TheSagaContinues

So one of my players wants to be a Starship designer and design the party's ship. I think this is great and am going to tie it into the Creation Destiny as a surprise. However, while I am pretty well versed on Starship modification, what I am trying to decipher is how to handle actual creation.

I told the player to pick from the stock ship types, though I believe reverse engineering an existing ship should be possible. Stock stats are:

Stock Type of Ship
CLASS   SIZE          STR   DEX   INT   SPEED   HP   DR   ARMOR   COST
Hvy FR   Col (FR)   106   10   12      -/1           400   15   +12           500k
GShip   Col          50   14   16   12/3           150   15   +12           200k
Lig FR   Col          42   10   12   12/2           120   15   +12           20k
Bomber   Gar          46   18   14   16/3           150   10   +8           50k

Stock Ship Base Values
STARSHIP           CREW   PASSENGER   CARGO           CONSUMABLES   EMP POINTS
Hvy Freighter   10           10                   100000 tons   6 months            5
Gunship           4           4                   5 tons           1 month            20
Light Freighter   2           6                   100 tons           2 months            5
Bomber           2           0                   50 kg           2 days            10


So I am thinking the price tag is basically for the barebones ships/stats. Then you add on systems based on the emplacement points available. Are these additions all considered standard modifications? What is the limit to standard modifications for a starship designer when designing a new starship? Also, is there a point buy system associated with initial stats? IE can a Starship Designer move points around on the ships's stat line as long as it is equal to the starting stat value (like point buy character creation)? Also is there a way to "buy" better stats other than the equipment bonus thrusters, armor, and such?

Player designed ships is a crapshoot.  There is the method located in SotG where you start with the listed stock frames and then make changes from there but there can be many problems with those as some ships become too good, especially depending on how you start allowing somethings to be used, while other concepts are next to impossible to build using those rules.  Reverse engineering a codex ship only goes so far as some of those really shouldn't be and certainly shouldn't work according to how some people would like to translate certain features.

An example of a reverse engineering nightmare is the Marauder Corvette when you get people who want to strip hanger space for dozen gargantuan starfighters and six colossal ships.  Looking at how many EP would be required by RAW to add that much hanger space it should become clear there is an issue with that ship.  I will admit that when I design a ship for use I sometimes will take a similar codex ship and just figure out what modification would be required for the ship I want and then call that an entirely new type of ship instead of calling it a modification; an example of this is my Shadow Hunter 'submarine' type ship which is little more than a Corellian Gunship outfitted with a cloaking device.

Now building ships using the Stock ships really is just like modifying existing ships except you what you start with a lot more bare bones. Generally any modification you add should be considered standard although when you start dipping into a ship's listed cargo space for EP you should consider things with a "base" cost modified by size as standard while things with fixed costs, like weapons, are non-standard.  Plenty of early ships build using the stock ship start with the heavy freighter and then use that massive 100,000 ton cargo capacity as a fountain for EP which were then used to outfit the ship with all sorts of weapons.  An old article on the official website covered this stuff in more detail but it suggested a limit on how much cargo space could be used for those 'non-bulky' things

There is no "point buy" for ship stats so you would use what are listed with the stock ships (check errata for STR on those larger ships because they are way off) and if you want to change them you would do so with the modifications.  To be honest, ships don't get a lot of use out of STR and if you could take that down to boost DEX and INT who wouldn't?

For your player I'd simply want to know what he is looking at trying to build and then finding a ship whose stats start closest to what he wants and then use that go from there.  Just because you begin with the stats of a certain ship means that the actual ship needs to be related in any way to the vehicle that inspired it.  One big problem with a ground up build is simply that it encourages too much min/maxing as the player concentrates on things that 'play well' while ignoring all kinds of things that may be useful, or even essential, because they really aren't used by PCs that much.

+1 to what Steven said.

I appreciate the vote of confidence but remember that some of what I post is abrasive and certain starship abuses can get me going.

When it comes to building a starship you can probably throw out the book, or at best use it for a guideline as many basic attributes are very similar across ships that have the same purpose, and just write out the ship you want to build.  The problems then become assigning it a CL and figuring out what the cost of the ship would be because there SAGA has never really had guideline for those.  I don't think I mentioned it before but a 'problem' with many codex ships is simply that there stats and costs can be based on things that had no consideration for how they would play this game.