Robust Ship System

General Suggestions
#1

So most of this is shamelessly stolen from seeing other implementations of similar systems. The “hows” of this are a bit lost on me, but here’s what I have seen implemented.

First, piloting skill. Investing in piloting should feel rewarding for more than perks. The way I have seen this implemented in the past is every ship size has a “crew” size, and it takes the average piloting of the people with the highest score to determine the ship’s total “piloting” score. Small ships might take just one or two people for instance, but larger ships might take as many as six to eight. This means if five people are on a ship with a crew size of two, you would take the two highest piloting scores and average them to determine the piloting score of the ship.

This score would then be used to determine the outcome of random events. You would roll and add the skill versus a difficulty of the event. Events could be a few different types, with passing an event giving more piloting XP than failing:

  1. Space anomalies: (asteroid belts, meteor showers, solar flares, etc) that if you pass the check you reach your destination faster, and if you fail you go slower.
  2. Random ship attacks: (Mynocks, boarding pirates, other stuff) that result in a fight on the ship. Something to spice up journeys. Passing the check avoids the encounter.
  3. Discoveries: Small, single map things that can be found while out and about. Distress signals, strange asteroids, and other stuff you could land on and explore. Passing the check locates them and allows for investigation. Failure notifies you you saw them but couldn’t find a way to land safely or something.

Then there’s ship combat. This gets a bit more complex and could likely be added separately from just flying around and having events.

First, every ship should have durability(HP) and hardpoints. Weapon hardpoints increase the number of attacks/damage, but you could also fit engine or stealth modules to increase AC or avoiding engagement. Larger ships that require more crew would have more of both. Ships should have AC based on their ship size, with smaller ships being harder to hit. Ships could also have three different speed modes, Full speed, combat speed, and stopped. Full speed would buff AC but lower ship weapon attack, half speed would keep both neutral, and stopped would lower AC but raise AB.

Combat would first require a check to “Engage” an enemy ship, with ships being able to run in “Stealth” mode or not. To engage a stealthed ship, you have to beat its piloting score with your own. Some ships (smuggler ships) could have a higher natural stealth score. Once engaged, a ship would attack by rolling its piloting score for each weapon versus the enemy ship’s AC every round, and applying damage. A ship running at full speed could also “Jump to Lightspeed” after a countdown (lowered, again, by piloting skill) that would break engagement and prevent further engagement for a period of time.

Obviously this is a ton of work, but it’s similar to a system I’ve seen implemented before and might make space travel and piloting a bit more fun!

#2

I’d be down to make the maps for small derelict ships etc providing someone can back it up with the code required lol

#3

Erm, most of that is already implemented!

The ships in the module today can have two crew members, pilot and gunner. The pilot’s skill is used for ship speed and defense. If there is no gunner, the pilot’s skill is also used for attack, but the ship can only shoot in its front arc. If you have a gunner, the ship can fire in any direction and uses the gunner’s skill for attack.

There are various modules you can craft to improve your ship. From memory, the enhancements are gun power, shield strength, fuel capacity (stronidium determines how long you can fight for - shooting and shield deflections both cost stronidium), hull strength, scanner rating, stealth rating, ship speed and cargo capacity (essentially a negative to other stats in exchange for more cargo space - since other enhancements all take a cargo hold spot). Currently, the scanner/stealth stuff isn’t functional, the intention was to do it when we have stealth mechanics for PCs.

Ships all have different stats based on their model. So when you fight NPCs, the ones that look different from each other will have different stats. They will also have variable piloting skill based on the area you find them in - rolling to hit is always a contested roll between the attacker and defender, so a skilled pilot will both hit more often and get hit less often.

Things we don’t have:

  • different speed settings. Speed is solely based on ship model and piloting skill (and any enhancements you have added).
  • hardpoints as distinct from cargo capacity. Currently cargo capacity is the sole thing limiting how much stuff you can stack on your ship - so it’s a trade off. (This actually means the freighter is ‘stronger’ than the escort - since if you apply enhancements to the freighter to match the escort’s stats you still have more cargo space left than the escort has to start with. But it’s much more work).
  • in-ship encounters. This was explicitly avoided due to the difficulty of flying the ship while also seeing what’s happening inside it. I’m very keen not to have to deal with pilots getting attacked in their chair while they’re in ‘ship mode’ on the space map.
  • stealth checks - as noted above this was pending having a stealth system for PCs to hook into.
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