Damage
Combat in space can be highly dangerous to the vessel and its crew. Once a starship has been damaged, critical systems might malfunction or shut down altogether, leaving its passengers without electricity, gravity, or even air. Such damage might also cause a starship to lose its sensors, propulsion, or weapons systems, which could spell defeat during an active engagement.
When a gunner hits with an attack, she rolls the damage dealt by the weapon she is using and determines which quadrant of the targeted starship she hits. A starship’s shield quadrants are the same as its firing arcs (see the diagram on page 318). Damage is first applied to any shields the target starship has in the quadrant hit by the attack, depleting a number of Shield Points equal to the amount of damage dealt. If that quadrant’s Shield Points reach 0, that shield is entirely depleted and any excess damage is applied to the target starship’s Hull Points. If the ship doesn’t have shields or if its shields in that quadrant have already been depleted, apply all damage directly to the target’s Hull Points.
If a starship has a Damage Threshold (see page 292), any attack that would deal damage to its Hull Points equal to or less than this Damage Threshold fails to damage the ship’s Hull Points. If the damage is greater than the Damage Threshold, the full amount of damage is dealt to the ship’s Hull Points.
If a ship is reduced to 0 or fewer Hull Points, it is disabled and it floats in its current direction of travel at a rate of half its speed until it is repaired, rescued, or destroyed. Crew members aboard such ships are not in immediate danger unless their life-support system is wrecked, but they might eventually die from starvation and thirst if they have no way to repair the ship.
If a ship ever takes damage that exceeds twice its Hull Points, it is destroyed and can’t be repaired. All systems stop functioning, and the hull is compromised. The crew might initially survive, but without protection, they won’t live very long.
Source
Core Rulebook pg. 320
Starship systems can take critical damage, causing them to become less functional and eventually stop working altogether. Critical damage is scored whenever a gunnery check results in a natural 20 on the die and damage is dealt to the target ship’s hull. The critical range is expanded to a natural 19 or 20 on the die if the target starship was the subject of a successful target system science officer action (see page 325). Critical damage is also scored whenever the target starship’s hull takes damage that causes its total amount of damage to exceed its Critical Threshold (see page 292) or a multiple of that threshold. For example, a starship with 100 Hull Points and a Critical Threshold of 20 takes critical damage each time its total amount of Hull Point damage exceeds 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 points (and so on). An individual attack does not need to deal more than 20 damage to score critical damage against this starship; it just needs to be the attack that pushes the starship’s total damage above a multiple of its Critical Threshold. A starship can take critical damage even when its total Hull Points are below 0. Source Core Rulebook pg. 321 |
The following are the critical damage conditions and their effects, ordered by severity. These effects apply primarily to starship combat and rarely impact noncombat play (wrecked engines can still be used to get a starship to a safe place to repair, for example— though the GM might rule that it takes longer than normal). Source Core Rulebook pg. 321 |
When a starship combat encounter is over, the crew members can repair damage done to their starship, provided it hasn’t been destroyed and they haven’t been captured! Shields regenerate Shield Points at a set rate (depending on the type of shield; see page 302) as long as the starship’s power core isn’t wrecked. You can double this recharge rate for 10 minutes by taking 1 minute and succeeding at an Engineering check (DC = 15 + 1-1/2 × the starship’s tier). Any penalties from critical damage conditions apply to this check. You can remove the critical damage condition from a system by taking 10 minutes and succeeding at an Engineering check. The DC depends on the severity of the condition (DC 15 for glitching, DC 20 for malfunctioning, and DC 25 for wrecked). The system is no longer critically damaged (it has no critical damage conditions) and can function as normal. Repairing damage to the hull (restoring lost Hull Points) is more difficult. You must first stop the starship completely, usually at a safe location (for instance, a world with a nonhostile atmosphere or a dock on a space station), and the repairing character or characters must have access to the outside of the hull. On most of the Pact Worlds, the crew can pay mechanics to repair the starship; the cost and time needed are up to the GM. If the crew is on its own in uncharted territory, it can still repair the starship’s hull. Doing so costs 10 UPBs (see page 233) per point of damage to be repaired and requires 5 hours of work regardless of the number of points repaired. A character who succeeds at an Engineering check (DC = 15 + 1-1/2 × the starship’s tier) can cut either the cost or the time in half. For every 10 points by which she exceeds the DC, she can reduce one of these factors by half (or by half again), to a minimum of 1 UPB per point of damage and 1 hour. Any number of allies can use the aid another action (see page 133) to assist with this Engineering check. Failing the check to reduce the time or cost instead increases the cost by 5 UPBs per point of damage. Source Core Rulebook pg. 321 |
