I can make a Sil 4 Corvette which flys like a starfighter and no rules for crafting starship weapons. Even the 30 year old Space Master rules were a bit better, AFAIR.

On 4/8/2018 at 11:22 AM, 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.

On 4/8/2018 at 12:01 PM, 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.

I would agree with themensch's initial post. 200 days minimum and 5,000 workers is a mom and pop operation in comparison to any real starship building company a military like the Empire would be using for it's ships, even the primary ship builder of some backwater planet's military would likely still outdo anything a player group would be able to dig up. Actual numbers would be difficult to define for them I think, but let's look at a company like Sienar Systems. It that has existed for decades by the new canon (about 15 millennia if we went with Legends) probably employs tens of thousands of Engineers and hundreds of thousands of workers both organic and droid. On top of that they're able to be picky, so they're likely composed of some of the best engineers and workers in the galaxy with some of the best droids for their role that exist, can afford to get the finest materials possible while being able to process them properly, and massive manufacturing facilities that allow them to build things much faster and with less error than the player would ever be able to. Then, they have had a long time to develop, test, and improve upon their ship designs, meaning most of the guesswork is out of the way and they have references to draw upon for future designs.

Take everything together and it's pretty easy to see how a destroyer built by an actual company could outdo anything the player could make short of stealing the blueprints. In fact with all that the effectiveness of the player at crafting anything even close to the effectiveness of the stock designs in any way is ludicrous, not to mention making something superior.

On 4/13/2018 at 12:14 PM, Miles Teg said:

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

with brilliant evasion the fight will be easy.

Though that is already the case based on Riggers which can reach easily armor 7+ on sweet little C-Roc Gozanti's

Though I am a little bit of terrified what your soon to be Shipwright/Rigger/Pilot/Scientist will do with those rules. Compressing basically the Gozanti down to Sil 4 and adding even more armor ... we might try to conquer whole imperial shipyards just to mass produce those babies for the alliance. ;-)

19 hours ago, immortalfrieza said:

I would agree with themensch's initial post. 200 days minimum and 5,000 workers is a mom and pop operation in comparison to any real starship building company a military like the Empire would be using for it's ships, even the primary ship builder of some backwater planet's military would likely still outdo anything a player group would be able to dig up. Actual numbers would be difficult to define for them I think, but let's look at a company like Sienar Systems. It that has existed for decades by the new canon (about 15 millennia if we went with Legends) probably employs tens of thousands of Engineers and hundreds of thousands of workers both organic and droid. On top of that they're able to be picky, so they're likely composed of some of the best engineers and workers in the galaxy with some of the best droids for their role that exist, can afford to get the finest materials possible while being able to process them properly, and massive manufacturing facilities that allow them to build things much faster and with less error than the player would ever be able to. Then, they have had a long time to develop, test, and improve upon their ship designs, meaning most of the guesswork is out of the way and they have references to draw upon for future designs.

Take everything together and it's pretty easy to see how a destroyer built by an actual company could outdo anything the player could make short of stealing the blueprints. In fact with all that the effectiveness of the player at crafting anything even close to the effectiveness of the stock designs in any way is ludicrous, not to mention making something superior.

Considering that Sienar is building hundreds of ships in that shipyard simultaenously they need many more people. The rules are built around what anyone needs to build a single ship. Therefore Sienar still requires 5,000 people to build that ship as the PCs. Competent GMs would still require players to get quality materials and to source plans. One way to think about the quality of ships produced by established manufacturers would be like thinking about stock vehicles vs custom ones. Ships designed for mass production would be base models designed to maximize profits and not necessarily inclusive of the very best technology and elements. When GM produces cars they are streamlined so that they eliminate common issues but they also aren’t as tricked out as they could be.

To explain my characters understanding of advanced ship designs he worked for CEC as a Chief Rigger for years prior to defecting. As a Verpine he was part of a small hive working there and greatly benefited from their hive mind mentality. His personal designs never met with Imperial approval because they were too “unorthodox.”

Generally parties aren’t going to create more than a few ships so something like this is probably pretty easy to explain away. But in the end, I guess it comes down to how you see it.

On 14/04/2018 at 10:49 AM, 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 ?

Or get the preedited rules for us to peruse

22 hours ago, immortalfrieza said:

I would agree with themensch's initial post. 200 days minimum and 5,000 workers is a mom and pop operation in comparison to any real starship building company a military like the Empire would be using for it's ships, even the primary ship builder of some backwater planet's military would likely still outdo anything a player group would be able to dig up. Actual numbers would be difficult to define for them I think, but let's look at a company like Sienar Systems. It that has existed for decades by the new canon (about 15 millennia if we went with Legends) probably employs tens of thousands of Engineers and hundreds of thousands of workers both organic and droid. On top of that they're able to be picky, so they're likely composed of some of the best engineers and workers in the galaxy with some of the best droids for their role that exist, can afford to get the finest materials possible while being able to process them properly, and massive manufacturing facilities that allow them to build things much faster and with less error than the player would ever be able to. Then, they have had a long time to develop, test, and improve upon their ship designs, meaning most of the guesswork is out of the way and they have references to draw upon for future designs.

Take everything together and it's pretty easy to see how a destroyer built by an actual company could outdo anything the player could make short of stealing the blueprints. In fact with all that the effectiveness of the player at crafting anything even close to the effectiveness of the stock designs in any way is ludicrous, not to mention making something superior.

Having worked in automotive manufacturing i can tell you first hand that

1 they don' hire the best minds... too expensive!

2 they don' get the best materials... too expensive!

3 they don' build the best product... too expensive!

4 they only want fast cheap and easy with a quick breakdown timeframe.

5 They don' make near as much on a whole vehicle as they do on the parts to rebuild a whole vehicle... Not enough profit margin!

All they want is profit margin!

On 4/17/2018 at 9:06 PM, jayc007 said:

Having worked in automotive manufacturing i can tell you first hand that 

I'd argue that comparing Star Wars shipbuilding to modern automotive practices is apples to lettuce. While not all ships will last this long, I've seen references in the fiction to ships lasting decades or even centuries. A spaceship takes the kind of strain that is more like an airliner than a car. If ships are lasting as long as they do while flying through space and in and out of atmosphere, they're built far better than anything mass produced here in modern America.

Still, I think there's one comparison to modern cars that would apply well: Taking the basic framework of an existing vehicle and tricking out and replacing so much of it that it is basically an entirely new thing. This is what my players want to be able to do with the rules, custom craft to exactly their character's style.

On 5/3/2018 at 6:26 AM, SiderisAnon said:

I'd argue that comparing Star Wars shipbuilding to modern automotive practices is apples to lettuce. While not all ships will last this long, I've seen references in the fiction to ships lasting decades or even centuries. A spaceship takes the kind of strain that is more like an airliner than a car. If ships are lasting as long as they do while flying through space and in and out of atmosphere, they're built far better than anything mass produced here in modern America.

Still, I think there's one comparison to modern cars that would apply well: Taking the basic framework of an existing vehicle and tricking out and replacing so much of it that it is basically an entirely new thing. This is what my players want to be able to do with the rules, custom craft to exactly their character's style.

We already know that star wars manufacturing and material science are one of the most advanced in all of sci-fi and fantasy. The prices and use cases suggest that the cars. boats and ships theme fit based on the size of things. And considering that there are tons of people using 30 or even 60 year old car frames and build them up from the ground ... it's not a strange thing to see in the star wars galaxy with space ships, especially considering that technology seems to move a lot slower in that galaxy as they have reached in many areas plateaus since centuries or even millennia.