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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imperialus" data-source="post: 2827927" data-attributes="member: 893">Hopefully I don't get too verbose here but here goes.One of the big things that has kept my group from playing any space based games is the fact that all the PC's are stuck on a ship together doing different and usually very specific tasks.  This means that except during very specific circumstances someone is going to get left out of the action.  The engineer isn't likely to have much fun in a space battle, and the gun bunny isn't going to have much to do when the engineer is frantically trying to get the engine running before they run out of life support.  Then there is the problem of the captain.  As soon as a superior officer is thrown into the mix either as a PC or an NPC the PC's loose a great deal of their autonomy.The best solution I can come up with is to have each PC be their own captain.  I just recently finished re-reading Foundation (and have been playing Space Ranger 2) and the idea of the independent trader/warrior/captain/pirate strikes me as a really good idea.  Each PC would have their own ship, which requires 1 crewmember and is simple and robust enough that any given PC could perform routine maintenance on it.  Sure if they got blasted by a battle cruiser they might need to get a professional engineer to patch it up but otherwise they should be able to keep it running themselves.Unfortunately the starship rules focus on large ships with dozens if not hundreds of crewmembers and the various ship systems each require different skills to operate that no individual crewmember could possible manage.Now I'm thinking the best solution may be a variant of the mecha rules.  They have slots that could make individual ships highly customizable allowing PC's to vary the armour, engines, weapons ect. to their hearts (and bank accounts) content.  Of course unless I want a bunch of flying robots I'll have to retool the slot descriptions but I think it could work.  This is still in the brainstorming session but I'll post ideas here as I come up with them.  Anyone else who has ideas or suggestions is welcome to pipe in.Right off the bat, I'm entiarly-ignoring PL, at least for the moment.  Now I'd probably start with 3 basic hull types Light (corrosponding to a huge mecha) Medium (gargantuan) and Heavy (collossal).  This gives us 11, 17, and 25 equipment slots respectively.  I may have to increase the number of slots since I’ll have to allow space for stuff that mech’s don’t require.  I'll deal with how to divy them up later.Now all of the superstructures would remain the same.  Alumisteel to Megatanium.  Armour would remain the same as well.Equipment is where things get more interesting.  Flight systems can be ditched but will have to be replaced by engines.  Sensors would be easy enough to modify, just increase their range.  The defensive systems could remain largely intact though the shields would have to be ditched and probably replaced by an energy shield (perhaps providing DR?) The weapons could probably stay about the same (minus the HTH weapons) once again increasing the range to account for the distance of space battles.Now as for divvying up the slots I’m honestly thinking of just making them interior or exterior (probably 75/25) respectively.  This means that PC’s are pretty much free to envision their ship as they see fit.  They could picture it as a futuristic fighter like an X-Wing, a flying saucer, or anything else they want.Anyhow that’s all I have for now.  I’m gonna keep working on it though.  I’m not overly familiar with D20 future though so any comments or suggestions would be more than welcome.</blockquote>

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