A question of scale...

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

Q1: When does a combat ship cease being a Starfighter and become a Capital Ship?
Q2: The same question for Transports, as I would imagine big Bulk Transports would handle more like Capital Ships that Starfighter-scale craft.

A good friend of mine Fiendrunner once made a house rule of 50 meters being the limit for Starfighter-scale vessels - regardless wether they were a combat ship or a transport.

In the case of a Bulk Cruiser it's laden mass is more like a Capital Ship.
Q3: Would you still use Space Transports as the piloting skill though?

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[Gry Sarth]

Well, I can give you a fair answer based on stuying ALL of WEG ship stats for my "Starships Stats" book.

Questions 1 & 2 are the same, there's no differentiation between transport and combat ships, when it comes to scale. Since the rules for when a ship ceases to be starfighter scale and becomes capital scale were never really established by WEG, there's a fair amount of contradiction, with a few starfighter-scale ships bigger than some capital-scale others. But taking in the whole lot I can safely say that the switch between starfighter and capital-scale occurs somewhere around the 80 meters mark.

Question 3: The vast majority of capital-scale bulk transports still use the Space Transports skill. There are only a few exceptions like the Bacta Transport or the Quasar-Fire Bulk Cruiser, but their small number can be attributed to WEG inconsistency.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[MA-3PO]

It does not matter how big a ship is when you are trying to decide what scale to use. The scales are simply a rules mechanic that cut down on the number of die you have to roll for the larger vehicles and starships. If I wanted to I could list Star Destroyers as starfighter scale but the number of die I would have to roll (22D or more for hull? I don't have my scale chart with me) would make running the Star Destroyer really inconvienent.

The Skipray Blastboat is a common cause of confusion. It is only 25m in length but listed as Capital. WEG says this is due to power output, which is true it packs some capital scale weapons. When people complain about this fighter I say just treat it as Starfighter scale. This means you will roll 8D+1 for hull instead of 2D+1.

Another example is Jabba's sail barge. It is big but it only uses speeder scale if I remember correctly. It is very lightly armored and doesn't possess enough die to warrant going up to walker scale.

So don't worry about how big it is. Look at how many die you have to roll when it's starfighter scale and if this is too many adjust it to capital scale accordingly.

[Gry Sarth]

Changing scales affects the ship more than just removing excess dice from Hull rolls. You should also keep in mind that if you make a ship Capital-scale (and its weapons are of the same scale), it'll also have a harder time hitting smaller vessels.

I agree that there are some freaks, the biggest of which is the Blastboat. But if you look at all of WEG's ships and their scales, you'll see that what I said in my previous post holds true.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

i have my own question along these lines. when converting speed between scales, particularly Space to Move. Now there is a chart in the SER&E, but it did not make sense to me (P129). well, is there an equation to get from space, to meters so its easy to see the range of weapons in space
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[Gry Sarth]

For weapon ranges, usually 1 space unit equals 100 meters. However when converting speeds from Space to Move it's better to search for an official ship with the same Space score and use its Move stats.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[MA-3PO]

[Gry Sarth]

Indeed, some ships have a notable performance difference in space and in an atmosphere. However that is a very rare thing which can be ignored most of the time...
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[garhkal]

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

Thanks for your thoughts ppl, they are, as always, appreciated.


I have another question that fits within this thread.

The stats for Slave I in GG15-Attack of the Clones lists the stats for Seismic Charges, but fails to indicate a scale. I know that this usually indicates the scale is the same as the vessel it is being carried on, but with the amount of damage they caused to even quite large asteroids in the movie, would they really be considered starfighter scale? I just can't imagine a Corellian Corvette's hull soaking all the damage from one of those things.

[Gry Sarth]

Well, first of all, those stats are based on the official Wizards' d20 stats, and I even souped it up a bit, a direct conversion would put the max damage at 8D, not 10D.

That said, I agree that they look like they could do a lot more damage. They tear through those asteroids pretty well (though one can wonder how those asteroids compare to a ship's hull and shields, I believe they are much more fragile). Playing out your example, a seismic charge going off at point-blank against a corvette would be 10D versus 12D (if the corvette has its shield up properly). That's not very likely to tear through it, though it has a chance of lightly damaging it.

I for one don't think that's too wrong. But it's your game, if you want them more powerful, be my guest. You could add some 3D to the damage, or change it to Capital scale and reduce 3D.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Liam (Gunman) Kissane]

Thanks Gry for the additional info.