Chapter 6: Stations And Bases

Spaceships aren’t the only platforms for weapons, sensors, docking facilities, and other such tasks that exist in a science fiction setting. Space stations and ground bases often have many of the same missions and capabilities, and are even more commonplace than large warships or commercial ships. A space station is basically a ship without engines—and, to extend the analogy, a ground base is a ship without engines or life support (although that depends on the local conditions). Note: This final chapter of Warships was not completed before the cancellation of the product line. However, we include these sections as originally written, along with TABLE 6-1 below, to serve as a good starting point for you to use to develop your own stations and bases.

Facilities

In very general terms, there are three types of stations: ground bases, outposts, and space stations. You might also consider any kind of industrial complex or settlement to be a potential station or base, but that exceeds the scope of this product.

Ground Base A ground base consists of a good-sized stretch of land on which a number of free-standing buildings and structures have been built. Usually, a ground base is located on a planetary surface with environmental conditions more or less suitable for human life, but a large base with sealed buildings and bunkers linked by subterranean transit tubes could be built on airless worlds. Ground bases may be built for a number of reasons: supply depots, naval repair and refueling, observation, defense, scientific research, heavy industry, trade and commerce, or even just habitation. Ground bases can exceed the size of even the largest starships. A major defensive complex and naval base might sprawl for hundreds of kilometers, ringed by powerful bunkers and dotted with hardened shelters for grounded ships. Small ground bases are cheap compared to spaceships; they can make use of bulky and inexpensive materials such as reinforced concrete or fused rock. The largest ground bases may cost three or four times as much as a fortress ship and beggar a galactic civilization.

Table 6-1: Stations and Bases Installation Hull Pts 5% 10% Light Habitat Dome 100 (+10) Light Platform 150 (+15) Light Post 200 (+20) Medium Hab Complex 300 (+60) Medium Platform400 (+80) Medium Bunker600 (+120) Heavy Ships Heavy Platform 1000 (+300) Heavy Bunker 2000 (+600) 100 200 Super-heavy Ships Super Platform 10000 (+5000) 500 1000 Fortress 20000 (+10000) 1000 2000

Tough Target

Zones

Limit

Crew

Cost

Small 0 steps Light 0 steps Light -1 step

$5 M $10 M $20 M

Light Med Med

-1 step

-2 steps

$30 M $60 M $100 M

Hvy Hvy

-3 steps

-4 steps

$250 M $500 M

S-Hvy -4 steps S-Hvy -5 steps

$5000 M $20000 M

Hull Points: The number of hull points available in this type, representing its capacity for installing systems. The first number is the basic hull point total, the number in parenthesis is the bonus hull point total. Tough: The installation’s toughness rating. Target: The installation’s basic resistance modifier to enemy fire, based on its size. 5% and 10%: This is the number of hull points a system requiring 5 or 10 percent of the hull requires. This information is simply a shortcut to save you time and effort. Note that you can add them to get 15 percent, double the 10 percent score to get 20 percent, etc., etc. S, W, M, C: The installation’s Stun, Wound, Mortal, and Critical damage tracks. Crew: For information purposes only, a general estimate of how many crewmen a typical installation of this size requires. Cost: The cost of the hull, in credits, Concord dollars, or the appropriate currency for your campaign.

Outpost An outpost is a sealed structure built on or in a significant body—a planet, moon, or asteroid. While a ground base is really a collection of buildings sharing a common purpose, an outpost is more like a spaceship built on the ground. It’s designed to protect its inhabitants from the environment around them, and it’s usually placed in a location that no one would want to live in if there wasn’t some overriding reason to be there. Like a spaceship, an outpost can be pictured as a collection of systems all located in the same general vicinity. Outposts are cheaper than spacecraft of similar size, since bulky but inexpensive materials such as concrete and rock can be used freely in their construction. An outpost doesn’t need engines and doesn’t have to worry about drifting into the nearest gravity well if seriously damaged by enemy fire. Since outposts (and ground bases, for that matter) don’t have to devote space and equipment to mobility, they are more heavily armed and armored than a similarly sized spacecraft. In fact, it’s downright dangerous to attack a serious defensive installation. But the base can’t ever run away, and the enemy always knows where to find it.

Space Stations Compared to an outpost or ground base, a space station is more expensive and more vulnerable. So why build a space station when an outpost would do? First, not all planets or positions are suitable for bases or outposts. A space station has to compensate for a number of hostile factors—vacuum, climate control, and radiation, among others—and these factors can be defeated competently by any civilization capable of building vessels for space travel. But the engineering challenges posed by building in the atmospheres of Jovian worlds or the murderous temperature extremes of Mercurian worlds may not be so easily conquered. A space station orbiting the planet in question can perform many of the same functions as a ground base, and be easier to build and operate too. Secondly, space stations are mobile. Even if they lack propulsion of their own, it’s possible to tow most space stations to new positions once they’ve outlived their usefulness in their original position. Ground bases are much less portable. Next, many facilities or industries are more efficient in zero-G than they would on the ground. For example, the size of a drydock or cradle offers serious constraints to the size of a spaceship that can be built in a ground-based shipyard, but an orbital shipyard can make use of zero-G construction techniques to build much bigger ships. Finally, there are tactical advantages to a position in orbit or in open space. The space station’s sensors don’t have permanent blind spots behind the bulk of a planet, or distortions due to atmospheric interference. Ground forces from a hostile planet can’t attack a space station, and the

indigenous population of a primitive world may never even detect an orbital station if the visitors overhead don’t want to be seen.

Missions

For purposes of Warships, a base or station exists to perform one of four basic missions: defense, observation, spaceport, or shipyard. While there are many other reasons to build an outpost or a space station, these four reasons have the most bearing on the action and support of major warships.

Defense This is perhaps the simplest mission to describe. A base or station designed for defensive purposes is armed with heavy anti-ship weapons and sited in some location where enemy vessels are not welcome. Defensive stations may be placed to support the passive defense of a star system or planet, much like the coastal fortresses and shore batteries of a seagoing navy. Defensive stations can also assume an offensive role by interdicting an enemy planet, system, or transit route. Two battle platforms towed into opposing orbits around an enemy planet would form a fairly effective blockading force, while a battle station protecting a wormhole or stargate of some kind could very easily bar the passage of enemy ships. If the science of the campaign allows for the creation of chokepoints in space, some specific place where spaceships must pass in order to reach other locations, a powerful star-fortress may be able to completely immobilize enemy movements. The measure of a defense station’s capability is pretty simple: How much weaponry does it support, and how resistant is it to enemy fire? Defense bases or stations may range from a small missile battery or a pair of fusion beams in a hardened bunker to titanic orbital battle-stations capable of standing off a squadron of battleships. Defensive Systems Type Zero: none Type One: Type Two: sparse defense network Type Three: small network Type Four: armed space stations Type Five: planetary shields, advanced satellites and weaponry

Shipyard Shipyards are a special type of ground base or space station. Any ship bigger than a corvette or light freighter requires a major shipyard for its construction. The construction of a large ship is not only a highly technical process, but also a process requiring the ability to manipulate thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of tons of the toughest and most durable materials around. The industrial machinery re-

quired to fashion hundreds of precisely shaped hull plates or structures weighing hundreds of tons is immense. Mills, refineries, power plants, and manufacturing facilities capable of producing each component of the new vessel limit a planet’s ability to rapidly construct large numbers of big ships. Most large shipyards are located in one of three places: high orbit around an industrialized planet, a stable trailing orbit (or LaGrange point) a few million kilometers away, or in the vicinity of an asteroid belt. While planet-bound shipyards are still quite common, it’s much easier for very large ships to be built in low- or zero-gravity conditions. The disadvantage of working in space, of course, is the fact that the work force must be housed somewhere near their job, and that power, materials, and supplies must be provided to the site of the work. Lifting extremely massive sub-components like

armored turret assemblies or induction engines from a planet’s surface to high orbit is obviously a difficult process. However, a serious space-based manufacturing capability allows the shipyard to build and outfit these components without lifting anything other than people from the planet below.

Stations In Combat

Hits in one zone of a ground base never “bleed through” to another zone, unless the attacking weapon is an area effect device. In other words, when Building 1 has been pulverized, leftover damage does not spill over and wreck Building 2. This is because most ground bases make use of the local terrain and the lack of space constraints to disperse important structures. Subsequent hits that strike the same “zone” are basically wasted.

Appendix: Space Combat Hex Maps

The last two pages of this book offer hex maps for use in playing out space combat scenarios. Both a color and a black-and-white version are presented here; we recommend using the “negative” (white) version for photocopying. You can use starship miniatures or even tokens or coins to represent the ships of each sidde.