Im having trouble finding the section in EotE that explains ships encumbrance. My instinct says that its a different scale than personal encumbrance. Others wise a ship like g9 rigger, with 80 encumbrance can only carry a shipment of something like 40 sets of laminate armor. That seems kinda odd to me.

There's a podcast that speaks to the notion of packing items. I'd just SWAG an amount that makes sense for the given items and volume of ship in question and not worry too much about the math.

SWAG?

Scientific wild @$$ guess...

Scientific wild @$$ guess...

Which is SO much better than a plain old WAG….

Scientific wild @$$ guess...

Which is SO much better than a plain old WAG….

It IS that much better. We do use a bit of math in a SWAG. A WAG usually uses nothing more than the MK 1 Eyeball. If that much.

I thought WAG was Wives & Girlfriends...

I thought WAG was Wives & Girlfriends...

Hmm. Lends a new meaning to the name of the convenience store chain “Wag-a-Bag”.

So I found a topic or two discussing vehicle encumbrance & I enjoyed the formula that someone suggested (sorry for not remembering who).

It was: Silhouette * (Hull + Armor) * 4 = Vehicle Encumbrance.

Seems legit but it feels like some of the vehicle encumbrance capacities are off compared to others, specifically all the freighters, light freighters, patrol boats & yachts of Silhouette 3-4.

In talking with a player of mine, we came up with a simple conversion rate that would fit for those specific ships that fit in the parameters given: Listed encumbrance capacity * silhouette = actual encumbrance capacity.

The reason those specific ship-types & silhouettes were chosen was because fighters shouldn't have much encumbrance capacity, same goes with alot of the land vehicles. What is listed seems to work just fine. As far as the silhouettes larger than 4, they tend to have capacities from the 800's to 10,000, which seem to work just fine.

An example of this is the Imperial-Class Star Destroyer, which has an encumbrance capacity of 10,000 and can hold 72 starfighters. If they were all TIE Fighters, then it would take up 6,912 encumbrance, which allows for wiggle room with different types of starfighters as well as land-based vehicles & cargo.

Anywho, it's a house-rule I'll be implementing as it seems to work out pretty great & gives my players a solid value for the ship encumbrance that doesn't seem off for something such as a Loronar which is written to only have 60 encumbrance (15 blaster rifles? really?). With everything house-ruled, YMMV but I wanted to post this in case someone else liked it.

So I found a topic or two discussing vehicle encumbrance & I enjoyed the formula that someone suggested (sorry for not remembering who).

It was: Silhouette * (Hull + Armor) * 4 = Vehicle Encumbrance.

Kirdan Kenobi and I've completely stolen his idea for my own uses after modifying it a bit. I played with the numbers on various ships and silhouettes and changed it a bit to account for larger silhouettes:

(Silh x Multiplier*) x (Hull + Armor)

*S2 x5 S3 x7 S4 x10 S5 x25 S6 x50 S7 x1000 S8 x2000 S9 x5000

I may change some of the multipliers later but they gave me believable results for GAME purposes.

Since doing math is not a good thing during playtime, I would use it only on ships the players own or might be picking up soon. I have a table that includes a quick average encumbrance of lower silhouettes if you don't want to pause to get the exact amount: Silhouette 2 is 40 encumbrance, S3 250, S4 1200.

Equal to the ship's encumbrance allows for storage, but no maintenance and delayed launching. Doubling the encumbrance makes it more easy to launch and allows maintenance.

I've also worked out some structure on determining whether or not the carrying ship has doors large enough to fit the craft inside. I've got Cargo Bay doors versus Hangar Bay doors. Otherwise you might have to dismantle that ship to fit it through the door and down the passageways.

Regarding fitting ships inside other ships, if you can take the Retrofitted Hangar bay, that implies a large enough door to launch from. Also if the ship includes a compliment of fighters or other ships in it.

Also, though smaller freighters can't necessarily contain fighters within them, you could probably attach one to an airlock similar to how the A-Wings of Phoenix Squadron do so in Rebels (this implies there is some sort of sealable hatch below the cockpit of said fighters, as otherwise how the heck do they get into the airlocks of the Ghost/Tantive IV?)

Regarding fitting ships inside other ships, if you can take the Retrofitted Hangar bay, that implies a large enough door to launch from. Also if the ship includes a compliment of fighters or other ships in it.

Retrofitted Hangar Bay implies the cargo bay doors being expanded into larger hangar doors for me. It was that attachment that got me thinking about the topic to begin with. Like you said, if a default ship's description has carried vehicles, that implies a roomier hangar door and enough room for double the encumbrance of default vehicles (they can be quickly launched and maintenance performed while aboard).

Regarding fitting ships inside other ships, if you can take the Retrofitted Hangar bay, that implies a large enough door to launch from. Also if the ship includes a compliment of fighters or other ships in it.

Retrofitted Hangar Bay implies the cargo bay doors being expanded into larger hangar doors for me. It was that attachment that got me thinking about the topic to begin with. Like you said, if a default ship's description has carried vehicles, that implies a roomier hangar door and enough room for double the encumbrance of default vehicles (they can be quickly launched and maintenance performed while aboard).

You are both correct. Retrofitted Hangar Bay means just that you somehow manage the include a hangar into your ship. If you modified the hull, expanded the cargo hold into something which is big enough for your ships or whatever does not really matter. Just remember how you modified your ship exactly, because this might become later important. Rebel shows you sometimes how drastical mods can change the hull, from removing fins, extending the hull or adding trap doors to a ship, etc

Getting back to the original topic: The rules state that the encumbrance value at least for capitals (sil 5 and up) does not represent cargo space. Rebels shows us that the ghost can simply dock with a container and transport cargo the same way how bigger cargo freighters do it. The X-Wing games show us the same mechanic for YT-1300 and other sil 4 YTs. Sil 4 freighters seem usually to be limited to a single container, sil 5 freighters seem to be able to take multiple ones.

Class Four container transport: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Class_four_container_transport

So I strongly recommend to use encumbrance for storage of equipment and use cargo containers for larger cargo runs.