I'm very interested in a starship variant that feels works -- something that "feels" right. I agree with just about everything that's been said here so far.
Sci Fi/Future gaming tends to lock characters into specializations and pigeonholes that are only effective at certain points in the adventure in much more dramatic ways than modern and fantasy games do. A Future game may have a hacker who is pretty much useless unless he's able to do computer things, a starship pilot and starship engineer who are only at their best in starship combat, and scientist types whe are good in their field but useless most of the rest of the time, too.
And all of that is fine in fiction -- we can leave characters alone for a while and no one minds. But in a gaming situation, everyone wants to be engaged all the time, and that creates very future-specific problems. Starships are just one glaring example of this problem -- there are a lot of others, and when you get right down to it, it's a lot of work to create RP situations where every character's skillset, in a varied party, will have an important role to play.
So, as GMs, we are forced to consider some unhappy options. We can try some solutions that are never quite as satisfying as we might like -- either running a very limited campaign, one that is all starships and starship crews, or all military, etc. Or we can try allowing each player to play a couple of different characters. Or we can accept a lot more idle time for each player than they would have in a traditional fantasy RPG.
One of the things that I really like about D20 Future is the way it uses the computer use skill for just about everything technological -- including nearly everything you'd want to do on a ship. That means that every character can have a rank or two in a skill that will allow them to be minimally effective in a starship situation. It takes feats and other skills to do things well, and to do a few of the key positions on the ship, but everyone can try to contribute something.
But will that contribution be satisfying? Who wants to be the sensor officer on the millenium falcon? I want to fire the guns, or pilot the ship -- or as a distant third be the engineer, trying to squeeze a little more out of the engines or patch up the new gaping hole in the side of the ship.
As a side note, another issue I think about a lot is the problem of tech babble. In a sci-fi book or movie or show, the characters come up with solutions to problems that are based on
science blather, and it's all great fun. But how do you translate that into game play that isn't just the DM telling the players that they come up with a solution. There needs to be a mechanic in the game that allows players to come up with a technobabble solution, probably based on an appropriate skill check, but the players need to be active in coming up with the plan, and that's hard to set up.
So, I think statting up a starship like a character makes sense, and it can be a useful way to look at the challenge of starships in future gaming, it may not quite be enough to handle the problems of the genre. It's going to require some other techniques that the GM is going to need to manage as he or she writes the adventures and creates the situation. And that's going to end up being more important than anything else. Encounters that are the province of one or two characters need to be quickly resolved. And climactic encounters need to involve everyone's skills somehow, and if that means that they're some sort of boarding party on the starship while the ship is trying escape from imperial space . . . well, then, figure out how the bad bounty hunters got on board.
