I kind of wrote the rest of this game to get to this part. I mean, I like the rest of the game, but this is the part I love.
Starship Attributes
Maneuverability: The acceleration and cornering ability of your ship.
Resonance: The quality of construction of your tesseract drive. High Resonance improves your tesser range and cooldown time.
Damage: The output of your weapons.
Armor: Your ship's ability to resist damage when the shields are down.
Shields: Force fields and defense grids that protect your vessel from harm.
Size: The physical bulk of your vessel.
Scan: The accuracy and range of your sensors.
Processor: The computing power available on your ship. Powerful processors cut down on the time it takes to calculate tesseract jumps, among other things.
Power: The amount of electricity your ship has to spare.
Hazard: How likely your ship is to blow up during bad situations.
(It feels like all of these will need to be exponential to handle the range of starship sizes properly. That means I need to avoid things like "allocate points of your Excess Power to other attributes.")
Starship Construction
Overview
Choose a Size for your ship.
Tonnage | Size |
1 | 1 |
2 | 2 |
4 | 3 |
8 | 4 |
15 | 5 |
30 | 6 |
60 | 7 |
120 | 8 |
250 | 9 |
500 | 10 |
x1,000 | +10 |
x1,000,000 +20 |
See the effects of Size below.
Your ship has 100 Capacity, which you spend to buy various components. Think of this as the percentage of the ship's tonnage that is taken up by that component.
You'll need enough Power to supply all of the things on your ship that you want to run at once.
Hull
Hull doesn't cost Capacity. Hull provides Capacity.
Hull also provides Armor rating.
Power
Default Capacity: 10 points
Each reactor provides a Power rating. Because Power is rated exponentially, you can power many devices that are of a lower Power rating. A Power 10 reactor doesn't provide enough for two Power 5 devices, it provides enough for two Power 9's, or four Power 8's, or eight Power 7's, and so on.
Reactor Types
Reactors provide Power based on the size of the ship.
Antimatter Reactor: Size + 9. Hazard +2.
Startap: Size + 7. Hazard +1.
Fusion Reactor: Size + 5
Fission Reactor: Size + 3
Solar Cells: Size + 1. No hazard rating.
Zero-Point Extractor: Size - 1
Larger or Smaller Reactors:
Capacity 80: +3 Power
Capacity 40: +2 Power
Capacity 20: +1 Power
Capacity 10: +0 Power
Capacity 5: -1 Power
Capacity 3: -2 Power
Weapons
Shields
Drive
Default Capacity: 20 points
Subtract your Size from your drive's Power rating to get your Maneuverability.
Drive Types
Modify your Maneuverability as follows:
Gravity Drive: +3
Motivator: +1
Ion Drive: -1
Chemical Rocket: -5, one hour of use per Capacity.
Larger or Smaller Drives:
Capacity 80: +2 Mnv
Capacity 40: +1 Mnv
Capacity 20: +0 Mnv
Capacity 10: -1 Mnv
Capacity 5: -2 Mnv
Capacity 3: -3 Mnv
Remember that a Maneuverability less than zero doesn't mean your ship can't move; it just makes it very unlikely that you'll dodge any shots.
Tesseract
Sensors
Computer
Other Amenities
Starship Combat
Maneuvers
Size Effects
Each point of Size difference gives you +3 Damage or -3 Damage.