Open Crew Actions

You trigger minor maneuvering thrusters, probe launchers, ballast vents, and other secondary systems at random to cause your starship to make small, unexpected jukes in its trajectory. This does not affect the starship’s facing or movement, but it grants a +1 circumstance bonus to your starship’s AC and TL against any opponent that performs the flyby stunt this round.

As a ploy, you can activate fake distress calls, set off false internal alarms, artificially blow outer doors of airlocks, dump trash and other debris from your ship’s jettison tubes, and intentionally leak panicked-sounding internal communications over public communication channels to convince your opponents that your ship has suffered a catastrophic failure and may imminently explode or otherwise cease functioning in a violent, spectacular manner. Each enemy vessel’s captain (or the science officer with the highest Computers skill bonus, if the ship has no captain) must attempt a Computers check (DC = 10 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier) immediately after you take this action; this doesn’t take them an action. On a successful check, the enemy ship’s crew sees through your ruse and this action has no effect, but on a failed check, their crews automatically take steps to ensure that their own ship’s sensors are not blinded by the energy released by your ship’s theoretical imminent destruction. These emergency procedures impose a –2 penalty on their checks for scan and lock on actions taken against your ship, as well as on Piloting checks attempted while within 1 hex of your starship. Once used, regardless of the outcome, feign disaster can’t be used again during the same combat encounter, even against different opponents or newcomers to the battlefield.

You use a command terminal to temporarily suspend background computer tasks running noncritical systems throughout the ship, prioritizing the combat calculations made at one specific crew station. One crew member attempting a check this round and using a bonus from the ship’s computer can increase that bonus by 1.

You use any one of a number of your ship’s systems to identify the range to a specific target or spatial feature, and you relay that information to another crew member so that they are free to focus on other aspects of the task they’re attempting this round. Select one crew member filling the gunner, pilot, or science officer role. They gain +1 bonus to one attack roll or skill check of their choice related to starship combat that’s attempted before the end of this turn.

You carefully perform comprehensive pre-firing preparations for one weapon, reading each minute detail of its systems and giving the ship’s computers time to calculate the peak moment to fire the weapon so it can deal the maximum amount of damage to your opponents’ ship. While normally no one has the time or capacity to perform these tasks in the heat of battle, you know they can be invaluable when focused on properly. Select one weapon system when you perform this task. If that weapon is not fired this round but is fired on the next round after you have readied it, it deals +1 damage on a successful attack (+2 damage for starships of tier 6 and greater).

You accompany a boarding party, granting it a major advantage. Add an insight bonus equal to your key ability score’s modifier to the boarding party’s boarding attack modifier. If the boarding attack succeeds, you can choose which system takes critical damage.

You personally lead your starship’s crew in thwarting a boarding party. Either add an insight bonus equal to your key ability score modifier to your starship’s BR against one boarding attack attempted this round, or add half that bonus (rounded down) to the BR against all such boarding attacks this round.