Something seems to be missing....

[Apparition]

I am about to run a new campaign tomorrow, so I decided to refresh my knowledge of the rules....and I dont know how I missed this the first time.

" Overcharging a thruster plate to increase a ship's agility"
" Overcharging a powerplant to get extra output"

These are descriptions of the various engineering specialties in the skill section. There is no mention, however, of any of this anywhere else in the book as far as I can tell. I also notice that in space combat, it lists drive systems as a station thet players can fill, yet gives no description on exactly what they could do there. Damage is covered by damage control, so one must assume that they can do something to tweak those systems, yet there are no rules anywhere that I could find to cover this. Hell, there are like three or four actions that the ships "senso operator" can perform, and the is not even listed as a valid crew position. Is there something I am missing?

I love the idea that you can squeeze more out of your ship then the manufacturer advertises with some good skills and creative players. I feel there needs to be at least some baseline examples however to go off of. Being an engineering student, I know what generally happens to a system when you overclock it, but how does that translate to game rules? Any opinions, or actual rules I have overlooked, would be hugely appreciated before I have to go deal with those pesky players tommorow

 

[Zparkz]

Maybe you can do something like i do? I use TNE rules, but it might be translateable somehow.

When travelling between point A to point B in real space the engineer may roll an enigeer roll to see if he can get the maneuverdrive to run a little more efficient and maybe save a few percent fuel. TNE uses reaction mass. Just to not make it too effcient I offset it with higher the wear value of the drive more fuel inefficient the maneuverdrive runs. I.e. it gobbles up more fuel per ton of thrust when the maneuverdrive is old and worn.

Rules suggestion:
Each combat turn the engineer tries to increase the agility roll an engineer task with a -2 modifier.
Note down each time this has been done. If the task ends with a failure roll 2D above the number of attempts to increase the agility. For instance if theere is 3 attempts, the player needs to roll 4 or more to escape a breakdown. Preventive maintenance can rectify some or all of damage done to the system by overclocking.