Cargo Handling covers solutions for the low encumbrance capacity of vehicles (cargo containers, overloading of vehicles) plus a big house rule change for carried vehicles (significantly alters the retrofitted hangar bay attachment). The later is not required to use the former, if you don't like the change.

Please yell at me if you think I've left out someone in the credits section.

Usual Statement: I understand some may not like the added complexity, or the added detail is not needed for their campaign. But, please consider that what may seem complex at first glance (lots of pages) may just be filled with lots of examples and presentation. If you see something that could be a problem for the rules I've presented then please, please comment here. I've play-tested a bit of this, but most of it is very new and yet used. If you do use my rules, please come back for feedback! I will update things as better options or errors are presented. I consider all of these "In Testing".

Vehicle Ops: Cargo Handling

Vehicle Ops Series

Amazing work Sturn! Thanks for fleshing these things out in such detail. I myself enjoy getting into the nuts and bolts, and have several like minded players that really enjoy the added depth. I know it is not for everyone. But having a resource like this for when you need it is great!

Added Consolidated Tables (cheat sheet) to the end.

Found discrepancies between the cargo container descriptions and the cargo container table. Updated to Version 6.

Man I love your stuff. Thanks for putting this up and allowing us to have access. Big Thumbs Up!

This is very good, and I see you drew your justification for converting passenger to cargo and cargo to passenger from the same ship I did, which makes me feel like this is going to be a great base of rules to use rather than the ones I put together lol

inhave a player who is very interested in trading and another who is the pilot so these rules will be very useful

So questions about this resource specifically, I’ll have some more feedback on the others when I can read over them, you have it that stowing things away in cargo containers only increases the total encumbrance by a factor of 2, but canon examples of containers, such as the specimen containers, increase this encumbrance by up to a factor of 3, and that includes internal life support systems.

Is the choice to reduce this a concious decision because it works better?

22 hours ago, Norr-Saba said:

So questions about this resource specifically, I’ll have some more feedback on the others when I can read over them, you have it that stowing things away in cargo containers only increases the total encumbrance by a factor of 2, but canon examples of containers, such as the specimen containers, increase this encumbrance by up to a factor of 3, and that includes internal life support systems.

Is the choice to reduce this a concious decision because it works better?

I grabbed the x2 factor from the Core books. See the "It's RAW" sidebar on page 5. Core speaks of items stored in an "effective manner" having half encumbrance. I did start with varying levels of "effective manner" that allowed things such as liquids or fine materials (think sand) being able to get greater reductions, but I found it added too much complexity.

Remind me of where the specimen containers were found? I must have missed it completely. I'm not sure if I like the extra reduction for living creatures since I had been figuring that living animals were the hardest thing to pack into containers since you can't really squeeze them in or dismantle them. May guess is large living creatures would be difficult to carry in RAW since their encumbrance was way too large when compared to cargo holds thus the specimen container was created?

Note that in my cargo rules a ship may also effectively double its encumbrance (see Overloading, page 2) while suffering performance penalties and movement through it due to junk stuffed everywhere. With Overloading and Crates, you could carry up to 4x the base encumbrance which was a good number for me to rectify the issues with cargo holds being way too small for common sense.

22 hours ago, Norr-Saba said:

This is very good, and I see you drew your justification for converting passenger to cargo and cargo to passenger from the same ship I did, which makes me feel like this is going to be a great base of rules to use rather than the ones I put together lol

inhave a player who is very interested in trading and another who is the pilot so these rules will be very useful

My next Vehicle Ops document was going to delve into trading. It's not even to a rough draft form due to all of the inconsistencies in RAW. It's half notes but what I have so far is here .

1 hour ago, Sturn said:

I grabbed the x2 factor from the Core books. See the "It's RAW" sidebar on page 5. Core speaks of items stored in an "effective manner" having half encumbrance. I did start with varying levels of "effective manner" that allowed things such as liquids or fine materials (think sand) being able to get greater reductions, but I found it added too much complexity.

see i read that as being able to stow things away to reduce the encumbrance regularly and then having the containers like the specimen container being able to provide even greater stowing capabilities, i.e. the container would be able to triple its own encumbrance in what it could store, and then by my stowing the container away properly i could halve its encumbrance again

1 hour ago, Sturn said:

Remind me of where the specimen containers were found? I must have missed it completely. I'm not sure if I like the extra reduction for living creatures since I had been figuring that living animals were the hardest thing to pack into containers since you can't really squeeze them in or dismantle them. May guess is large living creatures would be difficult to carry in RAW since their encumbrance was way too large when compared to cargo holds thus the specimen container was created?

Note that in my cargo rules a ship may also effectively double its encumbrance (see Overloading, page 2) while suffering performance penalties and movement through it due to junk stuffed everywhere. With Overloading and Crates, you could carry up to 4x the base encumbrance which was a good number for me to rectify the issues with cargo holds being way too small for common sense.

the specimen containers are on page 48 of enter the unknown, and i see it as since encumbrance also represents unmanageability that by putting them into stasis and having them cradled in a feetle position they take up much less space and cause none of the trouble.

but to be clear, i love this guideline that you made and i will be implementing it for my players, with only perhaps two things altered. (i especially love the altered hanger bay as i also planned on doing something like that.)

1 hour ago, Sturn said:

My next Vehicle Ops document was going to delve into trading. It's not even to a rough draft form due to all of the inconsistencies in RAW. It's half notes but what I have so far is here .

i'm definitely going to check this out, youre vehicle operations guidelines are definitely going to form a backbone for my players.

1 hour ago, Sturn said:

Nice. Only just come across this through another of your posts.

Cheers dude.

Look forward to looking over it all later.

Are these files still available? I'm getting dead links when I click.

48 minutes ago, Doc Sindica said:

Are these files still available? I'm getting dead links when I click.

Google sites updated, and the conversion didn't go well. It's still there under different links and the site needs reconstructed. Try this link for now:

https://sites.google.com/site/sturnsstuff/starwars/vehicleops