Technomage Ships

[Gargoyle117]

In an earlier post, Neo had suggested that there were other ships than the Pinace. I found this idea interesting and waited to see if we saw more about this in the January issue of S&P. No dice, but it's no worry.

In response to the comment that the Long Range Weapon enhancement was not very usefull due to the fact the Variable Energy Weapon is already long range.
Neo wrote:

For a pinnace it isnt but then there is nothing to say that Pinnaces are the only vessels used or made by Techno-mages, only that they are the most identifiable and common.

Even the technomages have logistics to worry about lol

Last night I finally took the time to sit down with the Starship Construction book and try to stat out a Pinace. I was pleased to find the Technomage specific EM Armor in the book, but that was about all I found that was helpfull.

The final stats for my ship were slightly different from the 2nd Ed. Pinace. Below are the differences in my stats from the official stats.

Handling: -2
Stress: +6
- No information on Technomage Adjustments or Flight Computer.
- No Variable Energy Weapon (thought the same one could be used, with no official cost, from the given stats for the Pinace)

How would one go about replicating the stats for the Pinace so a player could construct one? I am new to B5 ship construction, so I may have missed a few things.

Is there room for 4 more structural spaces so that the Pinace could potentially reach the 24 space maximum of the Medium class ship?

Does anyone have any thoughts on what they would do to design a different Technomage vessel? My first one might be a large sized exploration vessel.

Thanks all,

Dom

 

[Neo]

The 2e statistics, which to a point use the ship builders manual system are presented in Ships of the Galaxy for the TM Pinnace.

Chances are however (in fact I know) they may not be 100% rebuildable using the shipbuilders manual.

We actually wanted during playtest that all existing ships be reproducable perfectly using the new system but it wasnt possible due to the fact that thier was no system with definitive steps used when ships were produced using the Dragonstar ship stat blocks in 1st edition. Indeed ships were statted on an individual basis on a book by book basis as far as I am aware, and so do not follow set patterns or rules for limits in 1st ed.

Because of this all official second edition ships are as close as can be, but may vary as they for the most part do use the shipbuilders manual system where possible. There are many plausible ingame "faffage" explanations to explain away why ship designs are not exactly reproducable by PC's such as multiple corporations being involved in a single designs production, racial techniques and materials not openly available to PC's, mass production differences, after prototype refinements etc..etc...

As such the best method for producing "New" techno mage vessels, would simply be to produce them as close as you can to your desired idea, take the variable weapon from the ships of the galaxy manual and include a cost for it similar to a comparative damaging weapon and add 50-100% on top of cost to represent the unique TM technology involved.

 

[Gargoyle117]

Thanks Neo.

It sounds like we have a greater degree of freedom with the Technomage ships than we might with other ship. I can live with that. I just wanted to make sure I was not missing anything or there were not plans to add this in a later S&P.

Now that the creative flood gates are open, I'll get to work designing some interesting ships.

 

[Shadow Queen]

Or you could use the one in the 'Mage fact book