In the equipment section there's various mentions of what Capacity means in terms for weapons, armor upgrades and other equipment. These all mention that capacity measures the largest-capacity battery that item can hold. (Implying that you can slot lower-capacity batteries if you want?) So a Jetpack, a Red Star Plasma Rifle and a Gravity Well Hammer all use the same 40 charge batteries to power them, which you then get to recharge at recharging stations when empty. So far so good. However, the Blue Star Plasma Caster has 200 charges listed, while batteries only come in the 20, 40, 80 and 100 varieties. How would you fully reload such a weapon? Maybe it comes with a special battery, but what would be the cost of recharging that? Or maybe you can simply slot two 100 charge batteries in there. But then we have a further problem with technological items like flashlights, signal jammers and detonators, that all use non-standard battery sizes. How do you calculate the cost of recharging those?
Secondly, there are mentions throughout the book, especially in spells where batteries come up, of "power cells". But I can't actually find any description of what these are. The wording seems to precise in differentiating the two for "power cell" to simply be a synonym for "battery", yet this seems to be the case?
Thirdly, what kind of action would it be to swap the battery in a jetpack? A reload (move) action, or a standard action?
Finally, and this is a bit of a different topic, but in the Starship section there's mention of Sensors having a "passive" mode of 2x the sensor's range. What does this passive mode do? As I first read it, it sounds like it's how far the ship can "see" on the grid, but that seems strange cause weapons have much longer range in terms of increments (longest "passive" sensor range is 2 x 20 = 40 hexes, but for short range weapons, that is only 8 range increments as opposed to their max capacity of 10). It also seems implied that the science officer actions, which have a range of 5 increments, are already aware of the targets they scan. Am I simply misunderstanding what "twice the sensors' range category" means, and that passive mode reaches twice as far as active mode, but is less discerning? (i.e. cannot scan things, just "detect")
There is only one weapon with more than 100 capacity. I'd prefer to say it can slot 2 clips, but a DM could say it has 1 clip and an internal battery.
Passive sensors just show what is visible to the naked eye, what is unhidden.
Scanning as a crew action to learn details about the ship requies active sensors.
There is only one weapon with more than 100 capacity. I'd prefer to say it can slot 2 clips, but a DM could say it has 1 clip and an internal battery.
Yeah, that makes the most sense to me as well.
Passive sensors just show what is visible to the naked eye, what is unhidden.
Scanning as a crew action to learn details about the ship requies active sensors.
The point I was trying to make is that if passive sensors have that much shorter range than active sensors (and weapons for that matter), and if passive mode for sensors determines what can be seen on the battlefield, then it seems one ends up very restricted in what can be targeted.
For example, I lay out a hex grid battle field for ship combat. My players have medium range sensors (10 hex increments) with an assumed 'passive' range of 20 hexes (twice the range category). Does this mean the players can't see anything beyond that? How then can they target stuff up to 50 hexes away with active sensors?