Greetings.
I’d like to see what others have to comment on “Upgrading Starships”.
Suppose, for example, you have a group invested in a Starship Campaign. They’ve got their Class 2 Starship, and their debts are with various factions. Their starting debt is assumed to be the seed capital that funded the starship, am I right ?
So what happens if the players wish to upgrade to a Class 3 ?
Ideas were discussed on how to do it via trading with Cargo.
We set a nominal value on what a Class 1 starship may be worth, eg, 3 Cargo Units (Class 4). We then ramped it up, so 6 Cargo Units (Class 4) for a Class 2 Starship, 9 for Class 3, 12 for Class 4. But it doesn’t feel right.
After all, if a Class 4 was an Aircraft Carrier IRL, could Joe Bloggs just buy one ? Probably not. You’d need major funds and clout to achieve it. Thus, if it breaks at Class 4, it’s not a solid foundation for 1-3 either.
We all know Mr Solo won The Falcon in a card game.
So perhaps they could find a game and play some cards..and voila ! Class 3 🙂 (Just don’t fail the roll, otherwise I suspect the Class 2 is going for payment, and the faction with about 12 debt is going to be very upset too !)
Extreme cases, I know. But hopefully, to illustrate a point and that is we have no tangible foundation to adopt a trade system (Yes, Barter and Acquisition are good for abstraction, as is much of the game), but in this instance, we’re dealing with cold hard numbers and the financial worth of things and how to acquire them by trading.
I guess what I’m saying is, how many trades do they need to do, to upgrade a ship ? Is it even possible ? Chances are, if not, they’ll just nick one anyway. (yes, I know that creates even more problems, but there’s drama and fun in that too ! And probably very short lived characters….)
Thank you.
I’ve been thinking a bit recently about the ship as a sort of group asset that would allow them to pool their resources to upgrade. To this end, I was actually considering setting up a bunch of XP related advances that the players could all contribute towards.
It’s a lot to think about, but my brain has been on alternate advancement stuff for later game play. Being able to dump a collective 20xp on advanced energy shielding for the ship that reduces incoming energy damage by one severity automatically would be super cool.
/sub
Starships are so valuable as to be completely beyond the scope of Cargo and Barter and Acquisitions, I figure. Your debts don’t necessarily represent anything to do with your starship; don’t get me wrong, they can, but there is no requirement.
If my players wanted an upgrade, it would have to be by hook or by crook, I would say. Get in good with a faction, cash a favor, steal one, etc. That’s how I’d run it, since starships are such huge deals.
Alfred Rudzki my crews current ship had their electronics upgraded for two favors. It has some of the most advanced security tech with bio-imprints of the crew making it effectively unhackable.
This was after the second time the lost control of their own ship.
Adding weapons or workspaces is just a straight out Acquisition. In theory, a new ship is too – but I think it would be tricky finding a market able to sell you one. But I guess that’s what factions and debt are for.
I’ll second Larp, it’s something to play and find out. You have to earn favors, pay off debts, and be at the right places with a crew that can install the goods. Nobody can own a military craft unless it was decommissioned or they stole it from some pirates/faction.
I’ve treated adding weapons / features as acquisition, which works fine.
I’ve also allowed my engineer/tinker player to make his own “special modifications” given the right materials and a successful Expertise roll.
e.g. our crew had a ship like the one from treasure planet, complete with an open top deck. After a couple of boarding actions, the engineer decided to electrify the top deck plating. Which meant rerouting power from a different system, and since it was a homebrew mod the first several times it was used each needed another expertise roll (meaning the chance for spectacular / interesting failure scenarios that added all sorts of fun drama). More engineering projects and acquisitions eventually more or less worked out the kinks. But it became a fun driver of the story: it solved problems, it caused problems, and it gave the characters mini-objectives (“hey, I know what we could use this new power source we found for!”)
TBH I find this sort of progression, all based on the narrative, a lot more interesting than any XP-based advancement system. Sometimes I flirt with the idea of dropping XP-based advancement altogether, and letting characters gain abilities as needed and wanted through their actions/purchases/training/experiences rather than via XP rewards. (But at the same time, I love how those rewards and the triggers help drive the players to try all sorts of different things!)
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