This is far and away the biggest challenge for Rocketship Empires 1936. Getting anywhere near where I want things to be with the starship rules is going to be difficult.
Goals
The thing needs to be easy to play. Dice mechanics need to be consistent with the rest of the game. As much as possible one or two rolls resolves things and keeps the game moving. Activities aboard ship should be developed in a range from routine to fast and furious.
Some of the maintaining of a starship needs to be included in the mechanics. Part of keeping your rattle trap Chinese built freighter in the air is the fun and challenge of having to keep her from falling apart. Keeping your eyes open for key parts of the ship which are compatible with other ship models you might encounter for salvage, purchase or (let's face it) piracy. Of course this means that the challenge of writing up these details falls into the lap of someone...me. I have some ideas for this but as I said its going to involve a fair amount of work.
I want the sense that you are on board your starship. For ships with crew positions I want to have the sense that multiple crew members do something vital for the operation of the starship. Starship crew members need to be able to work together as a team to accomplish their goals. The main goals being...get from point A to point B in one piece. Survive combat threats. Repair stuff that gets blown off, blown up or just blows up on its own.
The starship is as important of a character in Rocketship Empires as any of the player characters and this is how it should be.
Broad Concepts
Space travel in Rocketship Empires has always been divided into three parts. Each of these three types of movement require its own drive system.
Jump Travel
Starships enter jump space to travel between stars. They do this by diving into the gravity well of a star and activating the ship's gravity drive at the right moment. The gravity drive shoots the ship out of normal space and into jump space where the laws are somewhat different. Jump space is where a ship travels from one star system to another by diving down what amounts to a worm hole connecting one massive gravity object to another.
System Travel
Starships use a system drive to travel within a star system. The drive crosses the distance of an AU in a measurement of terran days. System drives travel in a straight line or nearly so given the influence of the gravity wells of of plants they may pass along the way. There is no ability to maneuver while the system drive is active. Weapon systems are impractical to use against a ship using system movement. The ship is traveling far to rapidly and space is simply to massive for the weapons systems written into the game to be effective in any worthwhile manner.
Manuever Drives
When a starship drops out of system travel it activates its manuever drive to move about. Manuever drives allow a starship to dock with a space station, enter orbit, enter atmosphere, manuever in atmosphere or in space and land on a planet surface. All starship combat takes place using manuever drives. When a ship drops out of system travel it takes time for the system drive to recycle and be ready for another use. This recharge of the system drive can take hours. System drives are not safe to use within a certain distance of a planetary body. Once you get close to your destination the fail safes on your system drive are not going to let you operate it. Activating a system drive near a planet or in atmosphere simple insures the spectacular destruction of the ship in question and little more.
Ship Character Sheets
I have an idea where a ship design comes with a picture of the ship, a map of the interior of the ship and a collection of tabloid sized control stations for the essential crew. For a starfighter this may be a fairly simple affair with a picture of the ship, simple diagram, notes on the controls and ship resources and functions / weapons and one or two tabloid sized (11 x 17) control panels. One for the pilot. One for the navigator.
I'm thinking it would be cool for the control panels to look like some kind of aircraft instrument panel or science station from the period. Different vital controls have spots where the player assigns dice from their dice pool.
Game Within a Game - To do this right while the mechanics will be the same for both parts of the game I am thinking that starship operations and combat need to exist as its own game within the game of RSE.
To arrive at the dice pool available to a pilot or navigator or other crew member I am thinking it is some function of the character's various stats (intelligence, perception, agility) plus skill ranks in various ship related skills.
The player assigns their dice to various components on the control panel and how these dice are assigned determines what the player has available to roll to accomplish various things. Move. Make a special move. Attack with weapons. Maintain combat awareness - spot incoming rockets and missiles so that the ship can attempt evasive moves to avoid them, etc...
I really like this idea but again - we are talking about a lot of work. That is where opening the entire thing up for others to go crazy with is valuable. I can create the rules. Create a half dozen example starships of various flavors up to and including the Freighter the Other Woman and then let others go wild making their own starship packets.
Other Ship Control Panels
I like the idea the notion that you have slightly different control panel configurations depending on the command chair of the ship you are sitting in. The players might grab a different ship, drop into the seats...look down at the control panels and go...erm...ok...that is thrust, that is control...that is altitude..but what do those things do? Imagine a player moving from the controls of a ship where everything is in English and sitting down at the controls of a Soviet starship or a Reich starship or a Japanese starship. Some things will be immediately clear but reading them will not be as easy...some things will be a total mystery until some experimentation occurs but after all...shouldn't that be the way it is?
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