Chapter 25 — Ships, Vehicles, & Drones

A street chase, a gunship strafing a ridgeline, two starships trading fire across hard vacuum, a scout drone slipping down a vent — Wanderstar runs them all on one set of rules. A vehicle, a starship, and a drone differ in scale (Chapter 12) and in fiction, not in system. This chapter is how a crewed machine fights, takes harm, and is kept running — and how a Wanderer operates hardware at a remove — built on the same player-facing principle as everything else: the players roll the dice.

Index§

• One baseline
• Crew stations
• The round
• The damage track
• Damage control
• Scale in a fight
• An example: the Long Account vs a corsair
• Boarding & bailing out
• Ground chases
• Drones & Remote Operation
  • The skills
  • Operating in play
  • The control link
  • Drones, scale & damage
  • Statting a drone
    • Example drones
  • Turrets & remote mounts

One baseline§

Until a craft is customized (Chapter 26), every vehicle and ship shares one set of numbers:

Armor 24. Weapons deal 8D.

That is the whole stat line a craft needs to fight. "Shields," "plating," "hull" — they are all just ways of describing the 24. Whatever you build in Chapter 26 takes those numbers' place without changing the frame here.

Crew stations§

A craft fights through its crew, and each crewmember works a station with a skill they already have. Each character gets one meaningful action on the craft's turn — their Significant Action.

Under-crewed craft. One person cannot work every station at once. A solo pilot can fly and fire, but the second station they take in a round is at Disadvantage, and routine work runs on autopilot. This is the same limit as operating more than one drone at a time (below).

The round§

Initiative runs as in Combat (Chapter 11): the pilot's roll (2D6 + Piloting, with Dexterity) sets the craft's place in the order, and the crew act together on the craft's turn. Range uses the ordinary range bands — the pilot opens or closes the distance with a maneuver, and a weapon fires normally within its favored band (turrets up close, missiles far out) and at Disadvantage beyond it, exactly as a personal weapon does.

The dice stay the players' (Chapter 40):

• You attack an enemy craft. The gunner rolls Remote Weapons ≥ 8. On a hit, roll the weapon's 8D against the enemy's armor (24) and mark its damage track. Unlike a person, an enemy craft keeps its own track — so your fire grinds it down, hit by hit.
• An enemy craft attacks you. The enemy never rolls. Your pilot rolls Piloting ≥ 8 to evade. Succeed and the shot goes wide; fail and the GM rolls the enemy's 8D against your armor (24), and you mark your track. A lock from sensors, a jam, or a captain's call can hand the pilot Advantage on that evade.

As always, danger is expressed through Advantage and Disadvantage, never a moved target number — a crack warship's gunnery means the pilot evades at Disadvantage, not against a higher number.

How hard an enemy hits. An enemy craft throws a number of attacks on its turn that fits its arsenal — keep it light: one for a small or lightly-armed hull, two or three for a warship bristling with turrets. Each incoming attack is one evade for your pilot, so a pack of raiders is dangerous precisely because one pilot cannot dodge everything at once — thin them with the gunner, and let sensors or the captain hand Advantage where it counts. Crew quality is not extra shots: a crack gunnery crew means those attacks come at Disadvantage to evade, never a higher volume or a moved number.

The damage track§

A craft takes harm much as a character does — two tracks, two nodes each — but its nodes are mechanical, not flesh:

Hull:     [ Damaged ] → [ Wrecked ]
Systems:  [ On Fire ] → [ Offline ]

Compare the 8D damage to the craft's 24 armor: damage ≥ 24 marks one node; ≥ 48 marks two. The crew choose which open node to mark (the GM chooses for an enemy craft), and the overflow rule applies (Chapter 10) — a hit onto a full track spills onto the other. With all four nodes filled, the craft is on the edge of destruction: the next node it would mark instead destroys it outright.

Armor is a wall, not a cushion — match the gun to the hull. Because damage is a cluster of dice and armor a flat number, a small armor lead bites hard: a standard 8D mount readily marks a baseline 24 hull, troubles an armored 30 only now and again, and all but glances off a warship's 36+. Two steps up the armor track (Chapter 26) don't slow incoming fire so much as shut it out — which is also why the double-damage threshold (≥ 2× armor) almost never triggers between evenly matched hulls, and routinely does against an under-armored one. To threaten heavy armor, bring a heavier mount (10D–12D), an AP gun, or a scale-capable strike — a torpedo, a boarding party; a popgun will never grind down a warship, and that is by design. Statting an enemy, mind the flip side: an armor-36+ hull is genuinely hard to scratch, so hand the players a credible way through — or a reason to run.

What the nodes mean:

• Damaged — structural harm. A complication (leaks, lost speed, a jammed bay), not a flat penalty unless the GM ties one to a specific action.
• Wrecked — the hull is failing; the craft is barely holding together.
• On Fire — systems burning or failing: a worsening complication the GM may let spread (marking again) if it isn't dealt with.
• Offline — power and systems are dead. The craft can't fire, evade, or move under its own power — adrift, and a sitting target.

These mirror a character's trauma: the first node on each track is a complication, the second is crippling, and a full board is one hit from the end.

Damage control§

The engineer is the ship's medic. As their station action, an Engineering test (8+) clears one first-track node — beat out a fire (On Fire) or shore up the structure (Damaged) — or stops a spreading fire from worsening. The deep wounds do not yield in the field: Wrecked and Offline need a true repair — a drydock, a yard, a stretch of downtime — exactly as a character's Maimed and Broken need a full recovery session (Chapter 10). Keeping a battered ship in the fight is the engineer's whole art, and it is what "holding the shields" actually means: not a separate buffer, but a crewmember fighting to keep the 24 intact and the systems lit.

Scale in a fight§

The 24 / 8D baseline is a same-scale value — ship against ship, tank against tank. Across a scale gap the crossing-scales rules (Chapter 12) decide everything: a person firing a hand weapon at a hull is punching up and does nothing without a scale-capable weapon (a torpedo, a breaching charge), while a ship's gun against a person simply annihilates them. Read the gap, not the flat numbers.

An example: the Long Account vs a corsair§

The same five Wanderers from Chapter 4, now at their stations aboard their mortgaged free trader, the Long Account (Armor 24, one standard 8D turret). They've just broken out of jump at the system fringe. Everyone starts at Momentum 3.

GM: A week of empty jump behind you, and the Account's board lights up the instant you arrive — one contact, running hot, sliding out of the gas giant's shadow where it was waiting for exactly this. A corsair, armored and hungry. No hail; it wants your hold and it'll take the ship to get it. Ace, you're on the stick — Piloting for initiative.

[Initiative is the pilot's roll, 2D6 + Piloting with Dexterity (Chapter 11). Ace is Professional (+2) with a Dexterity Advantage → 3D6 keep 2, +2.]

Ace's player: [rolls 6, 4, 2 → keep 6, 4 = 10, +2 = 12.] We move first.

GM: You take the tempo. Your crew acts together on the Account's turn — one Significant Action each (Chapter 25).

Jinx's player (Sensors & Comms): Before Bram shoots, I paint it — Recon to lock and feed the turret. GM: 8+. [Jinx: 9.] Clean lock — that hands the gunner Advantage on this shot. He'll want it: that corsair is armored, heavier than standard plate.

Bram's player (Gunner): Remote Weapons at the corsair, taking Jinx's lock. That Advantage is a situational edge, so I pay 1 Momentum to switch it on — I drop from 3 to 2 (Chapter 7). GM: [Bram, Advantage: 5, 6, 3 → 11.] Hit. Now damage — your turret's a standard 8D, and its armor is 30, not the baseline 24. [Bram rolls 8D = 31.] Thirty-one over thirty, just barely — one node. Mark its Hull: Damaged.

[Two things here. The armor wall (Chapter 25): at 8D a 30-armor hull only takes a node about a third of the time, and without Jinx's lock pushing the to-hit through, Bram never even rolls that damage — heavier armor is why the sensors station earns its keep, and why a popgun never wears down a warship. And the cost of help: Jinx spent her action to make the lock, and here Bram, the recipient, pays the 1 Momentum to use it. A crewmate's assist is a situational edge like a Boon (Chapters 6–7) — and it doesn't stack with any Advantage he already had. He needn't be the one paying, though: under the Assist rule (Chapter 7), Jinx could spend her Momentum to cover the lock instead — either teammate can fund it.]

Stills's player (Engineer): Nothing's burning yet, so I hold — bracing the coolant runs, ready to fight the first fire the instant it starts. Edda's player (Medic): And I'm on the deck with the kit, waiting to see who needs me. No casualties yet — I hold too.

GM: The corsair's turn. It's a lone raider — one attack — but a crack gun crew, so your evade comes at Disadvantage (Chapter 25). The enemy never rolls; Ace, evade, 8+. Ace's player: Rolling at Disadvantage means I gain a Momentum for it first (Chapter 7) — up from 3 to 4. [3D6 keep low 2: 5, 2, 4 → keep 2, 4 = 6.] ...Short. GM: It connects. I roll its 8D against your 24. [GM: 27.] One node — mark the Long Account's Hull: Damaged. A round walks across the cargo ring and the lights stutter.

GM: New round, you're up again. Stills's player: Now there's work — Engineering to shore the hull and clear that Damaged node before it spreads. GM: 8+. [Stills: 11.] You wrestle it back — node cleared. That is what "holding the shields" means: a person keeping the 24 intact (Chapter 25). Edda's player (Captain): Switching to the comms to coordinate — Command to read the corsair's next run and hand Ace Advantage on his evade. GM: [Edda: 10.] Done — Ace has an Advantage waiting on the next shot that comes his way. Jinx's player (Sensors): Another Recon lock — but for Bram, not Ace. Advantage doesn't stack, so there's no sense both of us buffing the same roll (Chapter 7); we spread it. GM: [Jinx: 10.] Locked. Bram's player: Remote Weapons, taking the lock — 1 Momentum to switch it on, down from 2 to 1. [Advantage: 4, 6, 5 → 11, hit.] 8D on that armored hull — [41.] Forty-one over thirty. GM: Its second Hull node — Wrecked. The corsair is coming apart — and as it slews toward the gas giant to run, its crack gunners snap a parting shot. Ace, evade. Ace's player: Their gunnery is Disadvantage — but Edda's call is Advantage, and the two cancel to a clean 2D6, no Momentum in or out (Chapter 7). [2D6: 9.] I slip it. GM: Wide. It's running now, drives flaring for the giant's shadow. Ace's player: Not today. Always Finds a Way Through — that's a Boon, 1 Momentum (I'm at 4, down to 3) — Advantage to cut the angle and pin it before it reaches cover. GM: [Ace: 12.] You cut it off. Engines flickering, hull failing, nowhere left to run — the corsair powers down its weapons and goes dark. Offline. A Wrecked-and-Offline ship is a deathtrap for its crew and a prize for you (next section). It's dead in the black, and you're alongside.

[Where this leaves you: a derelict corsair is salvage, and salvage is the kind of payday that puts a real dent in the Account's note (Chapter 28). The fight just became a boarding job — and a question of what GANYMEDE will pay to know about it first.]

What just happened — the ship fight in one scene§

• The players rolled every die. The corsair never rolled once; the GM only rolled its damage, after Ace missed an evade. Same player-facing engine as a gunfight (Chapter 11), scaled up.
• Every station was a turn. Jinx locked, Bram fired, Ace evaded, Stills did damage control, Edda coordinated — five characters, five meaningful actions a round, nobody a spectator.
• It's the trauma track, reskinned. 8+ to act, Advantage/Disadvantage for every edge, and a four-node board that fills and clears just like a character's.
• Armor is a wall. The corsair's 30 shrugged unaided fire; Jinx's lock is what let the 8D through. Against heavy armor you bring an edge, a bigger gun, or a boarding party.
• Enemy quality was Disadvantage, not volume. A crack gun crew made Ace evade at Disadvantage; it didn't get extra shots, and a moved target number never entered into it.
• Help has a price — and either teammate can pay it. Bram spent 1 Momentum to use each of Jinx's locks (3 → 2 → 1); by default the recipient funds the situational edge, but under the Assist rule (Chapter 7) Jinx could have spent her Momentum instead. Either way it doesn't stack — which is why Jinx and Edda fed different people.
• Advantage and Disadvantage cancel. Edda's captain's-call Advantage erased the corsair's crack-gunnery Disadvantage to a flat roll — no Momentum spent or gained.
• Momentum cycled. Ace banked one for evading at Disadvantage (3 → 4) and later spent it on his Boon to pin the runner (4 → 3) — adversity into edge.
• A kill is a prize. Wrecked/Offline turns a duel into salvage, and salvage into the campaign — which is where Boarding picks up.

Boarding & bailing out§

A craft that is Wrecked or Offline is a deathtrap or a prize. A downed hull means crash, fire, or sudden vacuum for the people aboard (Chapter 13); a dead-in-space ship is a boarding target. Fighting aboard a craft — storming a breach, clearing a corridor, taking the bridge — is ordinary personal-scale combat (Chapter 11), with the ship as terrain. Boarding is how a crew takes a ship whole instead of scrapping it.

Ground chases§

Not every vehicle scene is a gun duel. A pursuit — outrunning a chaser, shaking a tail, threading traffic — is best run as an opposed test (Chapter 5) of Piloting (or Driving on the ground), the loser eating the consequence: a side-swipe (a Damaged node), a lost position, a wrong turn into trouble. Stretch a long chase across a few exchanges, as with any extended contest.

Drones & Remote Operation

Plenty of what a Wanderer points at a problem isn't held in their hands. A scout drone slips down a vent; a gun platform covers a doorway; a repair bot crawls a hull; a turret tracks the sky. This section covers operating a machine at a remove — and the skills that do it are ones you already have.

The skills§

• Remote Weapons (Intellect) — firing any weapon you are not physically holding: a drone's gun, a vehicle's turret, a fixed automated mount, a starship's turret. The gunner's skill for everything operated through a screen or a slaved trigger.
• Piloting (Dexterity) — moving a drone when movement takes finesse: threading a tight space, a chase, holding station in wind, flying evasive. Routine travel needs no roll.
• Engineering (Intellect) — building, modifying, and repairing drones, and clearing a Damaged node in the field.

Three more round it out: Recon to look and listen through the drone's sensors, Communications to hold the control link open (or jam someone else's), and Cracking to seize a drone that isn't yours.

Operating in play§

The drone acts on your turn. A drone is not a free extra combatant — when you act through one, that is your Significant Action. While you're heads-down in the feed you're an easy mark — the GM may rule you act at Disadvantage on your own senses and can't also fight in person.

One at a time. You can run a single drone as deftly as if you were there. Handling more than one live drone at once is a Disadvantage on each, unless they're following simple standing orders or you have an automation rig or a fitting Boon (Drone Nerd and its kin).

Autonomy. A higher-TL drone can hold a standing order — patrol, follow, hold this door, return to me — on its own, no action spent, until something needs judgment under fire. The GM may run an autonomous or slaved drone as a simple NPC acting on its own initiative.

Reactions. A piloted drone can Dodge an incoming attack (a reaction, rolled with Piloting), spending one of your reactions for the round.

The control link§

A remote machine is only as good as the link to it. Within range the drone obeys; push past that range, into a jammed zone, or take a Disruptive hit (Chapter 24), and you lose it — the drone goes inert or falls back to its last standing order until contact returns.

• Range & relays. Treat control as good to line-of-sight or local comms range by default; a relay, booster, or satellite extends it. Communications punches a link through interference.
• Jamming. A Communications test can sever or spoof a hostile operator's link the way it holds your own open.
• Hijacking. A Cracking test, opposed by the drone's security (Chapter 5), seizes control of a drone — turning theirs against them, or wresting yours back. Disruptive merely drops a drone; Cracking takes it.

Drones, scale & damage§

Most portable drones are Personal (S0) scale; a large ground unit can be Vehicle (S1) — Chapter 12. A small, quick drone is genuinely hard to hit: attacks against it may be made at Disadvantage.

A drone takes harm like a light vehicle: an Armor value and a two-node Damaged → Wrecked track (the tiniest drones have a single Wrecked node — one solid hit ends them). Damaged is a degraded drone; Wrecked is down until rebuilt. Disruptive drops a drone outright without wrecking it; Engineering clears a Damaged node and rebuilds a Wrecked one given time and parts.

Statting a drone§

Like a vehicle, a drone needs only a few lines:

• Scale — usually S0 Personal.
• Armor — low; most drones are fragile (3–6).
• Track — Damaged → Wrecked (or a single Wrecked node, if tiny).
• Movement — flier, walker, or crawler, and a rough sense of speed for chases.
• Sensors — what it lets you see (and any Advantage or Disadvantage on Recon through it).
• Payload — a mounted weapon (an ordinary weapon profile, Chapter 24) or a tool (survey, repair, medical).
• Controls — Remote Weapons to shoot, Piloting to fly the hard bits, Recon to perceive.

Example drones§

Turrets & remote mounts§

Everything above scales up. A vehicle turret, a fixed automated emplacement, or a starship turret is fired with Remote Weapons just like a drone gun — the difference is the weapon profile and its scale (Chapter 12). An automated turret with a standing order runs as a simple NPC on its own initiative; a crewed one fires on its gunner's turn. The detailed handling of ship-mounted batteries is the crew-station rules above.