We have liftoff.
about 3 years ago
– Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 05:38:26 AM
We've had a phenomenal start to this campaign. There's so much to say and so much to do, but I think now would be a great time to talk about one of our latest stretch goals, and new line-up to the core book squad...
Let’s talk about the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit!
Spacecraft are obviously a fundamental part of any sci-fi game, however, one thing came up over and over again during 0e, and that was that the overwhelming majority of people weren’t using the shipbuilding rules provided. Why? They were way too fiddly and complicated. It was a neat idea for sure, being able to modularly build your ship from scratch, and if you are one of the few that love that old system, congrats! You have a fully functional rulebook already. For everyone else, let’s talk about what we changed.
First off, we have a brand new ship sheet called the Ship’s Manifest. This is basically a Character Sheet for your ship and it’s designed to be like a control panel you’d see from the Captain’s Chair.
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that we’ve gotten rid of all the ship-building rules and descriptions of rooms, etc. This is a sheet that’s meant to be used during play. How? We’re glad you asked.
Similar to how the Wounds system has changed to make violence more interesting and decisive, we’ve done a similar thing with ships. Ships have “Frame” which is basically the same as Wounds but for ships. Whenever your ship loses a point of Frame they’ll have to roll on this nasty ship’s critical hit table (oh this will be on the back of the Warden’s Screen by the way).
You’ll see that a lot of systems can go Offline, or be disabled, damaged, or destroyed. This creates a situation where your ship might have a lot of specific maintenance to undergo. Do you want to get your Scanners back up and running or replace your comms? Re-route power from the Jump Drive to the Life Support system? You can now do all that easily and intuitively.
How are ships built?
Well now the game comes with 10 pre-built ships which can be customized to your liking.
- Raider: A cheap vessel, barely more than a Heavy Lander strapped to an orbital habitation unit. Heavily modded and favored by pirates.
- Courier: Jump Couriers travel fast and light, built to be small but perfect for long distance scouting and recon.
- Cargo Freighter: The backbone of the galaxy. Whether hauling cargo, scrap, or contraband, space truckers make do with what they've got out there on the rim.
- Salvage Cutter: Space is big and it's largely filled with junk. The cutters scrap derelicts and debris down to the bone. Occasionally though, they find something a little... stranger.
- Patrol Vessel: Whether it's the Colonial Authority, or worse, Corporate Inspectors, a Patrol Vessel is never a blip you want to see on your radar, unless of course, you're sending out a distress signal.
- Research Vessel: Taking samples, running planetary surveys, and tracking down strange deep space signals, research vessels have seen it all. And not everything they've seen has been kind.
- Passenger Liner: From interplanetary to interstellar, the gargantuan passenger liners will get you there, mostly in one piece too if you've got the credits.
- Corvette: The perfect balance between speed and armament, that's what the brochure says at least. Heavily favored by pirates, because they're the only vehicles weak enough to be stolen, but strong enough to be used as a weapon.
- Mining Rig: A behemoth of energy and industry. The rig houses dozes of miners on their off-world tours mining asteroids and moons. Big enough to protect itself if it has to, just pray it doesn't have to.
- Light Frigate: The smallest of the big ships, equipped to be totally self sufficient in long range, long term missions.
The designs above are our internal rough drafts designed by the incredible Sam Wildman who has an amazing vision for spacecraft in Mothership. Functional, utilitarian, and built by ruthless penny-pinching corporations for max profit and min safety.
What about Ship combat though?
Well, there’s a few things to note here. This is a sci-fi horror game, not a dog-fighting X-wing style pew pew game. So we’ve taken a more hardlined approach to space combat. We’re moving things to range bands, and those ranges exist across incredible distances. Combat is handled in real world terms as you move into “Hailing Range” or “Firing Range.” There’s no disconnect when talking about the game world or the mechanics. We want ship combat to be fast, brutal, and immersive.
We’ve done a lot of playtesting here, but the idea is to treat ship combat more like a social encounter, with enemies who want things from you, who want to talk things through. And if it comes to violence, it’ll be over in 2-3 rounds.
Like this image? Well, tell your friends, because if we can, this will be a full fledged poster map stretch goal, perfect for laying out on your gaming table so you can yell “TAKE EVASIVE MANEUVERS AND MOVE OUT OF FIRING RANGE!”
There’s a lot more to say, but for now we’ll leave you all with this question:
We’ve only put 10 ships in the Shipbreaker’s Toolkit so far, but we're thinking of adding five more.
