Skills & Upgrades

[TJHairball]

I could have sworn that somewhere, there was something I read that said "Hey, how about you go come up with a Skills & Upgrades table of your own that breaks things down more specifically by faction? If it's good, share it with us, and maybe we'll like it!"

Google Docs Link

So how does that look to you? Fair? Workable? Fun?

[Greg Smith]

That's pretty cool.

[McKinstry]

Very nice and sensible as well. Decent logical upgrades but nothing horribly unbalancing. Good work.

[TJHairball]

Very nice and sensible as well. Decent logical upgrades but nothing horribly unbalancing. Good work.

Well, thank you.

I will say, there are some very strong upgrades. Like... Precise photon torpedoes. Makes them blow through shields really nastily. And Skilled Captain is really quite something. But I figured if they were on the original table, it works well enough, and each XP die only has a 1/3 chance of getting you an upgrade, so they have to be nice for you to want to spend XP dice on upgrades (XP dice themselves are pretty good).

[Iron Domokun]

No, weapons only blow through shields on a natural 6, so Precise won't affect it. Come to think of it, it's Accurate that improves the chance of hitting, not Precise.

Mind you, with Precise, any photon torps that do get through the shields are going to hurt (Precise plus Devastating means twice as many crits, each of which does two critical levels...) So that may be too good.

[Da Boss]

Sounds great - I tried to download but could not get it to work - it only downloaded a setup.exe file and I was not keen on messing with that?

[tomrommel1]

like it

[TJHairball]

Sounds great - I tried to download but could not get it to work - it only downloaded a setup.exe file and I was not keen on messing with that?

Weird. Sounds like a hijack. I'll just upload it to Google docs.

[McKinstry]

Very nice and sensible as well. Decent logical upgrades but nothing horribly unbalancing. Good work.

Well, thank you.

I will say, there are some very strong upgrades. Like... Precise photon torpedoes. Makes them blow through shields really nastily. And Skilled Captain is really quite something. But I figured if they were on the original table, it works well enough, and each XP die only has a 1/3 chance of getting you an upgrade, so they have to be nice for you to want to spend XP dice on upgrades (XP dice themselves are pretty good).

Makes them nastier once they hit but they still don't hit any better or pass through shields more often. I didn't see anything game unbalancing.

[TJHairball]

No, weapons only blow through shields on a natural 6, so Precise won't affect it. Come to think of it, it's Accurate that improves the chance of hitting, not Precise.

Mind you, with Precise, any photon torps that do get through the shields are going to hurt (Precise plus Devastating means twice as many crits, each of which does two critical levels...) So that may be too good.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Precise = crit on 5-6, devastating +1 = double depth crits, so if you have Precise photons, it's causing an average of 2.67 critical hits every time you roll a through-shields hit (or on-hull hit) on an attack die. Nasty. Not necessarily game-breaking, but pretty nasty.

[Da Boss]

thanks - very nice piece of work - downloaded fine from Google

I have several ideas as to what a "Hot Helm" might look like depending on the race

[TJHairball]

Some feedback from a fellow player that I haven't done enough to help seeking-weapons races in campaign play (they suffer a bit as crew quality scores increase - I agree, though I don't really see how to remedy that very well, especially not with something as limited in effect as an alternate upgrade table) and that the Reconfigured Plasma Torpedoes bit and Tactical Genius bit might be confusing. I've tried re-wording/working that a little.

A little elaboration on why the table is the way it is set up the way it is with the Prestige points - in the base campaign rules, you gain 2 prestige points on a win and lose 1 on a loss. Applying that to the roll (+2 or -1) expands the options a little and also serves to add a small touch of flavor.

The idea is that not just that some upgrades are cooler than others, and the really cool ones are very rare; but also that in a campaign setting, a ship's crew and captain react differently to victory than defeat. Crews that have just been shot up are more likely to concentrate on defensive gunnery, damage control, hardening their hulls, and uprating their shields; crews that have just participated in a proud victory are more likely be gaining leadership-related benefits, and in general more interested in upgrading their weapons.

[McKinstry]

Some feedback from a fellow player that I haven't done enough to help seeking-weapons races in campaign play (they suffer a bit as crew quality scores increase - I agree, though I don't really see how to remedy that very well, especially not with something as limited in effect as an alternate upgrade table) and that the Reconfigured Plasma Torpedoes bit and Tactical Genius bit might be confusing. I've tried re-wording/working that a little.

A little elaboration on why the table is the way it is set up the way it is with the Prestige points - in the base campaign rules, you gain 2 prestige points on a win and lose 1 on a loss. Applying that to the roll (+2 or -1) expands the options a little and also serves to add a small touch of flavor.

The idea is that not just that some upgrades are cooler than others, and the really cool ones are very rare; but also that in a campaign setting, a ship's crew and captain react differently to victory than defeat. Crews that have just been shot up are more likely to concentrate on defensive gunnery, damage control, hardening their hulls, and uprating their shields; crews that have just participated in a proud victory are more likely be gaining leadership-related benefits, and in general more interested in upgrading their weapons.

I like the idea of a varying reaction based on whether you won or lost.

[TJHairball]

Updated. Somehow, I had Long-Range Plasma Torpedoes on the list, which didn't make sense, so that got the cut, and I've added a suggestion for "Stolen Technology" accessible through "Player's Choice" rolls.