It's time for another Developer Interview show!

The Order 66 Podcast is excited to welcome RPG Lead Developer Tim Huckleberry and writer Max Brooke back to the show to discuss their work on Fully Operational !

As we have done before, the Order 66 Podcast is collecting questions from you, the listeners, for any queries you have about the book. Got a production question? A rules dispute about a talent? A piece of gear that doesn't make sense? Looking for insight on the expansive Vehicle Creation rules, or want to ask about something in an ship's stat block?

We'll take questions until Wednesday night, June 27th. The show will be on the evening of July 1st (usually 8pm Central), and we'd love to have you join us in our chatroom, Echo Base, for the show!

https://m.twitch.tv/bigyoda/profile

As usual, we are only taking and fielding questions about this book, Fully Operational. We won't really have time to ask about any questions relating to other books, and of course Tim can't answer questions about products that have not been announced yet.

Finally, please limit replies in this thread to questions for the Devs only. If you would like to discuss something brought up in this thread, please start a new thread elsewhere and discuss the matter there.

Thanks for your time and your questions!

Did you have a more expanded Shipbuilding rule set that had to be trimmed for length and also simplified ?

There seem some areas, such as Expanded-Capacity holds that should possibly scale with silhouette (or square of silhouette), rather than linear. +25 passengers/encumbrance is amazing on a Sil 2 speeder, but tiny on Sil 5+. Was this caused by simplication, or by design ?

Were there other Frame Templates (eg large Freighters) you wanted to add ?

Are you expecting players to keep rebuilding Engines and Hulls til they get good ones, at least on large ships, as the costs are tiny as not based on silhouette ?

Did you test out the rules to see which existing ships you could or couldn't make ?

Species:

Great selection for the species. Having another "Medical-focused" species is great and useful for players looking for variance in species without rebuilding.

Specializations:

Droid Specialist: I had done a comparison between the Droid Specialist and the Droid Tech (topic link here) when I noticed how much the two specs provide assistance to each other. Was this intentional? Has anyone in the play test campaign combined the two? Has any Droid PCs been used with testing the Droid Spec? I get the feeling the Droid Tech is support while the Droid Spec is combat support and droid nullification. Would this be accurate?

Can we talk about the most amazing of cheesebuilds please? Sil 1 10 armor vehicle (flight suit?) with an autoblaster? Use droid brains for piloting and gunnery, ranks of speak binary and use a drall scientist, droid tech or rigger or modder and trick this thing out. Lets build the new Crotosisman! Hey you can even give it vehicle legs!

There have been at least 2 attempts at shipbuilding house rules on the forums in the wake of of the release of fully operational, one by @Banditks (a brand new system) and the other "The Nubian Design Collective's Whole Vehicle Crafting Handbook" which I envisioned as a community effort but for which I have been the primary contributor. My intent was determine the minimal change set needed to the RAW vehicle crafting rules to get them to reproduce 95% of official vehicles with a 95% match rate. So far the effort I've lead has yielded pretty good results although I'm still putting it through its paces and making tweaks.

So... what are the chances of a large scale official errata to Fully Operational to replace the current vehicle crafting RAW with a less abusable system that also reasonably replicates official ships? I believe the legality is that you can use anything posted on these forums, but if it makes a difference I'd be willing to sign something donating my work on this fan project to ffg for nothing more than being added to the authors list (as an "unpaid contributor") in reprints.

Side comment: doesn't need to be read on air, I really really DON'T want to be paid for this, because it would cause all sorts of bureaucratic hassles regarding "outside employment"... context: I work at a government lab and have advanced degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering (at 4 years old if someone asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up my answer was "make planes" so this really is a labor of love and the "gamer geek cred" of having contributed to an official product is sufficient compensation)

With regards to the Shipwright's Creative Design talent: Does this talent allow you to apply a single modifier with an advantage cost up to the character's ranks in the talent, or does it provide a pool of advantages that can be spent on multiple modifiers from the crafting table?

14 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

So... what are the chances of a large scale official errata to Fully Operational to replace the current vehicle crafting RAW with a less abusable system that also reasonably replicates official ships?

They cannot ask questions about future products and development.

Also this and a few other responses here feel like thinly veiled rants about how the rules shook out. Which is not anything that the hosts can really ask about.

I felt compelled to make this response, but with respect to Phil and O66's wishes, I will back out of this thread unless I have any constructive questions to ask. I do not wish to further flood this thread with unnecessary posts.

The Dockyard Expertise talent states a 25% reduction in the Shipwright talent tree, but a 20% reduction in the long description.

Which is correct?

Thanks for the shout out @EliasWindrider !

I'm curious how on earth the devs could resist naming one of the crafting despair results "woefully operational".

6 hours ago, Banditks said:

Thanks for the shout out @EliasWindrider !

You're welcome.

The "Lessons Learned" use of Advantage doesn't say that it can only be selected once.

If I roll 5 advantage, can I really add 5 Boost dice to the next check?

This doesn't apply just to Fully Operational, but when Modding attachments, the difficulty starts at Hard and increases by one for every additional mod. What happens when you get to the fourth mod?

Do you then start Upgrading the Difficulty dice to Challenge dice?

Or do you stop at 5 Difficulty dice and have to flip a Destiny Point to roll?

I ask because there are so many attachments (especially the Engine component of Ship construction and lightsaber crystals) that have an excessive amount of mods.

Fully Operational presents a new take on the Bith species, at least mechanically. Generally, the Bith have been a high-IQ species. This has been true ever since the West End Games days. Yet Fully Operational gives them average Intellect and instead bumps their Presence to 3. Does this reflect changes in the Disney canon? If not, what was the reason for this new interpretation?

What was the design philosophy behind the Creative Design talent?

Why did you choose to make it ranked instead of unranked and allow it to be used for up to 3 adv/threat?

It seems to me that the Inventor talent would've been a better fit for the Shipwright. Why didn't you include it in the Shipwright talent tree?

There doesn't seem to be any rules for crafting Attachments. Was this intentional?

How would you rule an engineer crafting an attachment?

1. In structured time: how many strips of the detonite flex tape can a character deploy in a round?
2. While the T-2E Petard has a clear analogue in the Churchill AVRE (btw seeing this in the book made me positively giddy), what was the inspiration for the AT-CE which appears to be a new invention for this book?
3. Table 2-11 lists the plasma drill as needing only 1 hardpoint, but the text on the same page (61) says 3 hardpoints, which is it?
4. Was the silhouette restriction on ion torpedoes set in stone before R1 came out?
5. What is the base difficulty and skill used to detect a vehicle for the purposes of the sensor baffler upgrade (page 62)?
6. The full text of dockyard expertise references facilities being able to "add attachments or modiflcations to one." Does the discount from the talent apply to these tasks?

Not a question, but do tell the devs that the description for the intelligent toolbox cuts of prematurely.

Good list, folks! Keep em coming!

Another few big questions: how do the civilian facility refit options on pages 74 and 75 interact with the base options in desperate allies? if you take the medical facility from one does it exclude the other? Can you max out the security features from both? can you have the maxed out hangar in desperate allies and the hidden one in fully operational? Are there other interactions between these options to be aware of?

Why do the contribution upgrades cap at 4 for the fully operational options but you can get 5 in desperate allies?

Also, what is the suggested difficulty to detect the base that the various upgrades interact with?

Last question: favorite downside to give to refitted civilian craft?

Regarding ship crafting: Why did you choose not to include clearer rules for installing weaponry?

For instance: There is some debate about whether or not it costs an additional Hardpoint for a turret over, say, a fixed Forward Fire Arc (I would really like to know the answer to that question).

I had hoped that the ship crafting rules would give you more flexibility in personalised design options. Like some of the special options the many of the ships have. eg Engineering access - A blue to repair rolls. Or Adv Medical suite - upgrade Medial rolls.

Is there any scope to add more of these in future books?

Background - I think that crafted ships should not be as overall good as produced in shipyards (eg Kuat) as they have thousands of people ironing out the kinks and have specialist equipment. However, I feel that the book does not offer many of the more unique addition options. eg cargo pod, hanger bay, medial deck. To me this is one of the main reason to craft your own craft, to give you something that gives you an edge in the areas that you want at the expense of something else.

Like :

Increase number of people it can carry by two - Reduce system strain by 20%

Give 2 Blues on shooting - 2 Blacks on Scanning

I totally miss this topic