THE GAME		MOVEMENT

PILOTS AND CREW

The men, women and other beings who operate fighters form an elite corps in the forces of the Terran Overlord Government as well as those of the Commonwealth, the Renegades and the KessRith. They have two skills that play an important part in the game -- Piloting and Gunnery. Piloting skill is primarily used as part of movement, but also represents the ability to make small evasive maneuvers that are effectively invisible due to the game scale. Gunnery skill is used to improve the chances of hitting a target with direct-fire weapons.

INITIAL SKILL LEVELS AND SKILL IMPROVEMENT

The average citizen of the galaxy has no skill in INTERCEPTOR Piloting or Gunnery, and will thus have luck's chance in any attempt to do anything in a ship. Most new pilots and gunners are graduates of one of the various military academies or training centers. Crewmen who complete the whole training sequence will have initial Skill Levels as determined below. A separate roll is made for each of the two skills.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

6
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
4
3

6
5
4
4
4
4
4
4
3
2

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

3
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1

7
6
5
5
5
5
5
5
4
3

TOG

COMMONWEALTH AND
RENEGADE LEGION



KESSRITH EMPIRE

HUMAN, SSORA, NARAM

HUMAN, SSORA, NARAM
VAUVAUSAR
BAUFRIN
KESSRITH

KESSRITH

 0


-1
-1
-2
 0


+1

 0


-1
-2
-1
 0


+1

Increases in skill level come only from experience. A crewman may increase either his Piloting or his Gunnery skill one level for every five kills. For this purpose, a kill is credited to the one who either caused a ship to explode, killed its last surviving crewman, or scored the last hit before the target's crew abandoned ship. An armed ship or OI of less than 1000 tons is worth 1 kill. An armed ship or OI of 1000 tons or larger is worth 1 kill per 1000 tons, rounding up; an unarmed ship or OI is worth 1 kill, regardless of size. Fractional kills are not allowed; if there is a dispute as to who gets a kill, each claimant rolls a die with the highest roll receiving credit. There is no upper limit to Gunnery and/or Piloting skill levels, although it is fairly unusual to see crewmen with skill levels of 10 or more. Any pilot who meets one had better hope that he's on the same side!

FAMILIARITY

When crews manage to survive battle in the same ship again and again, they gradually learn its subtleties and idiosyncrasies. Because of this familiarity, they receive a bonus to their skill levels when flying that particular ship, as shown on the table below.

 1 -  5
 6 - 10
11 - 20
21 - 30
31+

 0
+1
+2
+3
+4

 0
 0
+1
+2
+3

SKILL MAINTENANCE

Like any other skills, Piloting, Gunnery and Familiarity bonuses must be maintained through use or they will be lost. A pilot or gunner loses 1 from his Familiarity combat missions tally for every five consecutive non-combat missions, as defined above. Likewise, 1 is subtracted from a pilot's or gunner's Piloting or Gunnery skill (at player's choice) for every 10 consecutive non-combat missions. In any case, a pilot's or gunner's skills may never fall below their initial level -- once learned, they're never forgotten.

WEAPONS CONTROL AND TASK OVERLOADING

Each crewman controls particular weapons, which must be specified during the ship's construction. A crewman can normally handle no more than five weapons, all of which are firing in the same direction at all times, without losing effectiveness from task overload. For this purpose, all weapons controlled by a TOT synchronizer (see COMBAT and CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM) are considered to be a single weapon. Task overloading means that a crewman is being given too much to do at once, and becomes especially critical if the crewman has to constantly watch for enemy action in several directions at once. This will happen if he controls fixed weapons covering more than one arc of fire, or if one man is trying to control both a turret and fixed weapons. Details follow:

If a hardpoint carries only non-weapon pods (ELS, ECM, Safeguard-1, Sensor, or Painting) or Decoy missiles, it is ignored when determining the number of weapons in use as well as arcs of fire covered.

If a crewman is killed or incapacitated, all weapons assigned to his control are out of action unless another crewman takes over for him. All weapons on a ship with more than 1 crewman and without a bridge (typically, a 2-seat fighter with a turret) can be fired by any surviving crewman with Gunnery skill, but with an additional +3 modifier. All weapons on a ship with more than 1 crewman and a Bridge (typically, a corvette) may be fired by any surviving crewman with Gunnery skill. In these cases, apply task overloading modifiers as necessary. Weapons may also be abandoned by their controller to relieve task overload; they are out of action for the rest of the game unless re- manned by someone else.

Empty hardpoints and autoloaders are automatically considered to be abandoned for this purpose.

Some examples of task overloading: A large Renegade Legion corvette with a Bridge is about to be attacked by a mass of TOG fighters. The pilot is assigned control of five fixed forward-firing weapons, while there are three gunners aboard with the following weapons assigned to them:

#1 = five weapons in a turret;
#2 = four fixed aft-firing autoloading missile launchers;
#3 = twenty fixed weapons mounted ten to a side, with TOT gear for each group of ten.

Gunner 1 would take no modifier to his shots since he has only five weapons to deal with. Gunner 2 has no overloading problem per se, although it is likely that he will be taking negative modifiers for firing at multiple targets in a turn. Gunner 3 is considered to be controlling 2 weapons since TOT is in use -- but, since his weapons are on two different sides of the ship, he takes a +2 modifier. The pilot has no overloading problem.

After some turns of battle, the Renegade corvette has taken a considerable hammering. Gunner 1 is dead, but three of his turret's weapons are still working; Gunner 2 is wounded and unconscious, and all of his autoloaders are empty; Gunner 3 is unwounded and all of his weapons are working, but the TOT gear on the right side has been disabled; the pilot is unwounded and all of his weapons are working. Gunner 3 would have a +8 modifier if he tried to keep all of his weapons working: +2 for two arcs of fire being covered, plus +6 for the number of weapons above five under his control since the right side TOT is gone. Instead of doing this, he abandons all but 4 of the right side weapons, leaving him with a total of five weapons under his control and reducing his modifier to +2. The pilot takes control of Gunner 1's turret in addition to his own weapons, giving him a modifier of +7: +4 for pilot controlling both fixed and turreted weapons and +3 for number of weapons above 5 under his control, since only three of the turret's weapons are still working. The pilot does not abandon any of these weapons, although the overloading makes it unlikely that he'll hit anything with any of them. Some time later, Gunner 2 regains consciousness. Since his autoloaders are empty, he automatically abandons them and takes control of Gunner 1's turret from the pilot. This leaves both the pilot and Gunner 2 with no overloading modifier.

FLIGHT CONTROL

A ship with a single crewman (typically, a single-seat fighter) can only be flown by that crewman (obviously!)

A ship with more than 1 crewman and without a Bridge (typically, a 2-seat fighter with a turret) can be flown by any surviving crewman with Piloting skill, but with an additional +3 modifier to any Piloting skill rolls.

A ship with more than 1 crewman and with a Bridge (typically, a corvette) may be flown by any surviving crewman with Piloting skill, with no modifiers to Piloting skill rolls.

Any crewman aboard a ship without a Bridge and who does not have Piloting skill cannot take control unless a scenario's special rules allow it (this should be quite rare, adventure stories to the contrary!)

A ship with more than 1 crewman and with a Bridge can be flown by crewmen without Piloting skill; as noted above, however, they will have luck's chance in any attempt to do anything with the ship.

THE GAME		MOVEMENT