Cogent 0.7/Manhunt Starship Mechanics

Given that **The Manhunt for Elair Talbiqus** will be taking place over a whole system, combat between light frigates will be involved. For this purpose, Etzan has designed a simple starship system.

## Mechanics

### Setup

* Starships are vehicles which must be piloted by characters.
* A character must be selected as the pilot, and the dice total dice which they roll for for piloting must be inputted into the template when it is first set up.
	+ Piloting will be used for maneuvers, notably to evade oncoming attacks, catch up to adversaries in chases, and attempt difficult actions with the ship.
* In order to fire the ship's weapons, a character must have a proficiency in starship weapons, which is a proficiency with a bonus of 20, for 21 max dice.
	+ If two or more characters have a proficiency with starship weapons, the ship can fire two or more times during its turn.

### Combat

#### Missiles

* Ships will have a limited complement of missiles which they can fire at:
	+ Another ship
	+ An opposing missile
	+ A vehicle
* Missiles can also be mounted on vehicles such as shuttles, fighters, rovers, pods, drones, and fighting vehicles.
* When launched, missiles will home in on their targets from great range. If fired from great range, the defending side may have three turns to attempt to shoot down the incoming missiles with their ship's weapons.
	+ This is done by having the character which fired the missile roll their starship weapons proficiency against the defender's starship weapons proficiency.
* When launched from within close quarters combat (CQC) range, the defender only has one turn to shoot down the missile, and they must choose between attacking their opponent with their guns or the missile.
* If a missile makes it to the target, it pierces straight through the ship's shielding and strikes the hull. Roll a 1d5; the character firing must get a roll superior to the ship's remaining hull points for it to penetrate the ship and explode.
	+ If a missile manages to penetrate the ship's armor and explode inside of it, the defender must roll internal damage (1d8) 3 times. All the systems affected are knocked out. It also damages the hull by 1.
	+ Even if the missile does not penetrate, it damages the hull by 1.

#### Close Quarters Combat

* In CQC, two or more ships are duking it out at close range using their primary weaponry. The combat proceeds in turns, with the ship with the pilot with the greatest **REF** going first.
* In order to fire its weapons at an enemy, a ship rolls its starship weapons proficiency.
	+ The target then attempts to evade the broadside, rolling piloting plus a maximum bonus of **6** granted by the starship's burn drive.
	+ If the burn drive gets damaged, this bonus erodes.
	+ The results from each roll are then compared against each other. If the attacker gets a greater number of rolls than the defender, they have succeeded in landing a hit on the defender. The severity of the hit scales with the difference between the defender's roll and the attacker's roll.
		- If the attacker scores **1** hit above the defender, they land a hit on the shield but do not manage to penetrate it. This depletes the shield by 1 but otherwise does no damage.
		- If the attacker scores **2** hits above the defender, their hit penetrates through the shield and crashes against the armor. Both the shield and the armor are damaged by 1, but the ship is protected from internal damage.
		- If the attacker scores **3** hits or more above the defender, their hit penetrates the shield and the armor and ravages the internals of the ship. The defender must roll 1d8 on their ship's systems and apply the number of penetrative hits to that subsystem only.
		- Each subsystem has hitpoints which can be edited in the template. If these hitpoints are depleted, the ship will begin to function less and less well.
	+ Over the course of combat, the shield and armor will take damage. If the shield is fully gone, it no longer provides protection to the ship, reducing the number of hits over needed to score internal damage by 1. If the armor also goes, the ship is completely exposed.

#### Evasive maneuvers

* When a ship is about to be hit, her pilot can pull a crazy stunt to evade the attack and prevent the ship from taking damage.
* However, this comes at a cost. Suddenly changing directions or executing a complex maneuver places a lot of g-force stress on the crew.
* If this happens, all characters on the ship must roll on this table:

* Characters who are not strapped into crash couches during the maneuver, but are instead moving about inside the ship, get twice the injuries if they roll low on the table.
* With every succeeding time that the crew rolls on this table during a single engagement, or multiple engagements without rest, a -2 is applied to each roll. The first roll is a flat 1d8. The second roll a 1d8-2. The third a 1d8-4, etc.

### Repairing damaged systems

* Damaged systems may be repaired during combat or while the ship is at rest.
* A crew member who is repairing a system cannot be piloting the ship or manning its weapons.
* Every turn, that crew member may roll engineering to attempt to repair a system. The number of rolls which they have to beat in order to successfully restore 1 hitpoint to it during that turn is equal to the amount of damage that system has received. For example, if the shield generator is damaged by 4 points, my character will need to roll an engineering of 5 in order to repair it so it is only damaged by 3 points.
* The same can be done with the hull.

### Shields

* The maximum hipoints of a ship's shields are determined by the hitpoints of the shield generator. If the shield generator has 4 hitpoints, the shield can have 4 hitpoints.
* The shield regenerates between engagements.

### Chases

* At any point during a combat, or during play, a starship may turn tail and run.
* In these cases, other starships can choose to pursue that starship. If they do, a chase ensues.
* Chases will use the regular chase rules of Aoshtai Cogent.
* The DM will arrange ships by how far they are from the pursued target, and every turn all ships will roll their piloting skill to determine if they get closer or further away from their target.
* Ships may fire missiles at any range during chases.
* Ships may fire their primary weapons once they close into close quarters with another ship.