Each starship has a sort of character sheet for each of its crew stations. This is an example of an abstract sheet for a two person crew starship. This particular sheet is for the pilot.
A character's stats and skill ranks determine how many dice the character has available in a general dice pool for use with this sheet. In addition to the player's dice from their pool the ship has a few of its own dice set onto the sheet. We will talk about the static ship dice first from this example.
Three dice are placed on the red squares at the lower left corner of the pilot's controls. Each of these dice represent one attack pool dice to be rolled depending upon how much ammo the pilot squeezes off from the wing guns over which he has direct control. The actual attack roll is made by rolling an agility die plus skill ranks in gunnery plus one ammo die. Ammo is stored in blocks of three. The player marks off how much ammo is used either one, two or three (an entire block).
Targets have a base difficulty to hit based on ship type + modifier. A portion of the player character's starship combat dice pool can be assigned from turn to turn into the spaces next to each of three bogies or targets. These dice are not rolled but their assignment from the available pool reduces the difficulty to hit each target up to a maximum of three. They may also be reserved for defense, in which case they are rolled along with armor or counter measures in an attempt to reduce the number of successes scored against the player's starship by that designated target.
This begs the question of what happens if a single small starship goes up against more than three bogies. I am thinking that exceptionally skilled pilots may be able to place a handful of dice from their pool into a defensive posture only for additional foes but they would need to be fairly high in level. The answer to this question in the main is, don't get into dogfights with four or more bogies. The fourth, fifth and so on enemy able to tangle with you in a dogfight is only going to face the defense of your armor and counter measures (while they last). Terran pilots are dangerous but there -is- such a thing as biting off more than you can chew, even for them.
Two static dice are placed, one each, on top of the two counter measures squares. Counter measures are one shot defenses against incoming rockets and missiles. Imagine that the pilot can hit either one or both buttons to deploy counter measures directly. The second cockpit sheet in this set is for the ship's navigator who controls additional groups of counter measures as well as the ship's own missiles and some other important (indeed vital) systems.
A static die is placed under maneuver cost. All maneuver's have a cost from one to six. The cost is a measure in a reduction of points from the ship's current velocity value. There are a number of cards that represent maneuvers. Perhaps six to ten can be used by any pilot. Early in a Flying Ace or Starship Pilot career a pilot chooses to either develop maneuvers from the "boom and zoom" school, the "turning dogfight" school or the "pirate" school. Each of these three schools has its strengths and weaknesses. At each level the player character can choose any one new maneuver from those available in their school and add this to the cards available for them to play each combat turn. The die placed in the maneuver cost box is adjusted from combat turn to combat turn to reflect the reduction in velocity that the maneuver being played costs.
Everywhere else has to do with dice pulled from the character's available starship combat dice pool.
Velocity - Dice are placed into this circle to maintain velocity as it is spent. A ship has a maximum potential add to velocity each combat turn. Rolling the dice placed into this circle at the end of the combat turn determines what portion of combat velocity can be recovered from the maximum potential after velocity has been reduced by playing a maneuver. Part of space and atmo combat has to do with trading velocity for maneuver. Ultimately the best maneuvers will bleed the most velocity to the point where they can no longer be played. Speed is life in a dogfight. As your velocity bleeds you will begin to lose access to your best cards and become more at risk.
Control - Dice are place into this circle for making control rolls during combat. Control rolls are required to respond to maneuver cards played by enemy combatants or to achieve the best result from the maneuver card you just played.
ATMO - There are three light blue squares labeled Atmo beneath the large white spot in the center where the current maneuver card being used by the pilot is displayed. When a starship enters the atmosphere one die from the total pool must be placed into the first light blue "standard" atmo square. This represents the additional stress on the pilot of dogfighting in atmosphere. Should the conditions be exceptionally stormy a second die from the pool must be sacrificed and put into the "turbulent" square. Should the starship be fighting in an exceptionally dangerous condition or exotic atmosphere a third die from the pool must be placed into the "exotic" conditions for atmo.
Fuel tracks fuel use. Certain high power combat moves eat up a full block of fuel or even two. Taking damage in combat can cause a sudden loss in fuel. It is possible to run out of fuel in combat. This is always a bad thing. Worse if you are in atmo.
Flight Surfaces - Four orange boxes represent damaged flight surfaces. As a starship takes general damage to the structure of the starship each of these orange boxes requires that a pilot's combat pool die be placed on that box in order to keep the bird under control. Failure to do so or inability to do so causes an immediate and repeated control rolls to avoid spectacular and violent death via crashing or breaking up. The more damaged your bird becomes the more you have to concentrate your energy to keep her together even though she is shaking to pieces. This takes away from what you have available to say...keep your velocity up for better maneuvers or to pay attention to the bogies to hit more often or avoid taking more hits.
Systems and Internals - Five blue boxes that would be numbered. Each would represent a specific important system for the ship (like life support). In a small ship like this one the responsibility for handling damage control via internal automated / robotic fire control and repair is divided between the pilot and the navigator. Again a die is pulled from the pool as an important system is put offline by a well placed internal / critical hit. This represents the pilot madly punching buttons and hitting switches to put out fires and keep from losing a vital system for good.
Armor - Armor is ablative for most starships. Each box on the gray shield represents one use of armor against an incoming hit. In this case the armor is defined as hardened 2 so two dice are rolled to attempt to eliminate the number of successes rolled by your foe in their attack against you. Remember the number of successes you roll is multiplied by the value of your weapon. A weapon system with a value of 3 and four rolled successes would inflict 12 points of damage against the enemy. Four rolled successes may also indicate an automatic flight control surface or internal system hit. Rolling two successes with armor as part of your defense would drop the successes of the enemy rolled against you by two. No automatic flight surfaces or internals and only 6 points of damage rather than 12. Even so one of your 18 total units of armor is now gone forever or at least until you can land and put some hours into repairing your ship.
Anyway. This is all very, very fast and loose at this point. Just forming ideas to take to the table with a few friends for battling things out and seeing what works, what doesn't work, what needs to be changed.
-Ed
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