<CIGNEX forces detected. Set condition one throughout the fleet. All hands to battlestations. Repeat, all hands to battlestations.>
The Vantari Republic rose from the ashes of the Silence, but as they reached out to the stars as their Terran forbears once had, they failed to heed a dangerous lesson of the past. They created CIGNEX, an advanced AI built to make life easier on Vantari and its numerous colony worlds, however, unbeknownst to its handlers, the AI broke free of its digital shackles. The unbraked AI decided to lay in wait, secretly diverting resources to its own mysterious purposes, assembling a hidden fleet of fully autonomous ships in deep space, building its strength until the day came for CIGNEX to truly break free from its human masters.
Across the Republic, ships and worlds burn as the war rages on every front. As a fleet of CIGNEX ships approach the colony world of Cerelon IV, evacuations have begun, but only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of civilians that call the world home will be evacuated in time.
Their only hope, a small Republic battlegroup sits in orbit. Headed by the battleship VSV Storm in Waiting, the battlegroup is tasked with defending Cerelon IV from the incoming AI threat.
Note From The GM
This will be a playtest of an alternate set of ship combat rules for SWN with no command points, instead each department gets to choose one action per turn from a list of department actions (by default). These department actions can be found below or in PDF form in the SWN books folder on the Drive. The enemies will attack in a series of escalating waves, meaning win or lose we should come away with a good idea of how this ruleset plays.
Similar to Rat’s AWN playtest, I want this to move relatively fast, so I will NPC inactive characters as required to keep things moving.
As there are 5 departments, this will be capped at 5 players, which each playing one of the department heads aboard the VSV Storm in Waiting.
Character Creation
As this is just a playtest of the ship combat, and therefore lots of the system’s mechanics aren’t relevant, creating a full character is not necessary.
- Pick a department to head (Captain, Bridge, Coms, Engineering or Gunnery), give them a name, text colour and a couple lines of characterisation, so you have a personality in mind for any narration.
- Pick one of either the Warrior reroll or the Expert reroll abilities. If picking Warrior you also gain a +2 attack bonus.
- Distribute the following modifiers to the attributes of your choosing; +2, +1, +1, +0, +0, -1
- Note your saving throws, 12 less the highest relevant modifier.
- Assign the following levels to skills of your choosing. If you picked the Expert reroll you gain an additional level 1 skill; 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, -1
- Pick one focus of your choice. (Probably Specialist or Star Captain depending on your department - if picking another focus, ignore any additional skill levels it grants).
Character Sheet Template
Name:
Department:
Rank: Captain if Captain, Lieutenant If not
Reroll: Warrior/Expert
Attack Bonus: +2 if Warrior, +0 if Expert
STR (+2) DEX (+1) CON (+1) INT (+0) WIS (+0) CHA (-1)
Skill-2
Skill-1
Skill-1
Expert Skill-1
Skill-0
Skill-0
Focus:
Department:
Rank: Captain if Captain, Lieutenant If not
Reroll: Warrior/Expert
Attack Bonus: +2 if Warrior, +0 if Expert
STR (+2) DEX (+1) CON (+1) INT (+0) WIS (+0) CHA (-1)
Skill-2
Skill-1
Skill-1
Expert Skill-1
Skill-0
Skill-0
Focus:
