A Cargo Trait?

[Nerroth]

Before the waves of errata set in, the various amounts of cargo boxes a given Squadron Scale Ship Card was shown to have in Federation Commander was added to the Hull boxes in order to generate a unit's Damage scores. (For example, the Orion CR Ship Card has 5 C Hull boxes and 5 Cargo spaces in Squadron Scale; add those together, multiply by 2, and you have Damage 20/7.)

However, this pattern threw up some very odd Damage scores for civilian craft; to the point where each was would down considerably in later revisions, by getting rid of the damage added by cargo boxes. (So, the likes of the Armed Priority Transport went from 16/6 down to 4/2.)

In all of this, there isn't much of an account taken for the kind of cargo storage there would be on such craft; the kind of detail that might be useful in a campaign, or perhaps in a convoy or supply scenario.

So, could there be a Cargo X trait added in, which would show exactly how much space a given cargo-carrying vessel can transport?

(I'm thinking of the way in which the Admiralty Edition of Starmada handled things for its own Star Fleet conversion; which included a Cargo score that was broadly relative to the amount of Cargo boxes on the Ship Card proper.)

In this case, rather than use any sort of multiplier, one could simply abstract down the capacity to literally the amount of boxes on the Ship Card; so a Free Trader would have Cargo 12 (and a Prime Trader Cargo 6), a Small Freighter woudl have Cargo 25, and so forth.

In SFB, there are differences in how many "cargo spaces" each on-SSD box can carry; particularly for Orion ships. However, that kind of detail could simply be abstracted; it already is in FC.


So, would it make sense to have a Cargo X trait factored into a later revision, in order to give the various transports a little more to do in the right scenarios?

 

[Rambler]

Don't really see a reason to add a trait. Beside by adding a cargo trait you actually start padding other traits aginst the lose one trait roll when it comes up.

If someone was going to use cargo for a campaign I feel it is better if that is not tracked on the Ship Cards

 

[JohnDW]

I suppose scenarios could be devised where as the objective, a certain # of cargo has to be delivered safely off the side of the table, or to a planet or star base. With a limited # of points to use for civilian ships in the scenario, it would be an interesting way to weigh which ships to purchase. Of course you could also just make it so that a certain pts value of civilian freighter/transport ships make it to the objective rather than a set cargo value. You could even argue that the armed cutters are valuable for the transport as well, in that the smaller load they are transporting is gear or tech that will make other resources easier to gather which will require less dangerous transport routs, same for the free and prime traders.

So I guess we could add a cargo trait, but there's all ready a way to use the civilian ships in a way that doesnt require adding a new trait to the game. Victory points. Or if you want, you could use the remaining damage to represent undamaged cargo.

 

[Da Boss]

Don't really see a reason to add a trait. Beside by adding a cargo trait you actually start padding other traits aginst the lose one trait roll when it comes up.

If someone was going to use cargo for a campaign I feel it is better if that is not tracked on the Ship Cards

I think Rambler has it right here - previously some traits in battles - Atmospheric, Jump Engine etc tended to provide protection from the more important traits

You could just have it as an extra stat that has no other effrect in games or a Italics trait that can't be lost - the former is probably better.

 

[McKinstry]

Don't really see a reason to add a trait. Beside by adding a cargo trait you actually start padding other traits aginst the lose one trait roll when it comes up.

If someone was going to use cargo for a campaign I feel it is better if that is not tracked on the Ship Cards

I think Rambler has it right here - previously some traits in battles - Atmospheric, Jump Engine etc tended to provide protection from the more important traits

You could just have it as an extra stat that has no other effrect in games or a Italics trait that can't be lost - the former is probably better.

I think you could use the difference between the original damage values and the current as number of cargo boxes and treat every damage as affecting a cargo box plus hits on a bulkhead could still knock off a cargo box.

 

[Nerroth]

But the thing is that cargo boxes do act as a sort of padding in FC and SFB; if the player is willing to risk the loss of whatever happens to be in the cargo boxes, that is. (That was probably why the first pass at the Damage scores had the Cargo boxes added in; granted, that went too far the other way, but its removal still leaves the cargo unaccounted for.)

If a scenario or campaign is making the point of tracking what kind of cargo is being transferred from one place to another, a player electing in this case to suffer a loss here instead of on another system might sound like good news for the ship's crew; but would be bad news for the admiral trying to keep his fleet up and running.

If the scenario says that you must get that selection of spare parts to a given location, sacrifcing the Cargo trait becomes a far less easy option.


(To give one example, take the ISC Fast Blockade Runner; shown in Ship Card form in Communiqué #77. Historically, the Concordium used them to rush key supplies to cantons scattered across the former Pacification line; areas which had been cutoff from ISC home space by the Andromedan invasion. In fact, the first such run managed to make it all the way to the Lyran-Klingon border, where its supply of vital components helped keep that canton's PPDs operational. In such a scenario, sacrificing the ship's Cargo trait would be the last thing any responsible ISC captain would choose to do; and something that an ISC player would be very careful about considering.)


Although, if the idea of "Trait padding" would be too much of a problem, putting it in italics might be an option; albeit one which doesn't seem to be in keeping with the setting.


EDIT: I just double-checked the Critical hit tables; if I'm not mistaken, any result which sees you lose a Trait picks one at random. So, in that case, you can't choose to give up any particular Trait as "padding"; if it's lost, it's lost. So the captain of that Blockade Runner would have no choice in the matter.

Unless, of course, the specific Trait rule was written in order to allow a player the choice to treat it as padding or not; but that would still leave the question of whether or not to "mission kill" the transport in question, if given the choice.

 

[Rambler]

Even if it is a random roll it is still padding. It provided a null value operational hit location for the ship.

If cargo transfer becomes significant for a senerio. Don't track individual cargo units, track the number of succesfull transfer operation done by Transporter, Shuttle, or docking if it is added and call it a day.

If you are running a Supply run scenario give victory points for how many ships and what condition they are in the survive the scenario. FedEx, Armed Cutters, APT, Free Traders are worth 2 point/ 1 point if crippled. Small Freighters are 5/2, Large Freighter are 10/3, Ore Freighters are 20/6.

Keep this kind of mechanic as abstract as possible because the game is about starship combat not logistics.

 

[Rambler]

Big time lag spike triple posted.

 

[Rambler]

Big time lag. Triple posted.

 

[Myrm]

Don't really see a reason to add a trait. Beside by adding a cargo trait you actually start padding other traits aginst the lose one trait roll when it comes up.

Actually I have no problem whatsoever with that, quite the opposite in fact - while freighters were ridiculously overpowered for various reasons before their hulls were reduced, cargo boxes do provide a certain amount of protection to other systems - in Orions with a few boxes like the Light Raider they were nearly extra hull boxes and indeed seem to have been calculated that way from both FC and SFB (3 hull plus 3 cargo for 12/4).

Lots of cargo has less of an effect because although you have lots of boxes you are wiping out all the other actual functional systems incredibly quickly despite having a flying block of cargo pod.

So yes a trait would be fine as would some extra Damage - in fact I have done something very similar for repair boxes in the unofficial PF rules I have been knocking together.