First off, please understand that I am not that guy who internet rages over a knee-jerk reaction to a half-read rules system. Having taken some time to digest the ship building rules from Fully Operational, I am, to say the least, disappointed. I had hoped for a not perfect, but passingly useful ship crafting system, or at the very least rules for converting and gaining hard points on existing ships. Now we have the capability to build a destroyer with a whopping 17 hardpoints (before engines, hyperdrive, and hull) and an equally ridiculous starfighter with 11 armor potentially. Is it really that hard to come up with a system/splat book that isn't even great, but that makes quasi-sense? Does no one proofread these things before they go to print?

1 hour ago, kenngp said:

First off, please understand that I am not that guy who internet rages over a knee-jerk reaction to a half-read rules system. Having taken some time to digest the ship building rules from Fully Operational, I am, to say the least, disappointed. I had hoped for a not perfect, but passingly useful ship crafting system, or at the very least rules for converting and gaining hard points on existing ships. Now we have the capability to build a destroyer with a whopping 17 hardpoints (before engines, hyperdrive, and hull) and an equally ridiculous starfighter with 11 armor potentially. Is it really that hard to come up with a system/splat book that isn't even great, but that makes quasi-sense? Does no one proofread these things before they go to print?

That 17 hard Points then have to be spent on weapons in addition to hull, engines, hyperdrive etc. By the end of that you end up with a Destroyer that is subpar by comparisons against existing base models.

Also, you can spend 450 credits to create a hull for the Death Star....

2 hours ago, kenngp said:

First off, please understand that I am not that guy who internet rages over a knee-jerk reaction to a half-read rules system. Having taken some time to digest the ship building rules from Fully Operational, I am, to say the least, disappointed. I had hoped for a not perfect, but passingly useful ship crafting system, or at the very least rules for converting and gaining hard points on existing ships. Now we have the capability to build a destroyer with a whopping 17 hardpoints (before engines, hyperdrive, and hull) and an equally ridiculous starfighter with 11 armor potentially. Is it really that hard to come up with a system/splat book that isn't even great, but that makes quasi-sense? Does no one proofread these things before they go to print?

After seeing all of the other crafting rules spread across the various books, I had no illusions that the FO ship crafting rules would be anything more coherent than what they turned out to be. However, I was still unimpressed with the species and specializations offered, and the equipment isn't all that either (like an Auto-fire carbine doing a pathetic base Damage 4). Then there are rules for making repairs in all sorts of environments/situations that could probably be replaced with a simple reminder to add Setback. There's just nothing in this book that excites me at all.

Well have heart. The ship crafting rules are being revamped by the community for the community. Please check the thread out and add your input to help make them better

It's the Nubian crafting cooperative or some such. One thing is that, by and large, the armour is limited to sil+1 So that fighter will only have 4 armour and not 11?!?!?! Talk about a min/max'ers teenage boy's centerfold dream.

One thing I was really hoping for in FO (above and beyond the vehicle crafting) was vehicle weapon crafting rules... which we didn't get even a hint of, but I thought for sure would be part of the crafting rule set... And I thought there was supposed to be a whole rule set for demolitions crafting bit I haven't found it yet...

11 hours ago, jayc007 said:

Well have heart. The ship crafting rules are being revamped by the community for the community. Please check the thread out and add your input to help make them better

To "have heart" I'd want to see unified and sensible crafting rules that replace all of the scattered crafting subsystems. That's a big project to undertake with a ruleset that really isn't intended to support it. If I want crafting to be a thing, then I'd drop this ruleset entirely.

26 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

To "have heart" I'd want to see unified and sensible crafting rules that replace all of the scattered crafting subsystems. That's a big project to undertake with a ruleset that really isn't intended to support it. If I want crafting to be a thing, then I'd drop this ruleset entirely.

Well the more ppl that input into the Nubian shipyard discussion in the AOR forum the better chance we have of getting a decent set of rules that more ppl will like or at least find acceptable.

I'll be honest that for min maxing I liked the whole armour craziness that was in the RAW. But for reasonable play I knew it needed a revamp.

On 4/6/2018 at 12:36 PM, Khazadune said:

By the end of that you end up with a Destroyer that is subpar by comparisons against existing base models.

I know this is a common complaint, but it makes sense to me. I can't build a destroyer in my garage that is of the same calibre that Sienar systems can build in their shipyard. Now, if a player had access to a shipyard and an autofab and a team of designers and engineers and construction droids, I don't see a reason the GM couldn't take that into account.

37 minutes ago, themensch said:

I know this is a common complaint, but it makes sense to me. I can't build a destroyer in my garage that is of the same calibre that Sienar systems can build in their shipyard. Now, if a player had access to a shipyard and an autofab and a team of designers and engineers and construction droids, I don't see a reason the GM couldn't take that into account.

The rules call for you to have 5,000 workers working for 200 days minimum. This is not a mom and pop operation. You will be spending tens of millions of credits, you should have a ship with comparable firepower.

32 minutes ago, Khazadune said:

The rules call for you to have 5,000 workers working for 200 days minimum. This is not a mom and pop operation. You will be spending tens of millions of credits, you should have a ship with comparable firepower.

Hm, I agree!

3 hours ago, themensch said:

Hm, I agree!

Someone on the internet changing their opinion in response to a logical argument is refreshing

4 hours ago, Khazadune said:

The rules call for you to have 5,000 workers working for 200 days minimum. This is not a mom and pop operation. You will be spending tens of millions of credits, you should have a ship with comparable firepower.

Working on what’s essentially a first build of a retroengineered Star Destroyer Sienar actually developed from the ground up? Eeeeehhh...

I’m not saying the official rules are perfect, or even that they’re good. But for the purpose of building a single ship ( just building , not designing, perfecting and then building X years down the line) they seem adequate. If you want to build a Sienar light kind of company and actually do it right, I think a bunch of houserules should be in order - at least a whole bunch of Upgrades and Advantages for rolls would be in order, or maybe/probably I’d dispense with rolls altogether. It’s not like Sienar has a non-negligible chance of failing to finish a ship that’s up to standards, so if you get your company up to that level the same should go for you. Building a one-off in a time frame that’s frankly challenging to meet even if you get everything right? I can live with the fact it won’t turn out ideal.

55 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

Working on what’s essentially a first build of a retroengineered Star Destroyer Sienar actually developed from the ground up? Eeeeehhh...

That's what the select a template step covers. It takes into account everything from downloading the plans from privateerbay and starting tomorrow to spending years working on a custom design. It's up the GM and the story to cover how long this step takes.

6 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

That's what the select a template step covers. It takes into account everything from downloading the plans from privateerbay and starting tomorrow to spending years working on a custom design. It's up the GM and the story to cover how long this step takes.

I was mostly referring to the ‘minimum 200 days’. That time frame arguably barely covers the design phase if you intend to do any significant development yourself, let alone the actual build. I kind of doubt the FFG staff had major captains of industry in mind when they created these rules.

3 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

I was mostly referring to the ‘minimum 200 days’. That time frame arguably barely covers the design phase if you intend to do any significant development yourself, let alone the actual build. I kind of doubt the FFG staff had major captains of industry in mind when they created these rules.

The minimum 200 days is a reference to how the rules can allow you to reduce the time frame via excellent rolls. It’s not a reflection on what the actual time should be. If I had said X days, someone would have come along and said that they can reduce that time by rolling Y Advantage. The main point was to point out that creating a ship on the scale of Sil 6+ has a daunting amount of money and resources required for your average group, therefore if someone actually manages to get 5,000 employees, design templates, a facility to build it, rare weapons and armaments and sets down tens of millions of credits... why on earth after that Herculean effort can you not build something with a comparable amount of weapon systems etc.?

Thats not to say your ship will be inferior in all ways. The rules also allow for you to stack Armor to ridiculous proportions.

Also as I pointed out before, to increase Encumbrance on a space station by 16 when it’s base is 100,000 is just not properly scaled.

So I know you said you aren’t defending the rules and I get that, but the core of the discussion that was taking place was more about the inadequacy of scaling than about X or Y particular element, like timeframe. Those are symptoms, the rules are the cause of the problem.

RPGs while becoming more mainstream everyday is stereotyped as a game for needs, and needs are techies, in a game for nerds you can play a nerd (a whole career devoted to engineers) BTW I'm an engineer in real life so it's ok if *I* call my peeps nerds. If you're playing a shipwright the going assumption is that you spent years designing your own fly ride/dream ship in case you ever got the opportunity to build it. At the very least it's an upgrade to your design build fly senior engineering project for a shipwright fresh out of school. If you've been a professional shipwright for several years who defected to the rebellion recently the assumption is you defected with a datapad or flash drive with the plans for the uber cool next gen warship project you were on. You don't have to be a captain of industry to have well thought out cool ship plans ready to go. That shouldn't even be the standard assumption.

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Someone on the internet changing their opinion in response to a logical argument is refreshing

No inflexible mind attains enlightenment!

Hey, if your minion group of 5000 has a skill of Mechanics at 5000, count up those Triumphs and start bringing the ship up to snuff with published material. Let's face it, the existing ships as they are weren't built from any sort of system, they were shoot-from-the-hip from countless authors. I think it's nigh impossible to come back after the fact and try to make sense of that with a crafting system. Much like everything else in this system, the narrative can neatly step over whatever boundaries are imposed in charts and tables when those Triumphs show up. Some guidelines around that economy would be nice, but I guess that's different at every table but the Rule of Cool is always the same.

I found the rules were much better at creating specialist craft then generalist; e.g. if you are looking for a space craft with superior firepower, then talk to your GM because that isn't really possible.

For example, a Fragate and a Neb B could be made similarly, but in exchange for some less strain and wounds, it has a whopping 24 individual weapons and 24 star-fighter capacity. So basically; if you want to beat another capital ship with your's? Forget it. It just won't work unless you read hard points as batteries.

But with that I have built a Frigate with just 4 individual weapon slots (Two turbos and two proton batteries), 7 armour, speed 3, with a boarding tube. As a boarding vessel suddenly that 250 capacity passenger capacity becomes majorly interesting, especially if you up passenger capacity to nearly 400. The Neb-B's passanger limit of only 75 becomes a big disadvantage and one boarding check later you have a Neb-B and a heavy brick. Go one step further and put a hanger bay in instead of some guns and suddenly you have a way of mounting a full armoured assault on a star destroyer; which will make your mass combat checks much more favourable.

I do feel that the capital ships needed a different table then the star fighters. But I got a nichie that will hopefully really work as a group reward.

The elegant design , table 3-5, gives me a big headache.

I could use a freighter frame and turn this thing into a starfighter with 36 hull trauma.

I can not find any armor limit by silhoutte, is there one in the book ? where ?

4 hours ago, Miles Teg said:

The elegant design , table 3-5, gives me a big headache.

I could use a freighter frame and turn this thing into a starfighter with 36 hull trauma.

I can not find any armor limit by silhoutte, is there one in the book ? where ?

Well sorta yes. There is a limit in that the hulls tell you what they have and then in the hull or assembly phase you can spend advantage to add up to sil in more armour. So there is a limit when using advantage to add more to a hull and going by the hull types there is another limit by type. But that combined limit is rather insane. A star fighter can achieve an armour rating of 9 without much trouble and then you can add attachments after the fact to get it even higher. As in 11. So you can make a ship that will survive most any situation you find it in. Wanna take out an isd? No problem. If they hit it'll most likely just bounce right off your armour.

I found the book to overall be pretty "meh," but then I'm not the sort of player that plays techie-type PCs. The shipcrafting rules are neat and nice to have, but the likelihood of my using them with any regularity is low.

deleted

On 10.4.2018 at 4:29 PM, jayc007 said:

Well sorta yes. There is a limit in that the hulls tell you what they have and then in the hull or assembly phase you can spend advantage to add up to sil in more armour. So there is a limit when using advantage to add more to a hull and going by the hull types there is another limit by type. But that combined limit is rather insane. A star fighter can achieve an armour rating of 9 without much trouble and then you can add attachments after the fact to get it even higher. As in 11. So you can make a ship that will survive most any situation you find it in. Wanna take out an isd? No problem. If they hit it'll most likely just bounce right off your armour.

The turbolaser of the star destroyer will not bounce off, but the TIE fighter laser will.

with brilliant evasion the fight will be easy.

Without wishing to get us into a Monty Python sketch you were lucky. You at least have the book. In the UK we just found out that it still won't be released here until after next week at the earliest, so whereas we used to get books the week after their US release we're now into 2-3 weeks + later. Making the delays with this product line even more frustrating.

We dream of having Fully Operational...

Having spent a couple of hours with the rules, I think my biggest concerns with the rules are :

Increase/decrease silhouette - Why doesn't it change Crew, Passengers or Encumbrance.

Lack of frame templates - Anything bigger than a freighter is a military vessel with an enormous crew, no larger freighters?

HT much too high - base on freighter is higher than any other sil 4 freighter.

SS ditto - basic freighter engine, the ion turbine gives 40 SS, massively higher than any other sil 4 freighter.

Expanded-Capacity holds - Why is base increase in passengers and encumbrance not related to sil ?

And things like the armor bonuses are allowed to stack too high, of course.

I don't have an issue with stuff like the speed restrictions, as these are clearly the base ship, so talents and attachments can take them higher.

I think one of the issues is that sil is nearly exponential in size, and hence encumbrance, crew and passengers, but increases in those things are linear in these rules. I think what was probably needed was tables rather than times silhouette as a rule.

Example crazy vessel, using no mods and no more than 3 adv per roll (my engineer averages around 10 when crafting):

Freighter frame, reduce Sil to 3, Expanded-capacity holds - You now have a Sil 3 ship with 2 crew, 29 passengers and 125 encumbrance. You can carry more passengers than any Sil 4 ship, and more than most Sil 5 ships. You'd struggle to fit 29 passengers into the space a Sil 3 ship takes up, without adding a ship! Some good rolling on the mods and you could have 53 passengers!

Edit - Having said all that, the base concepts on how it works are fine, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that this was a far better system that was then edited down for length until it was in this state. If so, can someone slap the editorial department for me ?

4 hours ago, Darzil said:

Having spent a couple of hours with the rules, I think my biggest concerns with the rules are :

Increase/decrease silhouette - Why doesn't it change Crew, Passengers or Encumbrance.

Lack of frame templates - Anything bigger than a freighter is a military vessel with an enormous crew, no larger freighters?

HT much too high - base on freighter is higher than any other sil 4 freighter.

SS ditto - basic freighter engine, the ion turbine gives 40 SS, massively higher than any other sil 4 freighter.

Expanded-Capacity holds - Why is base increase in passengers and encumbrance not related to sil ?

And things like the armor bonuses are allowed to stack too high, of course.

I don't have an issue with stuff like the speed restrictions, as these are clearly the base ship, so talents and attachments can take them higher.

I think one of the issues is that sil is nearly exponential in size, and hence encumbrance, crew and passengers, but increases in those things are linear in these rules. I think what was probably needed was tables rather than times silhouette as a rule.

Example crazy vessel, using no mods and no more than 3 adv per roll (my engineer averages around 10 when crafting):

Freighter frame, reduce Sil to 3, Expanded-capacity holds - You now have a Sil 3 ship with 2 crew, 29 passengers and 125 encumbrance. You can carry more passengers than any Sil 4 ship, and more than most Sil 5 ships. You'd struggle to fit 29 passengers into the space a Sil 3 ship takes up, without adding a ship! Some good rolling on the mods and you could have 53 passengers!

Edit - Having said all that, the base concepts on how it works are fine, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that this was a far better system that was then edited down for length until it was in this state. If so, can someone slap the editorial department for me ?

Not necessarily. Look at the Lamda class Shuttle. If the sil 3 ship's passenger compartment is laid out like a private jet liner's with multiple seats set in rows and columns, you can fit a lot of people in a relatively small volume.