Welcome back to our exploration of How to Make Your Own Starship. We continue with more of the Main Compartment, specifically...computers.
This part refers to replacing or upgrading computers, though; they can be changed out either during construction (so the standard computer is replaced with the new version), or later on. If you're upgrading, you can trade in the old version for 25% of what you paid for it. Which isn't going to be a small chunk of change; those suckers are more expensive than Macs.
Ships can also be streamlined for use in atmospheres. It's an optional feature, costing a cool million credits per 100 tons of ship. Without it, the ship will be restricted to orbital work only, parking at a space station instead of lightly gliding to the surface of the planet. So, it's like the Enterprise, not a Colonial Viper.
Vipers are way cooler than X-Wings, and I'll fight to the death anyone who disagrees.
Ship's vehicles are next, which would be shuttles, pinnaces, tenders...whatever the space version might be called. Actually, there's a handy-dandy table that tells us your starship can carry an ATV (my sons will love that part), Air/Raft, Lifeboat (those are useful), Ship's Boat, Pinnace, Cutter, or Shuttle. The prices are in millions of credits, so your ATV is...3 million credits?! DAMN! I thought my son overpaid for the one he has! Okay, these ATVs are designed for literally any terrain, including terrains with no atmosphere. My son's ATV doesn't have that feature. But, still...no wonder there's a forty-year term on starship mortgages. These prices are insane. The shuttle, top-of-the-line, costs 33,000,000 credits and weighs 95 tons, almost twice as much as a cutter, so you're not going to be carrying too many of those in your shuttle bay. You'll need a forty-year mortgage just to pay for the shuttle!
Air/Raft is a non-airtight ship that can handle atmospheres, but not vacuum. It's the smallest ship vehicle, at only 4 tons, but costs twice as much as that ATV.
Turrets are mentioned again, and they can be refitted, upgraded or replaced. Old turrets, like old computers, are worth a quarter of their original price to turn in. Well, it's better than nothing.
Weaponry. Ah, now we're talking. Starships get weapons, of course. We've got a whopping four options here. Pulse lasers, beam lasers, missile launchers, and...sandcasters. What the hell is a sandcaster? Does it...wait, seriously? It literally shoots a canister of sand? So, it's like chaff for lasers, then? And disrupts missiles as well? And ships flying through it? That's some impressive sand.
The other weapons are pretty bog-standard sci-fi material. Pulse lasers are your typical X-Wing blasts, with short bursts. Beam lasers are like Star Trek phasers, with a longer duration (and more damage). Missile launchers do what you figure they do. There are four different kinds of missiles, which we'll learn about later. Again, the weapons are expensive; the sandcaster is the cheapest, at a quarter-million credits. The pulse laser is half a million, the missile launcher (missiles not included) is three-quarters, and the beam laser is the big boy at a flat million credits. The sandcaster, like the missile launcher, uses expendable ammo. We'll learn about that later, too.
So, another packed page with some interesting stuff to add to starships. I assume we'll get a table of some sort to summarize all these costs. Next up...the crew!
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