STARSHIP CONVERSION: GUNNERY STATIONS



Cost: 200 credits per gunnery station
Weight: 1 gunner = 5 metric tons



GAME NOTES:

   When modifying starships to add more weapons, often new gunnery stations need to be added.  Sometimes, the opposite is the case, where ship owners wish to remove gunnery stations, perhaps as they remove the need for gunners to reduce needed crew and make more cargo space.

   When adding gunnery stations, these rules assume the station is made from converted cargo space, where the gunner has access to a console and controls for the weapon, but may not be near the weapon, and engages targets by seeing them on a view screen.  Several such gunnery stations can be placed in the same location adjacent to each other, and crew using these stations can communicate with each other easily to come up with plans and tactics to engage enemy targets.

   Gunnery stations established near or adjacent to the actual weapon are usually done when the weapon is a turret (but can still be done for none-turret weapons).  Turrets have their own rules for cost and weight, and often require more cost and weight than these gunnery stations would allow, especially if the turret has a "gun well" crew move through to access the weapon.



GAME DESIGN NOTES:

   All I did here was look at Passenger Conversion in Galaxy Guide 6 Tramp Freighters, and applied half the cost and weight for this to also remove gunnery stations on a ship that also removed its crew of 6 gunners to free up cargo space, but also locked turrets forward, fire-linked these weapons together, and rerouted their controls to the cockpit for the pilot to use the ship more like a starfighter (Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-820A Assault Ship).

   These rules can be used to add or remove gunnery stations aboard ships.  Some GMs may decide this is done automatically when doing the Passenger Conversion rules from GG6, but these rules only state quarters, not accompanying crew stations.  The rules here address this, and grant even more cargo space for players who want/need it.

   Gamemasters can also ignore this as an optional rule and have the installation of weapons also include the required gunnery stations as part of the installation process and cost.  The main reason this option was created was for "removing" these stations to save space, and have the weapons be controlled from somewhere else, such as directly from the cockpit and remove the need of extra gunners, among other creative ideas GMs/players might have that this option would help with.

   (For an example of removing gunnery stations and rerouting weapon control linkages, see Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-820 Escort Freighter and Corellian Engineering Corporation VCX-820A Assault Ship in Starships D6, under Independent Transports)