Freefall Bomber Deckplans?

[CRMcNeill]

I would suggest making the passenger seats part of the bomb bay as well, so that the ship can carry either its standard ammo load, 20 metric tons or 10 passengers. I like the idea of making the bomb chute into a general purpose warhead launcher, as it greatly increases the versatility. Perhaps early models were equipped with just the bomb chute, and later upgraded models featured the ability to launch heavy torpedoes or other weapons for greater versatility.

As far as the deck plan, nothing too elaborate is needed. I know some modern bomber craft like the B-52 have a two-level crew compartment, with the lower level featuring crew rest bunks in addition to crew work stations. For this ship, I would suggest a small living space on the lower level, with a small fresher, an auto-chef and a couple bunks (so that the crew can sleep in shifts). This area would also include the boarding hatch, as well as a ladder or stairs to the upper level, as well as an access hatch to the bomb bay (used for manual ordnance checks, or providing access to the passengers or cargo). The layout for the cockpit on the upper level would then be relatively straightforward (crew stations and an access ladder to the lower level).

With regards to the weaponry, I would suggest changing the lasers to turret mounts on later models, as their primary usage on a bomber would be anti-starfighter defense. I realize the current write-up has them fixed forward, but such a placement is worse than useless if the ship is on a straight and level bombing run and an enemy starfighter gets in behind it.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[cheshire]

[CRMcNeill]

LMAO! Good one, Cheshire. Seriously, though, I was thinking it might even be a sealed pod with ten airline style seats in it (and maybe a small fresher). The pod could be completely self contained, to the point of being ejectable from the bomb bay in emergencies. Take out the seats and the fresher and you have 20 metric tons of cargo space in the same basic pod.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

I know I proposed an idea a while back for star bombers, in the form of space transports carrying CS-scale warheads for anti-ship attacks. Nice to see something in the EU along similar lines.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[tetsuoh]

Well unfortunately we don't need the deckplans anymore as my players have opted to sell off their rebuilt bomber which they used to escape a ship trap planet and bought a ghtroc 720...

Dang - I had hoped they would like the bomber.

[vanir]

My Players usually prefer light freighters as party vessels too, unless one is a specific Starfighter Pilot type of template. Reason is suitability to easy modification using basic RAW guidelines in the Tramp Freighters galaxy guide. Transports you can just bolt larger engines into, a starfighter you have to rebuild the structure for the new engines.

We do apply the same starship modification rules for starfighters but have the house rule that this must use (A) Starfighter Engineering skill for difficulties rather than Starfighter Repair as analoguous to Space Transports Repair when modifying ships. This is due to starfighters being basically a collection of high performance parts strung together in the lightest possible spaceframe, whereas a space transport is a sizeable hull and high performance parts maybe installed within the existing hull using up cargo capacity. So starfighters have to be structurally re-engineered to mod.

There are some other stipulations to make it workable in game. For basic modifications such as a speed increase you must either subtract from another stat, eg. increase space movement from 8 to 10 or Hyperdrive Multiplier from x1 to x0.75 means decreasing consumables from 1 week to 3 days say. Want increased cargo capacity, you should delete a weapon system. More powerful shields require more powerful engines and power converters to power them. The benefit of re-engineering in this way is because it uses an advanced skill and is being done in a balanced way there is no mishap modifiers.

Players can select not to decrease any stat but still raise the power of their starfighter in some areas using (A) Starfighter Engineering, eg. increasing space movement from 8 to 10 without any penalty in any other area, but they suffer mishap modifiers as per starship modification rules if they do this (the frequency of starfighter combat rolls means mishaps happen more than you'd think), and also I require the Player to redraw up a picture of their starfighter with the new modification, such as physically larger engines, etc.

I did have one gamer's PC mod a Y-Wing so extensively over years of gametime (and about a year of realtime gaming), that it wound up with four engines in a star pattern around the central fuselage and a quad laser gunport in the centre of them facing to the rear. That was an annihilation of a starfighter, he took on whole squadrons of TIE with it.

Naturally this type of modification, used with engineering skill has to be ruled on a case by case basis, starfighters by design are already virtually at the limit of performance potential for a given structure and generally speaking when a Player wants to greatly modify one to perform a completely different service role, like fitting passenger compartments to an X-Wing, well it just works out cheaper, more realistic and much easier to just buy a tramp freighter and soup it up so it performs like an assault craft.

[vanir]

[Fallon Kell]