Mass Effect Starships

Your Starship...

..is more than just a collection of bolts, wires and nuts, its a home away from home, a protector in a ship to ship fight and even a business. If you're passing a dead moon and get jumped by a swarm of pirates, your starship becomes the most important thing you have.

Like any other piece of hardware, the better you treat the ship, the better it will function. The ships in this section aren't all that's out there, not by far, but its a good sample of the sort that fill the spaceways.... and, if you're lucky, maybe you'll be flying one soon.

Element Zero

When subjected to an electrical current, the rare material dubbed element zero, or 'eezo', emits a dark energy field that raises or lowers the mass of all objects within it. This 'mass effect' is used in countless ways, from generating artificial gravity to manufacturing high-strength construction materials. It is most prominently used to enable faster-than-light space travel.

Eezo is generated when solid matter, such as a planet, is affect by the energy of a star going supernova. The material is common in the asteroid that orbits neutron stars and pulsars. These are dangerous places to mine, requiring extensive use of robotics, telepresence and shielding to survive the incredible radiation from the dead star. Only a few major corporations can afford the set-up costs required to work these primary sources.

Humanity discovered refined element zero at the Prothean research station on Mars, allowing them to create mass effect fields and develop FTL Travel.

Mass Effect Fields

Element zero can increase or decrease the mass of a volume of space-time when subjected to an electrical current. With a positive current, the mass is increased. With a negative current, mass is decreased. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect.

In space, low-mass fields allow FTL travel and inexpensive surface-to-orbit transit. High-mass fields create artificial gravity and push space debris away from vessels.

The military makes extensive use of mobility enhancing technologies, with mass effect utilizing fighting vehicles standard front-line issue in most military forces. Mass effect fields are also essential in the creation of kinetic barriers or shields to protect against enemy fire.

FTL Drives

Faster-than-light drives use element zero cores to reduce the mass of the ship, allowing higher rates of acceleration. This effectively raises the speed of light within the mass effect field, allowing high speed travel with negligible relativistic time dilation effects.

Starships still require conventional thrusters (chemical rockets, commercial fusion torch, economy ion engine, or military anti-proton drive) in addition to the FTL drive core. With only a core, a ship has no motive power.

The amount of eezo and power required for a drive increases exponentially to the mass being moved and the degree it is being lightened. Very massive ships or very high speed are prohibitively expensive.

If the field collapses while the ship is moving at faster-than-light speed, the effects are catastrophic. The ship is snapped back to sublight velocity, the enormous excess energy shed in the form of lethal Cerenkov radiation.

Drive Charge

As positive or negative electric current is passed through an FTL drive core, it acquires a static electrical charge. Drives can be operated an average of 50 hours before they reach charge saturation. This changes proportional to the magnitude of mass reduction; a heavier or faster ship reaches saturation more quickly.

If the charge is allowed to build, the core will discharge into the hull of a ship. All ungrounded crew members are fried to a crisp, all electronic systems are burned out, and metal bulkheads may be melted and fused together.

Discharging

The safest way to discharge a core is to land on a planet and establish a connection to the ground, like a lightning rod. Larger vessels like dreadnoughts cannot land and must discharge into a planetary magnet field. The ship passes the charge from the drive core to the exterior armored hull, then dives into the magnetic field.

As the hull discharges, sheet of lightning jump away into the field, creating auroral displays on the planet. The ship must retract its sensors and weapons while dumping charge to prevent damage, leaving it blind and helpless. Discharging at a moon with a weak magnetic field can take days. Discharging into the powerful field of a gas giant may require less than an hour. Deep space facilities such as the CItadel often have special discharge facilities for visiting ships.

Starship Statistics

For a full list of what each stat is see the Star Wars D6 RPG pgs 246-247. Below are Mass Effect specific stats that you will see for each ship.

Kinetic Barriers: replace Shields from Star Wars with Kinetic Barriers. As explained earlier, add this number to your ships Hull when it suffers damage, each time losing 1D in effectiveness. Remember, unmodified starship shields regen at 1D per round not taking damage.

FTL Speed: replace hyperdrive multiplier with FTL speed. This number is represented in tens of thousands (10,000s) of kilometers per second.

Discharge Time: this is how long it takes the ship to fully discharge the core. Represented in hours or days.

Starship Types

Each type of starship is designed for different purposes, from civilian transports to military defensive craft and warships.

Transports: This is the typical kind of ship owned by private individuals. It is basically a space freighter, used to haul cargo around the galaxy. This category also covers ships designed to carry passengers, like luxury liners.

Fighters: One-man craft used to perform close-range attacks on enemy ships.

Interceptors: One-man craft optimized for destroying opposing fighters.

Frigates: Small, fast ships used for patrolling and for screening larger vessels. On their own, frigates do not pack much of a punch, but when operating in "wolf-pack flotillas", they can often overwhelm larger vessels.

Cruisers: Middle-weight combatants, faster than dreadnoughts, and more heavily-armed then frigates. Cruisers are the standard patrol unit, and often lead frigate flotillas.

Dreadnoughts: Kilometer-long capital ships mounting heavy, long-range firepower. They are only deployed for the most vital missions. Treaties stipulate the amount of dreadnoughts a navy may own, with the turian peacekeeping fleet being allowed the most. (For every five turian dreadnoughts, the other Council races are allowed three. For every three Council dreadnoughts, associate races are allowed one. Hence, if the turians have five dreadnoughts, the asari may have three and the humans may have one.)

Starships

• KcV 1100 Light Courier
• Heavy Freighter
• Spacehawk Defense Interceptor
• FK-15 "Frigate Killer"
• Systems Support Frigate
• Obliterator Class Cruiser
• Typical Dreadnought