Shuttles on Medium Ships

[Joshua029]

Recreating the utility of the Firefly-class ship, Serenity (including its shuttles), here is my prop

For each pair of Lifeboats purchased, you instead get one Shuttle with the following exceptions.
-This shuttle has no weapon mounts.
-This shuttle has no expansion bays.
-This shuttle may not be equipped with a Drift Engine.
-This shuttle receives a number of build points at the game-master's discretion up to but not exceeding that of a Tier 1/2 ship.

[LordRiffington]

I think the biggest problem is that there's no ship in between fighter and shuttle. You can either have a fighter with a maximum of two people no expansion bays, or a shuttle with a crew of 4 and 3 expansion bays.

The Firefly shuttles would basically be a cross between a fighter and a shuttle, with 2 crew and one expansion bay. For those shuttles I'd stick to no weapon mounts or drift engines, but I'd probably allow a single weapon mount for other shuttles that size. Definitely wouldn't have drift engines installed as standard, but if a fighter can have a drift engine, there's no reason a shuttle couldn't.

[Flack Jack]

I'm basically doing the same thing for some of the ships made by 0 hour. GMs just gotta fudge things sometimes. Looks like some fair compromises for making it work.

[VampByDay]

I also agree. There needs to be a 'shuttlepod' class ship.

I suggest that it has a Crew of 1-2 BUT that it can hold up to six additional people. These people cannot make crew skill checks (they don't have any stations in front of them). But can aid. Basically treat them as if they were passengers on a passenger ship.

I'm thinking the shuttlepods from Star Trek-Enterprise.

[Shadowcat48]

or something akin to a Pinnace or Gig like in Traveller might work
but again its between a fighter and a shuttle

another thing I would like to see is a Starfinder treatment of the Traveller Modular Cutter

[baggageboy]

I think a lot of this could be solved by simply adding a tiny chassis that was more like a freighter. For tiny chassis we have what are effectively 3 kinds of fighter type ships. At the other sizes you typically have 1 chassis that offers greater maneuverability at the cost of HP, armaments, and expansion bays and one that is lower but tougher and more expandable. If we simply added a tiny chassis that was something like this I think you'd have a really good starting point.

Dinghy
Size: Tiny
Maneuverability: Average (+0 piloting, turn 2)
HP: 30 (increment 5)
DT: - CT: 6
Mounts Forward arc 1 (light)
Minimum crew: 1, Maximum crew 2
Expansion bays: 1
Cost 8

Special restrictions:
May only have 1 weapon mount per arc
May only have common quarters

With something like this you are pretty limited still but you do have some options. Want better quarters, buy a guest quarters, need more seating, install passenger seating, small time smuggler buy a smuggling bay.

Now this doesn't let you put a tiny ship on a medium ship, but I think that is a broader problem that involves deciding what the cost should be for an expansion bay or bays and adding any restrictions. Honestly I think a single expansion bay being set aside as a docking bay should be fine. I mean a single expansion bay fitted with escape pose holds 6 individual pods. I think that if you are willing to spend the BP on creating another ship that will be terribly ineffective you should be ably to do it. I don't think that it would be a good idea to do however.

Lets look at the math, if I have a tier 8 "ship" I have total of 205 BP. Now if I want to make a small dinghy it'll cost me say 25 for a very poorly equipped dinghy and then I have to pay say 5 BP for an expansion bay that I can't use for anything else now. That's roughly 15% of my total allotment for not much mechanical benefit.