I'm not sure they need to be specified in the CRB for all of them, assuming a starships-centric book is released someday.
1.0 What exactly is the state of a ship that has been disabled (but not destroyed)?
Page 320. If a ship is reduced to 0 or fewer hull points, it is disabled and floats in its current direction of travel at half speed until it's repaired, rescued or destroyed.
1.1 Does the disabled ship have power to life support?
Same page.
Does it have power for ship to ship weapons? Does it have power for the ship's computer? Anti-personel weapons? Holodecks? Remote control of airlocks? Doors? Etc.?
A more interesting question. If the power core is wrecked, that has some detail. If it's just disabled, it's less clear. When they say "you just float along" I would assume that if you can't control your engines, you can't control your weapons either. Anti-personnel stuff might reasonably have backup power. The rest - probably not working.
2.0 How can a disabled ship be boarded?
2.1 What are the techniques and skill checks required breach a disabled ship's airlock? Cargo bay doors? Hull?
Engineering checks related to the tier of the ship or armor maybe would be my thought.
2.2 What are typical defenses available to a disabled ship? Depressurized chambers, traps, weapons, surveliance/monitoring?
There are two ways to look at this:
a) none (an attractive answer for a small ship)
b) it's no longer a ship - it's a dungeon, and lay in whatever might be good in a ground installation. This is more compelling for big ships.
3.0 When a starship has been taken by the players, what are some rewards that ship can offer?
3.1 How to run sale value?
3.2 How to provide salvage rewards (e.g. because you have taken the heavy freighter "Merchant of Venus", you can replace your forward mounted weapon with a persistent particle beam.
I do not believe you'll get this. PCs are not supposed to get credits for selling ships. It's not the way the game is designed. Ships are a different thing - an alternate currency if you will. I doubt they will deviate from this in the game as designed.
3.2 is the exception - you can do this now, provided you have the build points.
3.3 Rules for ransoming captives.
Not sure why rules are needed for this - between skill checks and GM discretion this seems to be adequately covered.
1.0 What exactly is the state of a ship that has been disabled (but not destroyed)?
1.1 Does the disabled ship have power to life support? Does it have power for ship to ship weapons? Does it have power for the ship's computer? Anti-personel weapons? Holodecks? Remote control of airlocks? Doors? Etc.?
1.2 Does a disabled ship's computer function? Can that computer control holodecks/airlocks/doors/cameras/anti-personel weapons/etc.?
Page 320:
If a ship is reduced to 0 or fewer Hull Points, it is disabled and it floats in its current direction of travel at a rate of half its speed until it is repaired, rescued, or destroyed. Crew members aboard such ships are not in immediate danger unless their life support system is wrecked, but they might eventually die from starvation and thirst if they have no way to repair the ship.Sounds like the systems don’t stop actually working, but the only thing the ship does is float – so no actions are available for the crew. Anything outside of starship combat seems fair play.
2.0 How can a disabled ship be boarded?
I’d try one of the massive holes punched in the hull by your guns.
2.1 What are the techniques and skill checks required breach a disabled ship's airlock? Cargo bay doors? Hull?
Computers’ hacking or Engineering’s disable device.
2.2 What are typical defenses available to a disabled ship? Depressurized chambers, traps, weapons, surveliance/monitoring?
Anything installed from the Security systems list, modifications installed by the crew (cameras cost 5 credits, and a control module for each one only 0.5 credit), traps would be a weird thing to have inside a ship, but, crazy cultists, who knows. Boarding parties will probably have the environment protection from their armors turned on, so vacuum is not a threat.
3.0 When a starship has been taken by the players, what are some rewards that ship can offer?
3.1 How to run sale value?
3.2 How to provide salvage rewards (e.g. because you have taken the heavy freighter "Merchant of Venus", you can replace your forward mounted weapon with a persistent particle beam.
Anything from the crew quarters and inside the expansion bays can be sold for credits – put anything you see fit in there, probably personal items and trade goods, respectively.
Ships can’t be sold per se – they can be used as an abstraction when refitting and upgrading the PC’s ship, whenever their APL goes up. They probably tow whatever they capture to some harbor, and whenever they need to level their ship up, they can go there, or the owner talks with his buddy who owns a harbor in another planet and they take care of you, etc.
Page 305:
As the PCs go on adventures and gain experience, they need an increasingly powerful starship to face tougher challenges. When the characters’ Average Party Level increases, so does the tier of their starship. The PCs receive a number of Build Points equal to the Build Points listed for their starship’s new tier – those listed for its previous tier, which they can use to upgrade their starship. For example, a group whose APL increases from 2 to 3 receives 20 BP that the PCs can use to upgrade their starship. This could represent salvage gathered during their exploits, an arrangement with a spacedock, or called-in favors from a wealthy patron. Some GMs might require PCs to visit a safe, inhabited world before they can spend these Build Points, but this shouldn’t be allowed to impact the campaign too much.
3.3 Rules for ransoming captives.
Putting a price on intelligent beings lives probably goes against Paizo stance of “no rules for slavery” somehow.
Just role-play it, and calculate a fitting reward based on Character Wealth by Level, you pirate.
Where is the self destruct option?
Especially if you could set it to explode 5 seconds after the escape pods launch.
"Board my ship will you? Screw that, she's already a flaming hulk, there's nothing left o'value here! This cap'n doesn't go down with 'is ship today!"
*Boards escape pod, and ejects*
Barding party - "No crew in sight but we did find a big timer counting down...that can't be good"
Traps on a ship wouldn't be that weird, provided there's some expectation of the possibility of being boarded. I could easily see some form of trapped placed at the air locks, and perhaps on the entrances to key compartments ( bridge, engineering, computer core ).
There are some fitting traps in the CRB, but the few starship maps I've seen so far make they seem very cramped. Having traps laying around would be quite a hazard for the crew themselves.
And since there are no rules for setting traps up, you gotta presume they were there for a long time, and not only right before the boarding... that would a pain for the crew.
Detonators though, would be very appropriate in this situation.
There's always the handy shock trap you can add to your computer. Just stick one of those on the console right next to the airlock. When their hacker tries to remotely access the life support or whatever, BZORCH to anyone in 10 feet.
Where is the self destruct option?
Especially if you could set it to explode 5 seconds after the escape pods launch.
"Board my ship will you? Screw that, she's already a flaming hulk, there's nothing left o'value here! This cap'n doesn't go down with 'is ship today!"
*Boards escape pod, and ejects*
Barding party - "No crew in sight but we did find a big timer counting down...that can't be good"
It's on page 302.
Self-Destruct System
Used most often as a last resort, a self-destruct system completely destroys the starship on which it is installed (as if the ship had taken damage equal to twice its Hull Points), often killing everyone on board. A starship in a hex adjacent to a starship that self-destructs takes an amount of damage equal to half the destroyed starship’s maximum Hull Points; this damage can be mitigated by shields. A self-destruct system can be activated only by creatures on the starship (by turning a set of keys, typing in a specific passcode, or other physical means known only to high-ranking members of the crew) and can’t be activated remotely via hacking. The activating creatures set a time delay for the destruction (at least 1 round of starship combat). The cost of a self-destruct system depends on the size category of the ship (for the purposes of this calculation, Tiny = 1, Small = 2, Medium = 3, Large = 4, and so on).
You might find a GM that would rule it that way, but I think any reasonable person would count anyone in or on the ship as affected.
I just want a turret that says, "You have 15 seconds to drop your weapon." and opens fire 15 seconds later regardless of whether the gun was dropped.
I would call it "Ed."
Why would it be a pain? The crew simply leave the traps turned off all the time, except when they are actively being boarded. Then, in addition to turning on the red alert klaxons, they also flip the switch on the anti-boarding measures.
I don't think even the azlanti star empire has crews that competent and serious minded, to keep such discipline.
Not even a goofball, lazy or moron in the entire crew? As a captain, I wouldn't take my chances. One or two guys in charge of explosives and detonators? Sure. Traps laying around waiting to lower my human resources? No way.
If you are dead set on trapping a starship, the trap entry in Chapter 11 suggests accidental traps. Just put up things that make sense from the damage inflicted on the ship, such as exposed wires, steam valves bursting in random intervals, parts of the hull cracking open and vacuuming everybody outside.
Have something like a Star Trek comm badge, a device that has your identity, maybe works like a cred stick, and is attuned to the ship the crew serves, and deactivates any traps, or opens digitally locked doors, etc. So you don't accidentally set-off a trap on your ship.
When it comes to traps and starships, I'm disappointed by the lack of hostile life support options, or rather the small amount of races with incompatible habitability needs. It would totally be within this game's humor for a ship to be boarded and it's occupants native to a planet of 5g decide the best way to deal with boarders is to turn off "guest mode" on their gravity generators and watch their intruders do their best yamcha impression.
It's slightly less risky when everyone is probably wearing armored space suits all the time. Not that the risk is 0, but if you're expecting that your ship could be boarded and there is something on board you would like to protect...it might be a good option.
Currently, the only rules supported method of boarding would involve first disabling the enemy ship. So your two options are flee via escape capsules or try to defend and repair the ship. Sometimes it is more prudent to survive, rather than risk being killed. In fact, unless we had something we absolutely needed to defend unto death I would attempt to escape hoping that whatever the attacker wanted was the ship or aboard the ship as opposed to our lives (if they want your life trying to escape wont work).
But in at least some situations its probably better to try to defend your ship, and some sort of automated defense system should be able to do that.