Starship Background Random Roll Tables

[taalismn]

(In the spirit of the Starship Flaws to add color to a spacecraft, here’s some random roll Starship Background)

Starship Background Random Roll Tables
“The -Freedom Rising-?! AGAIN?! What does it take to kill that damn ship already?!”

“If I’m right, you may have something more than just an old courier here. I’m thinking this may be the long-lost royal racing yacht of the Duchess of Shadmor, and the last commissioned design work of Artaloc Amadi, great grandfather of Vareesahn Amadi. If it’s still got the original Windmarc engines, you’re sitting in a serious collector's item!”

“You’re shippin’ out on the old -Gaye O’Shay -? Watch ya’self on that ship, lad! That ship’s engines may be good, but I’ve heard that there’s something finky about its airlock seals, something to do with the captain and exec flushing a midshipman into the void for using the ship FTL comm to view porn, back in ‘oh-seventeen. Word is, the outer doors don’t close so tight on account of the middie trying to hang on and not take that last long walk. Just sayin’ ya might want to be extra careful aboard that ship until ya can get another berth.”

Any mariner of either the briny blue or the starry dark can tell you that ships are alive, defined by their history. Even mass-produced types can acquire noteworthy service records.
Here’s some Random Roll Tables to give some color to your starship.

01-15% Brand-spanking New/Virgin---The ship is too new to have acquired any sort of history.

16-35% Reserve Sitter---The ship may be old, but it’s had a boring and uneventful service career, either serving close to home port on low-risk assignments or has spent more time in reserve mothballs than on active service.

36-50% Veteran---The ship has had a number of years and a number of successful war patrols or trading voyages, but nothing exceptional, to its credit.

51-60% Hero Ship---The ship has seen serious service, being involved in hard combat or long eventful trading voyages/exploration across the cosmos, before being retired or reassigned.

61-65% Jonah---The vessel has had a string of bad luck attached to it. Blue-on-blue incidents, inexplicable deaths of past crew members, accidents, bad timing, or poor decisions on the part of the ship’s crew have led to the ship being labeled a jinx by the more superstitious spacers.

66-75% Secret Jonah---Similar to the Jonah, the Secret Jonah was involved in a bad luck incident(or incidentS) or notoriety so bad they renamed(and repainted) the ship in hopes of changing its fortunes.

76-85% Lazarus----The ship has a reputation for taking a beating, but coming back from incidents that would have led to another vessel being scrapped. For whatever reason, the ship seems to keep going, or keeps getting patched up and returned to service. Even though the ship might have emerged from the repair dry-docks more new than old, it’s still considered the same ship.

86-95% Famous/Notorious---The ship has a record of being near, or directly involved in, events of great history, such as heroic rescues, speed records, great victories, or important diplomatic events. On the less legal side, the ship may have been a smuggler or floating sin-palace, or was owned by a flamboyant master known for odd and colorful habits.

96-00% Infamous---The ship is known to have been involved in activities of a decidedly unsavory nature(much darker than simply notorious); it might be a slave ship, the ship of a particularly cruel pirate, or have been involved in war crimes. Many spacers consider the ship to be tainted by these activities and anybody willingly serving aboard it to be damned by association.

[Warshield73]

Interesting chart. Not sure if I would use the random roll too often but it gives some great ideas to add flavor to ships in the game.

If I was doing a point buy chart for ship construction I think I would use this and each option would have bonuses and penalties that go with it.

[taalismn]

In my Starship Brokerage Charts I DID(do) have penalties and bonuses for ship age and maintenance in the dealership hangars.

I did this mainly to add color to the story-telling. And I went with random rolls because life tends not to have a set value pool, but more often than not rolls up randoms, or comes out from events you have little influence over.
If a GM really wants specific things to happen in a game setting, they can adjust values and options as fits their game plans. The rest is window-dressing or to give players some options to take to upset the GM's grand scheme.

[Warshield73]

Most charts, point buy or random roll, are for the GM. Now a chart like this could be added to an existing ship but the problem is that Phase World has a real shortage of ship classes to use. The only reason I was considering adding it to my point buy system is that is what I use to sort of populate the setting with new ships and the amount of points is supposed to help me determine the cost of a ship but that is always harder.

Still great chart and lots of ideas to add to the ships, not just ones for sale but ships they come in contact with. I can see a PC group coming in contact with an "Infamous" ship that is now under the control of someone else or a ship famous for freeing slaves now under the control of slavers.

[taalismn]

I can see a PC group coming in contact with an "Infamous" ship that is now under the control of someone else or a ship famous for freeing slaves now under the control of slavers.

"Hey, that's the -Freedom Way- and guess what, they're inviting us over to have lunch with them! A chance to meet some of the greatest abolition activists in the galaxy! Isn't that GREAT!?"

[Warshield73]

I can see a PC group coming in contact with an "Infamous" ship that is now under the control of someone else or a ship famous for freeing slaves now under the control of slavers.

"Hey, that's the -Freedom Way- and guess what, they're inviting us over to have lunch with them! A chance to meet some of the greatest abolition activists in the galaxy! Isn't that GREAT!?"

And wackiness ensues. Either that or mass carnage and a few near-death experiences.

[taalismn]

"Just let me put this collar-I mean gift necklace! Yes, -NECKLACE-on you as a sign of my admiration for you!"

[Warshield73]

"Walk this way to our cages-ahhhh guest quarters. The rings on the wall? Those are for exercise."

[taalismn]

Here's some more color for your starship shopping experience:

(The following borrows a few basic ideas from the old Starship Flaws thread)

Variants, Knockoffs, and Clones: Off-Brand Ship Design in the Three Galaxies
“Sure, this looks like a disarmed CAF-surplus Proctor, but if you look under the deckplates, you’ll quickly see that the engine manifolds are windowdressing for a civilian-grade shuttle thruster. The hull stress-bracing’s all wrong too. This tub was probably assembled in the Rim and given an aerospace militia paint job to make it look tacticool for the chumps. I suspect the closest this thing’s gotten to military action is reruns of ‘Cosmo-Legion Warriors’ played on its communications panel.”

“The only place you’re going to get spare parts for a Drezler-Eighteen anymore is the Tadean Alliance, and that’s because they recently started manufacturing a caliper-copy of the old dee-eighteen and calling it a Tee-Cee-Four. But it’s the same transport in all but name, down to the squeaky main hatch hinges.”

The Three Galaxies are awash in starship designs, some millennia-old, others cutting edge microsecond-new, many unique to the organizations or species who built them. However, a common trend among spacefaring cultures, especially newly-emergent ones coming into contact with the older prominent galactic societies, is to acquire or copy designs from more established spacefaring cultures, rather than develop their own from scratch. Though some polities stubbornly insist, for whatever reasons(pride, typically) on doing their own research and development, most, upon discovering that they’re late to the party, decide to go the easy route and acquire their star travel technology and hardware designs from their more advanced neighbors, either trading for or reverse-engineering it. This has led to an increasing number of spacefaring species using a smaller common pool of established designs, or variants there of.
The most often copied starship designs are commercial-civilian types, followed by smaller military craft such as fighters and corvettes. Larger military types are less commonly copied, and of those, they are most often much older designs that have fallen by the wayside of history or are so common that their traits are well-known. Then, too, there are the practices of acquiring older military-surplus hardware from other polities, or commissioning larger vessels from the more advanced shipyards(just as pre-WW1 South American nations commissioned cruisers and battleships from European shipyards), those vessels being less-advanced than the state of the art produced by those shipyards for their host nations’ armed forces.
There are three general types of copying in the starship trade:

-Licensed---The interested party has negotiated a license from the original manufacturer to locally produce the same design. This is usually for an older design of the originator company, but sometimes it can be a more current and in-demand type. The licensee has agreed to do most of the construction, using their own facilities, rather than wait in qeue for a ship off the design’s mother manufacturer’s often-overbooked/overburdened assembly lines. While there may be local differences in the licensed copy, to reflect species-specific accommodation needs or locally developed technologies, licensed copies are generally produced to the same high standards as the original design.
Licensing has several advantages; the original manufacturer helps the licensee set up production, oversees quality control, provides technical support(including upgrades), and in many cases extends the same servicing to the license copy as it does its own production models. In return, the origin-producer gets free advertising as it shares credit for the design, and gets royalties or a percentage of profits from sales of the licensed copy. In some cases, if demand for a design is great enough to overbook the original builder’s production facilities, they may reverse cash-flow and buy from the licensee’s assembly lines to meet orders.
The United Worlds of Warlock and Paladin Steel/Aegis Stellar Industries sharing production licensing for the Aurora Fast Aerospace Scout Frigate and Hauberk Light Destroyer are good examples of military design licensing. WZTechyards started out as reciprocal licensing before becoming a more tightly integrated overall manufacturing group.

-Acquired----The interested party has acquired the design without license, but not necessarily without permission. This can be a common domain design that the original producers no longer lay claim to, or else the tooling to an older design line has been sold off to make room for newer equipment and squeeze a few last drops of profit from an obsolete and discontinued product. The original manufacturer provides little, if any, additional assistance to the second party acquiring the design, beyond reminding the latter that they cannot represent their version of the older design as the original.
Designs acquired in this manner are often subject to ‘badge engineering’ where a blatant clone of a design differs only in a few cosmetic differences(sometimes suggested by the original company to differentiate the clone from the original design) and the new manufacturer’s name and sigil slapped on the new vehicle.
Sometimes the clone is so exact a copy of the original that fans of the original discontinued design flock to the new producer for copies of their favorite vehicle, or to buy compatible spare parts for a vintage ship.
Sometimes the clone serves as a basis of independent development, with enough changes implemented over time that the clone becomes a truely unique design in itself. More often than not, however, older acquired designs suffer from being older technology, or the new producer takes shortcuts that hamstring the clone compared to the original. In the worst case scenarios, the secondary manufacturer may attempt to move into the same markets as the original design-manufacturer, either figuring that their copy is original enough to compete, or word of mouth nostalgia association with the original design will draw orders...only to have the shortcomings of the copy thrown into open contrast.
The same rules and access of ‘common domain’ as apply to such technologies as High Intensity Lasers, Fusion Power, and Contra-Gravity in the CCW generally apply to this category.

-Knockoff----This is a blatant copy/ripoff of somebody else’s design without their permission. Through reverse-engineering, the manufacturer has tried to get the basic gist of a design on the cheap. Without permission and technical support from the original manufacturer, the design is subject to multiple small differences, but more often flaws, that make the copy different enough, even though the two designs may look very similar.
In the worst case situations, the knockoff may be misrepresented and sold as the original design it is derived from. Knockoffs are generally less expensive than the real originals, but also tend to be inferior and dangerous to their operators in many ways, on account of slipshod manufacturing practices and cost-cutting quality-trimming shortcuts and substitutions.

-Sometimes a design falls in between categories. The Free Worlds Council, for example, has managed to acquire/capture at least one manufacturing facility for the TGE’s Flying Fang aerospace fighter(older models though), and produce their own versions of the venerable Imperial war-machine, as placeholders while they rush to come up with their own distinct designs. Several other groups have reverse-engineered older model Flying Fangs to produce their own versions of varying quality and capability. The TGE prosecutes ANYBODY caught flying an unauthorized copy Flying Fang.

-Naruni Enterprises claims that Hartigal Combine essentially stole all their designs from the legitimate designers and copyright-holders, making Hartigal an unlicensed knockoff franchise.

-Nosan Corp. has a history of copying the lines of other shipyards’ more popular low-end spacecraft classes and passing off their cheaper ‘economical alternatives’ as equal to the original.

Travelers around the Three Galaxies(or other universes) are advised to exercise discretion and a fair amount of preparedness when shopping for a ship.

a) Type of Copy:
-01-25%-Licensed---The ship is a licensed copy of another manufacturer’s design.
-26-75%-Acquired----The ship is based on older, stolen or common-domain blueprints. (Optional: 5% chance of a Design Quirk/Flaw)
-76-00%-Knockoff----The ship is ‘inspired by’ another more popular design, but has little officially connected to it. (Optional: 20% chance of a Design Quirk/Flaw)

b) Design Quirks/Flaws(optional):---These are more prominent in the poorer quality copies and knockoffs.
(More complete idea-lists of specific/exotic flaws can be found in the Starship Flaws thread:)
01-10%--- Substandard Armor---Overall armor values are -1d6x10% from the original design.

11-20%--- Stodgy Controls---The ship is -5% on piloting/control rolls.

21-30%--- Substandard Engine---- Propulsion produces maximum speeds that are -1d4x10% of the original design.

31-40% ----Nonstandard Parts---The copy may use locally-sourced technologies or calibration measurement standards used only in particular regions of the cosmos, making replacement parts that fit much more difficult to come by.

41-50%---Substandard Electrical Insulation----The ship’s electrical system is insufficiently shielded from electronic interference and disruption; ion and electrical attacks do 50% more damage, and there is a 20% chance of 1d4 subsystems(communications, sensors, fire control, internal lighting, etc.) being temporarily knocked out for 1d4 melees.

51-60%---Maintenance Hog; the ship generally requires +1d4x the normal amount of maintenance, fine/re-tuning and adjustment to work properly.

61-70%---Shield Flux----Forcefield systems tend to ‘stutter’, temporarily failing and going off momentarily for 1d4 melee rounds every 4d6 melees’ of operation.

71-80%---Poor Heat Management---The ship’s cooling systems tend to labor under stress, with a 20% chance of breaking down under maximum load, such as maximum speed for over 1d6x10 minutes , traveling in extreme heat conditions such as plasma storms, o when attacked with plasma weaponry doing more than 50% of shield/armor damage capacity. This leads to a 10% chance per melee of the engine shutting down after the cooling system fails.

81-90%---Wallowing Performance---Even if everything else works fine, the ship has difficulty getting up to speed or applying braking power; takes 1d4 times longer than normal to accelerate/decelerate, even with the throttle thrown wide open.

91-00% Substandard Structure---The ship’s frame is susceptible to microfracturing when subjected to heavy loading and maneuvering stress. 20% chance of taking 1d4x10 MD when engaged in heavy acceleration/deceleration maneuvering or trick piloting. Being internal, this damage counts as Major Damage, requiring more time and facilities to repair than external hull damage.