Well I would say go for it. The gunship and the ship of the line have several "must have" mods to make their ships work. anything to make those easier would probably be okay because there are about 4 or 5 mods I think you NEED when building a heavy cruiser or destroyer. Even if you got it 2 easier there would still be formidable and daunting check at some point.

My bad, this is correct. This difficulty change would have altered a few thing but not significantly prior to the addition of the ship of the line. The two quick builds would have had slightly different stats as we would have run out of destiny points at some point in the build (assuming we were even succeeding) but with things as they stand you could still get insane numbers of weapons banks on a sil 5 ship. I think I'm looking at a potential of 8 (still disregard some of the stats as they would be slightly different) weapons banks if you stripped the ship down further. This would involve dropping to a single ion engine ditching the med bays and life support. this would be extreme but I think its what we are trying to avoid.

I do assume I get the mods although I don't pick them all up. I make the assumption because they are average or easy within 40 xp of playing a shipwright. Most of the time we are looking at 2 yellow 2 green 2-4 blue with an automatic success and 2 advantage and I did two black (for added difficulty) and 2 purple. The shipwright can then move extra success but that is unimportant for mods. The home one build with 5 yellow and 5 blue was rolled out completely and it didn't matter. Ever. like it wasn't even close on any occasion. The mods are only not a cakewalk if you don't have a mechanics skill or a friend to give you a hand (or tool and materials) but they very quickly do become a cakewalk for people who build for it. I've seen the dice turn on people but in this case it is very improbable that someone will fail, I know because I've tried. I've run some checks with three black for the heck of it and even didn't use the ability to lower difficulties just because it didn't matter. I've also built a cruiser with engines that that it didn't need because it couldn't go that fast, just to raise difficulty. I don't want to make this too hard to do. A party with someone with some mechanics skill or talents should have no problem building a sil 4 freighter so the story can progress. If it is a war story sure you can try to alter a "shuttle" into a warship, by all means you can try but the styles of ship in the silhouette 4 bracket aren't war ships meant to get shot up or carry tons of weapons. At best they are gunships, troop carriers, freighters and personal spacecraft. Clicking on the corner of their image and dragging it out shouldn't suddenly turn it into a warship. I understand that there are some builds that can be produced this way and not others, so I'm not saying change the Silhouette or class requirement but add a new level of failure. I'm afraid if you raise the difficulty of the check you turn people away from building a simple ship that allows them to get from point a-b and also lets them say "hey I built this, its mine." I don't want it to be difficult to build a shuttle for those purposes. I just don't want someone to build something like what I built or worse. Those numbers I used by the way, are the 10 base from the book and the ten from mods with two more with advantage spent.

I used the stock number of HP out of the book. They aren't disasters there are specific things it can be spent on. Sure they could be really bad but most of them I could see a GM allowing them to fix after they find out there is a problem. The last three charts that would receive a red die don't outright kill the players just add I serious problem later. The thing is that pushing the scope of the build should be easy to do in that you only need one or two advantage but there needs to be some risk for doing so. Most of the time a despair wont roll and all of the despair results require at least a single despair to roll later for them to come up. Two of them are 2 despair to be an issue. I have not had a single roll in either the book system or the article that results in something bad. I had to use the shipwrights talents to make something bad happen. it just seems too easy and this seems like a way to make people think.

It wouldn't be bad if the larger scope was two advantage but I think either increasing or upgrading the difficulty of subsequent checks (I like upgrade personally) would really make player talk about their goals for the ship. If there is a new level of risk involved they have to ask themselves is it worth it and I think that gets people more involved in the process and builds up excitement for the ship. I also see there is an argument to be made that it shouldn't be the case this is just a personal opinion at this point. I like seeing one red die because it reminds me that failure is an option.

I think the check for the frame and hull is too easy. A shuttle frame is only hard but you can get the weapons banks by increasing your scope. You should make the hull daunting if you intend to keep the same silhouette requirements. I want to hand this to players who want to play an engineer but I don't want someone who is 1 hour and 45 min into my campaign, building a "ship of the line" (used in broad meaning) because it was easy enough for them to try. If you don't want to raise silhouette requirements or frame requirements then I would make it more difficult. I can just see a player going "we need a shuttle" followed by a "I can do what?", I'd like for there to be a more obvious reason why that isn't the case. With a starting character I was able to design and build a shuttle with sil 5 speed 3 HT40 SS40 defense 6/3/3/3 and 6 armor handling -1 (this was with 2 black for testing reasons). I have a hyper drive, advanced sensors, a med bay, engineering access, escape pods, life supports systems, and highly automated. The other 10 HP went to weapons banks. My ship has 25 weapons (a lot more than dp20 lancer or CR90). because I'm size 5 I get light turbo lasers made available. When the checks were rolled 5 times the only one I failed more than once was the assembly which was daunting. Now would a character have the credits to pay for this? Probably not. We should make the difficulty dissuade the players from doing this as soon as they see the article. I like that larger scope is easy to get but before vsl was added it was kinda a bad thing mechanically. It made you easier to hit and harder for you to hit enemies. Now it gives you more HT and gives you access to the bigger hulls with strong mods. I recommend that the "larger scope" also upgrade the difficulty of further checks on the project to reflect the frame being pushed to its limits. It mixes red into the system so that we use the other half of the table and that's scary to builders. Additionally, we might consider making the "ship of the line" hull difficulty daunting. Does a team of engineers with ~100 xp care? No. Does a shipwright with ~100-200 xp care? No. Does a character that is not an engineer or very early engineers care? Heck yes they do. If my rolls were hard, normal with a red, daunting with a red and daunting with a red my starting characters would never try this. Also when a hight xp character goes to build home one or their own ISD you want it to be impressive. You want other non engineer character to sit with their jaws on the table as the engineer downgrades difficulties adds his 5 blue upgrades his checks and pools this massive dice pool. IF there are hard and easy checks its kinda a forgone conclusion when the 300xp engineer starts the project and that's no fun.

Okay so if I wanted to do dp20 id go ship of the line. If I want to cr90 I go gunship. One is about bigger gun and one is about more guns. maybe specify corvette as having access to the ship of the line. I'm concerned about players moving lower level ships up into the silhouette 5 and getting access to ship of the line with a frame that doesn't make sense. would that be a reasonable fix?

yeah but my "dp 20" has 10 oversized weapons lol I misunderstood id give gunship access to a single weapons bank but id make weapons banks a size 6 thing. The gunship would be the exception obviously.

oh shoot is the special that it gets a single 1 size up weapon system or that its systems can be one size up?

I'm not sure if I included all of the changes but I was very close to making a dp20. my HT is within 5 and SS matches. Shields are 3/3/3/6 and I have matching armor with a better handling. This is running the gunship mod so while the DP 20 has more of its light turbo laser its only by 2 but I get medium TL because of the oversized. Instead of 6 Quad laser cannons I went for 4 Quad Ion cannons (heavy) because they have longer range higher dmg and do ion. I also did the 4 concussion missile launchers. I don't have the extra hard point but I have a med bay. I see the point that there are not enough hp in this situation however the things you have equipped players with (specials and mods) allows for them to make something comparable. The same can be said about the lancer class at sil 5. The lancer is admittedly crap (mechanically, idk lore) but my 14 weapon system ship will have no problem dismantling a lancer and my ions will have no problem shutting down fighters about as fast because more of my damage gets through and I have to shut down a smaller pool of strain. Both the medium tl and the heavy ions are not usable by either the lancer or the dp20 but your gunships access to oversize evens things up. As for the asserter idk ill have to look at it tomorrow lol I think the slight difference in fire power ( I don't think its a lack of) in this situation should be left the 5% we just can't get.

I previously recommended weapons banks however, after thinking about the concept I asked myself what are problems are we solving by adding this (we should change as little as possible right)? Also, how will people run this? So, after putting this under more intense thought, I would ask if you intend to increase the number of hard points into the hundreds or just add this "bank" system? If you do intend to make destroyers with 140-200 hard points, do we need weapons banks? Remember, if there are ways to get another 32 hard points through hull mods we could see a very healthy 160-230 ish hard points at the base construction. If all systems only take up 20-30 hard points that leaves 120-210 hard points for weapons. So if we are just concerned with "does the ship have enough weapons?" we don't need weapons banks for ships with 150+ hard points because we will have enough hard points for a full weapons compliment. However, the "weapons bank" idea is useful when considering how people are going to run these monstrosities. It is very likely that players will run the banks for barrage actions as opposed to just making checks for each battery (it would destroy the cinematic aspect of the game). So if we reduce the number of hard points back down to 50 (just picked a random number) and we need 3 for engines and 15-25 for bays, that leaves 22-32 for weapons banks. We can also get rid of 8 of those (we are now down to 14-24) for attachments people might want to add after construction. 14-24 weapons banks would be a lot of weapons even if the banks were a single silhouette worth of weapons. An ISD could get 112-192 weapons. If you then put the requirement that the weapons in each bank had to be the same you limit the variety of weapons making the barrages function. An additional benefit would be that the other people at the table don't have to suffer through one guy hand picking 150+ individual hard points worth of weapons. This rough calculation of 112-192 weapons works for both the 130 weapons of the Imperial 1 class Star destroyer and the 150 weapons of the Praetor 2 class star battle cruiser. Also, you would be allowed in this situation to have 14 different kinds of weapons giving a builder 9 additional types of weapons compared the ISDs 5 types of weapon systems. I seriously recommend not going to silhouette 5 with the ship of the line hull type. Under no situation should a corvette be considered a ship of the line in Star Wars. Even a frigate at silhouette 6 is pushing what I think most people would consider a ship of the line. The really crazy one would be a shuttle up sized to 5 getting ahold of several weapons banks. Moving the silhouette 6 would allow for really hefty corvettes and frigates to get small banks for more of their HPs which wouldn't be TOO bad but I think even this could pushed to broken. I would have the "decreased crew thing" be something you spend advantage on at some point but it would also reduce your strain threshold. Either that or its a bay of some kind with a limitation of one per ship (2 for carriers, heavy cruisers, destroyers, and stations) and it still puts stress on the ship. I wouldn't worry about increasing the difficulty of each mod on the Hull and engine because in the case of large ships you are going to have some crazy engineers (possibly teams or parties of engineers) and you can make their checks formidable and they wont care. I would just make sure there aren't more mods on our hulls than there were on the ones in the books. I would allow more for both the gun ship and the ship of the line because they are harder checks to make in the first place and because they are intended to do more anyways. These ships will likely become very important basses of operations and will need to have more work done to them. You might slap on time penalties but at this point the party has been kicking it for like a year so what's a few more hours right. As far as a gravity well generator, I'm just spit-balling some ideas. There is a really big cannon used by one of the republic ships in Episode 3 that I could imagine putting some strain on the systems. I don't know enough to really come up with anything else that would help lower strain. I will say as a reflection on these builds ( I have also done the MC30 but I need to do the write up) that it is nice that we are setting the standard as something that is already in the game but we should keep in mind that people might want to build something that is new to the universe. I may sit down and try to break the system at some point and ill let you know how that goes. Sorry for the wall of text. As always, may the force be with you.

ISD build is odd. HT 60+65+4=129 (I used adv to get 4 more), sil 8, speed 2, shields are 6/3/3/3, Strain threshold 94, handling -1, armor 7, crew is 12,800, encumbrance is about 18k I have 4 hanger bays, 3 cargo bays, 3 med bays hyper drive and sensors and I have massive 2. I have generated 21 left over hard points at this point. I am going to try to fix a few things before we do weapons. ( there are 130 on an isd) Enhanced carbon-durasteel armor (8 armor -2 handling) core rule book 286, 2hard points spent Reinforced armor plating (armor 10 handling -3 HT 135), 2 hard points spent I have 17 Hard points after fixing the armor handling and trying to get some HT concerns/comments/questions 1. HT is still really hard to get. I ran this with five yellow dice and I still only get 1 triumph about half the time and none the rest. While a triumph for silhouette of HT was a move in the right direction you might consider moving the two advantage for one (I took this four times) and make it three advantage for your silhouette in HT with a limitation of two times per vehicle. This would allow fighters to potentially get 4-6 HT but that is only one more round if it takes a concussion missile or a torpedo so no big deal. I think this is really important because this is the second large build I've done with a character that isn't realistic and both ships have come out 10+ HT off before attachments. 2. You might consider making a different hull with silhouette requirements. Make the gun ship about having oversized weapons and keeping its handling up a little more. Give it 2 silhouette of hard points but double the crew mods. Only give it one defense mod and one armor mod. Then make a ship of the line hull with a silhouette requirement of 7 and up. it would have a 4 base armor and a -2 handling. It would need two defense mods and two armor mods. It would also get 4 silhouette of hard point but double the crew (base crew needs to be 1000 rather than 800 it is an easier number and totals need to be bigger). The ship also needs a built in way to get HT. gain hit point mods I don't know what you could do that was special other than maybe give it a free rank of massive. 3. I would say that the destroyer needs to have about 60+VSL hard points available to it. This build would have had 21+125= 146 hard points when we got to the weapons and attachment part of the build. 4. Both large builds have had a decent amount of shield and strain threshold above what the target was. If there was a built in way to spend shield generation power or strain so that people could get something cool you might find people end up with strain thresholds closer to the target ships. 5. Can you explain how the repair bays are purchased? What benefit would there be to having multiple other than its a large ship it might be nice to have two? Its probably fine I just don't get it. 6. Just a thought (please don't crucify me) what about a gravity well generator to help spend strain or shields? how would it work? Is that even a reasonable thing? I think this is making progress. Thanks for considering my input. May the force be with you.

Fair warning, I have not read all of the posts on here so I may repeat your recommendations, sorry ahead of time. I went ahead and tried to build one of my favorite ships in the game and movies, Home One, using the PowerPoint that was attached . The character that will be trying this would have to have about 300 experience invested into their mechanics skill and engineering trees. I went ahead and went down Mechanic and Shipwright. It resulted in a 5 int and 5 mechanics. I have ways through gear and talents to get 4 extra advantage, one extra success and 5 blue. Additionally, I can reduce the difficulty of mechanics checks and reroll a check if necessary. I decided to use the books prescribed hard points as a guide for this build (for my own sanity). I Started with the Destroyer frame. After rolling, I had 1T and 7adv to spend on the table. Home one is a silhouette 9 so I purchased "larger scope". I am trying to get to a massive 3 so I also got "too big to hurt". Cant have enough hard points so I grabbed that. since this character would have been played several sessions and would really deserve it, I spent the rest on Hard work recognized. early concerns I am a bit low on health at only 141 to the Home One's. See page 56 of lead by example You might consider changing "hard work recognized". A character played to this point has probably built up to this for some time. The player will be just shaking to have their new star destroyer (mwahahaha) but 2 duty... it just feels a bit low. The build isn't over I suppose and the GM might award more duty but maybe changing "hard work recognized" to the silhouette size worth of duty(reflecting several sessions of work) might be more rewarding to the character and the player. Continuing on, I decided on the Ion turbine engines as my limitation on speed is two (silhouette limitations) and, with mods, this meets without going over. Furthermore, the ITE also have a good strain associated to it so that seems like a good choice. My roll resulted in 9 adv to spend on the table. I picked up all the mods on the engines and added "enhanced power to deflectors". My defense is a 4/1/1/1 with 104 Strain threshold. Any concern I had about getting those fantastic Mon Cal shields will be somewhat addressed when we get to the hull. The hulls are better then they were in the book. Thank you. That being said, I am going to hit most of my problems here (as I think most people did when they got the book). My role resulted in 1T and 8 Adv to spend on the chart. I am trying to get that massive rank up so I got "too tough to hurt". This is where I run into my first problem both in the book and the PowerPoint. The way it is worded makes me think they don't stack "gain massive 1" vs "gain +1 massive ranks" or something along those lines. that may have been cleared up but it might not hurt to rewrite if they are supposed to stack. If they are not supposed to stack getting to a massive 3 (building a really big ship mid you) will be very difficult. Also the combat hull gave the +1 massive quality that would have gotten me to three (assuming the other two stack) but that is not a hull in your rendition. I do like the additional HP mods but it is not clear how I would calculate the extra personnel. If my stock ship was 3 would it become 9 and then 27 or would it increase to 9 from 3 and increase by an additional 6 to 15? for something the size of a Star destroyer its important. I like that there was a very good attempt at getting the build more gun slots though. Now the part that was the most detrimental was the oversized attachments and specials. I don't really need them from about silhouette 7 and up. I knw why they are there but you might consider making the oversized weapon stuff be interchangeable for more armor, defense zones increases or hit points. I ended up after spending everything with less hp and armor (141 hp and 7 armor). I also gained an integrated attachment and another hard point. I love your "dedicated bays". This is fantastic hands down best stuff added. I went for 4 of the cargo bays bringing me to 90k encumbrance. This is a little better than home one. I also went with only one repair bay but only because I didn't know how much they cost after the first one. do they get cheaper or more expensive? I might consider a second if they get cheaper. I got 4 medical bays (its a big ship). I got the engineering access and the escape pods. I need to long range sensors so I went advanced as well getting the hyper drive. I also picked up the reinforced armor mod and the shield generator mod. Lastly, I decided 6 hanger bays would allow me to get the fighter and auxiliary ships of the home one. 9 silhouette 9 Armor -2 handling 2 speed 147 HT and 104 strain threshold. so I have one integrated attachment and 12 hp for weapons. I could back off one cargo bay, one med bay, and one hanger bay. I would feel a bit low on the hangers and med stations but it would work. I would officially have less encumbrance than Home one. So 16 guns. That doesn't work obviously. if we run the rules as they stand I need about 140-165 more hp to be at the right point. you might consider allowing the players to buy banks of weapons on corvettes up. The bank would be your silhouette+1. If we did this I would be able to put 120-200 weapon systems on the ship which is in the ball park for 9s. I would say without changing how purchasing guns works the destroyer needs like 200 hps (I feel like something is wrong just saying that) but if there is a change to a bank system you need 19-25. I hope this was useful feedback. Maybe you can explain some of the things I don't entirely understand. Also, if there is any other way I can help feel free to ask. May the force be with you.