I was also wondering about the possibility of being able to transfer "energy" from one area of the ship to other areas. The idea of the captain having to decide who gets energy to feed their systems during conflict can be a really cool game mechanic; Principal Warfare Officer needing power for his weapon systems; shields needing power for defense; engines for manoeuvring; life support (is that even in the equation?).

I'm not trying to add too much complication but I do have very fond memories of playing FASA's Star Trek RPG in which every player had a role and they all kept trying to get the captain to give them what they needed; problem being (as the ship took damage) there was a limited supply of power available.

Not sure if this is possible but it would be damn cool

Here's a basic description of how FASA set up the starship combat in Star Trek back in the 1980's...

The game's basic rule system provided a simple system for moderating space battles, in which each player assumed a role in the battle, typically by manning a station on the ship's bridge.

The Captain determined the strategy, the Engineer was responsible for power management and allocation to different systems such as weapons and shields, the Helmsman for firing weapons, the Navigator for managing deflector shields, the Communications Officer for damage control and so on.
 

Last edited by The GIT! (8/06/2014 11:03 am)

You know, the more we discuss it, the more convinced I am that I need to swap Armor and Shields.
Make Shields one of the primary attributes and make Armor a boon.

If I do that, should I modify damage allocation so that Shields must be reduced by 1 instead of Hull?

As for energy allocation, I'll second jasales's question; were you refering to something other than Reserve Power? I had included Res Pwr precisely to include that dynamic. Perhaps I need to make it more important? Again though, I wanted to keep the book keeping to a minimum.

On the dynamic of energy allocation; I seem to remeber that the ships have an Auxiliary Power stat which is spent like hero points. Give the commander control over these. He gets to decide who gets what after hearing the pleading of his crew.
Of course the one at the engineering console could just do what he wants.

I played some small space battles last night. I renamed Armor to shields and renamed the Shields boon to Armor. I used the Hardened Armor boon as a boon to the Armor boon, giving an extra die.

It worked well. Attacks were launched, shields were checked and reduced by one on a failed roll (as previously Hull was) and remaining damage went to where I allocated it. It was pretty cool.  I need to play some more to be sure. But overall, it works very well in an RPG situation. I leaves a lot to be desired in multiple ships and spacebattles but, that is not what this game is about. Nor should be.  I tthink it perfectly does the job it was ment too.

I think it will be even better with a group of players playing the crew. 

The more I play with this the more impressed I am with what you did with this nerosfiddle.
 

Last edited by jasales (8/07/2014 7:48 am)

I think that Reserver Power stat is great. I can see a player going to use some but another player goes first and uses it up! 1st player "Hey! I needed that for my guns!" 2nd player  "We'll I used it for the shields!"

 I figure a team will sort that out or have someone be a captain and make the call as to where it goes. I think that would be part of the fun.

Here is a sheet with 4 starship character sheets on it. I just copied them from the alternate character sheet. Armor was replaced with Shields for my own purposes.

http://www.epicwords.com/attachments/15418
 
Damage allocation is kinda fun. With Hull damage needing repairs at a facility there is some fun stress in figuring out where to place damage.

Last edited by jasales (8/07/2014 10:04 am)