is the vehicle equivalent to the Recover action allowing it to move up the CT when pushed down it as the system I see here completely obliterates that.

Then I look at your Emergency Repairs section and am not entirely sure how they work.  Is it I make that type of emergency repair and the system is back up to full operating capacity for that amount of time?  What REALLY drives me mad there are the HUGE diminishing returns you see for those emergency repairs.  Granted you might see a 1 minute repair attempted during combat most of what you would have during a fight are Jury-rig actions.  Where things are nuts is that for the time spent Jury-rigging something it will last about 7x longer than you took doing it.  With a Patch you're looking at 3x longer as you would be with a system bypass but then if you do some kind of quick fix (not entirely sure what that is) you just get it two work for twice the amount of time you put into it.

I keep meaning to reply to this again.

When it comes to "repairing" those sub-system I generally think they should be relatively easy to fix/get working again.  This is from looking at the Reroute Power application of Mechanics which takes 3 swifts and a DC 20 Mechanics check to move the entire ship +1 step on the CT.  If you're trying to give "other people" things to do during combat that could give them the opportunity although as far as RAW ship mechanics go those would be performed by the Ship's Engineer of which there can be only one.

I might note that when a ship moves down the CT I believe that penalty will certainly apply to any checks made with/involving the ship but may even take them a step further and have them apply to anything someone is trying to do onboard the ship.