Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

[Harrkonen]

I'm fixing a Starwars campaign in the near future and I have pretty much all my bases covered save for one. Vehicles. I've never been that good at designing them and I'm really wanting some help on this one. I'm a big fan of the SW universe so it really bothers me that I'm needing help on this part...Anyone have any suggestions or examples for me?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

What do you want to use them for?

 

I find that if you want detailed then it is work - if you want colour then a land speeder is flight, AoE (hexes), physical manifestation, must be within 1" of a surface, OAF, independent.

 

This allows you to fly just above the surface. I allow the physical manifestation to get other people to sit on board - they have no control over the movement of the speeder unless they take the focus from me and I cannot impose movement on them unless they choose to sit in the speeder.

 

If the vehicle has weapons then you buy attacks on a similar basis.

 

That gets round an awful lot of the vehicle design rules unless you want to go into the spaceship warfare with bits blowing up etc etc....

 

 

My way has advantages of cinematic action and vehicles giving characters abilities rather than being proto-characters in and of themselves.

 

 

Doc

[Vulcan]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Of course, the kewl starfighter and starship battles were some of the best parts of the movies... second only to the Jedi duels.

 

I would not be at all surprised if Shadowcat has some of the Star Wars vehicles already statted up. You might also poke around the threads and see what turns up...

[Maur]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Well, one could look in the Star Hero forum... Seems there are quite a few threads in there about Star Wars and the HERO system...

[Harrkonen]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

I need fairly detailed specs on things such as land speeders, speeder bikes, and a few fighter ships. The campaign is set during the Clone wars. In the past with campaigns that involved space travel and ships we've made a few ships but they are actually very harsh in combat and rather clumsy. I'm hoping for something that I can use to actually simulate ship to ship combat. And I've poked at some of the various threads but haven't dug too deeply I still have trouble navigating around here not a very experienced thread hopper.

[Harrkonen]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Another Question: Astromech Droids. This is somthing I have yet to see on any of the threads. What bonuses and such do astromech's give pilots? I know they help the pilot with things.

[Maur]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

They provide no bonuses to this piloting. They can help with target selection and identification as well as making system repairs and rerouting of power (e.g. shields double-front).

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Here are a couple of Internet sources for HERO SW vehicle stats.

 

Website with 4E HERO writeups of character races and archetypes, weapons, ships, droids, and of course the Force:

http://www.sysabend.org/champions/campaigns/StarHeroWars/index.html

 

Jedi Powers, Talents, Skills, Perks, Disadvantages, Martial Arts, equipment and starfighter writeups:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041227060058/http://www.herogames.com/oldForum/StarHero/000195.html

 

BTW there is a huge and diverse mass of fan-created HERO material for Star Wars on the Internet, if you'd like to be directed to some of it.

[Harrkonen]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Okay you're guy's insight has been rather helpful. Now I have somthing purely that I want to get your Opinion's on.

 

Deflector shields.

Normally when these are designed people think of forcefield or force wall. However even with things such as Ablative, activation roll, sectional defense etc...none of these give the proper simulated effect of deflector shields. The effect of course being that they can sustain a beating until they are knocked out which then the ship is now defenseless (unless it has armor of some kind) The problem lies in that with this technology one's shields can recharge if the pilot manages to evade fire for a few moments and until they go down the ship takes no damage (save for the pilot getting bumped around a little)

 

A possible way myself and a friend devised was as follows

 

Deflector Shields

Forcefield

2 ED

with custom adder of X10

Custom Limitation of: Lockout once shields collapse

Extra time 1 minute only to re-erect shields once down

Focus OIF, Bulky,

 

Basically this build was the what we came up with when we put our heads together. It gives this ship a total ED of 20 that slowly is whittled away bit by bit. If the ship avoids fire for at least 1 minute the shields recharge to full. Also in this manner one can divert power (Or in essense Push) the defense of the force field. (rather then make a roll the action just takes a phase). While i know this is a somewhat odd build for somthing that should be much simplier the truth is that there isn't. Thru standard means using the Hero system it's actually very difficult to correctly replicate that behavior of shields from things such as Starwars and Startrek.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

One solution to the deflector shield problem I have seen is extra Body, possibly with some defense (Armor or FF; linked to the Body if you want them to decrease as the shields are weakened). Then you can add some Regeneration limited to only affecting that Body if you like.

 

I've also seen custom Modifiers used on a defense that cost End when the defense is applied as well as or instead of each Phase. The characteristics of the End Reserve used to power the shields then determine the rest.

[Maur]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Okay you're guy's insight has been rather helpful. Now I have somthing purely that I want to get your Opinion's on.

 

Deflector shields.

Normally when these are designed people think of forcefield or force wall. However even with things such as Ablative, activation roll, sectional defense etc...none of these give the proper simulated effect of deflector shields. The effect of course being that they can sustain a beating until they are knocked out which then the ship is now defenseless (unless it has armor of some kind) The problem lies in that with this technology one's shields can recharge if the pilot manages to evade fire for a few moments and until they go down the ship takes no damage (save for the pilot getting bumped around a little)

 

A possible way myself and a friend devised was as follows

 

Deflector Shields

Forcefield

2 ED

with custom adder of X10

Custom Limitation of: Lockout once shields collapse

Extra time 1 minute only to re-erect shields once down

Focus OIF, Bulky,

 

Basically this build was the what we came up with when we put our heads together. It gives this ship a total ED of 20 that slowly is whittled away bit by bit. If the ship avoids fire for at least 1 minute the shields recharge to full. Also in this manner one can divert power (Or in essense Push) the defense of the force field. (rather then make a roll the action just takes a phase). While i know this is a somewhat odd build for somthing that should be much simplier the truth is that there isn't. Thru standard means using the Hero system it's actually very difficult to correctly replicate that behavior of shields from things such as Starwars and Startrek.

 

Well, this isn't really true. This is a takeoff from the X-wing and TIE Fighter games and not from the movies. The computer game made the shields much more powerful than they were in the movies or early novelizations. In the movies you can see that the fighters, while able to take some hits, weren't able to survive a barrage of hits (unlike in the video game where my x-wing with fully charged shields could survive a turbolaser from a Star Destroyer).

[Harrkonen]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Well' date=' this isn't really true. This is a takeoff from the X-wing and TIE Fighter games and not from the movies. The computer game made the shields much more powerful than they were in the movies or early novelizations. In the movies you can see that the fighters, while able to take some hits, weren't able to survive a barrage of hits (unlike in the video game where my x-wing with fully charged shields could survive a turbolaser from a Star Destroyer).[/quote']

 

actually very true. Prest you make a very good suggestion too i'll have to remember that one.

 

But maur onto your point: you are absolutely correct. in the games the ships had far too powerful shields (unless you hit it up to hard difficulty blech...) anyway but that is why the ff is still treated as a ablative form. The standard ship laser cannon does a RKA 4d6 often with a AF modifier. this means on average if a ship is hit the shields will lose anywhere from about 9 to 12 points per hit. Meaning that after about 2 hits for a starfighter which is where this shield example came from, the shields are down, leaving the pilot with his ship's measly 6 DEF and 20 BODY (Once again from the same ship mind you) to fend for itself and the shields themselves won't recharge until at least a minute of not getting hit has gone by. And as for somthing such as a turbolaser from a Stardestroyer...well for the most part lets just hope that the Turbolasers have somthing more important to focus on rather then you. 6-8d6 RKA AF 2 shots can really tear you a new asshole.

 

Although regarding that didn't the Millenium Falcon take a number of hits from a Stardestroyer's guns? Of course this can be chalked up to the fact of it's Shield generator being much more substantial then that of a Starfighter. Still the re-routing of the power happens often in the movies, you can often hear quotes of Luke or Anakin telling R2 to switch the power to front or rear deflector shields.

 

Finally for my last point if one might argue fighter craft other then the Main character's who were often shot down in one to two shots I once again re-instate this being the Pulp feeling of the setting where in Pulps the minion mortality rate is often very high.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

I set them up, in 4E, as multiple forcewalls in a multipower. This let them simulate the "double front" and such - set both forcewalls to be in front of you, or one front one rear. They were 5 ED each, IIRC, so that a 1d6 RKA *could* get through on a high roll. I had more than just 2 forcewalls on larger ships, so they could take a bit more of a beating before total collapse - you would have to burn through multiple forcewalls.

 

I had them run off an END reserve with very limited recovery, and END only required to activate, and then a skill roll to activate or "angle" them.

 

I'll see if I still have any of my old write-ups.

[Warp9]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

I'm fixing a Starwars campaign in the near future and I have pretty much all my bases covered save for one.

 

Near future????

 

No.

 

 

 

 

 

StarWars = Long, long, ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Harrkonen]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

I set them up, in 4E, as multiple forcewalls in a multipower. This let them simulate the "double front" and such - set both forcewalls to be in front of you, or one front one rear. They were 5 ED each, IIRC, so that a 1d6 RKA *could* get through on a high roll. I had more than just 2 forcewalls on larger ships, so they could take a bit more of a beating before total collapse - you would have to burn through multiple forcewalls.

 

I had them run off an END reserve with very limited recovery, and END only required to activate, and then a skill roll to activate or "angle" them.

 

I'll see if I still have any of my old write-ups.

 

Yeah we've been using a system similar to that for the time being until we come across something better. So far it works for most circumstances seeing as how appearently in Starwars vehicle weapons are actually quite devastating with only larger ships being able to take more then a few hits. With our first trial run a PC got hit pretty hard and it completly wiped his shields out. Course not too terribly worried about things with things worked as when the ship reaches 0 body it stops responding and goes dead (not exploding until it reaches it's full negative body) allowing a PC to safely crashland his battered ship and hopefully escape...unless of course out in the vacuum of space...then they might be kinda screwed.

[Kenn]

Re: Starwars Vehicles: Any ideas?

 

Machesney Park... Hmmm. Would you be looking for players and how often and when would this be run?