This is an supplement of sorts for GLOGSTAR, which is in turn a collection of classes for playing spaceships as characters in the GLOG (presumably in a game where everyone is playing spaceships; I’m not quite sure how you manage a party of an Exploration Cruiser, an Orbseeker, a Gun Witch, and a Zenith-Caste Solar, but if you run that game please tell me about it).
Out on the frontier, the standardized classes of carriers, cruisers, and battleships that form the backbone of core-system fleets give way to a more eclectic array of ships. You might see a battleship with a decades-obsolete hull, hauled by the engines of the class that replaced it, and awkwardly bolted-on guns of another empire entirely—and that’ll be the closest-to-regulation ship in its fleet. Beyond such simple hacked-together variants of existing ship designs are the ship classes below—designs that can only thrive out beyond fleet regulation, standardized maintenance schedules, and common sense.
Class: Auxiliary Logistics Ship
Long operations in hostile or simply unindustrialized space can test the limits of even the best-supplied ships. The natural way around this issue is simply to bring a safe harbor with your fleet: the auxiliary logistics ship. One part mobile drydock, one part supply hauler, one part engineering drone controller, an “aux” can in theory keep a fleet active indefinitely given a few well-placed moons and asteroids to scavenge for materials.
This is a wizard school, though one that’s closer to a conventional cleric in party role.
Perk: All-Devouring Industry
You can convert raw materials into deployment dice, for your own use or an ally’s, at a rate of roughly a big metal asteroid or equivalent per die. This can’t be done in combat unless it’s a very long combat indeed, but when individual rounds aren’t being tracked consider the time negligible; certainly faster than the normal refit and repair process a typical carrier can manage.
Drawback: Lumbering Colossus
You can’t mount main guns. If a question of the form “are you maneuverable enough to ______” needs to be asked, the answer is no.
Cantrips
- Fleet Logistics Hub: You, personally, cannot run out of supplies. As long as you’ve used All-Devouring Industry within the past dozen duty cycles, neither can [templates] capital ships and proportional light escorts under your care; if you need to care for more, divide the frequency of raw material consumption accordingly.
- Dedicated Engineering Team: Your crew can fabricate from spare supply any device simpler than a jump drive and smaller than a shuttle. This takes about a duty cycle, less if you devote your full focus to it.
- Decompilation: Your crew can convert an unknown piece of technology, or the wreckage thereof, into schematics for that device. This has a [templates]-in-6 chance of working at all on wreckage, and the same chance of not turning a previously working piece of technology into wreckage.
Spells
- EVA Repairs (R short, T one capital-scale target or a squadron of escorts, D instantaneous)
Restore up to [sum] hull to or divided among the target(s). - Hostile Environment Support (R medium, T [dice] capital-scale targets or escort squadrons, D command)
Grant the targets +[dice] to saves against a particular type of environmental condition. - Thermochemical Boosters (R long, T one ship, D [sum] rounds or [dice] landing + takeoff sequences)
Grant the target doubled movement in space combat, or the ability to land and take off again in a gravity well it is not normally designed for (most capital ships can’t land on anything bigger than a large moon). - Arsenal Pods (R medium, T up to [dice] capital-scale targets, D command)
Assign the rolled dice to targets; they each deal +1 damage with missile attacks, ticking their die down by one for each shot, ending when it reaches 0. You can also add a special tag of your choice to attacks modified this way; something like “incendiary” or “sensor-jamming” that doesn’t give direct bonuses but does imply things about what types of defense are applicable or what happens to someone who gets hit. - Chaff Generators (R long, T up to [dice] capital-scale targets, D command)
Grant the targets +[dice] to AC and stealth. - Ablative Swarm (R medium, T one ship, D command)
Absorbs the next [sum] hull or crew damage the target would take from external sources. - ECM Drones (R [sum] su, T whole area in range, D command)
Conceals the area from standard sensors. Sensors of exceptional quality may be able to pierce the ECM field. Looking out the window still works. - Isolation Field (R long, T one ship, D command)
Target must save at -[dice] or be entirely cut off from all communications. - Jump Solution Optimizer (R long, T up to [sum] total ships, D instantaneous)
Allows all the targets to make an FTL jump without any further preparation. If this does not cover all the desired targets, the jump may be canceled without consequence beyond wasted dice. - Psychohistorical Simulation Network (R self, T something highly connected and significant, D [lowest] hours)
Provides up to [dice] relevant predictions about the future behavior of the target. - Capital Drydock (R touch, T one ship, D one duty cycle)
You can salvage and restore even a destroyed ship from wreckage, at least temporarily. The first [die] recovers the ship’s black-box. The second [die] recovers up to [sum] crew. The third [die] restores the ship to limited functionality, but it can’t be restored above 0 hit points without a full rebuild. The fourth [die] restores the ship to true functionality with up to [sum] maximum hull, but reduces your maximum deployment dice by one as long as you need to keep it functioning. The fifth [die], if you can somehow acquire it, truly and completely restores the ship. - Improvised Weapon Paradigm (R self, T self, D [sum] rounds)
With a ship full of engineers, everything is a weapon. For the duration, you do not take damage from capital-ship or lesser weapons, your attacks deal maximum damage, and your attacks against targets of HD/level less than [dice] cannot miss.
Class: Battlecruiser
Take a mostly-obsolete light battleship. Rip out most of the armor—it’s just slowing you down. Fill the space you’ve opened up with more guns and thrusters. Behold: the battlecruiser, a ship with the speed and armor of a cruiser, the rough size and crew of a battleship, and the broadside armament of a dreadnought, the ultimate in hit-and-run tactics.
This is, to a very rough approximation, a monk.
A: Battle of Maneuver
B: Broadside, Point Defense
C: Excessive Thrust
D: Broadside!, Injection Burn
Battle of Maneuver
Positioning wins battles; timing wins wars. As long as your armor is no heavier than bulkheads, as part of an attack or combat maneuver, you can name and describe a unique naval tactic. This stunt allows you to ignore [templates] AC or difficulty, and if applicable also add [templates] to damage. Record named stunts; you can use it in the future when circumstances permit, avoiding the need to invent a new stunt, but only once per battle.
Broadside
An unfairly large fraction of your mass is dedicated to heavy artillery. With two templates, add +1d6 damage to any attack you make when you have a perfectly clear shot at your target (no circumstantial improvements to their defense, say). With four, add another +1d6.
Point Defense
By replacing your armor with more guns, you both can and must shoot down projectiles a true battleship would simply shrug off—assuming you have time to react. Unless something is impeding your movement or targeting, you can protect yourself and other ships within 5 su of you from any projectiles launched from more than 30 su away.
Excessive Thrust
If a piece of fancy piloting work would be feasible for a subcapital ship but laughable for a capital ship, you have a 2 in 6 chance of being able to pull it off anyway. If you consider it a round in advance so your crew can precalculate the maneuver, you can roll before deciding whether or not to try it.
Injection Burn
You win initiative. You are not surprised. You are too maneuverable to properly outflank or line up raking fire against; no benefits are gained from these and similar types of maneuver against you.
Class: Ace
There are legends of fighters who have stood against capital ships and won, weaving between the lines of battle, one with their pilots. Those are not mere tall tales; you are that ship, cunning and grace incarnated in the smallest of durasteel frames.
This is… a raven?
A: Wings of Glory, Lethal Precision
B: Targeting Interlock // Squadron Commander, Electronic Countermeasures
C: Zero Profile
D: Specialized Payload
Wings of Glory
You are a personal spacecraft in a world dominated by capital ships, with all that entails. Regardless of your stats and templates, you only have one crew member, and accordingly a single hit point. You can’t mount any armor or capital-ship weapons, you have one bay (inventory slot) and even that’s smaller than usual, but you’re twice as fast as a capital ship and effectively infinitely more agile. The good news is that although you really can’t survive a hit from a capital ship gun, your size and evasive maneuvers also make you an incredibly difficult target to hit; you only take damage from critical hits. You don’t carry supply for long-term independent operations, normally, and are instead based on an allied capital ship, from which you can launch or land as your movement in a round.
Lethal Precision
You couldn’t possibly carry a weapon capable of blasting through capital ship armor. You don’t need to; there’s all kinds of deliciously vulnerable systems that have to be partially outside the armor to work, and you have the maneuverability to get in close enough to actually target those weak points. Instead of making attack rolls and dealing hull damage, your attacks (at point-blank range only) have a [templates]-in-6 chance of shattering a random vital system. Roll (not choose) the same system twice, and you’ve knocked out the power core, plus save vs. rapid unscheduled disassembly.
- Communications
- Main Weapon
- Thrusters
- Sensors
- Life Support (1d6 crew damage)
- Choose One
Targeting Interlock (Based on Combat or Specialist Ship)
Your targeting computer is designed to act as a spotter for the far heavier guns of your allies. Whenever you use your Lethal Precision, whether you hit or miss, your base ship can make a free attack against the same target.
Squadron Commander (Based on Carrier or Support Ship)
Your communications array is designed to coordinate a full wing of other light ships. Whenever you use your Lethal Precision, whether you hit or miss, your target rolls saving throws against your base ship’s small craft twice and takes the worse result. Alternatively, you can take your action to focus fully on command, allowing your base ship to reroll a single deployment die while launching small craft this turn.
Electronic Countermeasures
You can credibly and reliably spoof any communication you have the proper authorization codes for, and have a [templates]-in-6 chance of disrupting a target’s scans or communications at point-blank range. You roll saves against electronic attacks twice, taking the better result.
Zero Profile
You can, as a free action once per round, shut down or reactivate all your systems. While shut down, you can’t move other than gliding, or take any other action besides passive observation; but you are also invisible to any sensors more sophisticated than literally looking out the window.
Specialized Payload
Spend up to four full duty cycles aboard your base ship loading a special payload, replacing either your inventory slot or your weapons. This payload can be deployed and consumed, with effect as if you personally were a unit of small craft (choose and modify-if-needed a spell, including a legendary spell, from whatever source you want), with one deployment die per duty cycle of preparation. You can restore yourself to your normal configuration in 1d6 rounds on your base ship.
Cyber Jazz Fusion 