STARSHIP CONVERSION: CREW AUTOMATION
Many ship owners wish to reduce the number of necessary crew members needed to operate their ships. Some even modify their ships where they only need a single pilot to fly the ship and operate it in combat. They often use various technologies (including, but not limited to, droid components (brains), or full droids) to apply automation to replace the operations performed by crew members.
This also makes these crewmates unneeded in the ship's basic operations, and changes them to "passengers". Unneeded crew can also have their quarters converted back to cargo space to increase the amount of cargo the ship can carry, or make room for other upgrades.
Keep in mind, this does not replace the need of "gunners" to operate weapons, and crew are still needed for this. Methods of automating weapons can be found elsewhere, but would involve fire-linking and installing extra weapon control linkages, removing them, or simply leaving them as is.
The goal of automation is to reduce the needed crew as low as possible, even the skeleton minimum crew, as well as the Difficulties incurred for operating a ship with few crewmates, or even just one pilot. Taken as far as possible, the resulting goal is usually for a ship to have "Skeleton: 1/+0" after modification, but the "Crew" stat can stay the same. This way, a single person can fly the ship, while the other crew members are freed up to do other things like operate weapons or make repairs during combat.
While automation can do wonders for starfighter scale space transports and light capital ships with the application of some extra credits, applying it to the larger capital ships can become prohibitively expensive. It could even potentially wind up costing more than the ship itself. However, if automation is applied partial to such ships, it can free up crew quarters and related facilities, that can then be converted to cargo space, which could then be used to modify or upgrade the ship to make it more effective some how (Example: the Dreadnoughts of the Old Republic Katana Fleet were partially automated to free up cargo space, which was then used to modernize these ships for the time and make them more capable in Space Speed, Weapons, etc, and also had slave circuits installed...which was also the reason for the fleet's disappearance).
Cost:
-Difficulty Reduction: 500 credits per +5 Difficulty.
-Crew Reduction: Difficulty Reduction cost times number of removed crew members.
-Skeleton Crew Reduction: Crew Reduction cost times three.
The Skeleton crew number costs x3 because these are the bare minimum crew needed to operate a ship, and therefor will be the hardest to replace. GMs can decide to use this alone and not add the "Crew Reduction" cost if they wish, as this is the most important part to worry about when automating a ship (Difficulty Reduction 500 credits per +5 Difficulty, x Skeleton Crew (-1, the pilot), x3 (GMs, if the x3 seems too expensive, then negate it and don't worry about it)).
GAME NOTES:
Examples of ships converted to use automation to its maximum potential are given below.
Stock YT-1300 (Crew 1, Skeleton 1/+0)
-Automation Cost: N/A (already able to be flown easily by Crew 1)
Stock YT-2400 (Crew 2, Skeleton 1/+10)
-Automation Cost: 1,000 credits (Crew 2, Skeleton 1/+0)
Guardian Light Cruiser (Crew 16, Skeleton 8/+10)
-Automation Cost: 29,000 credits (Crew 16, Skeleton 1/+0)
Gallofree Medium Transport (Crew 6, Skeleton 3/+10)
-Automation Cost: 9,000 credits (Crew 6, Skeleton 1/+0)
Lambda Shuttle (Crew 2, Skeleton 1/+10)
-Automation Cost: 1,000 credits (Crew 2, Skeleton 1/+0)
J-Tpe Star Skiff (Crew 3, Skeleton 1/+5)
-Automation Cost: 1,500 credits (Crew 3, Skeleton 1/+0)
Ghtroc 720 Freighter (Crew 1, Skeleton 1/+0)
-Automation Cost: N/A
Firespray Patrol/Attack Craft (Crew 1, Skeleton 1/+0)
-Automation Cost: N/A
Corellian CR90 Corvette (Crew 30+, Skeleton 7/+10)
-Automation Cost: 41,000 credits (Crew 30+, Skeleton 1/+0)
Venator Star Destroyer (Crew 7,400, Skeleton 3,025/+15)
-Automation Cost: 20,170,500 credits (Crew 7,400, Skeleton 1/+0)
Nebulon-B Frigate (Crew 854, Skeleton 307/+10)
-Automation Cost: 972,700 credits (Crew 854, Skeleton 1/+0)
Mon Calamari MC80 Star Cruiser (Crew 5,156, Skeleton 1,230/+10)
-Automation Cost: 7,613,000 credits (Crew 5,156, Skeleton 1/+0)
Imperial I Star Destroyer (Crew 36,810, Skeleton 5,000/+20)
-Automation Cost: 93,614,000 credits (Crew 36,810, Skeleton 1/+0)
GAME DESIGN NOTES:
After seeing various forms of automation mentioned in various Star Wars material that reduces needed crew and Difficulty for operating ships, I have always wanted rules to do this in my games, as both a player and a gamemaster. But, to this date, I have not found any rules to do this, in either D6 or D20 rules (D20 rules may have something, as I have yet to pour through ALL of it like I have most of D6). So, I decided to make my own! This may seem expensive, but this is due to how useful, and potentially powerful, this could make a ship.
While this price works for space transports and other small ships, applying this to capital ships may seem too expensive, yet it would also be great to use this on older capital ships to update them to modern standards (like the Katana Fleet of Old Republic dreadnoughts portrayed in the original Thrawn Trilogy of novels). When applying this to capital ships, companies hired to perform this modification may offer a discount for a "bulk deal" to replace large numbers of crew ranging in the dozens, hundreds, thousands, or more (GM discretion).
|
