Spacefaring

Your crew of scoundrels and punks is surrounded by powerful factions with inscrutable agendas and immense resources. You live on the fringes and between the cracks, but it’s hard to avoid being pushed or pulled by the slowly-turning gears of power and influence that run the Foundation. Without some kind of edge, contending with these sleeping giants is almost impossible. Luckily, you have one: your very own ship. Your ship isn’t just a vehicle: it represents freedom and independence, and a kind of autonomy that most people never get a chance to realise.

This game assumes you are a group of spacefaring scoundrels, but that’s not a requirement cast in stone. If you don’t want to have a ship, the game will run just fine without one. The scope of your exploits will probably be a lot more local, and your group will have fewer options to escape from the repercussions of their actions. The overall tone will probably be grittier as a result, so make sure everyone is on the same page before you choose this option!

Table of Contents

• Ship Creation
• Using Your Ship
• Breaking Your Ship
• Upgrading Your Ship
• Space Travel

Ship Creation

Creating your crew’s ship is a collaborative exercise. Working together, the players will flesh out the details of the vessel their characters share, one step at a time. As a group, you’ll answer a series of questions from the GM about your ship and its history. If you’re not sure which option to pick, the first option is always a safe bet, or you can roll a d6 to make your choice randomly. When all these questions have been answered, your ship is ready to play.

1. Choose your ship’s origin

Your ship changed hands before it ended up in yours, possibly many times. Once upon a time, though, it was shiny and new. Why was it commissioned in the first place?

• 1-2. It was a Scarab, a modest civilian freighter. It’s a scout-class ship, and it gains the Cargo Bay upgrade.
• 3-4. It was a Hound, a racing ship or patrol interceptor. It’s a scout-class ship, and it gains the Afterburners upgrade.
• 5. It was an Aurochs, a heavy-duty interplanetary hauler. It’s a corvette-class ship, and it gains the Cargo Bay upgrade.
• 6. It was a Seraph, an obsolete gunship with just about everything replaced. It’s a corvette-class ship, and it gains the Point-Defense System upgrade.

Your decision here affects the scale of your ship and assigns its first ship upgrade. It also determines what your ship looks like, what it was built for, and how other people will tend to perceive your ship and its crew. It’s a lot easier for a civilian freighter to fly under the radar than an enormous military gunship, loaded for bear. The scale of your ship also affects how easy it is to fly and land in atmosphere.

2. Choose your ship’s previous owner

Your ship belonged to someone else before it belonged to you. Who was the most recent owner? What did they use it for?

Decide on the ship’s previous owner by picking from the list of factions operating in your system. Depending on which category of faction your choice falls under, assign your ship’s second upgrade:

• The previous owner was a government or military. Pick one upgrade: Armor, Jamming System, Missiles, or Point-Defense System.
• The previous owner was a corporation. Pick one upgrade: Cargo Bay, High-Energy Scanners, Point-Defense System, Railgun.
• The previous owner was a clandestine group. Pick one upgrade: Afterburners, Hidden Compartments, Point-Defense System, or Rooted Transponder.
• The previous owner was a fringe group. Pick one upgrade: Hidden Compartments, Point-Defense System, Unusual Weaponry or Workshop.

Your ship’s previous owner doesn’t just determine the nature of your second upgrade, however. Whichever faction you pick is connected to your party in some way, and is likely to figure heavily in your first adventures.

Your ship's previous owners aren't in the habit of giving ships away. How do they feel about you now?

There’s no way you’re getting out of this unscathed, but if you pay through the nose you might be able to lessen the heat. Pick an option:

• 1-3. You paid them off. They’re mollified, but they still don’t like you. Every player pays 1 Cash, and you start with one grudge from them.
• 4-5. You blew them off. It’s your ship, fair and square. If they don’t like it, that’s their problem. You start with three grudges from them.
• 6. You bent the knee. As far as they’re concerned, you work for them. Gain one grudge from them when you refuse an order, and three if you ever cut them loose.

3. Pick a flaw

How did a ship like this end up in the hands of a bunch of scoundrels like yourselves?

Pick a unique flaw that hangs over your ship:

• 1-2. Leveraged: Your ship isn’t entirely yours, and you’ll be paying off the interest for the rest of your lives. Pick a faction to be your creditor; whenever you enter the downtime phase, pay them 1 Cash or gain a grudge from them.
• 3-4. Clunker: Your ship is held together with duct tape and dreams, refitted and retrofitted so many times that something’s always on the verge of failure. The ship rolls with +1d whenever the GM checks for a crisis.
• 5. Finicky: Your ship has strange quirks that only one of you understands, and it doesn’t cooperate with anyone else. Pick a member of the party (usually the pilot or mechanic). When they’re not onboard, reduce the ship’s quality rating by 1. If they die or leave the crew, its quality drops permanently.
• 6. Messy: Your ship suffers from a certain lack of finesse. Weapons, engines, scanners - they’re all clunky, loud, or poorly shielded. When you use your ship as part of an action roll, the result is always noisier and messier than it otherwise would be.

Your flaw will probably be with your ship for quite a while. If you’re determined to get rid of it, you and the GM might agree on a path to erase the flaw entirely. For example, you might give the ship a total overhaul from top to bottom and refit every system, or find a way to escape the cycle of debt and interest once and for all. Doing so will probably require multiple long-term projects or some kind of special mission or adventure.

4. Pick an edge

There’s something special about your ship that sets it apart from all the other ships out there. It has nothing to do with its specs or capabilities. What is it?

Pick a unique edge for your ship:

• 1-2. No Place Like Home: When you enter the downtime phase, everyone clears 1 stress for free as long as you have access to your ship.
• 3-4. Ship of Theseus: It doesn’t matter what kind of beating your ship takes - it can always be fixed, and with just about any old junk. The cost of clearing upkeep is reduced by 1. When you tick the repair clock, you get an extra tick of the clock.
• 5. Part of the Crew: Your ship seems to have a mind of its own. Once per session, it can make a setup action as if it was a player character. When it does so, it rolls using its quality.
• 6. Leaf on the Wind: When you’re on the verge of disaster, that’s when your ship sings. When you use the ship as part of a roll, you always get +1d to the roll but -1d to resist any consequences.

The edge you pick is part of your ship’s essential nature, and it can’t be lost or taken away. You can only ever have one edge per ship, although in special circumstances you and the GM might agree to swap your current edge out for a different one.

Using Your Ship

When you use your ship as part of an action, your ship’s unique capabilities factor into the risk and effect of the action. When you engage with another ship (in combat or otherwise), compare the capabilities of the two vessels.

Quality factors into the critical systems and technology levels of the ships that are being compared. Every ship has a quality rating from 0 to 6; it’s a general representation of how sophisticated and powerful it is. Having a higher-quality ship than your opponent gives you an edge, but it’s not the only factor to consider. Your ship is quality 1 when the game begins; it’s an older model, an outdated vessel whose previous owner probably isn’t going to chase you across the system to recover it.

• Quality 0: A rust bucket. It’s limping along on failsafes and emergency backups, and most of its systems are failing. Not really considered spaceworthy by a sane person.
• Quality 1: A ship that has seen better days. It’s old and creaky. Most of the ship’s parts and systems are several years obsolete, and it shows.
• Quality 2: A decent vessel, albeit a basic one. Thoroughly adequate, but nothing special. No better or worse than most of the ships flying the void.
• Quality 3: An excellent vessel. Might be an older model, but it has it where it counts. Its dependable systems will reliably outperform most ships out there.
• Quality 4: A state of the art vessel. One of the newest models, or an old model retrofitted to the newest standards. Fully modernised, with sophisticated systems.
• Quality 5: A top of the line vessel. The best you can get on the open market, constructed at an advanced shipyard with no expense spared. Blows most other ships out of the water.
• Quality 6: A bleeding edge vessel. An experimental military warship, megacorp prototype, or similar. You’ve never even heard of the tech that this ship is loaded with.

Scale factors into the class of the ships that are being compared, if they differ significantly in size. Ships in the Foundation are rated by the class of their hull: fighter, scout, corvette, cruiser or titan. Cruisers and titans are too big to be operated by a crew like yours, so you won’t find any rules for owning one here.

Sometimes an action will favour the smaller ship, but often the side with the larger ship has the scale advantage (especially in open space). Consider whether this is a situation where being agile and maneuverable is more helpful, or if it’s one where one side can overwhelm the other with sheer force and power.

Potency usually factors into the upgrades installed on the ships that are being compared. Potency might be the dominant factor if one side has an upgrade that clearly gives them an edge against the other, or if one ship has sustained some kind of damage or malfunction that impairs its capabilities.

Space Combat

In Worlds in the Dark, ship-to-ship combat is swift and brutal, best avoided when you can help it. Outside of exceptional circumstances, it’s usually clear who’s going to win a skirmish in space long before the first missile is fired. Exactly how the battle plays out depends on the weapons in use. Use the special rules below to work out how a space combat resolves.

When you close into missile range, you can try to acquire a lock (as long as you have missiles). You might roll Study to calculate firing solutions on the fly, Finesse to chart a deceptive trajectory and try to gain the advantage, or Rig to tune the sensors for an edge. Regardless of which specialty you use, you roll against the risk that the enemy acquires a lock on you first. If the enemy doesn’t have missiles, there’s no need to roll.

When you have acquired a lock, you may fire the missiles. No roll is required, but you must decide whether to fire: a few missiles, half of your missiles, or everything. Firing a few missiles does nothing unless your opponent is unable to defend themselves. Your opponent is making the same decision. Next, the GM considers the following factors:

• Quality: If your ship is higher quality than the opponent, you can fire more missiles, faster, and with better guidance. The ship with the lower quality has fewer PDCs and slower processors to shoot them down.
• Scale: The bigger ship has more missile bays or point-defense cannons, even if the quality is the same. If you chose to unload everything, your ship fires as if it was one class bigger (i.e. a scout fires like a corvette).
• Potency: If you acquired a missile lock before your opponent, you fire first and gain potency. Other factors, such as electronic warfare or sabotage, might also contribute to this factor.

If your ship clearly overwhelms the opponent, they are destroyed. Otherwise, make a fortune roll starting from 1d. Add 1d for each factor where you have an edge. Subtract 1d for each factor where you have a disadvantage. If it’s a big difference, add or subtract 2d instead.

Judge the results as follows:

• 1-3. The enemy ship is able to shoot down every missile you fire.
• 4-5. The enemy ship takes an impact. The crew is temporarily impaired by some kind of crisis onboard, but will ultimately recover.
• 6. The enemy ship takes a few impacts. It sustains significant damage, with similar effects to an ongoing major crisis for those onboard.
• 66. The enemy ship takes many or heavy impacts. It sustains critical damage and is either disabled or destroyed (GM’s call).

When there are missiles incoming, dodging is futile in open space. You must use your point-defense systems to defend yourself. If you don’t have any or if you are clearly overwhelmed, you are doomed without some clever way to hide or avoid them. Otherwise, roll with Finesse or Assault against the risk of failing to shoot down some or all of the incoming missiles. The GM should consider the same factors from above - but in reverse - to set the risk and decide how much damage you might suffer.

When you close into railgun range, you can fire when ready (as long as you have one). Your enemy can also fire their railgun at you. Roll against the risk of missing, or roll against the risk of failing to avoid the enemy’s shot. Railguns take a while to charge between shots, so missing might allow an enemy to put some distance between you before you can fire again.

When you’re trying to dodge a railgun round, scale is usually a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Bigger ships change direction more slowly. At point-blank range, dodging a railgun round is all but impossible.

A Friendly Nudge. When one ship starts trying to acquire a missile lock on another, the other ship immediately knows (unless their sensors are disabled). Attempting to acquire a lock is often the final step in an escalation between two vessels, when negotiation has failed. The other ship has to decide whether to back down, run away, or arm their own missiles in response.

Escaping a Lock. If another ship starts trying to acquire a missile lock on you, it might occur to you to get the hell out of there. If you’re just inside missile range, you can get away before they acquire a target lock by making a successful roll. If you’re well within range, though, you’re out of luck. Stand and fight or be destroyed.

Shots in the Dark. “Missile range” and “railgun range” refers to the effective range of your weapons, not their maximum range. A railgun round will keep travelling until something stops it, but beyond a certain distance it’s trivial to avoid. Likewise, the limited fuel capacity of a missile turns it into a dumb rocket after a certain point. Firing weapons beyond their effective range is allowed, though, and can be effective against targets that are unable to maneuver or defend themselves.

Breaking your Ship

Ships are expensive to keep running - they need fuel, supplies, ammunition and constant maintenance. To represent this battle against entropy, your ship has an upkeep rating that starts at 0 and can go up to a maximum of 4. It gains 1 point of upkeep whenever one of the following triggers occurs:

• When you enter the downtime phase after an adventure where your ship played a significant part.
• When you travel long distances through space, either between planets or between the stars.
• Whenever something happens to waste your ship’s supplies or strain its systems beyond their limits.
• When your ship suffers a Hit.

You can clear all of your upkeep by travelling somewhere that’s suitable for resupply and maintenance, and by paying Cash equal to the ship’s quality in fees. Paying for upkeep is optional; you can always choose to skip it. If you have lingering upkeep when your ship takes damage, however, you risk a crisis.

When that happens, the GM will make a fortune roll using your ship’s upkeep rating to see whether a crisis occurs. The result of the roll determines exactly what happens:

• 1-3. The ship groans and creaks, but it pulls through.
• 4-5. The ship suffers a minor crisis.
• 6. The ship suffers a major crisis.
• 66. The ship suffers a systemic failure, causing two major crises at once.

When a crisis occurs, roll on the crisis table to see what the nature of the crisis is:

1d6	Minor Crisis	Major Crisis
1	Upgrade Malfunction. One of your upgrades or weapons systems has stopped working. You can probably get it back online with an appropriate action or fortune roll.	Upgrade Disabled. One of your upgrades or weapon systems is seriously damaged and will remain non-functional until you fill the repair clock.
2	Engine Trouble. Your engines are acting up, reducing your effective quality by 1 when maneuvering or speed are called for. You can probably get them firing on all cylinders with an appropriate action or fortune roll.	Engine Failure. Your engines cut out, leaving you a sitting duck. You can probably get them running again with an appropriate action or fortune roll.
3	Struggling Life Support. The air filters and waste recyclers need urgent replacement. Until you clear upkeep, spending time on the ship gives you the Pounding Head condition.	Life Support Failure. The primary life support system is offline, and the backup systems won’t last forever. You can probably get them running again with an appropriate action or fortune roll, otherwise you’d better dock in the next few hours.
4	Degraded Comms. Your sensors and communications are fuzzy, knocking out long-range communications and reducing your effective quality by 1 when scanning or targeting are called for. You can probably restore them with an appropriate action or fortune roll.	Sensors Dark. Your sensors and communications are completely offline, leaving you blind and mute. You can probably restore them with an appropriate action or fortune roll.
5	Fire Onboard. A fire has broken out somewhere on the ship. If it’s not dealt with, it’ll degrade air quality in the short term and threaten the ship’s integrity in the long term.	Hull Breach. The hull has been punctured by a projectile or space debris, or has undergone some kind of stress failure. You can seal off the affected area, but the hull needs to be patched before you can repressurize it.
6	Systems Glitch. Some minor system is inoperable - like an airlock door, the vaccsuit locker, or the lighting. You can probably get it back online with an appropriate action or fortune roll.	All Systems Red. A critical system has crashed and won’t come back online. Operations which require complex computing resources, such as navigation or electronic warfare, are impossible. The effective quality of the ship is reduced by 1. You can probably reboot the system with an appropriate action or fortune roll.

If the same kind of crisis happens twice, upgrade it from a minor crisis to a major crisis. If it’s already a major crisis, upgrade it to a catastrophic failure that will destroy the ship or render it inoperable if it’s not dealt with immediately.

If a crisis can be resolved with a roll, a failure or a partial success might indicate something like: you’ve only got it partially back online; you’ve only got it working for part of the ship; you’ll need more parts to finish fixing it; you’ll need to cannibalise something else to get it working; it’s going to take several days to fix.

Taking Damage

Consequences that inflict physical damage on your ship can degrade the performance of its systems. When your ship suffers damage as a consequence of an action, the risk of the action determines how many levels of damage it takes - 1 for limited risk, 2 for standard risk, 3 for great risk, and 4 for extreme risk.

There are four levels of damage your ship can suffer:

1. Hit. The ship accrues minor damage in the form of a point of upkeep, but doesn’t mark any permanent harm. The GM makes a crisis roll immediately.
2. Impaired. The ship’s systems are starting to fail. Any action rolls that rely on the ship must add the threat of triggering a major crisis. The GM makes a crisis roll immediately.
3. Disabled. The ship is limping along on emergency systems. Any action rolls that rely on the ship must add the threat of catastrophic failure. The GM makes a crisis roll immediately.
4. Scuttled. The ship’s critical systems have failed, and its integrity is compromised. There is a time limit on the life of everyone who remains onboard, anywhere from minutes to days depending on the size of the ship and the severity of the damage.

If you need to mark damage but it’s already marked, then the damage moves up to the next level. For example, if your ship suffers level-2 damage from a risky action but it’s already Impaired, then it would become Disabled instead. If your ship is both Disabled and Impaired, you don’t have to add two different threats to every roll; just add the threat of catastrophic failure.

Repairs

If your ship sustains permanent damage, you can make repairs as a long-term project. The scale of your ship is what determines how many ticks the repair clock takes to fill:

• If your ship is a fighter, then it’s a 4-clock.
• If your ship is a scout, then it’s a 6-clock.
• If your ship is a corvette, then it’s an 8-clock.

When the clock fills, end any ongoing crises and pick one: restore all damaged upgrades, remove the Impaired status, or downgrade the Disabled status to Impaired.

You can fill in the repair clock by:

• Spending money, if you’re at a spaceport or shipyard with access to labour and replacement parts. Each tick of the repair clock costs Cash equal to half your ship’s quality (rounded up).
• Spending downtime actions to work on repairs, gather information about replacement parts, or otherwise make progress towards getting your ship fixed.
• Pursuing a lead, calling in a favour, or going on an adventure to get your ship fixed without spending the time and money it would usually require.

Emergency Repairs. With a successful action or fortune roll, the ship’s mechanic might be able to restore some functionality to your ship on a short-term basis, similar to first aid for humans. They might get an inoperable upgrade working temporarily, resolve or temporarily mitigate a crisis, ignore the penalties for being Impaired or Disabled for a while, or even extend the lifespan of a Scuttled ship.

Salvage. A ship that has been scuttled, or which has suffered a catastrophic crash, can’t be fixed up just by filling the repair clock. Wrecked ships don’t just need a few repairs, they need a total overhaul. Expect multiple long-term projects or special missions before you can get them running again.

Upgrading Your Ship

If you want to increase your ship’s quality, you must find a shipyard that’s capable of performing the necessary improvements. You can improve your quality up to a maximum of 3 at just about any shipyard, but improving it beyond that might require access to special resources or cutting-edge equipment. The cost depends on the scale of your ship:

• If your ship is a fighter, you must pay Cash equal to 4x the new rating.
• If your ship is a scout, you must pay Cash equal to 6x the new rating.
• If your ship is a corvette, you must pay Cash equal to 8x the new rating.

You can also improve your ship by adding new upgrades to it. Exactly how you go about obtaining an upgrade depends on which type of upgrade you’re after:

• Common upgrades are freely available and can be installed at just about any shipyard. As long as you have access to a shipyard and enough money to cover the costs, you can always get them.
• Rare upgrades are harder to come by. They might require cutting-edge technology or rare resources to construct, or they might just be unusual and bespoke modifications. To obtain one, you might need to visit a specific facility, cultivate connections who can find one for you, or do some information gathering to find one yourself.
• Restricted upgrades are usually weapons and other military tech. Sometimes you can get them for self-defense purposes with a license, but their construction and sale is usually tightly monitored. Restrictions are looser on the Rim, where travelling armed with aftermarket missile racks and railguns isn’t unusual.

Purchasing a new upgrade for your ship “off the shelf” usually costs Cash equal to 4x your ship’s current quality. If the upgrade is rare or illegal, you’ll need to provide answers about where and how you’re going to source it.

Common Upgrades

Amphibious: Your ship’s hull and thrusters have been modified to allow for ocean landings and takeoff. It can float in the water and sail slowly like an oceangoing ship, but cannot submerge. It is also capable of launching aquatic vessels from its hangars, if it has them. Only available for ships capable of atmospheric flight.

Afterburners: Powerful auxiliary thrusters that can dump fuel into the engines to provide short bursts of speed and maneuverability. Your ship is more agile than others of its class, and gains potency when maneuvering, dodging or outracing another ship.

Antigrav Grapple: Allows you to board enemy ships if you can get close enough, by redirecting your ship’s antigravity engines to “grapple” them. You’re all in zero-gravity while it’s in use. Available for legitimate purchase as a salvaging tool, and can also be used to manipulate and tow objects in space. Beware of railguns and point-defense systems!

Armor: Hull reinforcement, ablative plating, and resistant polymers. Mark your armor to reduce incoming damage to your ship by one level; instead of being Disabled, your ship would merely be Impaired. Once marked, your ship’s armor does not refresh until the next time you clear upkeep.

Brig: Space jail, with room for a couple occupants on a scout or half a dozen on a corvette. Doubles as a panic room or a secure storage room - if you need to keep something in or out, you’re covered.

Cargo Bay: Extra space for storage, including large doors for ease of access. Increases your capacity for cargo and gives you enough space to carry a shipment of goods. Can be sealed off from the rest of the ship as a makeshift brig or quarantine zone, but it’s not as secure.

Cutting Laser: A heavy duty hull-mounted laser used for salvage operations. Can cut through steel or vaporise rock. Slow to power up, too unwieldy to use effectively in combat unless your target doesn’t move at all.

Hangars: One or more vehicle bays, depending on the size of the ship. They can hold ground, water, air or spacecraft. Includes basic tools and facilities to maintain or repair your vehicles. If your ship is a scout, the hangar is big enough to hold a shuttle or fighter-class ship. If it’s a corvette, it’s big enough to hold a scout-class ship or a few fighters.

Planetary Sensor Suite: Directed atmosphere-penetrating scanners that can gather detailed information about a planet or other body at long range. You can scan for information about significant features, life forms and signals, local conditions, etc. With enough time, you can perform a detailed planetary survey.

Point-Defense System: A network of agile, short-range weapons that use high-velocity slugs or even high-powered lasers to disable incoming missiles and other threats before they reach your ship. Very short range makes them fairly useless offensively, although they are still deadly in atmosphere or at “point-blank” ranges. Generally classed as defensive weaponry, available to anyone who can afford them.

Remote Control: Your ship’s maneuvering and engine systems are wired into its computers, allowing you to pilot it remotely. Requires a good connection and a pair of smart glasses or similar augmented reality interface. If the ship has an autonomous system, it can fly itself according to simple orders. Can be physically disconnected if necessary.

Workshop: A garage, medical bay, library, science lab or similar workspace. Depending on the type of workshop, it might give you a way to work on projects, provide medical assistance, do research, and so on - all from the comfort of your ship.

Rare Upgrades

Autonomous System: Your ship’s computer systems house a weak AI that is capable of executing simple tasks and commands, automating the ship’s functions, and limited problem-solving or decision making. Cannot fly unless you have the Remote Control upgrade. When the capabilities of the AS are tested, roll using the ship’s quality.

Hidden Compartments: Secret places to hide things, used by smugglers. Shielded against scanning; the better your ship’s quality, the harder they are to detect.

Hypersleep Bay: Spaces for the crew to be placed into suspended animation for long journeys or critical medical emergencies. Commonly seen on colony ships or long-haul vessels that spend months at a time in otherspace.

Llewellyn Drive: Allows you to travel between star systems by shifting your entire ship into otherspace. You must travel to the outer limits of a system to engage the drive, as gravity interferes with its operation. Warp fuel costs 1 Cash per unit, and your ship can hold 1 unit per level of quality.

Maintenance Drones: A unit of small automated drones, capable of performing routine maintenance and minor repairs continuously. Because of their tireless efforts, reduce the cost of upkeep by 1 Cash.

Unusual Weaponry: Flamethrowers or gas projectors for use in atmosphere, or any other unique and unusual weapon that isn’t commonly seen on a starship. Includes grappling hooks, robot arms, crowd control weapons, and the like.

Restricted Upgrades

Jamming System: Allows you to jam another ship’s communications at combat range, preventing them from signalling for help or performing detailed scans. A skilled hacker can use this system to interfere with enemy missiles, reducing their effectiveness.

High-Energy Scanners: Extremely powerful electromagnetic and gravimetric scanners allow you to see the internal structure, energy distribution, and activity levels of a ship within combat range. Targets always know they’re being scanned. A skilled technician can use this sytem to help calculate firing solutions, giving you an edge when trying to acquire a missile lock.

Missile Bays: Projectiles with a mounted drive - the really big ones are called “torpedoes”. Their range is long, but not unlimited. Within their effective range, they cannot usually be outmaneuvered and must be shot down. Missiles are not included! Most ships only have one or two serious salvos before they need to restock. Replenishing your munitions costs 4 Cash for a fighter, 6 Cash for a scout, or 8 Cash for a corvette.

Railgun: Much shorter effective range than missiles, but railgun rounds are extremely difficult to dodge within that range and can’t be shot down. Because of their limited range and cheap ammunition, they’re popular with pirates for disabling ships once they get close. Civilian ships sometimes carry them for self-defense, for much the same reason. Military vessels tend to stick with missiles.

Rooted Transponder: The security protocols in your ship’s transponder have been overridden, allowing you to broadcast a fake signal and to change your transponder signal whenever you want. The higher your the quality of your ship, the more it holds up under intense scrutiny.

Stealth System: Vents heat into otherspace, masking the energy signature of your ship as long as your main drive isn’t on. Doesn’t make you invisible, but makes it much harder for sensors to detect you. The system is experimental and power hungry, and each use gives your ship a point of upkeep.

Space Travel

Travel through the vastness of space comes in three categories: local travel, interplanetary travel, and interstellar travel.

Local travel is travel within a region of a star system. Examples include travelling between two locations on a planet’s surface, going from the surface to one of the planet’s moons, or to a space station in orbit. This kind of travel usually takes no more than a few hours. A disabled ship or a short-range shuttle might take up to a day to complete the same journey.

Local travel is essentially free. You can do as much of it as you want without worrying about running out of fuel or using up your ship’s resources.

Interplanetary travel is travel between two regions of a star system. For example, going from one planet to another; or from a planet to the edge of the system. It takes up to a week with a functional drive; a disabled ship or one that has no fuel would take at least a month to complete the journey by limping along on emergency thrusters and backup engines.

Interplanetary travel uses fuel and power, but most ships have plenty of both. You don’t need to keep track of your ship’s fuel reserves unless the fiction dictates that they’re critically low (i.e. a fuel line ruptures). When you travel between planets, your ship just gains a point of upkeep to represent the depletion and strain on its systems.

Interstellar travel is travel from one star system to another. Only ships with a Llewellyn Drive installed can shift into otherspace and perform this kind of travel. Llewellyn Drives can’t function in the gravity well of a star or other celestial body, so you must first travel to the system’s edge.

You can’t use your ship’s regular fuel to travel through otherspace; you need special warp fuel to engage the Llewellyn Drive. Each unit of fuel costs 1 Cash and allows you to travel 2 parsecs; your ship can carry a number of units equal to its quality. Most of the systems colonised by humanity are within 1 to 6 parsecs of each other, since only the most advanced ships can travel much further.

Otherspace voyages are faster than light, but that doesn’t mean they’re fast. A journey can take anywhere from a week to several months, depending on how far you’re going and how good your drive is. As a result, you always enter the downtime phase when you travel between the stars. When you reach your destination, you gain 2 points of upkeep to represent the strain of traveling through otherspace.

Landing

Not every ship has the ability to survive atmospheric entry, fly in atmosphere or make landfall on a planet. While some ships are designed to transit between atmosphere and vacuum on a regular basis, larger vessels need to rely on shuttles and landers for sub-orbital travel. You can purchase a shuttle as an ordinary asset, but you will need the Hangars upgrade if you want to keep it on your ship.

How your ship performs in atmosphere depends on its scale:

• Fighters are designed with aerodynamics in mind, and are equally comfortable in atmosphere or vacuum.
• Scouts can fly and land just fine in atmosphere, but they’re not as maneuverable as terrestrial aircraft.
• Corvettes are unwieldy in atmosphere, and fly slowly and awkwardly. They need a proper, flat landing pad to safely land.
• Cruisers and titans are incapable of atmospheric flight and will break up if they attempt it.

If you’re being chased by a larger and more powerful vessel, reaching the atmosphere of a planet can be a handy way to escape!

Restricted Space

Like aircraft in the modern day, a starship can be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. Accelerating to relativistic speeds, even a civilian starship is a WMD that can be a threat to cities or whole continents. For this reason, inhabited regions tend to have significant defense platforms - including railguns and gravitic brakers that can destroy and deflect relativistic projectiles.

When you want to enter the restricted space of a planet, major space station or other important area, strict rules apply about where you can fly and how fast, and those rules are backed by heavy weapons. A ship attempting to turn itself into a kinetic projectile, for example, will be detected and hailed when it’s still halfway across the system. If it refuses to change its trajectory, it will be destroyed when it enters the range of the planetary defenses.

While you’re in restricted space, you’ll be expected to obey a speed limit and to lock in a flight path to your destination, which you are not allowed to deviate from. It is also common practice for the final part of the landing or docking process to be automated. Speeding or flying an unplanned route will be met with warnings, and ultimately with escalation.

Sensors

In space, the range of your sensors is effectively infinite. Outside of a few light-minutes, however, most objects smaller than a planet are just a radar “blip” on your scanners. As you get closer, your sensors can give you more detail:

• Minimal Detail: Within a light hour, you can identify basic information about a ship-sized object. You can identify its rough size, its current trajectory, and whether it is burning its main drive. A ship that isn’t burning its engines looks similar to an asteroid or a wreck. Fighters are too small to make out, and you might miss a scout. Most objects in the same system as you.
• Partial Detail: Within a light minute, you can identify the basic size and shape of the object. You can tell whether something is a cold rock or a warm ship, even if it isn’t burning its engines or firing its weapons. Small vessels like scouts are clearly visible, but you might still miss a fighter at this range. A ship that’s approaching the planet you’re orbiting.
• High Detail: Within a few light seconds, you can make out prominent features such as identifying markings and obvious weapons. You can get a rough idea of a ship’s quality and capabilities. The better your sensors, the more detailed information you will be able to discern. A ship that’s orbiting the same planet as you.
• Full Detail: Under a light second, you can make out fine visual details and identify individual systems such as the reactor and weapons. You may be close enough to acquire a missile lock. You may be able to detect power fluctuations such as weapons powering on or engines warming up, or fingerprint the ship’s energy signature. A ship whose engines and lights you can just about see.

The better your ship’s quality (and the more skilled your sensor operator), the more detailed information and resolution you’ll be able to get at each of these sensor ranges. The sensor arrays installed on planets and large space stations are typically bigger, and they can detect things at a longer range and with a higher fidelity than shipboard sensors.

Passive Sensing: Scanning at partial detail and above means using a mix of active and passive scanners, including radar and lidar. Whoever you’re scanning immediately knows that you’re a ship and not an asteroid, and they know that you’re shining a light on them. They may or may not care, depending on the context. If you want to avoid the risk, you can stick to passive sensors like telescopes and thermal imaging in exchange for less detail, or reduced effect on any rolls related to sensing or detection.

Transponders: You don’t need your sensors to identify most ships. Every ship has a transponder, and most civilian vessels keep them on all the time. These transponders are effectively constantly broadcasting the ship’s identification and current flight path to the entire system. Of course, transponder signals can be faked; they can also be switched off. This is common practice for military vessels, but a ship that approaches restricted space with no transponder is likely to be treated as a threat.