adrick said:

Maybe the Star Destroyer will have batteries of guns. One stat block with linked 4 or something.

-EF

GoblynByte said:

Beyond that, the text states that any ship with a Silhouette of 5 or more has four defense zones, but the listed ships that match that criteria only show numbers for three zones. Is the missing number a goof, or meant to imply one zone is unprotected?

Oh, and as for Star Destroyers? I'm not even bothering to stat them. Their appearance should mean, "Holy crap, time to get the hell out of dodge." Unless my group somehow manages to take control of a capital ship, I plan on having combat at that level take place in the abstract.

DailyRich said:

I've read this as an abbreviated notation of reporting of the values. The default state of the shields are listed as: Fore/Port&Starboard/Aft

So 2/1/1 implies 2 defense fore, 1 port, 1, starboard, 1 aft, and the craft's total defense rating is 5, not 4. Though it would be nice if they explained this, or I could be wrong and it they may be indicating there is one undefended quarter.

-WJL

I had sort of a kooky idea, so rather than keeping it to myself I thought I'd put it up here.

Would it make sense to have planetary vehicles (ground and atmo craft) only have their armor plating and hull points multiplied by 5 when compared to personal scale attacks?

It's an added layer of math, but it seems like planetary craft are either unarmored or turtles when assaulted by characters. And the 10x multipliers leads to weapons like thermal detonators and lightsabers having gonzo damage so that they can do one or two points of hull damage to anything beyond personal scale.

Additionally, starships could stand to be a cut above atmo craft by doing 2x damage and halving incoming to keep personal-to-starship combat asis

Callidon said:

Yeah, I like this. I adapted the "Pirates of Prexiar" from WEG's 2ed R&E corebook for the very first adventure I ran to stress test the system, and I was alarmed at how fragile (speederbikes) or nigh-invulnerable (AT-PTs) were compare to the players. I understand that AT-PTs are military anti-personnel weapon platforms… but soaking 30 character-scale damage per hit makes them pretty damned tough. I had to house-rule them down to 1 armor for the encounter.

And yea, its another layer of math, but not really very hard math. Though I may be a poor judge of that…

I guess it would also require a separate listing of weapons for planetary vehicles as well. Just something to consider.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

Not necessarily. Most planetary craft use personal scale weapons or starship weapons as-is. Anyway…nothing super important. I'll return to my crate.

Callidon said:

I like the direction of this idea a lot. It would be better to have more granular rules for vehicles that are likely to be used in character scale (land speeders, speeder bikes, small walkers, ground vehicles). I really think the way vehicles work with character scale is a weakness in this system. Having said that I can see how it would be very hard to get right. Another idea would be to stat atmospheric vehicles on the character scale altogether.

LethalDose said:

Maybe as a math-lazy alternative, you could just add a static number (like say 10 or 15).

Callidon said:

Surely the easy way to do this is to just make all starship/vehicle scale armor more granular (i.e.: 5 points of personal rather than 10), and then adjust the armour of starships and other vehicles that warrant it upwards to reflect that? I'd prefer something like that to having effectively a third scale for planetary vs starships.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Let's see if that quotes right… probably won't

Anyway, the static bonuses make me nervous because they don't scale well, for example, the Rodian terrorist shoots a civilian speeder (armor 0), damage to the speeder is reduced by 10 pts (but has vehicle armor 0). Planetary security shows up in an Armored speeder (Armor 3), same terrorist shoots that speeder… and damage is reduced by 10 again? 13? And it doesn't fit with the established "one point of armor -> 10 soak" rule we have.

Besides, the easy multipliers (2, 5, 10) aren't hard to apply to the small numbers that show up with Soak/Armor values. some players may even find it easier than trying to add 15.

-WJL

PS even as it is, it still beats the hell out of die caps.

After playing through my first session of this game, starship combat was - from my perspective - the least refined portion of the rules. The groups’ space encounter was probably my biggest gripe area – and while it was still fun, I think there are some opportunities for improvement. Our encounter pitted the PCs’ stolen YT-2400 against a pair of TIE fighters, piloted by the minion military pilots on page 202 (Agility 4! GEEZ). Once those TIE fighters “gain the advantage” you’re pretty much screwed… granted some well-placed/rolled shots and the use of destiny points allowed the players to eventually prevail, it was a harrowing and one-dimensional fight.

Some of these suggestions are recaps from my more general first impressions thread, but have evolved based on some further thought and discussion:

1. Handling

Rework handling (pg 146). Handling is way too overpowered when you’re putting a freighter against something as nimble as a TIE fighter. Much like armor and defensive values, the handling values should be conservative (2 at most), and a ship’s handling should never be negative for any ship other than silhouette 5+ (i.e. Nebulon-B or bigger).

2. Maneuvers & Actions for Non-Pilots

System strain can use some bolstering. I think it’s a great mechanic, and I really love the idea, but it can be really brought to life by defining even more actions that non-pilots (co-pilots/engineers/gunners) can do to cause strain - let everyone on-board have a chance to push that bucket of bolts to the limit. I’d recommend something that overcharges the engines, adds power to the shields, or boosts the punch of the cannons… maybe even at the expense of some other component on a failure.

I’m sure there are a host of other good ideas we could collective come up with here, but the point is there needs to be more defined outside of just "use complex equipment."

3. Rework Gain the Advantage, Evasive Maneuvers, and Stay on Target

Gain the Advantage was a big pain point for me. Affording BOTH the ability to negate evasive maneuvers AND select a defense zone is just grossly overpowered. Slower ships (even by 1 speed) are just doomed… and if they don’t have turret/rear facing weapons, its game over.

“Gain the Advantage” should be converted from an action into a complex maneuver which still calls for a piloting check using the same difficulty table as described on page 155. Success allows the pilot to select a defense zone of the target; all subsequent attacks made that round target that defense zone… remove the added effect to ignore the effects of evasive maneuvers. This effect also only lasts for one round, but obviously can be "chained" round after round.

Furthermore, Evasive Maneuvers and Stay on Target should also call for piloting checks (as well as Gain the Advantage); these checks can also use the same difficulty table, as described on page 155. This means the pilot can choose to steady the ship, avoid incoming fire, pick the defense zone – or some combination of two of these three maneuvers, if he wants to suffer strain. This leaves the action for shooting weapons.

This will limit brutal combinations of all three (the current rules allow for the benefits of evasive maneuvers, stay on target, and gain the advantage), while also providing the opportunity for more regular use of the piloting skill for "complex" maneuvers. After all, these complex maneuvers are much like leaping over some crates (which might require an athletics check), and likewise should require a piloting check.

4. Navigating Stellar Terrain

In light of my suggestions listed in #3, navigating stellar terrain might need to be revised to limit the number of piloting checks on a given turn. Instead of requiring a new check, a number of difficulty dice are upgraded equal to the greater of either speed or silhouette. This would follow the normal upgrade rules found on page 18, such that if there are too many upgrades and not enough difficulty dice, you just add difficulty dice to the pool. These checks could be further modified by the "Navigations Hazard" table on pg 159.

Let me know what you guys think!

I have a question regarding planetary vehicle combat:

How should we handle it when one vehicle tries to ram another? In our first session, the droid attempted to ram the PCs' (rented) airspeeder into a few parked speeder bikes. I didn't have the remotest idea of how to handle that properly, so we improvised a temporary patch that I wouldn't like to repeat here. Another question is how we should have handled it when the same droid then attempted to hit one of said speeder bikes' pilot with the air speeder. In that case, using the updated rules as a guide, the pilot (planetary) check was opposed by the target's agility, and the guy was basically able to jump out of the way before getting creamed, but what might the damage have been otherwise?

So it's two questions:

What damage is done (to both vehicles) when one rams another?

What damage is done to a target on foot when they get rammed by a vehicle?

@Greedo is Good:

According to the rules for the Force Power: Move, an object deals 5 damage if size (silhuete) 0 and otherwise 10xsize (silhuete) damage.

Remember that 1 damage in vehicle scale = 10 damage in personal scale.

I would use the guidelines above to cover your situation:

Airspeeder does 2 damage to bikes, bikes does 2 damage to airspeeder, both do 20 damage to targets on foot.

Test this in practice. Only if results aren't satisfatory I would try to think alternative solutions.

@Exalted5:

I think you raise some valid concerns in your topic. I myself have read and re-read the ship conflit rules and just from reading them I am having more doubts regarding play then in other chapters (with the possible exception of the Force).

In a sense I agree that this seems to be an area of the rules not as fully developed as others, apparently a little clunky and complicated to understand at times.

I believe that in a STAR WARS game ship-to-ship combat should be as excited and engaging as personal scale combat and at the same time simple, easy to explain and fast to play, just like most other rule systems in the book, but I will have to playtest it before I can have a more definitive opinion on this matter.

I mention this because at my table the pilot character is played by the most casual player in the group, which was drawn into the game by being interested in play an Han Solo Smuggler character type, but is not an hard core player or rules headed person in any sense. He made his character, played a fist session and he grasped very well all the main rules so far, notably the dice rules, character creation, improvement and combat rules.

Even so, I am wrapping my head around how to explain/teach the rules for ship-to-ship combat in a manner that he (and the rest of the group) finds intuitive, easy to understand, and easy and fast to play, so that the next session turns to be at least as sucessful as the last.

My main area of doubt remains the fluidity of ship conflit at the table.

As I have said, I will need to playtest these rules soon and then came back to you with more feedback.

OB-1 said:

That's the simple answer I was looking for! The factor I was looking for is silhouette.

I think my rule for ramming would look something like the following:

Ramming (Vehicle action)

This action is used to cause collisions between a moving vehicle and other vehicle, character, or object, to do deal damage. To use this action, the ramming vehicle must move into close range of the vehicle to be rammed.

To assemble the dice pool, start the the ramming characters appropriate vehicle skill and attribute. Determine difficulty based on table 7-5 (pg 156). If the ramming vehicle is moving slower than the vehicle to be rammed, upgrade the difficulty a number of times equal to the difference in the speeds of the two vehicles. If the ramming vehicle is moving at the same speed or faster than the vehicle to be rammed, there is no change in the difficulty. The attack is further modified by the vehicles handling, and is subject to all defensive modifiers conferred by the target that would be applicable to any similar attack with a physical projectile at close range.

The ramming vehicle is treated as a weapon that deals damage equal to it's silhouette times it's current speed, and a CR of 4. If the ramming vehicle is larger than the vehicle to be rammed, the attack is also considered to have the vicious quality with rating equal to the difference in the silhouettes of the two vehicles.

If successful, the rammed vehicle takes weapon damage as described above. In addition, the ramming vehicle takes damage equal to the rammed vehicles silhouette.

If the ramming vehicle is attempting to ram a character or character scale object, it deals damages equal to 10 times its silhouette times its current speed, and is otherwise similar to a weapon as described above. Characters are considered to be moving at speed 0, and deal damage to the vehicle equal to their silhouette size (in vehicle scale).

The GM should feel free to invoke "rule 0" and adjudicate any difficulty modifications or consequences to the ramming attempt and resultant damage. For example, if a TIE fighter attempted to ram a rebel soldier on foot, it would deal damage to the soldier as above, and take damage based on the soldier's silhouette. However, it would also collide with the ground, likely resulting in it's fiery destruction, even if it missed its target. Similarly, if a character standing in front of a tree, barricade, or other barrier were to be rammed, the vehicle must contend with what is immediately behind the target.

Looks good, not perfect, but I like having explict difficulties and involving the speed of the ramming vehicle.

-WJL

Nice. Our second session will be picking up right in the middle of the combat I described, so I'll see how well this works. The droid was nice enough to let the other PCs out of the airspeeder first.

Just some comments on the stat breakdown of the three ships that the PC's can start with. The descriptions in the book at the end of character creation (pg 68) give a nice breakdown of the different ships, listing one as the slower tougher cargo ship without many guns, one as the jack of all trades type with extra hard points, and the third as the more offensive craft with better guns/armor.

My PC's opted for the Firespray on account that they were going to pursue a career as a bounty hunting outfit and needed some extra firepower. When we came to the first combat however and actually pulled out the stats for the ship we found the weapons to be absolutely abysmal in comparison to the YT. Yes the armor and speed are one higher, but at the cost of a lot of hull integrity, worse guns, and less hardpoints it seemed like a raw deal to them.

Perhaps the stats on the Firespray could be adjusted to bring it in line with the description and fit it into its role better out of the three options.

Alternatively, if FFG understandably doesn't want to mess with ship specs perhaps something like the Phoenix Hawk could be used that would fit the bill of a more aggressive option.

Page 150 to 151: We have a Quad Laser Cannon with Linked 3 and Accurate, shouldn't we have available a Double Laser Cannon with Linked 1 but no Accurate? A Tri Laser Cannon would then be Linked 2, possibly with Accurate. I don't think we should have to wait for a supplement to make these official. A double laser cannon may be more common then a quad one.

Page 167 Digger Crawler crew seems way too high to me. This is the Jawa Sandcrawler . Are the large crew numbers from a book or earlier Star Wars RPG? I could imagine a large number of jawas in that sandcrawler, just not up to 160! I would cut it back to at most 1/2 of those numbers.

Page 172-174. Some of the ship/vehicle attachment prices need scaled by silhouette. The armor upgrade (page 172) has "2,000 times silhouette" for cost. This make sense. The larger the ship, the more armor to cover it. I think a few other attachments deserve the same treatment. First the obvious ones - Reinforced Shield Generator (larger ships need larger shield generators to cover them), Hyperdrive Generator and High Output Ion Turbine (the hyperdrive and ion engine upgrades on an X-wing are going to be nowhere near the size and cost as the same upgrades on Corellian Corvette). Less obvious scaled pricing should be considered for the Advanced Targeting Array (it covers all of the ship's weapons, lots more to cover on a Star Destroyer vs. a TIE fighter), and Hydraulic Control Circuits (lots more control circuits to cover on larger ships).

So… after the cloakshape fight last night - which went well all things considered, mainly due to me having to play the pilot of the group and me not remembering all the manoeuvers and stuff.

Right, range bands and speeds. Moving between the range bands seems to take some time, and having four to deal with is also a bit off considering the three main categories of personal combat, although close range could be considered the same as engaged, but then most weapons (except perhaps starfighters') should have short range rather than close range.

My main question concerning this is if the difficulty generated by speed affects other pilot manoeuvers, or if this only applies to moving about in the terrain, but not affecting manoeuvers like evasive manoeuver - which I see now on reading does not require a check so I guess not, although I think it could require a check and the number of successes or advantages upgrades that difficulty of attacking the evading ship further; I think someone has already suggested this above. Although this might make it into an action which we don't want - well I don't want it considering the limitations on actions per round. The speed of the ship should, I think, affect the fly/drive manoeuvre (page 153), or at least table 7-8 navigation hazard (p 159) should call for a roll if having a starship battle in an asteroid field or in a city environment with lots of manoeuvering.. which then also begs the application of speed related difficulties to these manoeuvers. This in turn will increase the difficulties of flying about, but should, I think, also affect other manoeuvers, or at least apply the t7-8 to manoeuvers evade, or actions to gain advantage.

Related issue: Perhaps the number of upgrades supplied by the evasive manoeuver for enemies equals the number of proficiency dice the pilot has? So our pilot has agility 4 and pilot 2 - by executing an evasive manoeuver he upgrades the attacking starship's difficulty by 2, so the cloakshape fighters would roll 2 challenge dice instead of 2 difficulty dice, or 2 challenge dice and 1 difficulty die, as the basic evasive manoeuver should still be useful for the pilot with no ranks. I think it makes sense - until the point where another pilot has 5 ranks in pilot and only 2 in agility; then his skill has nothing little effect beyond 2 ranks. Unless we just stay with the skill rank as an upgrading factor - which might break with other logics in the system, and the rank 5 (or if thinking about large starfighter wings of minions which could result in the "equivalent" of a rank 5 pilot skill I guess) will be darned difficult to hit, which is ok for the ace pilot going evasive- unless the starfighter wings are treated as a larger silhouette too, which might make it slightly easier - or minion groups/starfighter wings don't get better pilot by being in a group which makes sense really, unless lead by a superior henchmen pilot giving orders - hey new talents and options for starfighter wings against but also containing players!

Note or starfighter wings: This should be able to break up somehow, to further decrease their strength. I know that starfighter wings are not really in the system, but I used the T-16 Skyhoppers as a minion group - which served well to finish the that part of the encounter which I botched and the players owned (as the pop-cultural term goes).

Next thing: Starship weapons against people. I assume that people are still considered silhouette 1 against starships. Still, I think that when fired upon by a starship these weapons should gain a Blast-like quality. Perhaps even more than only people engaged with the "target". Actually I think starship weapons are so big and powerful that most, if not all, should have an area-like effect. With this abstract system I know it's hard to make, because a short range area effect centered around a target is a bit large, a dozen meter blast radius is… heavy. Still, against minions I think it's fine to rule that way.

I also see that gunnery difficulties is not based upon range at all, only size difference or speed (I guess this is where evasive manoeuver comes in, but this is not affected by speed in relation to difficulty to being hit).

About the scale discussion above (and elsewhere): I too think that there should be more than two scales. Personal - vehicle - starship - capital. I know its a lot, but it's less than D6. Multipliers involved with each level could be something like (personal being x1), Vehicle x5, starhips x10 and capital x20 or 15… the death star and space station scale doesn't always make much sense, could just as easily be considered multiple capital ships. D6 did also have Walker scale (I think) for those big lugging things, and speeder for smaller - and I'd like to add that but its not that important. Airspeeders - like the Clone trooper transports I guess would count as starship. Starship scale would include both starfighters and freighters. I know this is against the simpicity notion and adds math and all that, but even I as a qualitative social researcher know how to multiply, its a mundane and should be considered common and expected skill in a modern industrial society with mandatory basic education. Yes, I'm elitist and all that. Sorry.

Now, onto the thing I really wanted to post, which is a re-post from the equipment thread:

Encumbrance for ships. From what I gather this sort of encumbrance is the same as for PCs. Looking at the Ghtroc 720 this mean that is can carry 7 (full) bacta tanks and a dejarik table and its stuffed, sounds sort of good (bacta tanks are big and heavy), at least that haul can pay off and give profit… although if its worth the risk of raiding an imperial medical facility is another matter

On the other hand the 720 can only carry 50 disguise kits OR 11 heavy repeating blasters OR 20 bowcasters, which I find unreasonable for a ship that big… I understand that the encumbrance unit it to simplify weight and cargo space. I can also remember long threads of discussing metric tons vs volume for the older incarnations of the star wars rpg. I do not particularly want to start such a thread, but this encumbrance stuff did make me curious and slightly confused.

I realise that there might be stuff I have overlooked and not understood when it comes to encumbrance, particular in relation to starships. The sidebar on page 171 does suggest that at least capital ships can carry a lot more than listed, although not how much more - but since my players won't ever get their own capital ship or "super"freighter it won't matter what that particular upper limit is. But what is the limit for the Ghtroc 720? Is it 100 encumbrance, plus x for filling passenger quarters if need be… are bowcasters so big and bulky that you cannot fill a Ghtorc with more than 20 of them, or even less in a YT-1300?

On this note I also wondered about the smuggling compartments. Do they add encumbrance, or do they "steal" encumbrance away from the total capacity and hide it so to speak. Wouldn't be a very clever solution, since most custom patrols would have specs and knowledge about capacities… and a YT-1300 with substantially less cargo capacity than it should have, will cause suspicion - beyond the normal: "you look like a scoundrel, you talk like a scoundrel and you smell like a scoundrel. Open your cargo hold!"

I think that covers it.

Damnation! Right, long post gone… MEH!

First up is speed in relation to range band. It has been mentioned above, I will just reiterate my main points from the lost post and drop the chatter. Since the book only lists speed 5-6 being able to go from long to close range (at all) and doing so in 1 round, I suggest doubling the required manoeuvres as you go down in speed categories, sort of. Thus a speed 2-4 requires 4 manoeuvres to go from long to close range (ie a minimum of two rounds) when chasing down that ISD you want to ram, or that thief that took your favourite blaster pistol and your ship (Skavak!), in other words 2 manoeuvres to go from long to medium range or medium to long range (if not 3, but the general trend says 1 or 2 manoeuvres for moving between range bands). For speed 1 this is doubled, so 8 manoeuvres to go from long to close, or close to long - which is an awful long time - so I guess from long to medium or medium to long the speed 1 would require 4-5 manoeuvres. I guess we need a chase mechanism and some manoeuvre/action that can affect movement between the range bands - perhaps the Punch it manoeuvre can automatically move you one range band away from pursuit? and cannot be used while already at full throttle? meh… don't know, Chase mechanism!

Second. Sensors. What decides the sensors range? Ghtroc 720 has medium, whereas both the YTs has short. Why? Talking about range bands - again with the range bands - I find that freighter weapons have a bit short range, anyone else thinking this?

Anyways, sensors. Even considering that the YTs have short, they gain medium by using active sensors (also I propose a modification similar to the subspace transceiver just for sensors), which any semi-sentient group of PCs would/should do - not that my players are that smart most of the time.

The limitation of passive and active sensors is ok, although I'd like a manoeuvre, or action rather, called "active sensor sweep" that allows the sensor operator to conduct a sweep at active sensors range for all the fire arcs, make it average difficulty - or even better make it a hard difficulty. Successes gives you blips, perhaps a generic size indication of blips - like planet, asteroid, comet, huge starship, small starship, advantages types and classes of planets/asteroids/ships… triumph their energy signatures, best route to avoid their attention by estimating assumed/actual sensor range and sensor activity? mineral make-up, density… you name it… threats, miss-labeling ships as asteroids and vice versa.. Despair… hehehe

I think that's what I was on about, the co-habitor is being annoying and inconsiderate today. I get confused and loose concentration.

Does anyone know if the Encumberance threshold for starships is normal scale or (X10) vehicle scale? The Enc. stat isn'nt discussed in the starship section, or I didn't see it.

I've been wondering the same.

If you look at a yt-1300 it's got 80 or 90 I think, which is close the 100 or so metric tons it had in previous games, whereas the Action VI has 1000 enc capacity, which is much less than the 90,000 tons or so it could carry in earlier games.

If it is at a x10 it could make sense for the Action VI, but not much so for the yt-1300.

It is stated that it's a cross between mass and volume, but I wonder how they figured it out… because at present you can't carry many bowcasters in the hold of a YT-1300 or a ghtroc 720 … which doesn't really makes that much sense, unless they're REAL big suddenly.

Jegergryte said:

For starships I would recommend looking at it from an angle of "does it make sense?" At least from the PCs standpoint you should be able to look at their intended cargo manifest and wave them on or raise an eyebrow. Trying to equate cargo capacity in tonnage to an encumbrance threshold will lead to big sad weepy tears, because it is hard to nail down the bulk encumbrance of cargo without implementing a ***-for-tatencumbrance system based on weight (the rpg standard). But, weight systems dont take into account how bulky objects are, and fall flat in three dimensions without group/GM buy-in anyway. A hold full of Tibana gas cannisters will logically weigh less than the same volume of crates full of phrik ore….but the hold is just as full. Yet a weight-only system either ignores this fact to presserve gameplay or you end up with a bag-of-holding extra dimensional space ship. The current encumbrance system may seem open to abuse, and widely divergent interpretation from group to group. But if given a chance, common sense application of the encumbrance rules will keep people focused on the game and less about accounting. And if a reward or plot point hinges on cargo capacity…there probably would have been a "too much for your ship" amount of cargo in the first place so why hide behind tonnage encumbrance systems? Just make call that moves the session forward on how encumbering a given thing is to the star ship.

Fair points, but my players at least want to know these things, particular weight, but of course also volume. At the moment it isn't an issue, but in the long run it probably will be. That's why I'd like some indication of 1 encumbrance being x volume/mass unit for ship storage. Could you for example say that 1 encumbrance of a ship equals 1000 kg and 1 cubic meter? which could fit with the YT-1300, it can then carry 80,000 kg or 80 metric tons (I might be remembering wrong from EotE, it could be 90 enc, therefore 90,000 kgs or 90 tons), close to canon 100, and has value for volume too. The Action VI then has 1000 cubic meter storage, which translates into way too much in tons, but can be limited to 90,000 tons as per canon (or thereabouts) because weight, as you point out, is not necessarily the limit, room can be.

Now comes the problem then to translate equipment enc to a "storage" enc… but then, how much can you fit into a 1x1x1 meter crate? or any size really, you have the volume of the ship … Except 80 cubic meters isn't that big a storage room … approx 4,3 * 4,3 * 4,3 meters … which isn't all the much considering that the YT-1300 is about 34 meters long and who know how wide, I'm guessing about 20 meters or so at the widest. That only 4x4x4 meters of that is cargo space is ludicrous.

So, I see your point, its fair and it annoys me that it is I'd like some more detailed rules on this, but that's me… I guess I should talk to my Traveller friend .. but I hate it when he starts to talk about starship construction! BAH! I'll just stay with the old ton measurement, it makes more sense to me than "encumbrance" … tradition I guess.