Star Wars: Empires
From UTRPG
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[edit] Star Wars: Empires
[edit] What is this game about?
You play a motley (or not) assortment of humans and aliens (so long as you can pilot a ship) who are also Incom fighter pilot abord the Independence. You're the least senior pilots assigned to the Independence and because of that, you're stuck doing maintenance while the rest of the fighter wing is out on leave. As you toil away annoyed, the klaxons ring and you're being given hesitant orders by the very junior watch officer to suit up and get ready for something.
[edit] Sidenotes
I'm going to try to implement some kind of quest display system for the random side quests that I want people to try to be engaged in. Why? This way its stated what I think your possible external goals are. Also perhaps some kind of structured written device might help with lowering the game confusion of "what do we do now".
Also, if you haven't noticed, this game is about flying starfighters, going zoom in space and blowing stuff up, with an underlying dramatic tension of a galactic civil war, insane godlings and mild bureaucratic and resupply nightmares. Your character should be able to either fly and/or shoot in a starfighter, no exceptions. If you want to be a gunner in a bomber that counts as shooting and there might be a fun way to work out the nature of your pilot or vice-versa. There should be enough points in the standard dice spread that you can be a decent pilot and shot, with perhaps a third specialty. Also since always starfighting is bad, there will be several instances where you have to venture forth from your starfighter to do stuff in meatspace, like haggle for concussion missiles, steal better starfighters, engage in bar brawls with unreasonable demi-gods.
The idea with this game is to re-theme Star Wars somewhat. The major idea is to make the whole Alliance/Empire distinction less clear cut between good and bad and to push Jedi to one side as dealing with them mechanically can suck. One other source I like is Blake's 7, which has a generally depressing feel to the heroics. Also an influence is the Lost Fleet, a series of novels where the protagonist leads a fleet to try to get home through enemy territory. The game itself is gonna start off hopefully a bit like Privateer, but in a carrier with your buddies running away from other people who may have been your buddies at one point.
[edit] History
The Trade Federation War, was a particularly dark time for the application of technology. While the Trade Federation itself was a fragmented group of traders and industrialists and had little in the way of military might they managed to transform themselves into a galactic power in the terribly short timespan of eight years. On a distant world they found a wonderous factory world that would shatter a ten millenia ban on self replicating intelligences, which would be the core of the newly reborn Trade Federation. Armed with an ever increasing, ever evolving droid army with an insatiable appetite for matter they declared their independence from the Galactic Republic. Unfortunately for the Trade Federation, the Jedi intervened after a world holy to them, Naboo was consumed by their rampaging World Eaters.
Using their political pull and the fact that the Jedi were seen as godlings amongst the people of the Galactic Republic, the Republic was drawn into war with the Trade Federation, which was timely as the ever increasing horde of droids showed no signs of halting their growth. Initially the Jedi managed to win several battles decisively but it was shown that no matter how many battles they won for the Republic, there were too few of them to properly affect the outcome of the war. The first to realize this was a Count Dooku, an elder within the Jedi Order. With the help of the Geneticists of Geonosis he put forth a proposal to bolster the ranks of the Jedi for the duration of the conflict with cloned Jedi warriors, force grown to full maturity, implanted with full combat training. All of this would be limited by a short lifespan, dictated by the requirements of the force growth. The proposal was met with great disapproval initially but as the war continued it was implemented in desperation. With the help of these “Clone Troopers” the Jedi and the Republic managed to eradicate the droid army and the remnants of the Trade Federation within a span of two years.
Unfortunately this new Jedi horde did not sit well with the survivors of the war as their existence looked much like the problem of the Trade Federation's droid army. Against their continued militarization was a young Senator Palpatine (who was secretly trained in the Jedi way) and a good two thirds of the Jedi Council who thought that this act of technology was an abomination that could end civilization in the universe. They secretly built up favor within the Republic's army and with a coordinated strike managed to kill most of the Jedi Troopers. This created some feedback in the Force and drove nearly all Jedi mad. The remaining Jedi Council members branded those who had supported the the Clone Trooper initiative as heretics or “Sith” and threw their starships against the remaining clone trooper forces. Unfortunately for the universe, the most terrifying war would be one between Jedi as their strife mauled already wounded worlds. It was this that pushed Palpatine to gather what remained of the Republic in order to weather the storm that would be the Clone Wars.
The rise of Emperor Palpatine and the reformation of the Republic into the Empire after the Clone Wars brought forth many dissenting opinions on how governance should be conducted in this shattered universe. Some remained Allied to the ideals of the Galactic Republic should be upheld, where as other worlds, devastated by war and weary of the constant struggle, flocked to the strong arms of the Empire. This new war, threatened to break the bonds of kinship as solar systems declared for both sides.
[edit] Where do you stand?
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Declaration_of_Rebellion
The sentiment on Feresia, home of the Incom Corporation when the declaration was made was mixed.
As a core world, they had been ravaged by the war against both the replicating droid horde of the Trade Federation and the fallout of the Jedi Civil War so the idea of stabilization, even under the autocratic regime of the newly reformed "Empire" would give them time to rebuild. This ideal would be crushed by an alliance between Siennar Fleet Systems and Kuat Drive Yards in a bid to gather all the military contracts for the Empire and to otherwise inconvenience the other contractors. Siennar was particularly incensed by accusations from an engineer-lord of Incom suggesting major flaws with Siennar's upcoming TIE fighter design.
The culmination of Incom's bad luck came when three overstrength flotillas jumped in system under the auspices of "nationalizing" Incom. This is where you stand, otherwise occupied in the largest orbital dockyard over Feresia in the Marauder class Corvette Independence. You're finishing an upgrade cycle in the orbital dockyards, putting the last touches on installing an expansion to the fighter bay. Half the crew is otherwise on leave and the flotillas for some reason have setup far out of the gravity well.
[edit] The Independence
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Marauder-class_corvette
The Independence is an 150 year old hull with a storied history. While not classified as ship of the line it has served with distinction as a patrol cruiser and has been commanded by several important executives of Incom. As such it has been a test bed for several experimental upgrades, notably a expanded fighter bay and a new design of ion engine to accomodate the extra mass. The fighter bay despite being expanded has markedly fewer amenities, possibly to save mass, or because of its modular design.
[edit] Fighter Complement
The extended bay of the Independence is spartan to say the least in its amenities, but due to that and several other design ingenuities the ship can now store six more hulls with proper space for munitions and spare parts. This brings the fighter complement to an unprecedented 18 ships, especially on such a small hull. Trying to fix those ships in the space given however is somewhat of a problem especially when the full complement is present (-1D mechanics on any kind of repair or modification work when the fighter complement is above 16)
4 Y-Wing Bombers Carries 8 Proton Torpedoes.
6 P-38 Interceptors (Lasers reduced to 4D damage)
8 Cloakshape Fighters (Lasers increased to 5D damage)
[edit] Supplementary Materials
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kuat
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fresia
[edit] Mechanics
You know me, I love mechanics and due to a friend's running of this game I also love D6 Star Wars but stuff needs to be sorted out.
[edit] Stats, Skills & Specializations
Stats will be a bit cheaper and there will be no penalty for trying to raise your stats. Skills are capped at Stat level but are added to stats. Specialization are limited to 2D.
This means generally the cap for a 4D stat will be 10D. Any more and the game starts to fuckup.
This is a modification to the standard method of reading stats in D6 since skills are a specialization of a stat and the same relation holds with a specialization and a skill. To read a die pool it will be Stat + Skill + Specialization.
[edit] Ship Modification
Hulls have modification points equal to 15 - the ship's space move rating. Modifications to the ship's stats or weapons cost 1 pt per pip, so 3 points per full die. Increased munitions capacity is bought at a 1:2 ratio for concussion missiles and 1:1 ratio for proton torpedoes. Beyond the hull's modification total you can spend some amount of character points instead. There'll be some sort of hard cap on certain stats.
[edit] Standardization of Munitions
Some ships do not list how much of whatever munitions they are carrying. I will change that because it is shit. Also missiles vary in stats and stuff, and not in a good way. So, unless otherwise stated a starfighter carries 3 Proton Torpedoes or 6 Concussion Missiles per launcher, double if said vehicle is a bomber type, -1/-2 per if the vehicle could be classified as "light". Firing more than 1 missile or torpedo at one time offers a fire control or damage bonus of 1D to a maximum of 2 bonus dice.
Concussion Missile
Skill: Missile Weapons: Concussion Missiles
Fire Control: 3D
Space Range: 1-3/12/24
Damage: 7D
Proton Torpoedo
Skill: Missile Weapons: Proton Torpedo
Fire Control: 1D
Space Range: 4/15/30
Damage: 9D
