Building a starship, gravbike, air raft or death star in the Hero System is no more difficult than building any other character. Basically, all you're doing is creating a character (in this case a machine) which can survive, move and see in its appropriate environment(s) — space, atmospheres, maybe underwater as well. It wouldn't hurt to be able to defend itself too, but that's not essential.
Stuff on life support systems goes here
| Maximum "/Turn Flight | Maximum Acceleration |
|---|---|
| 6" | 0.1 G |
| 30" | 0.5 G |
| 60" | 1 G |
| 120" | 2 G |
| 180" | 3 G |
| 240" | 4 G |
| 300" | 5 G |
| 360" | 6 G |
| 420" | 7 G |
| 480" | 8 G |
| 540" | 9 G |
| 600" | 10 G |
Without friction from an atmosphere or resistance by some other outside force, an object under acceleration can keep increasing its velocity as long as its fuel holds out. In HERO terms, this means that Flight for a spacecraft should be bought with the Cumulative (no limit) (+1;) advantage, so that its inches of movement are added to its current speed (or decreased from it, if braking). It should also be bought with the Noncombat Acceleration (+1)
For example, a ship with 5" of Flight (Cumulative) moving at Noncombat Speed will be moving at 10" after its first Phase of acceleration, 20" after its second Phase, 30" after its third Phase, and so on until it stops accelerating for any reason.
Acceleration is measured in multiples of Earth's gravity, approximately 10m/sec/sec, shortened to "G". To achieve 1G acceleration, a ship must be able to accelerate at 60" per Turn. Therefore a ship with SPD 2 and the normal Noncombat Speed multiplier of x2 would need 15" Flight to achieve 1G acceleration.
Accelerating at 1G it would take a ship about a year to get close to of the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than light in normal space.
The reaction thrusters in general use are assumed to be fusion drives using hydrogen fuel, and are pretty efficient. Fuel is bought in HERO terms as one or more replaceable Fuel Charges – one charge represents one fuel tank. As an arbitrary figure, assume that the drives and sufficient fuel to remain under 1G acceleration for 100 hours will take up 20% of the total volume of the ship, plus an additional 10% per 100 hours over that. Accelerating or decelerating at higher or lower rates will expend fuel correspondingly faster or slower.
| Harvested Fuel Efficiency | |
|---|---|
| 3d6 Roll | Efficiency |
| 18 | 100% |
| 17 | 90% |
| 15-16 | 70% |
| 11-14 | 50% |
| 7-10 | 30% |
| 4-6 | 10% |
| 3 | 0% |
The fuel tanks can be recharged in one of two ways:
In the second case, the efficiency of the drives will be impaired depending on the impurities in the gas collected. When scanning an atmosphere to determine its usefulness as fuel, roll 3d6 and refer to the table to the right for the resulting fuel efficiency.
A ship can have as many separate fuel tanks as the builder desires, within reason, though the more complex the fuel system the more likely it is that something may go wrong. There is one big advantage to having more than one fuel tank (i.e. more than one Fuel Charge) — an accident or attack which ruptures one tank won't necessarily leave you stranded in space, assuming there's any fuel left in any of the others.
See the page on the Jump Drive for information on this mode of travel.
Space is really, really big, and stars are a long way apart.
Stuff on sensor systems goes here
Almost every ship will have one small bow laser to clear debris from its path. This is pretty inadequate as defensive armament of course; it has a very limited field of fire and isn't usually very powerful. Plus, it's normally set up for fully automatic operation, and so isn't necessarily easy to aim manually.
Local ordinances differ of course, but in the main there's no legal reason not to arm your ship to the point where there's no longer any room for the crew.... except that if you do, people are likely to become a little suspicious of your motives. If you land your heavily beweaponed Ship of Doom at a spaceport which has recently been subject to the predations of pirates, for example, they may not ask too many questions before tossing you into jail and gassing you to death on the grounds that you look like you're probably a bit piratical.
As far as genuine defences go — as opposed to defence-through-overwhelming-firepower — there are two options, often used in tandem: armoured hull plating and Force Fields. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
| Armour Activation | Fuel Efficiency Loss per +1 DEF |
|---|---|
| 15- or higher | -1% |
| 14- to 12- | -0.7% |
| 9- to 11- | -0.5% |
| 8- or lower | -0.2% |
This is cheap and requires very little maintenance, but you can't armour every single spot and still be able to move or see (i.e. it will have to have an activation roll assigned). Plus it's heavy, increasing the mass of the ship and thus the load on the thrusters. As a quick and easy figure, assume that for each +1 rPD and rED your fuel efficiency drops by 1%.
For example, a ship with hull armour of 20rPD/20rED will get only 60 hours of thrust out of the same fuel that would power an unarmoured ship the same size for 100 hours (100% - 20% (for rPD) - 20% (for rED) = 60%).
This will be modified by the armour coverage; a ship with armour with 11- activation is only carrying armour on half its hull, so it will have better fuel efficiency than a fully armoured ship (as shown in the table to the right).
Force fields don't weigh the ship down the way physical armour plating does, but they have their own drawbacks. They have to be powered, and so absorbs a portion of the ship's power. If power goes down for any reason, or if the field generator is damaged, the field disappears entirely, possibly leaving the ship defenceless. Plus, they're not cheap items to buy or maintain. A field capable of withstanding even modest ship-to-ship weaponry costs thousands of SVU and needs regular maintenance to ensure reliable operation.
Another drawback of force fields is that you can't shoot back through them — either you have to leave gaps in your defences for your weaponry, or settle for taking the punishment and hoping your attacker gets bored or tired. A field can be created which is transparent to laser fire, but then of course lasers can be used against you.