So lately I've been looking through the various vehicles and comparing them, and I've noticed some odd imbalances between price and effectiveness, even between ships of the same type. For example, as the title mentions the C-ROC Gozanti-class Light Cruiser Vs. Consular-Class Light Cruiser the Cozanti is clearly superior statistically in all areas except maneuverability while also possessing 6 weapons by default, with only minor inferiority in things like encumbrance, sensor range, that stuff. Now get this: the Gozanti costs at base price 190,000 credits and the Consular costs THREE MILLION CREDITS. I've done the math and I could buy 15 Gozantis for what 1 Consular cost, the only difference being that the Consular has a rarity of 5 while the Gozanti has a rarity of 8, though based on the description the Consular should likely be the more rare of the two in an Imperial Star Wars.

Does anyone else notice this kind of thing? I've seen a lot of vehicles so far that are equaled or even surpassed by other vehicles of their type yet are much more expensive and don't really follow their own descriptions that well.

You can buy a bulk cruiser for less than the cost of a consular light cruiser. Maybe that is a bit more apples and oranges than what you are talking about, but yeah, that sort of thing is all over the place. Action VI, Xiytiar, and the YZ-775 are another example

You really dont want to think about it too hard tho. This way lies madness

The main difference in prices for starships with similar stats is about how much are you willing to pay for luxury. On cheap ships quarters are cramped and bunks are shared while on expensive pleasure yachts there are really nice cabins with a lot of amenities.

Going by the Clone Wars and Rebels the Gozanti-class is very much the common run-of-the-mill pickup truck of the light cruiser world, whereas the Consular-class is the executive limousine. Both will get you to your destination in pretty much the same time and in the same way, but one of them carries an in-universe sense of prestige and style that the other doesn't. And just as in real life, people will pay through the nose for a 'luxury' car.

The Consular is, in theory, a proper military spec cruiser. The Gozanti has 2 quad lasers and 2 twin heavy lasers, the Consular has a twin heavy ion cannon, and four twin light turbolasers. The turbolasers alone are worth 84k, and the heavy ion cannon can't normally be mounted on a sil 5 ship. Not only that, the turbolasers & ion cannon are restricted, whilst a Consular is not; a refitted, up-gunned Gozanti would not be legal, whilst a Consular is.

Edit: In fact, the Gozanti has 6 HP worth of weapons: 2 quad laser, 2x2 twin lasers. The Consular has 4x2 twin turbolasers, 2 heavy ion +2 oversized weapons mount which should also reduce its handling and strain, so count in an additional HP worth of thrusters. 6 vs 13. The oversized weapon also costs another 30k!

The Consular is quite overpriced and the C-ROC is definitely a bit too good for the cost, but you're not comparing apples to apples. A better comparison would be the Consular vs the CR-90, which only costs 1.2 mil despite having roughly equivalent weaponry and stats.

As others have stated, and to be even more clear, the Gozanti is a cargo ship, designed to haul cargo through sometimes dangerous regions of space. The Consular Class Corvette is a diplomatic vessel. It's designed with luxury and comfort in mind, not combat nor cargo hauling. It's designed for senators, diplomats, ambassadors, etc. as they travel to various planets for diplomatic meetings, negotiations, etc. That's why it's more expensive. It has to do with its function.

The other factor will be how new the ship is.

The Gozanti--and the C-ROC version in particular--is crazy good as a low-cost freighter if you can afford to pay the 12-being crew. Now it does carry way more than 6x the cargo of most light freighters for 6x the crew, so it should be a win there too, but it's all-or-nothing if it breaks down or is otherwise lost.

That's not to say that I like the stats they gave it. For one thing, the HTT and SST are way too high for a freighter (especially on the C-ROC). For another, it is way too easy to turn it into a low-cost escort (it's really almost there already) or even a stand-in corvette. This wouldn't be an issue if it didn't perform as well as dedicated corvettes, but it really can with only a bit of rearming work.

The one place the freighter designation really shows up compared to a dedicated capital ship is in the Consumables. The Gozanti has only one month's consumables (food, fuel, spare parts, coffee filters, toilet paper, etc.) and the C-ROC only ups that to two months. That's very short compared to almost all capital ships and should limit how it is deployed, but this is often overlooked in-game.

There are some problems with how FFG handles size and a lot of stuff size and function related. For instance, the Wayfarer-class medium freighter (82m long), Gozanti-class light cruiser (73.91m long), the Consular-class cruiser (115m long in diplomatic and 138.55m long in military configurations), the CR90 corvette (150m long), the Marauder-class corvette (195m long) and the Sphyrna-class (Hammerhead-class) frigate (315m long), are all silhouette 5 ships. But they are very different ships not only in size, but also in the kind of function the perform on a fleet.

While the Gozanti and the Wayfarer are essentially relatively small, medium sized civilian cargo haulers , with the Gozanti being a more well prepared for navigating perilous territory, they are essentially common ships using standard civilian equipment, they are bit if compared to most civilian craft, but not big enough to be a military capital ship. Even using the fact that, in Clone Wars and Rebels TV shows, there are some military variants of the Gozanti , such as light fighter carrier, light patrol craft and as spy/counter-intelligence vessel. And that in the Legends canon, the main use of the Wayfarer (other than as freighter) was as light fighter carrier, since by default they could carry a pair of Z95 s or X-Wing s or 4 Tie Fighter s on them. In the end despite these militaristic/combat versions, they are more advanced adaptations on a somewhat flexible civilian platform than a revamp of the entire ship's purpose.

On the other hand, the Consular and the CR90 are diplomatic/military vessels in nature, they have in average twice the size of the Gozanti , their role is to either safely transport diplomats through hostile territory or as light attack vessels on small capital ship engagements or support/specialized vessels on large capital ships deployments (usually as medical frigate or troop carrier). These ships have military grade weapons and sensors suited for capital ship engagements with some degree of protection against smaller targets (point defence against fighters).

Also as stated by others, these are quite versatile vessels with a wider range of uses. They could come in diplomatic configurations (which involve good degree of luxury upgrades), combat configurations (which include capital ship sized weapon systems), specialized configurations , like the medical configuration (which trade all available space for medical gear), the troop carrier configuration (which is hollowed out in order to carry troops and gear) and the cargo configuration (which trades much of everything for tons of extra cargo space) , and pretty much anything in between. The key difference between them is that CR90 have a stripped down civilian version, while the Consular is and had always been strictly a diplomatic/military vessel, which in turn makes them rarer to find and more restricted in terms of permission to be owned, which makes Consulars more expensive than the CR90 which can be bought cheap as a civilian vessels and later upgraded for military or diplomatic use.

To me the Gozanti and Wayfarer clearly aren't in the same league as the Consular and CR90 , there is nothing in their actual specs that indicate they are in the same league or perform the same role on a fleet, the only thing that somehow put them on the same class is that in the FFG system they are silhouette 5 ships.

The things become even crazier if you look into things like the Marauder and the Sphyrna/Hammerhead , since they are also silhouette 5 ships, but they have an even different hole in the fleet. Not only they are 3-4 times bigger than the Gozanti , but they are strictly military war vessels , they are solely employed in capital ship engagements or related tasks like as capital ship escort to smaller vessels, and their weapon systems and stats are entirely geared towards being battle ships.

Yet all of these vessels are silhouette 5 ships. In the WotC era, the Gozanti and Wayfarer were classified as Colossal (Transport), the CR90 and the Consular as Colossal (frigate) and and the Marauder and Hammerhead as Colossal (Cruiser) sizes. which is a better predictor for their size and hole in the fleet, something that the silhouette classification used for FFG lacks.

11 hours ago, nichendrix said:

To me the Gozanti and Wayfarer clearly aren't in the same league as the Consular and CR90 , there is nothing in their actual specs that indicate they are in the same league or perform the same role on a fleet, the only thing that somehow put them on the same class is that in the FFG system they are silhouette 5 ships.

The other things that put them in the "same class" is the Armor, HTT, and SST along with the ability to mount heavy (light turbolasers are heavy enough) weapons, sufficient hard points to do so, and the Sensor Range to make full use of those weapons. Without any modifications, the Gozanti (either version) can easily work as a fleet escort vessel protecting big ships from fighters and drawing Consumables from the big vessels in return. That's not really what it was designed for, but that's what the stats given by FFG suggest.

13 hours ago, nichendrix said:

There are some problems with how FFG handles size and a lot of stuff size and function related. For instance, the Wayfarer-class medium freighter (82m long), Gozanti-class light cruiser (73.91m long), the Consular-class cruiser (115m long in diplomatic and 138.55m long in military configurations), the CR90 corvette (150m long), the Marauder-class corvette (195m long) and the Sphyrna-class (Hammerhead-class) frigate (315m long), are all silhouette 5 ships. But they are very different ships not only in size, but also in the kind of function the perform on a fleet.

I don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that Sil 5 ships should only perform certain functions in a fleet?

5 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

The other things that put them in the "same class" is the Armor, HTT, and SST along with the ability to mount heavy (light turbolasers are heavy enough) weapons, sufficient hard points to do so, and the Sensor Range to make full use of those weapons. Without any modifications, the Gozanti (either version) can easily work as a fleet escort vessel protecting big ships from fighters and drawing Consumables from the big vessels in return. That's not really what it was designed for, but that's what the stats given by FFG suggest.

The problem is that all Gozanti stats (Armor, HTT, and SST , etc.) have to do with the fact that they are Silhouette 5 ships, at least per the Fully Operational book, the base stats are all consequence of their silhouette, that are later modified by other factors. It is unfortunate that FFG could not think of a way to add more detail to this silhouette system in order for us to have better depiction of how ship stats change with their size and role on the fleet.

As I said, they were not designed to fill the role of something like the Consular or the CR90 (heck, they didn't even have the size to do so), a most we see them in system patrol craft tasked to deal with smugglers or other kind of lesser threats. Here and there we see they as support vessels (usually as light Tie Fighter carrier) for smaller capital Ships, but never more than that.

3 hours ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

I don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that Sil 5 ships should only perform certain functions in a fleet?

No, on the contrary, I'm saying that the silhouette system doesn't portray well the diversity of sizes, roles and configurations these ships can assume.

Gozanti for instance, fill a certain group of roles on a fleet (medium freighter, light fighter carrier, patrol vessel), but it can't be expected to really fill the role of a ship over 4 times bigger like the Hammerhead or even a ship 2 times bigger like the Consular. They don't have the size, nor punch to be comparable of ships far bigger than them. That's the flaw of presenting these ships all as silhouette 5 without any sub-classification that would help to put them on comparable size/capabilities.

Without more information (and rules to support them), we will always have this kind of confusion, where the stats makes us believe we are comparing two apples, when in fact we are comparing apples and bananas.

13 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

The problem is that all Gozanti stats (Armor, HTT, and SST , etc.) have to do with the fact that they are Silhouette 5 ships, at least per the Fully Operational book , the base stats are all consequence of their silhouette, that are later modified by other factors. It is unfortunate that FFG could not think of a way to add more detail to this silhouette system in order for us to have better depiction of how ship stats change with their size and role on the fleet.

Do not use the ship building rules from Fully Operational to try to explain how FFG statted any of the ships they made because they are quite clear that they didn't use those rules--or anything like them--themselves when statting ships.

FFG has also produced examples of Sil 5 ships that have SST and HTT closer to Sil 4 "standards" (like the VCX-100), so there's no good reason the Gozanti had to have ratings in those that exceed many Sil 5 warships.

4 hours ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

I don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that Sil 5 ships should only perform certain functions in a fleet?

14 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

The problem is that all Gozanti stats (Armor, HTT, and SST , etc.) have to do with the fact that they are Silhouette 5 ships, at least per the Fully Operational book, the base stats are all consequence of their silhouette, that are later modified by other factors. It is unfortunate that FFG could not think of a way to add more detail to this silhouette system in order for us to have better depiction of how ship stats change with their size and role on the fleet.

As I said, they were not designed to fill the role of something like the Consular or the CR90 (heck, they didn't even have the size to do so), a most we see them in system patrol craft tasked to deal with smugglers or other kind of lesser threats. Here and there we see they as support vessels (usually as light Tie Fighter carrier) for smaller capital Ships, but never more than that.

No, on the contrary, I'm saying that the silhouette system doesn't portray well the diversity of sizes, roles and configurations these ships can assume.

Gozanti for instance, fill a certain group of roles on a fleet (medium freighter, light fighter carrier, patrol vessel), but it can't be expected to really fill the role of a ship over 4 times bigger like the Hammerhead or even a ship 2 times bigger like the Consular. They don't have the size, nor punch to be comparable of ships far bigger than them. That's the flaw of presenting these ships all as silhouette 5 without any sub-classification that would help to put them on comparable size/capabilities.

Without more information (and rules to support them), we will always have this kind of confusion, where the stats makes us believe we are comparing two apples, when in fact we are comparing apples and bananas.

As @nichendrix is saying Silhouette 5 covers a large range of actual sizes, from the VCX-100 at a little under 50 meters long, to ships in excess of 150 meters long, and everything in between.

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Do not use the ship building rules from Fully Operational to try to explain how FFG statted any of the ships they made because they are quite clear that they didn't use those rules--or anything like them--themselves when statting ships.

FFG has also produced examples of Sil 5 ships that have SST and HTT closer to Sil 4 "standards" (like the VCX-100), so there's no good reason the Gozanti had to have ratings in those that exceed many Sil 5 warships.

I'm aware they don't use these rules when stating their own work. Which is a shame, since it would be a good point that their rules really work well.

Nevertheless, since I can't talk about what a specific designer had in mind on the day he created those stats, I have to make my point using something that are more tangible, hence the use of the starship crafting rules.

But invoking the crafting rules it isn't a waste of time either, for instance there freighters are usually Sil 4 ships, but could have their silhouette upgraded without changing too much their stats. Which works wonders to explain why the VCX-100 is Sil 5, but have stats closer to Sil 4. There it has a clearly distinction between the base stats of a Sil 5 trans´´port, freighter, corvette or frigate, which would do wonders if the same guidelines were used in making their own stats for ships. At least this way the Gozanti would have stats more akin to the VCX than to the Consular and it would be fine for them having the same silhouette, because the difference in size and role would be clearly accounted for.

8 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

Without more information (and rules to support them), we will always have this kind of confusion, where the stats makes us believe we are comparing two apples, when in fact we are comparing apples and bananas.  

O, see, I don't think it was ever the intention to do so with Sil. The ships are already sub-classified by type (Freighter, Capital, etc) and Hull Type/Model.

13 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

at least per the Fully Operational book, the base stats are all consequence of their silhouette, that are later modified by other factors.

The base stats are based on the frame type, not the sil. The rules in FO can't be used to properly replicate any of the stock ship stats- it's literally rules for one or more mechanics building a starship in a garage, as compared to the ships in the books built in proper shipyards and facilities.

Ships created this way will not reflect the same rules used to create stock ships. The designers had a hard enough job trying to reverse engineer stats for ships that already exist in media, and coming up for rules for them when the people who created them had no such rules in mind. With the diversity of ships and hands in the shipbuilding pie, I think the abstract approach that FFG went with was wise.

I understand your criticisms, but I feel like you are asking the system to do something that it was never intended to.

15 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

As @nichendrix is saying Silhouette 5 covers a large range of actual sizes, from the VCX-100 at a little under 50 meters long, to ships in excess of 150 meters long, and everything in between.

I guess I don't see a problem with that. Has anyone tried revamping the silhouette system? I know plenty of efforts have been made to house rule and home brew space combat: what about starship specs and crafting?

22 minutes ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

O, see, I don't think it was ever the intention to do so with Sil. The ships are already sub-classified by type (Freighter, Capital, etc) and Hull Type/Model. 

Actually this classification by type only applies in the crafting rules, not to the stock ships, and that's what we were talking about. It isn't hard to come up with a way to make a stratification for this kind of thing, in fact we already had something like this for the past 30 years, since all previous editions of SW RPG, stratified each size category by its role/subcategory, I even gave an example of how it was done in the past, when these ships were classified as Colossal (Transport), Colossal (frigate) and Colossal (Cruiser) based on their size/primary role. Even FFG was forced to do something like this when developing their crafting rules. I just wish they used some variation of their own rules.

22 minutes ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

The base stats are based on the frame type, not the sil. The rules in FO can't be used to properly replicate any of the stock ship stats- it's literally rules for one or more mechanics building a starship in a garage, as compared to the ships in the books built in proper shipyards and facilities.

Ships created this way will not reflect the same rules used to create stock ships. The designers had a hard enough job trying to reverse engineer stats for ships that already exist in media, and coming up for rules for them when the people who created them had no such rules in mind. With the diversity of ships and hands in the shipbuilding pie, I think the abstract approach that FFG went with was wise.

I understand your criticisms, but I feel like you are asking the system to do something that it was never intended to. 

Frame type essentially states what your base silhouette and the stats that come along with it, also limiting their minimum and maximum silhouette and adjusting their stats accordingly. This is why freighters base stats are silhouette 4, but could be also be Sil 3 or Sil 5, but never less than 3 or more than 5. Frigates are average of 5, but could be 4 or 6 depending on other modifications. With few exceptions every time you adjust silhouette, you also adjust most of the vehicle's stats (since they are usually given as a multiplier based on the silhouette of the ship).

I'm not advocating they have to use the exact same rules, but they should not just do things randomly. Also, as for reverse engineering existing ships, if they did everything completely from scratch they are just dumb, since most ships were already stated in some point in the past 30 years of SW RPG, they could easily find ways to understand how these things compare to one another. If they did their home work (like their predecessors), they would never stated the Gozanti so close to the Consular or the CR90. They can't claim they don't have access to the previous material, since they are even re-printing part of them (The original WEG SW RPG).

17 minutes ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

I guess I don't see a problem with that. Has anyone tried revamping the silhouette system? I know plenty of efforts have been made to house rule and home brew space combat: what about starship specs and crafting?

I think that the way frames were classified in FO do de job pretty well in complementing silhouette giving a good approximation for the primary role, size and base stats for starships, I think that with few modifications they could even be great rules to making stock starships.

Sincerelly Silhouette 5 (Medium Freighter) or Silhouette 5 (Frigate) and being stated accordingly should be more than enough.

25 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

But invoking the crafting rules it isn't a waste of time either

Here we fundamentally disagree.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

Here we fundamentally disagree.

Maybe, but its the only reasonably objective way we can go, other than that we would be just giving our opinion without any factual basis and/or trying to divine what kind of drug the game designer was taking when stated those ships.

22 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

Sincerelly Silhouette 5 (Medium Freighter) or Silhouette 5 (Frigate) and      being stated accordingly should be more  than  enough 

They already do that: they are divided in the books by type/role in Starship Profiles. And not every Silhouette 5 (Frigate) will be statted by the same rules, because the creators and designers of the original media were really only following the rule of cool, thus not every Frigate of equivalent size in the Star Wars universe is created equally.

Go give a listen to the Jason Marker episode of Order 66. Everything FFG builds is statted based on the ships roll and fluff. An old ship will be less expensive than a new ship with the same stats. Also not stat related stuff will also come into play. Ie a bespoke ship like a nubian will be more expensive than a CEC ship.

A lot more than stats go into pricing.

20 minutes ago, panpolyqueergeek said:

They already do that: they are divided in the books by type/role in Starship Profiles. And not every Silhouette 5 (Frigate) will be statted by the same rules, because the creators and designers of the original media were really only following the rule of cool, thus not every Frigate of equivalent size in the Star Wars universe is created equally.

Men, I'm not talking about they stating this is Sil 5 (Freighter) and making the stats whatever they want, but that this kind of classification influence on their stats (the same way it does on the crafting rules).

This whole classification on type/role/size was created by WEG or Star Wars RPG, and later incorporated into the overal lore, because before Lucasfilm had a good grasp on how to run their own continuity, it was WEG who kinda did it to them. Not very long ago every time an author or script writer would make something for SW the first thing they got was a bunch of RPG supplements to make the research for their work.

We are on the 6th core rule set for SW RPG, and all 5 before the actual, could handle this, why would I believe that only FFG could not? Specially since they kind of already did on the crafting rules.

As per other media going by the rule of cool, this is why they never classified anything in the SWU, you know that to he movie/tv show makers they just use names like rebel blockade runner or republic gunship, and so on. They usually don't say, hey this is a frigate or that is a cruiser or that is medium freighter while this one is a light freighter. These classifications were always something specific for the RPG.

In the end, I can stating that the Hammerhead and the CR90 are both frigates, even taking account their difference in shape and size, also gives me the information these were capital ships primarily used as military/paramilitary vessels, that their weapon systems are geared towards capital ship to capital ship combat, and that it isn't the kind of ship my players would usually commandeer because they need huge crews, and so on. In the end they could still come in different shapes and sizes, but base stats would reflect their primary function, not some made up nonsensical stats like the Gozanti's.

@panpolyqueergeek for example, independent of the size/shape/type of frigate I can assume that any frigate would have high HTT and SST and Shields/Soak, because they are expected to be war vessels, they are expected to go into combat. Freighters, on the other hand, are not expected to have as much HTT, SST, Shields/Soak, because they are not expected to be in combat as often as a frigate is expected to, and so on. This can be easily resolved, and like I've said the starship crafting rules already address that, even though the designers don't use them.

39 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

Maybe, but its the only reasonably objective way we can go, other than that we would be just giving our opinion without any factual basis and/or trying to divine what kind of drug the game designer was taking when stated those ships.

No, we can compare to the other ships the writers have made without using the trash rules from FO and see how a given ship fits in the ranges offered. This is where we will see that the Gozanti is well on the extreme end of its size and role when it comes to HTT and SST. Comparing it to ships made using the system that outright fails to be able to recreate those ships (because that wasn't its purpose) does no good at all.

17 minutes ago, nichendrix said:

not some made up nonsensical stats like the Gozanti's.

I guess I'm failing to see the stats as nonsensical. What prevents it from having the stats it does?

edit: do you mean

Quote

Freighters, on the other hand, are not expected to have as much HTT, SST, Shields/Soak, because they are not expected to be in combat as often as a frigate is expected to, and so on

?

The Gozanti is a dual role ship that served as both freighter and cruiser. And besides, freighters also have to defend themselves from pirates and other hazards in a dangerous galaxy at war. If I were a long hauler in this universe, I would expect decent HTT, SST, shields and armor, lest I be a sitting duck. Otherwise I'm not stepping foot in it.