But what you can charge for the services of your ship will also dramatically increase. It's really a matter of coming up with a story about the ship and less the Mechanics I think. I'm hoping we get some good Narrative suggestions on how to integrate a custom ship into the game. Realistically it's not too hard to devise reasons why a group of Rebels would have a custom ship, from testing and experimenting through to sheer necessity and desperation. The point though is that the story provides everything needed so that the PC's can do the fun part.

It would be nice to see that all repeated in an EotE campaign (or corporate sector book) with Edge flavour rather than AoR too. The reasons are definitely different in that instance.

I wouldn't be surprised if the price for materials was also talked about in relation to Contribution Rank cost as well, similar to base upgrades.

2 hours ago, Sturn said:

I ran some numbers when working on my Vehicle Operations supplements using basic pay for ship crew from other sources. Comparing what consumables cost to replenish (input from various sources) versus monthly crew costs, it's the crew that is the big expense for capital ships. Unless you have a very, very large party of PCs that are willing to work for free, running a larger crewed ship is going to be very expensive.

For ships with crew sizes in the few dozens--as most transports and exploratory type ships are likely to have--it's probably not that bad. In Star Wars there's always somebody (or even many sombodies) willing to sign-on to a ship's crew just to get off of whatever mudball they grew up on. Throw in room and board (Consumables) and even a little pocket money along with on-the-job training in being a spacer, and they'll be pleased. They are likely just unskilled minions, but that's not too much different than what the Imperial Navy uses if you go by game stats. If the leaders of the ship are skilled PCs, it's okay to bulk out the crew with low-end extras.

On 4.3.2017 at 4:43 PM, Blackbird888 said:

On the contrary, they've never used a species on the cover that isn't playable in the game. When Special Modifications was announced, they didn't mention the species, but the cover features a Besalisk, and it added Besalisk. So, past patterns and all evidence so far indicates that, yes, the Bith will be playable.

In another thread Absol also gave her statistics that look pretty clear (100%), so that settles the matter. I'm not gonna argue with Absol (when it's about statistics, at least): I stand corrected. And I am looking forward to Bith.

11 hours ago, Sturn said:

I ran some numbers when working on my Vehicle Operations supplements using basic pay for ship crew from other sources. Comparing what consumables cost to replenish (input from various sources) versus monthly crew costs, it's the crew that is the big expense for capital ships. Unless you have a very, very large party of PCs that are willing to work for free, running a larger crewed ship is going to be very expensive.

With the trading rules in place you can make millions per month with a sil 5 ship, a good negotiation skill and a (modded) hyperdrive attachment. Which means paying 10,000 credits per crewman and moth becomes trivial and just buying droids or even building a full crew of nemesis assassin droids with gunnery, piloting space and mechanic skills is just time consuming, not a credit problem.

WARRIOR BITH!

Sweet! Does anyone know if theres a larger picture of that Birth trooper on the cover cause its awesome!

13 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

With the trading rules in place you can make millions per month with a sil 5 ship, a good negotiation skill and a (modded) hyperdrive attachment. Which means paying 10,000 credits per crewman and moth becomes trivial and just buying droids or even building a full crew of nemesis assassin droids with gunnery, piloting space and mechanic skills is just time consuming, not a credit problem.

Not sure exactly how you got to "millions per month", but if so I would quickly make house rules to stop that in a free trading campaign. Not only would it cause in-game issues with PCs making that kind of loot, it flies in the face of what we have seen on screen. If one of the best smugglers in the Galaxy thinks 17,000 credits is a windfall life-changer for a job, how does it make sense that a legitimate trader (taking no legality risks) could make millions in just a few weeks?

12 minutes ago, Sturn said:

Not sure exactly how you got to "millions per month", but if so I would quickly make house rules to stop that in a free trading campaign. Not only would it cause in-game issues with PCs making that kind of loot, it flies in the face of what we have seen on screen. If one of the best smugglers in the Galaxy thinks 17,000 credits is a windfall life-changer for a job, how does it make sense that a legitimate trader (taking no legality risks) could make millions in just a few weeks?

You could argue that is negotiation skill is 0 and his presence just two. Which makes the kind of deals which Lando can do, impossible for Han. You could argue as well that Han needs the money now, because he just now had screwed up the Kessel Job and needs the credits immediately to pay Jabba and thus has no starting capital at all to start his business with buying wares for a few hundred thousand credits and double his money in a single half the galaxy haul. Lastly you might argue that running around with millions for of cargo comes with its own problems and attention from parties which might significantly cut into your profits.

But at all is not really important as basically the trading rules are silly and allow for mmo style money multiplication in a few rolls. Buy on low rarity planets, sell on high rarity planets, double your money with good negotiation rolls, which is the basic idea of all the trading related builds. The GM can counteract this with harder opponents for those trading rolls once the money involved rises and absolutely should do this, but trading can be still quite lucrative.

Besides, Hans claim to be the best should be ignored imho. The best smugglers actually made money with their jobs, huge money and used huge ships instead of this junkpile that the millennium falcon is. Ships worth magnitudes more and with magnitudes more cargo space as well. In those ships it is naturally easier to make your cut with legitimate trading.

Even if Han is overhyped, he is seen as one of Jabba's best smugglers with Jabba being considered at least a big time galactic gangster. Han thus is in no way small potatoes. Thus it's still a huge leap for a semi-good illegal smuggler to think 17,000 credits is a wonderful score while skilled single-ship free traders are hauling in millions per month in profit. For Han's statements to make some sense you need to draw back the single free trader profit to more like 1,000's or possibly 10,000's of thousands (at best) per month.

I agree the rules as written can be easily abused. That's why I suggested if my players had a way of making millions per month trading, I would put some tweaks or house rules in place to adjust that before it began. I've actually been working on my own such contribution, which led me to running some numbers on operating expenses for ships. Knowing how much a ship's expenses run on a monthly basis allows a step towards figuring out a sensible profit that isn't game or canon breaking. Of course what one party/GM thinks is sensible can vary greatly so what I've got is heavily influenced by my personal wishes and perceptions for my campaign.

Something else I also hope for appearing in this book is the Assault Frigate Mark One, the Neutron Star Carrier, and some new ship classes created the same way. Namely Rebel engineers completely rebuilding or at least gutting the interior and refitting existing ship designs.)

59 minutes ago, Sturn said:

Even if Han is overhyped, he is seen as one of Jabba's best smugglers with Jabba being considered at least a big time galactic gangster. Han thus is in no way small potatoes. Thus it's still a huge leap for a semi-good illegal smuggler to think 17,000 credits is a wonderful score while skilled single-ship free traders are hauling in millions per month in profit. For Han's statements to make some sense you need to draw back the single free trader profit to more like 1,000's or possibly 10,000's of thousands (at best) per month.

I agree the rules as written can be easily abused. That's why I suggested if my players had a way of making millions per month trading, I would put some tweaks or house rules in place to adjust that before it began. I've actually been working on my own such contribution, which led me to running some numbers on operating expenses for ships. Knowing how much a ship's expenses run on a monthly basis allows a step towards figuring out a sensible profit that isn't game or canon breaking. Of course what one party/GM thinks is sensible can vary greatly so what I've got is heavily influenced by my personal wishes and perceptions for my campaign.

Is is one of Jabba's best henchmen. Not business partners. The free trader who makes millions is more in the league of someone Jabba does business with, not someone who does business for Jabba. Remember, while Han has trouble paying off his debts to Jabba, Lando owns and runs a multi-million credit business.

We have pretty good numbers what skilled craftsman make, as special modification comes with average wages, which suggests that that 17,000 credits is basically just 17,000 dollar and top notch crafter makes already 10,000 credits per month or even 30,000 if he is willing to take risky jobs.

Lasty, remember that it Han gets 17,000 credits for a simple trip from Tatooine to Alderaan. That is a few trip of a few days at worse, a day at best. Meaning that if Han would be that lucky with his customers, he could make a lot himself. Now is not that lucky, he is not in legitimate business either and he has no hand for business at all, constantly losing his credits or giving them away or needing to pay some crime lords out, because he screwed up something and naturally he needs to constantly pay for his ship.

And as I said, becoming a big merchant requires keeping your money together, getting a lot of starting capital together (something which Han never really had) and then sound business decisions for a long time to get your big trader up and running and doing actual trading. Which again comes with its own risk of pirates, getting scammed, getting blackmailed, having to pay tax to the empire and your local hutt, etc so all that easy money becomes just a fun toy for the GM to keep you still hungry, even when you fly a 3.7 Million decked out Action VI called Wild Karrde and are basically the king of smugglers. (Talk about successful smugglers, no wonder Leia wanted a divorce )

What is funny is that in Canon Han became a very successful businessman after ROTJ. Though how he went from where he was 6 years before TFA running a successful shipping firm and playing a major role in interstellar racing to where he is in TFA broke and in massive debt with a single bulk freighter, presumably once part of his shipping firm's fleet, is completely unknown.

WOO! Vehicle crafting rules! Shipwright spec!

This pleases me immensely.

What about Geonosians? We have gotten quite a few of the trade federation species, they all share the same approach of the Empire driving them into the dirt for what they did during the clone wars, they have a common hatred of the Empire and therefore work together with the Alliance. Their recent history has been aggressive flying termites who are rather good at engineering, in particular the weapons of war.

Wookiee, Geonosian and Bith would be a nice mix of species, A tough species, an agile cunning species, and an intellectual species... Ewoks for a sneaky 4th but i'm not holding my breath there.

6 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

What about Geonosians?

The only thing is that somebody upstairs has something against Geonosians in Disney canon. Even if they considered it, they may have an executive veto.

On 4/6/2017 at 6:14 PM, Richardbuxton said:

What about Geonosians? We have gotten quite a few of the trade federation species, they all share the same approach of the Empire driving them into the dirt for what they did during the clone wars, they have a common hatred of the Empire and therefore work together with the Alliance. Their recent history has been aggressive flying termites who are rather good at engineering, in particular the weapons of war.

Wookiee, Geonosian and Bith would be a nice mix of species, A tough species, an agile cunning species, and an intellectual species... Ewoks for a sneaky 4th but i'm not holding my breath there.

We already have Wookiees in the EotE core, and even though they 're a popular species, I don't want them in this book. Give me Skakoan.

How many domesticated animals and small children do I have to sacrifice to get them to give us a preview article next week?

Because that would be great.

6 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

How many domesticated animals and small children do I have to sacrifice to get them to give us a preview article next week?

Because that would be great.

Some spec names would be magnificent

4 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Some spec names would be magnificent

Steve!

I keep forgetting this book is in the line. So a preview article would be most welcome.

I agree. I have little to get excited about because I have nothing to base my rampant speculation on!

Sure, I have the name of the Shipwright spec, but I don't really care about ships all that much, so that leaves me with, what? Bith? Woohoo.

I want something juicy that I can wonder over. Make me hate the wait, FFG! I know you can do it!

Unfortunately it looks like this week is not going to be the week though yes, more information would be great. Personally I'm most interested in the other two specs but more general information on Engineer-centric adventures would be just as nice.

On 27.4.2017 at 7:04 PM, Absol197 said:

I agree. I have little to get excited about because I have nothing to base my rampant speculation on!

You're not going to let a piddling little thing like that stop you, are you?

5 hours ago, Krieger22 said:

You're not going to let a piddling little thing like that stop you, are you?

I might! Shut up! You don't know me !

To be fair to you, normally I probably wouldn't. But this is the Engineer book, and Engineer is my least favorite Age career, and possibly my least favorite career of them all, so in this specific instance, I have no reason to speculate unless I have a reason to get excited. Neither Bith nor the Shipwright get me excited, so, you know .

13 minutes ago, Absol197 said:

I might! Shut up! You don't know me !

To be fair to you, normally I probably wouldn't. But this is the Engineer book, and Engineer is my least favorite Age career, and possibly my least favorite career of them all, so in this specific instance, I have no reason to speculate unless I have a reason to get excited. Neither Bith nor the Shipwright get me excited, so, you know .

[ mock outrage ] Hey, i'm an engineer in real life, PhD in mechanical engineering, and I work st a government laboratory designing algorithms, and my masters was in aeronautics and astronautics and when i was 4 years old if somebody asked me what i wante to do when i grew up my answer was "make planes".. so if I were to build me in game it would probably be engineer mechanic/scientist (brawl is definitely a career skill for me, i studied karate back in undergrad) and maybe a little Shipwright thrown in. My highest Stat is definitely int, probably started with a 4 in int and 3 in brawn and put all my dedications into int. High ranks (maxed out) in education, maybe 2 ranks in brawl, 3 or 4 in athletics, mechanics probably 2 or 3 ranks, 4 or 5 ranks in computers, probably one rank in ranged light, and one in ranged heavy (I have a friend who is into firearms, I went shooting with him a few times). I am definitely a nerd, but this nerd got the hot curvey girl who is supportive of my gaming hobby

Point is engineers are pretty awesome for muggles, good enough to represented in a star wars role playing game. That's something even if we happen not to be as "cool" or "exciting" as jedi! [ /mock outrage ]

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but the last several books have been: Forged in Battle , Endless Vigil , and No Disintegrations . Forthcoming are Disciples of Harmony and then Fully Operational .

FiB has the Kyuzo, EV has the Pantorans, ND has the Kallerans, and DoH will have the Cosians. All are relatively new to Star Wars (compared to old ones like the ones from the EotE CRB, or the Bith, that have been around since the beginning)--none of them have any in-universe, informational coverage from sources like WEG, d20/Saga, or the Essential Guides.

So, if the above trend of covering a relatively new species to Star Wars lore continues, we might see something in Fully Operational.