A whole bunch of starship questions

[Deetee-Senpai]

Stuff that I couldn't find, but might be written already:

Do starship and vehicle rules ever cross over?

Can a crew member fulfill more than one role? For example, can a pilot inside a small fighter also fire it's weapons? If they can, or are assumed to be able to, what's the limit on that ability? At what point is a starship so large that one person cannot cover multiple roles? Is it defined by size, number of rooms, or power use?

What happens if you commandeer another starship and then use your BP to upgrade it? Are you unable to use anything outside of your BP range?

Sensors work on blindsense rules, so what are the rules for identifying another starship outside if your sensor range? Is it the same as any object or creature with perception and concealment? Can you use those rules to cloak/disguise your ship?

Stuff that I'm pretty sure is unclear ATM:

What kind of signal do sensors use? Can they be jammed or confused?

Is there any way to strip, loot, or modify the chassis of another starship (for example, can you steal a weapon/core/etc that's better than yours)? Can you affect another starship outside of damaging them at all?

Is normal damage against a starship equal to damage/10 (the reverse of starship weapons against non-ship targets)?

Stuff I know other people have asked and am echoing for the sake of community consensus:

Cloaking? Boarding? Ramming? AI sentience?

And a moral question to make everyone uncomfortable:

When the heck do you "win" a starship battle? If the enemy is at 0 HP, do you just leave and assume they're okay/ignore their wellbeing? Do you take the ENORMOUS RISK of helping them and letting them off with a warning? Do you have to blow them up to certain doom every time? Do you have to assume they'll retreat before it's too late? Is this what the accursed, cruel gods want?

Feel free to provide your opinion/knowledge to any one of these, I'm working on filling in all the blanks the Core Rulebook leaves. All things considered, I'm really enjoying the system and I can't wait to see more.

[Deadmanwalking]

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Stuff that I couldn't find, but might be written already:

Do starship and vehicle rules ever cross over?

Not really, no.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Can a crew member fulfill more than one role? For example, can a pilot inside a small fighter also fire it's weapons? If they can, or are assumed to be able to, what's the limit on that ability? At what point is a starship so large that one person cannot cover multiple roles? Is it defined by size, number of rooms, or power use?

They cannot, and that's true for all ships. You can swap roles between rounds, but in one round you can only perform one. However, see 'Minor Crew Actions' under starship combat. You can take those as well as a normal crew action.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

What happens if you commandeer another starship and then use your BP to upgrade it? Are you unable to use anything outside of your BP range?

Correct.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Sensors work on blindsense rules, so what are the rules for identifying another starship outside if your sensor range? Is it the same as any object or creature with perception and concealment? Can you use those rules to cloak/disguise your ship?

You presumably would use those rules, yes. I dunno about a disguise, mechanically speaking.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Stuff that I'm pretty sure is unclear ATM:

What kind of signal do sensors use? Can they be jammed or confused?

Presumably, but the rules don't have many ways to do that at the moment.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Is there any way to strip, loot, or modify the chassis of another starship (for example, can you steal a weapon/core/etc that's better than yours)? Can you affect another starship outside of damaging them at all?

Mechanically, there is not. Thematically, this is one of the listed examples of how to justify the Build Point increases you get as you rise in level.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Is normal damage against a starship equal to damage/10 (the reverse of starship weapons against non-ship targets)?

Mechanically, a ship is an object and uses those rules for damage. This makes damaging a ship with man-portable weapons very difficult indeed.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

Stuff I know other people have asked and am echoing for the sake of community consensus:

Cloaking? Boarding? Ramming? AI sentience?

No rules yet.

Deetee-Senpai wrote:

And a moral question to make everyone uncomfortable:

When the heck do you "win" a starship battle? If the enemy is at 0 HP, do you just leave and assume they're okay/ignore their wellbeing? Do you take the ENORMOUS RISK of helping them and letting them off with a warning? Do you have to blow them up to certain doom every time? Do you have to assume they'll retreat before it's too late? Is this what the accursed, cruel gods want?

Varies wildly depending on specific situation.

[Lane_S]

For salvaging or capturing starships.

As a general rule every starship is owned by somebody other than the operator. This could be a corporation, a bank or a wealthy individual. Even pirate ships have a legal owner as most of them are stolen. When you capture a ship may get to use it for a short time but eventually the owners will come looking for it. It can be assumed that any ship you capture, or one destroyed in a location that it can be recovered, are transferred to a broker or salvage yard. In return the party may get a recovery fee or part of the salvage profits. However these funds are rarely available right away. In fact it may take months or years. Because of this your Build Points at tenth level may have come from an encounter at 6th level or a lucky fight with pirates may provide BP over multiple levels.

Sensors
I there is a jammer in the equipment section. There is also the Improved Countermeasures action.
As a house rule you could make an Stealth/ Sensor Jammer.
Cost tier + (2 x size) PCU 10 + size^2
While stealth is active you must make a sensors check to detect it, even with passive sensors. DC = 10 + (2 x tier) + sensor bonus + defensive countermeasures of the cloaked ship.

Damaging starship outside space combat
Rules state treat as an object. However given the hardness/ HP of a ships hull listed in table 11-9 I'm not sure how ship weapons manage to damage a starship.

[Matt2VK]

I also want to know if you have multiple science officers or engineers, if those extra people could assist the main person doing the check (aid other). This would help off set some of the high DC these checks can have for a non-optimal crew.