Characters in main engineering may also be able to handle SHUTTLEBAY
more complex activities, such as Tasks or Challenges to Most starships have one or more launch bays for small craft,
make significant modifications or come up with unusual
solutions to problems. Some complex technical tasks,
especially those related to the ship’s engines, must be
performed in main engineering.
SCIENCE LABS
While most starships have an array of laboratories for
scientific research and experiments, they are rarely important
within combat.
There is, additionally, at least one sciences station on the
bridge, which may use sensor operations Tasks, above.
Some bridge configurations may add additional roles to a
sciences Station (see p. 257).
NPCS AND STARSHIP
OPERATIONS
The normal rules for starship combat are designed from the
perspective of Player Characters operating a single ship, which
will be the normal situation for most groups of Player Characters.
However, this is wholly impractical for NPC ships, where the GM
may be running several ships and doesn’t necessarily want to track a
half-dozen NPC bridge officers per bridge, each with their own rules.
As a result, there are some slightly streamlined rules for NPC
starships.
Firstly, an NPC ship does not have specific crew at individual
positions on the bridge — this level of detail is unnecessary for
running an NPC ship. Instead, each NPC vessel has a Crew
Quality, which provides ratings which serve as the Attribute and
Discipline scores needed by the vessel for any given Task. NPC
crew used in this way are always considered to have an applicable
Focus.
CREW QUALITY ATTRIBUTE DISCIPLINE
Basic 8 1
Proficient 9 2
Talented 10 3 Task (p. 224), but reduces the Difficulty of that Task by 1.
Exceptional 11 4
Because individual NPC crew are not being tracked, each NPC ship
takes multiple Turns during each Round — one Turn for each point
of Scale the ship has — representing the individual actions of that
ship’s crew. However, each Task attempted after the first during
each Round from any single role increases in Difficulty by 1.
225 CHAPTER 09
ranging from work pods to small personnel transports, to
larger multi-role support crafts. These vessels are frequently
used for transit (when transporters aren’t available or
suitable), reconnaissance, scientific surveys, and a range of
other missions and may often be required to depart or return
in hazardous situations.
Small craft may not enter or leave the shuttlebay while the
starship’s Shields are up, and launching or landing a small
craft is a Task for the craft’s pilot. Small craft operations are
discussed in more detail on p. 232.
SICKBAY
During combat, sickbay prepares for that inevitable
consequence of battle — when the fighting starts, people
will get hurt. Characters and other personnel may become
Injured, or suffer complications representing minor injuries, as
a result of damage to the ship.
The Tasks a character performs in sickbay during starship
combat are not meaningfully different to those they’d perform
in personal combat (p. 172); the biggest difference is that
those Tasks take place in sickbay, and can thus be assisted
by the ship’s Sensors or Computers + Medicine.
There will also be minor crew injuries throughout the ship,
which medical personnel can deal with, quickly patching up
the walking wounded and sending them back to their posts.
When the ship has suffered one or more Breaches (see
p. 227) during a scene, characters in sickbay can choose a
single Department, and attempt a Daring + Medicine Task,
with a Difficulty of 2, assisted by the ship’s Computers
+ Medicine. If successful, the next Task which uses that
Department may re-roll one d20, as injured personnel from
that department rush back to work.
TRANSPORTER ROOMS
A transporter room — and a starship will have at least one
of these — serves only one purpose: operating transporters.
Each transporter room contains both a transporter pad,
normally sufficient for five or six people at once, and all the
control systems necessary to operate that transporter with
maximum effectiveness.
A character in a transporter room can use the transporters
Further, direct access to transporter systems allows them
to be altered or adjusted to create a specific effect or to
counteract problems, which cannot be done remotely from
elsewhere on the ship.