Just as the title says: I have questions on these and could use some input.

I'll go with the easier one first.

" Do-It-Yourself Attachments "

The section on attachments and mods has a price listed for when you get the parts and have someone else to do it, with a few exceptions. Now, most of the mods/attachments that aren't "Pay someone to do it" have a Mechanics roll offered (Filed Down Sights and the Bowcaster attachments come to mind.

That said, would you drop the prices for someone doing it themselves, or use the prices as "for parts" and then set the price for hiring someone to do it on an as-needed basis?

The same question also pops up for ship modifications. My test group has an Outlaw Tech that really wants to scrounge, rip things apart and make things better, so I figured I should ask this now.

" Retrofitted Hangar Bay "

Grab a seat, this one may take a while.

I'm having a lot of thoughts on this one and can't seem to get a grasp on it considering examples from canon and/or previous RPGs.

For example, this modification can only be done on a ship with a Silhouette of 5 or above, meaning the Wayfarer, Action IV, GR-75, Space Master, Starwind Pleasure Yacht, Star Galleon, CR90, DP20 Gunship, Marauder Corvette, and the Nebulon-B. Considering the last two already have hangars, let's ignore them as we move along.

Now, I know in canon, there are a few "Pocket Carriers" out there, where ships have been refitted to carry fighters. The CR90, for example, has been modified in at least one book to house 12 X-Wings (and have 2 TIE fighters in lieu of escape pods); this one was the Ession Strike . Another CR90, the FarStar , was modified to be a much larger carrier (I would assume this would either mean it's created as another ship or a hand-waved plot device to change the CR90). Now, if we look at an X-Wing like a Z-95 with regards to being Silhouette 3, that means a CR90 has been modified to haul a silhouette of 36!

As for the Wayfarer , the original map given for this ship used the "hangar pods," which meant it was a pocket hangar as well as a cargo hauler. This had the ship capable of hauling two Z-95s with ease and plenty of space left over.

With the current Retrofitted Hangar Bay rule, a Silhouette 5 ship would only be able to store up to Silhoutte 5 worth of vehicles (without modification), making the above examples all but impossible. There's also a pretty big leap, as the Silhouette 6 vehicles can carry up to Silhouette 20 worth, and Silhouette 7 can haul up to 60.

So, my questions here are:

1) Am I misreading something here, or am I fully understanding it?

2) Is each Modification only a +1 Silhouette, or is it doubling the capacity?

3) How would you rule the impact of hauling one or more ships on the available cargo space?

4) Some ships, like certain Nebulon Bs, Patrol Ships and ships from the Tapani Sector do not have dedicated hangar bays, but rather clamps to hold its starfighter complement. How would you rule this after seeing the rules Retrofitted Hangar Bay?

Honestly, I don't expect this part to come up immediately in game, but knowing the group, someone's going to want to get their hands on a starfighter somehow, and it's easier to have a way to clamp or be in a hangar than have to worry about how they're staying sane in their little cockpit for a week's flight. . .

The way I understand weapon mods is that because of the way weaons and armor are manufacutred to be easily customized an attachment doesn't even require special skills to put on. The mechanical skill listed is for adding the optional mods listed for the attachment. The listed price is simply for the "clip on" attachment which is already "do-it-yourself". If the characters don't have someone who can do the optional mods for them then they would have to negotiate a price with someone who can.

As for the retrofitted hanger bay. Notice that it too has optional mods so that you can increase it by the maxium silouette 5 times as long as you make the mechanics roll or can pay someone who can. Which means the CR90 a Silouette 5 ship can take the Retrofitted Hanger Bay and get one hanger that will hold a silouette of 5 and then do that 5 more times for a total of 6x5 or 30 silouette which is pretty darn close to your 36. At least that is the way I read it.

As for the retrofitted hanger bay. Notice that it too has optional mods so that you can increase it by the maxium silouette 5 times as long as you make the mechanics roll or can pay someone who can. Which means the CR90 a Silouette 5 ship can take the Retrofitted Hanger Bay and get one hanger that will hold a silouette of 5 and then do that 5 more times for a total of 6x5 or 30 silouette which is pretty darn close to your 36. At least that is the way I read it.

That point is actually under debate at the moment.

Sam Stewart clarified on an earlier Order 66 podcast that each modification only adds a +1 to the total Silhouette max of the hanger bay; a Silhouette 5 ship with the retrofitted hanger bay could only store a maximum of Silhouette 10 in ships (base 5, +5 for having each modification installed). Which does make the modifications border on useless for anything bigger than a Silhouette 5 ship.

Andy Fischer admitted that the wording was unclear on that modification, and that it's under consideration to be errata'd as part of the Age of Rebellion Beta updates. No telling when that will be, or if it will happen, but it's under official consideration for possible revision of the wording.

As for the retrofitted hanger bay. Notice that it too has optional mods so that you can increase it by the maxium silouette 5 times as long as you make the mechanics roll or can pay someone who can. Which means the CR90 a Silouette 5 ship can take the Retrofitted Hanger Bay and get one hanger that will hold a silouette of 5 and then do that 5 more times for a total of 6x5 or 30 silouette which is pretty darn close to your 36. At least that is the way I read it.

That point is actually under debate at the moment.

Sam Stewart clarified on an earlier Order 66 podcast that each modification only adds a +1 to the total Silhouette max of the hanger bay; a Silhouette 5 ship with the retrofitted hanger bay could only store a maximum of Silhouette 10 in ships (base 5, +5 for having each modification installed). Which does make the modifications border on useless for anything bigger than a Silhouette 5 ship.

Andy Fischer admitted that the wording was unclear on that modification, and that it's under consideration to be errata'd as part of the Age of Rebellion Beta updates. No telling when that will be, or if it will happen, but it's under official consideration for possible revision of the wording.

Hmmmm....I wasn't aware of all that. I think in my games I will keep it the other way.

Thanks for the feedback on the Retrofitted Hangar Bay. I may have to do some houserule tweaks if the group decides to make the game into a campaign and end up using the Wayfarer.

The way I understand weapon mods is that because of the way weaons and armor are manufacutred to be easily customized an attachment doesn't even require special skills to put on. The mechanical skill listed is for adding the optional mods listed for the attachment. The listed price is simply for the "clip on" attachment which is already "do-it-yourself". If the characters don't have someone who can do the optional mods for them then they would have to negotiate a price with someone who can.

That makes a bit of sense. While reading the descriptions, it sounded like most of the mods would need a bit of work, though; for example, a good number of the blaster mods require taking apart the blaster to replace some of the parts, and some of the armor mods seem to be rather in depth, such as the mod to protect against vacuum. I wasn't certain if a roll was needed or a professional as required, thus the query.

As for the retrofitted hanger bay. Notice that it too has optional mods so that you can increase it by the maxium silouette 5 times as long as you make the mechanics roll or can pay someone who can. Which means the CR90 a Silouette 5 ship can take the Retrofitted Hanger Bay and get one hanger that will hold a silouette of 5 and then do that 5 more times for a total of 6x5 or 30 silouette which is pretty darn close to your 36. At least that is the way I read it.

That point is actually under debate at the moment.

Sam Stewart clarified on an earlier Order 66 podcast that each modification only adds a +1 to the total Silhouette max of the hanger bay; a Silhouette 5 ship with the retrofitted hanger bay could only store a maximum of Silhouette 10 in ships (base 5, +5 for having each modification installed). Which does make the modifications border on useless for anything bigger than a Silhouette 5 ship.

Andy Fischer admitted that the wording was unclear on that modification, and that it's under consideration to be errata'd as part of the Age of Rebellion Beta updates. No telling when that will be, or if it will happen, but it's under official consideration for possible revision of the wording.

As for the retrofitted hanger bay. Notice that it too has optional mods so that you can increase it by the maxium silouette 5 times as long as you make the mechanics roll or can pay someone who can. Which means the CR90 a Silouette 5 ship can take the Retrofitted Hanger Bay and get one hanger that will hold a silouette of 5 and then do that 5 more times for a total of 6x5 or 30 silouette which is pretty darn close to your 36. At least that is the way I read it.

That point is actually under debate at the moment.

Sam Stewart clarified on an earlier Order 66 podcast that each modification only adds a +1 to the total Silhouette max of the hanger bay; a Silhouette 5 ship with the retrofitted hanger bay could only store a maximum of Silhouette 10 in ships (base 5, +5 for having each modification installed). Which does make the modifications border on useless for anything bigger than a Silhouette 5 ship.

Andy Fischer admitted that the wording was unclear on that modification, and that it's under consideration to be errata'd as part of the Age of Rebellion Beta updates. No telling when that will be, or if it will happen, but it's under official consideration for possible revision of the wording.

You must of listen to a copy completely different pod cast than I did. They did clarify it however they said it duplicated the size just as it is written, but a GM needs to use common sense with how many additional upgrade he allows. He then went on to say "look at the AoR beta notes we will probably clarify this because we have the same mod in AoR.

I sadly never really have the time for podcasts (90% of my time on a computer is at work, the other 10% is usually business or research related), so I only knew about these comments in passing.

If it does get duplicated, that would make more sense for some of these ships. Still doesn't grant the full 12 X-Wings that we see in canon, but I think this would be a good first step at the very least!

You must of listen to a copy completely different pod cast than I did. They did clarify it however they said it duplicated the size just as it is written, but a GM needs to use common sense with how many additional upgrade he allows. He then went on to say "look at the AoR beta notes we will probably clarify this because we have the same mod in AoR.

We're talking about two different answers from two different people.

Andy's the one that said "as written, I'd say it adds the ship's Silhouette" while Sam Stewart (the guy that wrote the section on starships) said "it's just a +1 per modification with no regard to the ship's Silhouette." Andy did go on to add that the wording was unclear, and that it'd be something to consider, either as errata or to be included in the eventual AoR Beta updates.

Personally, as Sam's the guy that's been noted as being the one largely responsible for the starships section in both books, I'm more inclined to view his answer as the more correct one of the two, particularly for Silhouette 5 craft since the attachment and modifications don't eat away at the ship's cargo capacity, meaning you could have a Wayfarer that's toting around almost a full squadron of Z-95 Headhunters or Y-Wings (figuring a good enough mechanic to install all 5 modifications) yet could still carry it's normal allotment of goods.

So, based on Sam's answer, the Wayfarer could be modified to hold up to 20 Silhouette worth of Silhouette 3 or smaller craft. (The Wayfarer has 5 hard points, the Retrofitted Hanger Bay costs 2 (for 5x2=10 capacity), and each of them could take up to 5 mods (1x5x2=10). And, that would leave a single hard point for other attachments, such as upgraded weapons.

The Corellian Corvette (CR90) faces the same limit, but without the leftover hard point. But then again, it already has *significantly* better combat statistics than the Wayfarer.

Unless we start seeing some Silhouette 2 starships (Vulture droids perhaps?) or you want to have a combat-launch-capable landspeeder or speeder bikes there's relatively little point to getting all 5 upgrades on each Bay, since the 6 fighters you could carry would total up to 18 Silhouette.

Don't recall if it was here or over on the d20 Radio forums, but I recall someone suggesting this as a possible "patch" to Retrofitted Hanger Bay to keep it viable for Silhouette 6+ ships but not worrisome to GMs for Silhouette 5 ships so that PCs don't suddenly turn said ships into pocket squadron carriers.

The suggestion was that each modification grants additional Silhouette capacity equal to its base capacity divided by 5. So for a Wayfarer, each modification only grants +1 Silhouette capacity, a Silhouette 6 vehicle gets +4 to its capacity per modification, and anything bigger gets +12 to its capacity.

True, the bigger ships will get more bang for the credit, but it make sense as they are much larger and thus have more "empty space" that can be converted to hanger space.

I think that someone was me over on the d20radio forums.

As for Voice's assumption, if that is what it is, I'd not allow multiple instances of the same attachment in this case. At least not for the silhouette 5 ships, I'd say they are too small to have multiple hangar bays, and also mostly too small to carry more than 3 starfighters of the size of X-wings, Y-Wings or B-wings. But that's me. I'm not sure know there is anything in the core book about restricting multiple instances of the same attachment, but again there is nothing the says that you can - barring weapons, and perhaps smuggling compartments, I'd restrict most other attachments. I can't remember if this also came up in the Sam&Jay episode, or some other order 66 episode.

The size 5 Marauder carries 12 fighters and a pair of shuttles.

The thing is, not all ships of the same silouhette are the same size, so looking a the EU material and trying to make all sil 5 ships the same isnt going to work. The Wayfarer is the low end of sil 5 and is probably only about 10% the total internal volume of the nearly 3 times longer Marauder.

Personally, I would have it depend on the ship. I doubt I would let a wayfarer carry a dozen fighters, but The consular my players aquired is going to end up carrying half a dozen fighters and a couple skiprays on external docks.

The size 5 Marauder carries 12 fighters and a pair of shuttles.

The thing is, not all ships of the same silouhette are the same size, so looking a the EU material and trying to make all sil 5 ships the same isnt going to work. The Wayfarer is the low end of sil 5 and is probably only about 10% the total internal volume of the nearly 3 times longer Marauder.

Personally, I would have it depend on the ship. I doubt I would let a wayfarer carry a dozen fighters, but The consular my players aquired is going to end up carrying half a dozen fighters and a couple skiprays on external docks.

Well the Marauder was also designed with the intent to carry a squadron of starfighters, where the Retrofitted Hanger Bay is more for ships that were never meant to carry even a single starfighter or to cram more fighters in than was originally designed.

I can see your point about having it "depend on the ship," but that adds a great deal of complexity to a system that's generally trying to steer away from excessive complexity, particularly given the huge variety of starships that exist in the Star Wars setting.

Yes. That! I do believe the entry for the retrofitted hangar bay says something about that.

Also, as I have said elsewhere, this retrofit is not the same as ship designed with a hangar for carrying ships, so it is - to me - natural that there are limitations on the attachment that prevents a silhouette 5 transport/medium freighter from becoming a carrier of sorts.

I think that someone was me over on the d20radio forums.

Ah, should have none, ye of the big ol' book of unofficial transport conversions

It's a **** good suggestion, and one that I hope Sam and Andy take note of for the AoR Beta updates.

Yes. That! I do believe the entry for the retrofitted hangar bay says something about that.

Also, as I have said elsewhere, this retrofit is not the same as ship designed with a hangar for carrying ships, so it is - to me - natural that there are limitations on the attachment that prevents a silhouette 5 transport/medium freighter from becoming a carrier of sorts.

Yeah, and there are plenty of examples from real life of ships being converted into carriers to see that there are limits that can make a ship a poor carrier or a mediocre one. The thing is, just because there is something in the rulebook that should not get into the way of the players having fun. Technically, if they are having fun, and dont mind/care about if it is realistic, then they should go ahead and do want they want. Not could, should . The game is about having fun, after all. Especially when there are more than a few ships in the canon that violate the rule anyway.

I have another question for the retrofitted hangar bay.

What about encumbrance capacity? I mean, does the hangar bay in any way impact that? If so, how? Does it increase or decrease? I mean, mechanically it does neither, but from your point of view, if you were to let the retrofit affect encumbrance capacity, how would it? I'm thinking of the Wayfarer here in particular, but I mean it goes for any ship I think, and what about crew/passenger impact? I guess I'm moving in on some - potentially - minor details, but humour me please

I have another question for the retrofitted hangar bay.

What about encumbrance capacity? I mean, does the hangar bay in any way impact that? If so, how? Does it increase or decrease? I mean, mechanically it does neither, but from your point of view, if you were to let the retrofit affect encumbrance capacity, how would it? I'm thinking of the Wayfarer here in particular, but I mean it goes for any ship I think, and what about crew/passenger impact? I guess I'm moving in on some - potentially - minor details, but humour me please

Since the Hangar Bay is an Attachment, it's possible that it's an external feature 'bolted on' to the outside of the ship that only takes up minimal internal space. This conflicts with the fluff for the Hangar Bay which describes converted holds, but as alternate fluff it fits the current crunch of the Attachment which doesn't currently alter the ships Encumbrance Capacity at all.

I can agree with that, but how would you, if you would at all, add drawbacks?

I mean, a full cargo hold and full external hangar bay, decreased handling? decreased speed? would the external attached hangar bay add any other limitations or weaknesses? I'm not saying it should, but certainly that it could. Narratively an external hangar bay could of course make the ship too big to fit in certain landing bays, make imperial customs or local law enforcement come down on you with fines, regular and insistent inspections...

What if you bay is internal, could this decrease the cargo capacity if the bay has starships in it? Could the cargo capacity be increased if no starships are in the bay? This is not so much for changing the attachment in itself, but more for house rulings, or whatever.

Does the retrofit include quarters for pilots of the starship in the bay?