Ascend Vehicles & Ships

These are preliminary thoughts of vehicle/ship stats, combat and miscellaneous gameplay.

General view

Milieus

Sword and Starship

• High speed
• Lots of carrying (mecha, boarding pods, strike witches, space marines, etc)
• Heroism (ability to be highly upgraded)

Heavy Metal

• Primary Firepower (guns)
• Defenses
• Mass-producible

Infospace

• Extended Firepower (missiles, torpedoes, 'special' weapons)
• Systems
• Stealth

Stats

Not necessarily comprehensive, or universally applicable.

• Defense: The target number to hit
• Shields/Armor: These reduce all damage inflicted. Some weapons or effects ignore some/all of one or the other - or both.
• Hits: How much damage must be accumulated before structural damage (ie, loss of Structure Points) occurs.
• Damage Threshold: The amount of damage (after armor) that must be done in a single attack to inflict multiple Structure Points of damage. (number TBD)
• Critical Threshold: A higher threshold to inflict more Structure Points.
• Annihilation Threshold: A value at which point the vehicle/ship suffers a rapid and uncontrolled autodisassembly - boom, magazine hit or reactor containment breach.
• Structure Points: A tracker of 'mega-hits'. Once these are exhausted the vehicle is literally shot to shit and can no longer operate in any meaningful manner - save perhaps as cover.
• Passive Detection: Eh, lets you detect stuff.
• Active Detection: Shine a light into the darkness. Higher value than passive, but also lights you up.
• ECM: How exactly this plays into stuff has not yet been decided, but probably means something.
• Signature: The measure of how easy or difficult it is to spot your unit.
• Emissions: A value that stacks onto Signature (ie, making you more easy to be spotted) representing the waste energy - thermal, etheric, electromagnetic, psionic, etc - of your unit. See Stealth and Detection for more detail.
• Energy: How much etheric energy your unit generates each turn, presumably by turning condensed etheric fuel (such as EAM) into useful electro-etheric energy. Any not spent (for whatever reason) vanishes at the end of the turn unless stored in a capacitor.
• Capacitor: A power storage medium.

Rules

General Stuff

Most systems can consume extra energy to achieve higher damage and/or added effects (both numerical and status). Some possible examples:

A beam cannon might be able to spend extra energy to gain the ability to ignore a certain amount of armor.

ECM emitters might be able to spend extra energy to scramble enemy computer systems.

engines might be able to spend extra energy to perform evasive maneuvers, making the vehicle difficult to hit.

In addition to drawing extra energy out of the capacitor or shunting energy from other, shutdown systems, systems can also be overcharged by feeding them energy normally but not firing/acting. This means they will progressively build to their max charge over one or more turns of inactivity. If you choose not to fire/activate upon reaching full charge, holding the charge will inflict a hit of damage every turn - per base power consumed, and the system must also be continually fed to maintain the charge.

Systems that are functioning unless turned off (such as shields or engines) cannot be progressively overcharged - they use the power as fast as it is fed to them.

Stealth and Detection

Passive detection is done by rolling/comparing the passive detection stat to the target's signature + emissions.

Active detection is done by using the active detection stat against the target's signature. The Emission stat is disregarded in this case, because active sensors are specifically looking for radiated emissions which will generally overwhelm waste emissions.

Active detection allows for locks and other useful status effects - passives may be able to achieve these, but will be more difficult.

Units that have the Silent Running ability can enter Silent Running, which deactivates most/all power generators and leaves the unit operating entirely on capacitor power. This brings the unit's emissions down to a minimal level, making it quite stealthy against all but a determined adversary. Unfortunately, with the powerplants cold it will also only have limited endurance before it must reactivate them to recharge.

Misc Ideas

Induction coils; target an enemy and he takes damage based on how much is in his capacitor. Possibly gets some energy out of it, too.