10 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Let me give you one example of what I mean: Most Sil 4 light freighters have a HTT of 20-30 but, using this system, the base HTT for a freighter is 35(!), which is higher than almost all given Sil 4 ships.

That one is a little high... i kind of expect errata on starship crafting rules that'd knock it down to 30. But I don't think it's higher than all sil 4 ships (but I'd have to search for an exception).

The rules certainly aren't what I would have done in terms of details even if keeping the same framework.

I'm guessing they made it what they did so people would be inclined to use larger project but in that case a base of 10 plus 5x silhouette woul have been better for the freighter

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

That one is a little high... i kind of expect errata on starship crafting rules that'd knock it down to 30. But I don't think it's higher than all sil 4 ships (but I'd have to search for an exception).

The rules certainly aren't what I would have done in terms of details even if keeping the same framework.

I'm guessing they made it what they did so people would be inclined to use larger project but in that case a base of 10 plus 5x silhouette woul have been better for the freighter

You know what I'm going to try my hand at a set of house rules for starship crafting, a perturbation away from the official rules. Here are some ideas I have so far... HT is a per frame type constant plus the approximate square of silhouette see below. HP is a per frame type constant plus silhouette. Armor, add one to the base armor rating of each hull type, but layered plating can only be applied at mos a number of times equal to half the silhouette round down (probably but maybe round up) sensors would be a new subsystem about as detailed that the hyperdrive side bar, 2 options (0 hp, 1 hp) 0 hp is close range with no range mods, 1 hp is short range with 3 +1 range mods, speed limits are based on sil and HT, you use the smaller, but for sil 4&5 the size limit on speed is one higher than existing but hull trauma threshold limit would mean that to get a speed 4 sil 5 you have to go with a sil 4 and frame and use larger design (but speed limit would be presented in an x and y look up table, silhouette on the x axis hull trauma on the y. base enc is per hull type constant times the approximate square of silhouette. The approximate sqaures table would be named something like silhouette scaling law

Sil 1->1

Sil 2-> 5

Sil 3 -> 10

Sil 4-> 15

Sil 5 -> 25

Sil 6 -> 35

Sil 7- > 50

Sil 8 -> 65

Sil 9 -> 80 (space station)

All of those numbers are within 1 of squares of silhouette and are easier to work with.

Hull type can add to the base enc of a frame, as can cargo pods hull upgrade.

Maneuvering fins can be applied a maximum of 3 times.

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

You know what I'm going to try my hand at a set of house rules for starship crafting, a perturbation away from the official rules. Here are some ideas I have so far... HT is a per frame type constant plus the approximate square of silhouette see below. HP is a per frame type constant plus silhouette. Armor, add one to the base armor rating of each hull type, but layered plating can only be applied at mos a number of times equal to half the silhouette round down (probably but maybe round up) sensors would be a new subsystem about as detailed that the hyperdrive side bar, 2 options (0 hp, 1 hp) 0 hp is close range with no range mods, 1 hp is short range with 3 +1 range mods, speed limits are based on sil and HT, you use the smaller, but for sil 4&5 the size limit on speed is one higher than existing but hull trauma threshold limit would mean that to get a speed 4 sil 5 you have to go with a sil 4 and frame and use larger design (but speed limit would be presented in an x and y look up table, silhouette on the x axis hull trauma on the y. base enc is per hull type constant times the approximate square of silhouette. The approximate sqaures table would be named something like silhouette scaling law

Sil 1->1

Sil 2-> 5

Sil 3 -> 10

Sil 4-> 15

Sil 5 -> 25

Sil 6 -> 35

Sil 7- > 50

Sil 8 -> 65

Sil 9 -> 80 (space station)

All of those numbers are within 1 of squares of silhouette and are easier to work with.

Hull type can add to the base enc of a frame, as can cargo pods hull upgrade.

Maneuvering fins can be applied a maximum of 3 times.

I like the basics of this, although I would look at things like the maneuvering fins etc, to see what the numbers are at the end of the day. All in all I think this is a sober approach that might work better.

For the bonuses;

Crafting results can add a bonus of +1 HP per 4 Adv or 1 Triumph. You can add things like maneuvering fins, but probably only once and restricted to Sil 4 +. Add a weapons loadout equal to 1 HP. The sensors you suggested would cap at Long and you would need to invest Advantage to increase them the final range band. (So even a 0 HP could get close with 3 adv). Triumph can earn a 1 HP which must be spent and added at no cost. Other options reduce time to construct to a maximum of 50% reduction, and credit cost to a maximum of 50% reduction, both not able to stack with other sources of reductions.

When im home from Easter dinner I’ll take a look at filling the details in and apply these to the current structure with your numbers as the base. I think that’s a more realistic approach that keeps it close to the existing models but allows for slight upgrades that make the investment worth the effort (without getting as extreme as weapon and Armor crafting).

I am guessing someone is going to work up all the other parts that go into ships other than a frame, engine, and hull plating? Where are the mechanics for adding in a hanger bay from the get go in the blue prints? sure we have a jury rigged, stuff it in somewhere, retrofit hanger but a real hanger going where it was designed to has to do better. What about a med bay? docking rings for sil 4 and up craft? upgraded sensors, an actual shield generator, larger weapon systems? I mean even if you make a destroyer hull you don't have enough hard points to make anything near the liberty cruiser and that's a cruise liner changed into a warship and it has what 70+ HP worth weapons on it? thats no including a hanger, special boosted shields, and a supped up command center and it still has a few HP to spare.

This is a great start but where is all the detail needed to really make a fully functional ship crafting system? its like they made the basic rules and then failed to think of the very next step.

There should be a 1 Adv stripped down bonus that reduces HT by 1. As way that a corvette frame could meet the sil 5 speed 4 criteria.

4 hours ago, Banditks said:

I am guessing someone is going to work up all the other parts that go into ships other than a frame, engine, and hull plating? Where are the mechanics for adding in a hanger bay from the get go in the blue prints? sure we have a jury rigged, stuff it in somewhere, retrofit hanger but a real hanger going where it was designed to has to do better. What about a med bay? docking rings for sil 4 and up craft? upgraded sensors, an actual shield generator, larger weapon systems? I mean even if you make a destroyer hull you don't have enough hard points to make anything near the liberty cruiser and that's a cruise liner changed into a warship and it has what 70+ HP worth weapons on it? thats no including a hanger, special boosted shields, and a supped up command center and it still has a few HP to spare.

This is a great start but where is all the detail needed to really make a fully functional ship crafting system? its like they made the basic rules and then failed to think of the very next step.

My first thought would be to add a "carrier" hull that could carry a silhouette total equal to halve the starship scaling law round down in other craft with a maximum individual silhouette of one less than the silhouette of the carrier.

Who's down for a community project called "the Nubian design collectives whole vehicle crafting handbook"? I'm open to other names. Basically we house rule the vehicle crafting rules like we've been talking about and we write it up professional like using the ppt template that someone posted one the edge forums not so long ago.

I was thinking of speed being limitted by silhouette and the SUM of hull trauma and armoran exotic materials upgrade. And an exotic materials upgrade that adds armor that doesn't count toward this total. Actually if you use a triumph on layered plating it counts as exotic materials and does count toward the HT + armor sum used to limit speed

23 hours ago, Khazadune said:

I highly doubt those RAW are meant to include restrictions against piloting talents, I read that as the top speed for the vessel, the pilots’ skills are then placed on top of that, which is why the cap seems restrictive. It is built with the understanding that whatever speed is given pilots and their mechanics can potentially add +3 speed or handling above that, which is pretty amazing.

Imagine a shipwright/rigger in an ARC Fighter as co-pilot to a Hotshot. With the benefits of Signature Vessel, push the specs, etc and full throttle etc, that Fighter would push in the ballpark of 9 speed, +6 handling...

Except from my understanding top speed is capped at 6 in the game and hanldleing at +3

As for the blurb from FO for crafting a vessel... it quite explicitly states that this vessel can never exceed the values on the chart... even if various factors indicate otherwise. Personally that sounds like even talents can not increase the speed.

Now as to the rules for crafting... I think the speed restriction is overly limiting, i think the armour should have been limited in that manner rather than the speed. Also the cost of things should have perhaps been per sil. rather than just a straight cost like it is.

I mean in regards to armour my armourer could craft a sil1 speed 4, handling 0, armour 7, htt of 11, sst of 9, def of 2/2, with 2 inbuilt weapons "iron man" suit...

Oh I forgot massive 3. See, I'd say that the armour is more game breaking than the speed... especially since we don' have rules for crafting vehicle scale weapons.

8 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I was thinking of speed being limitted by silhouette and the SUM of hull trauma and armoran exotic materials upgrade. And an exotic materials upgrade that adds armor that doesn't count toward this total. Actually if you use a triumph on layered plating it counts as exotic materials and does count toward the HT + armor sum used to limit speed

Can you give an example?

In regards to armour I was thinking something along the lines of limit to sil+1/2 sil rounded up... or maybe sil+1... let's see... sil +1/2 sil r.up

Sil1 = 2 armour

Sil2 = 3 armour

Sil3 = 5 armour

Sil4 = 6 armour

Sil5 = 7 armour

Sil6 = 9 armour

Sil7 = 11 armour

Sil8 = 12 armour

Although even that gets a little extreme at sil5 and above... perhaps sil+1 is better.

@EliasWindrider I think if we are doing a community crafting rules book it needs it' own thread... probably in the edge forum.

I'd be down to help with custom shipbuilding rules! Sounds like fun! Though, I might suggest we keep the new thread for the discussion in this forum since the original rules are from an AoR supplement and AoR places more emphasis on a broader range of ships and space combat than Edge.

On 3/29/2018 at 1:18 AM, jayc007 said:

What about crafting ship weapons or installing ship weapons into a crafted ship... are there any real guidelines or charts for that aspect of vehicles / ships?

I have the same question. Weapon systems are vital to most vehicles and starships so crafting rules for them should have been included in this book. Well, I guess that's another thing for them to put in another supplement.

26 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

I have the same question. Weapon systems are vital to most vehicles and starships so crafting rules for them should have been included in this book. Well, I guess that's another thing for them to put in another supplement.

But what other book than engineer would make sense for it... And what other line than AOR.

The only other option I could see would be maybe a corporate sector book IN the AOR line.

1 hour ago, immortalfrieza said:

I have the same question. Weapon systems are vital to most vehicles and starships so crafting rules for them should have been included in this book. Well, I guess that's another thing for them to put in another supplement.

I don’t understand why weapons aren’t in the write ups under each ship frame? Like Sil 3 ships have 2 weapon systems that come standard. There are already rules for adding weapons to ships, but there should be a base so you aren’t relying on HP’s which might be way out of whack with reality. I built an X Wing and could only get the exact build after rolling a Triumph to include the integrated System for the missing Hard Point. Something like a droid socket being 2 HP’s is not balanced with this system and that’s just one example. Take a look at the space station and add the Encumbrance Advantage... it’s 100,000 Encumbrance adds... wait for it, 8. At best if you treat it as a freighter(?) then you get 16...... scaling in this system sucks, weapons missing sucks... the only thing that marginally works for this system is swapping out existing systems, and even then it often causes more problems then not... wait my X Wing now carries a number of passengers?

This book was probably delayed due to these rules, I wish they would have sought some input from people who would use these rules. Whoever playtested these didn’t do a very good job. (No offense if that was you, but you let us down.)

On 29/03/2018 at 3:36 AM, Bluerexdc said:

Yeah I’m slightly confused when it comes to adding weapons as it doesn’t really mention it in the rules as far as I can tell

Near as I can tell you have to either save some hard points and add what you want through that means or you have to use triumphs in the hull building stage to add integrated systems and put in your weapons in that manner. Either way that's pretty expensive to do.

Personally in rewriting the rules I'd say use 2 advantage in the assembly stage to add a weapon system up to a max of 2 times the sil. (Still need to pay unless you have it/them on hand)

Then we still need rules to craft our own vessel weapons.

In regards to integrated hangers we definitely need to homebrew a carrier type hull. Thoughts? Opinions?

Here are some I've had.

Holds vehicles at most 1 sil lower, with starting at only one and maybe having mods to add more = 1/2 ship's sil rounded up.

Holds a maximum of silhouettes = half of htt with mods to add silhouettes up to full htt

So a sil 5 ship with say 50 htt could hold up to 25 sil 1 ships plus mods to take it up to a max of its htt so 5 mods to add 5 sil 1 vessels per mod.

So this ship is maxed out at 50 sil 1 or 25 sil 2 or 16 sil 3. With regards to sil 4 ships, it can hold 1 with mods to add 2 more. Let's say 3 sil 4 ships (12) + 12 sil 3 ships

Now it needs some other things like armour 1 plus a mod to add a second

And defense 1/1/1/1 with no mods.

I'm sure I'm missing some other things but hey... it' a start

My book finally came in and I had a chance to read through the rules. They're not bad. Not good, but not bad. I think FFG missed their opportunity to really make a robust system. Ships should be multiple components: Frame, Engine, Hull, Hyperdrive, and Shields. Then each piece would modify the final outcome. High end engines may give a bunch of speed and/or handling, but heavy armor would reduce it, etc. Frame would start with X HT, Hull would add Y HT. Engine would give X SS, Shields would reduce it. And all of the parts should be customizable more than just mods. Like you may increase X by 1 but decrease Y by 2. That sort of thing.

I'm cool with weapons how they are. It works fore everything silhouette 4 or less. I can understand the frustration for silhouette 5 or more. But if you treat them as weapon banks, it's a bit better. Those 20 starboard turbolasers are only 1 HP (like linked weapons).

11 hours ago, jayc007 said:

Can you give an example?

In regards to armour I was thinking something along the lines of limit to sil+1/2 sil rounded up... or maybe sil+1... let's see... sil +1/2 sil r.up

Sil1 = 2 armour

Sil2 = 3 armour

Sil3 = 5 armour

Sil4 = 6 armour

Sil5 = 7 armour

Sil6 = 9 armour

Sil7 = 11 armour

Sil8 = 12 armour

Although even that gets a little extreme at sil5 and above... perhaps sil+1 is better.

Off the top of my head (I'm away from book), the corvette frame has I think 50 HT and you'd expect 5 armor. It's the traditional sil 5 ship

So for sil 5, ht+armor<50 allows speed 4, but ht+armor>=50 allows a max speed of 3 (the cut off might be 45 instead of 50, would need to look more closely at raider corvette, do gunship, and ir-3f to see the trend)

For sil 4, ht+armor<25 would allow speed 5, but 25<= ht+armor<45 would allow a max speed of 4, 45<=ht+armor would allow a max speed of 3, etc

5 hours ago, Khazadune said:

I don’t understand why weapons aren’t in the write ups under each ship frame? Like Sil 3 ships have 2 weapon systems that come standard. There are already rules for adding weapons to ships, but there should be a base so you aren’t relying on HP’s which might be way out of whack with reality. I built an X Wing and could only get the exact build after rolling a Triumph to include the integrated System for the missing Hard Point. Something like a droid socket being 2 HP’s is not balanced with this system and that’s just one example. Take a look at the space station and add the Encumbrance Advantage... it’s 100,000 Encumbrance adds... wait for it, 8. At best if you treat it as a freighter(?) then you get 16...... scaling in this system sucks, weapons missing sucks... the only thing that marginally works for this system is swapping out existing systems, and even then it often causes more problems then not... wait my X Wing now carries a number of passengers?

This book was probably delayed due to these rules, I wish they would have sought some input from people who would use these rules. Whoever playtested these didn’t do a very good job. (No offense if that was you, but you let us down.)

I was referring to crafting the weapons specifically. For instance, what's the material cost for crafting a Ion Cannon (Light) and how long would it take Vs. an Auto Cannon? What does it take to craft a missile launcher? How about crafting missiles themselves? Things like that.

Having vehicle and ship crafting rules but lacking those seems like a pretty big oversight to me.

So I had an interesting thought about the vehicle crafting rules. Is there an order to crafting? Does it go Frame->Engine->Hull? I'm currious, because some of the advantage/triumph options on the engine and hull are limited by the silhouette. But if you haven't created the frame yet, the silhouette could change.

If I'm creating a starfighter (Sil3 by default) and build combat plating with the increase HTT by sil it would go up by 3. But if when building the frame I select Elegant Design does it reduce the HTT gaine by the combat plating by one?

If I'm building the same starfighter but spend my Advantage on Layered Plating 3 times but then build the Elegant frame would the advantage just be lost? Would the hull no longer fit and I'd have to build a different one?

21 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

I was referring to crafting the weapons specifically. For instance, what's the material cost for crafting a Ion Cannon (Light) and how long would it take Vs. an Auto Cannon? What does it take to craft a missile launcher? How about crafting missiles themselves? Things like that.

Having vehicle and ship crafting rules but lacking those seems like a pretty big oversight to me.

That's where things could have been really expanded on. They could have added different styles of each weapon with their own mod options similar to the engines and hulls they introduced.

1 hour ago, Ahrimon said:

That's where things could have been really expanded on. They could have added different styles of each weapon with their own mod options similar to the engines and hulls they introduced.

My bet is they will say they didn't have the page counts available to include all of those details. But you could probably quickly build some custom weapons crafting rules based on the Ranged Weapons table in Special Modifications. The real issue will be balance, especially if you follow this rabbit trail all the way to its conclusion where the player can try to make every last subsystem on their ship. After all, what's to stop a Scientist/Shipwright from crafting their entire ship, including computer programs like a Gunner Droid Brain and Navigation AI and some of those other software-based attachments in some of the other supplement books?

On a similar train of thought, you would want to make sure that any custom crafting rules do not step on the toes of expensive talents, like the Shipwright's signature talent of Push the Specs. Those talents mean specializations like the Shipwright and the Rigger can get much more out of a CR90 then a generic crafting monkey. Just food for thought, but happy to help refine any custom rules, especially a carrier hull concept :-)

7 hours ago, AeroEng42 said:

My bet is they will say they didn't have the page counts available to include all of those details. But you could probably quickly build some custom weapons crafting rules based on the Ranged Weapons table in Special Modifications. The real issue will be balance, especially if you follow this rabbit trail all the way to its conclusion where the player can try to make every last subsystem on their ship. After all, what's to stop a Scientist/Shipwright from crafting their entire ship, including computer programs like a Gunner Droid Brain and Navigation AI and some of those other software-based attachments in some of the other supplement books?

On a similar train of thought, you would want to make sure that any custom crafting rules do not step on the toes of expensive talents, like the Shipwright's signature talent of Push the Specs. Those talents mean specializations like the Shipwright and the Rigger can get much more out of a CR90 then a generic crafting monkey. Just food for thought, but happy to help refine any custom rules, especially a carrier hull concept :-)

Good points. I wouldn't want to see an advantage/etc chart for making weapons, but I think I would rather see weapons done as regular attachments. That way the blast-co medium laser would have different mod options than the Zap inc model. The Aegis deflector shield would be different than Barrier shield. Etc. Simple things like a damage +1 mod or an accurate mod.

13 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

So I had an interesting thought about the vehicle crafting rules. Is there an order to crafting? Does it go Frame->Engine->Hull? I'm currious, because some of the advantage/triumph options on the engine and hull are limited by the silhouette. But if you haven't created the frame yet, the silhouette could change.

If I'm creating a starfighter (Sil3 by default) and build combat plating with the increase HTT by sil it would go up by 3. But if when building the frame I select Elegant Design does it reduce the HTT gaine by the combat plating by one?

If I'm building the same starfighter but spend my Advantage on Layered Plating 3 times but then build the Elegant frame would the advantage just be lost? Would the hull no longer fit and I'd have to build a different one?

@Ahrimon

Remember, you craft the Frame first. If you can apply Elegant Design, that's when it happens. Your Starfighter is now Sil 2, with all the advantages and disadvantages.

You then craft Engines next and finally you craft the Hull.

Also, the ship would be limited to weapons available to Sil 2.