Improving Vehicles, Vessels and Weapons

Improving Vehicles, Vessels and Weapons

During the course of a Star Wars game campaign, characters grow attached to their favorite starships, landspeeders and blasters. They want to tinker with them — characters can use their repair skills to improve the speed, damage, shields, or other stats of their vehicles, vessels and weapons. Boosting these stats involves many different factors: cost of new materials, the technician's talent, and strain of modifications on existing parts and systems. Han Solo's freighter, the Millennium Falcon, is a good example. Han's improved
the hyperdrives, weapons, shields — almost every system aboard his ship (and some more than once). Although this gives the Falcon great advantages (better speed, firepower and protection), there are many disadvantages. The hyperdrives are twitchy, the droid brains argue all the time, and the interior looks like a mess. Sometimes the Falcon just doesn't want to work at all — and needs a persuasive nudge (or a banged control panel) to get going.

Gamemasters, beware: the more you let players improve their characters' vehicles and ships, the more powerful they become. Characters failing modification repair rolls might permanently damage or destroy the system they're working on. Feel free to give successfully modified systems occasional quirks or problems. They're good plot devices, balance out game play, and give the vehicle or vessel a personality
of sorts.

Example: Bob the gamemaster wants to give his players a modified light freighter with a cool and powerful weapon — his players have been bothering him for months about this, and he's finally caving in. His solution? A banged-up Ghtroc freighter called the Lumpy Bantha. Although the Bantfia has a regular laser cannon in one gun mount, Bob has given the players a really cool quad laser cannon in the other mount. The players are happy. There's only one problem. To balance out game play, Bob decides that the previous owner did a slipshod job installing the quad laser cannon. Every time the characters power it up, it randomly draws off power from one other ship's system (life support, maneuverability, ion drives, hyperdrives, or shields) shutting
that system down! The first time the characters use the weapon — while fleeing from a swarm of TIE fighters — the Lumpy Bantha's shields go down! Although they have better firepower when using the quad laser cannons, they'll think more carefully next time before powering up the weapon.

Here are some general rules for modifying vehicles, vessels and weapons. They are in no way comprehensive, but they provide a basic framework. The notes are broken down by system (just like "Using Repair Skills" above) which discusses difficulties, costs and skills your characters can use. For more detailed rules on improving starships, see Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters.

Modification Limit: Stats may only be increased one "pip," one Move level or one hyperdrive level at a time. For instance, a maneuverability of 1D must be improved to 1D+1 and 1D+2 before it can be modified to 2D.

Increases shown in the charts below reflect the modification above the original stat: the owner is constantly replacing and upgrading parts of the original ship's systems. Using these rules, no system may be improved more than +1D+2, or more than 4 moves.

A new repair improvement roll can be made every month of game time. Use the charts below for guidelines on difficulties and costs. The costs are always a percentage of the item's original value. Should characters find someone else capable of implementing modifications, double or triple the cost.

Hyperdrives: These sensitive engines can be improved to speed travel through hyperspace. The difficulty and cost for improvement depends on the level of the old hyperdrive engine compared to the new one.

Old/New	Difficulty	Cost
x4/x3	Easy	10%
x3/x2	Moderate	15%
x2/xl	Very Difficult	25%
xl/xl/2	Heroic	35%

Failure on these modification repair rolls could permanently damage hyperdrives, or cause them to function sporadically. Skills used to improve hyperdrives include capital ship repair, space transports repair and starfighter repair. Individual skills can only modify hyperdrives on their respective starship types.

Maneuverability: This stat can be increased by adding new lateral thrusters to the craft. Use the difficulties and the percentage of original cost below:

Pip Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+ 1	Easy	5%
+2	Moderate	10%
+ 1D	Difficult	15%
+ 1D+1	Very Difficult	20%
+ 1D+2	Heroic	25%

Failing any modification repair roll can result in loss of some or all maneuverability. It could also have some serious side-effects, such as reversing controls (left jets turn the ship right, right jets veer left) or misfiring thrusters (zigging when the craft should have zagged).

Improvements to maneuverability can be made using the skill appropriate to the craft modified: capital ship repair, ground vehicle repair, hover vehicle repair, repulsorlift repair, space transports repair, starfighter repair and walker repair.

Move or Space: By improving a vehicle or vessel's drives, characters can improve its Move or Space stat.
To add to a vehicle's Move, check the chart below for difficulties and cost:

Move Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+5	Moderate	10%
+10	Difficult	15%
+15	Very Difficult	20%
+20	Heroic	25%

To boost a starship's Space stat, use the chart below. (The ship's new Move can be found on the "Ships in an
Atmosphere" chart in the chapter on "Space Travel and Combat.")

Space Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+1	Moderate	10%
+2	Difficult	15%
+3	Very Difficult	20%
+4	Heroic	25%

Characters failing repair rolls to increase moves might seriously damage their ship's drives, possibly reducing the Move or Space of their craft. A failure may also periodic malfunctions or cause "jumpy" movement, stalls or slow starts.

These skills are used to improve vehicle and starship speeds: capital ship repair, ground vehicle repair, hover vehicle repair, repulsorlift repair, space transports repair, starfighter repair and walker repair. Individual skills can only improve moves on their respective vehicle or vessel types.

Shields: A starship may add protection by boosting its shield die code. Improvements often reflect additional shield generators or boosters — although only so many may be added effectively before overloading the ship's power core.

Pip Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+1	Easy	15%
+2	Moderate	25%
+1D	Difficult	30%
+1D+1	Very Difficult	35%
+1D+2	Heroic	50%

Failed modification repair rolls might permanently blow out a ship's shield generator, could foul shield controls
(adding +5 or more to all difficulties when deploying shields) or could cause random shield malfunctions.

Capital ship repair, space transports repair and starfighter repair can be used to improve shields aboard their respective vessels.

Weapons: Characters may wish to improve the fire control and damage for certain weapons, including personal sidearms (blaster pistols) and ordnance mounted on vessels. (The cost is based on the original cost of the weapon itself, not the ship or vehicle it's mounted on.)

Pip Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+1	Easy	15%
+2	Moderate	25%
+1D	Difficult	30%
+1D+1	Very Difficult	35%
+1D+2	Heroic	50%

Character may also improve the ranges of their weapons.

Range Increase	Difficulty	Cost
+5%	Easy	5%
+10%	Moderate	10%
+15%	Difficult	15%
+20%	Very Difficult	20%
+25%	Heroic	25%

A failed modification repair roll could result in the weapon's destruction, or might cause a recurring quirk (weapon loses power after each shot), reduced damage or fire control.

Blaster repair can modify all character-, speeder- or walker-scale blasters. Capital ship weapon repair is used
for capital-scale weapons, while starship weapon repair is used for starfighter-scale weapons.

The rules for modifying weapons also apply for improving personal armor. Use the chart above to determine the difficulty and cost to boost armor die codes.