Ship/Vehicle Crafting: Hardpoints

Rules & Game Mechanics
#1

Hello everyone, happy to see an alternative to the FFG forum gaining traction.

As for the topic at hand, I have run into the fact my players at heading towards creating their own independent nation, and they plan on producing ships in such a manner to gain influence. Problem is the crafting rules are relatively lackluster in creating anything that can stand in against anything of a similar class when above Sil 4, simply because after you get through crafting and choosing templates to make it competitive for ships in the same class, it simply does not have the hardpoints to mount any sort of substantial weaponry.

Has anyone gone through and attempted to try and rebalance the hardpoint number, given each class a set of weapon presets, or played with adjusting the amount of hardpoints earned through crafting?

#2

Yes, EliasWindrider on the old forum had a project called the Nubian Design Collective’s Whole Vehicle Crafting Handbook or something like that. You can find it at the top of the old AoR forum in the archive, or you might be able to chase him down on Nytwyng’s forum. I don’t know because I’m not on that forum and I lost touch with Windrider after leaving the old forum. Due to things happening in his personal life, he may not even be on any forums.

For my money, I just threw up my hands over the whole thing and decided to freehand it. We start with a basic drawing, then work out the stats, balance, cost, etc.

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#3

That’s what FFG did too. There was no consistent system used for the examples they provided to us, so any system set up after that with the intent to introduce consistency is likely wasted effort. Better to just pull rough stats from your nether-hole and throw them on the wall, then finger paint that into the picture that you feel works best.

#4

Ah yes, ye olde plane of wisdom, glad to see you here.

After doing some light number crunching, the Nubian Design Collective Handbook (NDCHB for short because forget saying the whole thing in normal conversation) it certainly seems to solve the problem for the most part, despite it being somewhat incomplete in terms of costs and a few undetermined numbers here and there. I’ll do a few more mock tests to see if I can’t find any consistent issues and the like, but its decent so far.

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#5

As much as I would normally use this suggestion, I unfortunately have a dedicated pair of crafters with ambitions that also have quite a fair amount of XP put into their trade. By doing all the aforementioned rather than tweaking the system, I put more work on myself and them to try and come up with a fair compromise as well as end up ignoring their talents they’ve put time into acquiring. If I’m homebrewing a “custom” ship, then yeah, hand wave and pull from the nether, but I also want to incorporate the process with the players and their skills, so the NDCHB is a good alternative to at least work on the skeletal framework to add to the RAW crafting system

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