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The Black Desert Ship's Log on page 5
may be reproduced for personal use.
 This is the first in a series of Freesource PDF
previews of The Black Desert Campaign Setting for
OpenD6. In this Excerpt, the entries in the Ship's Log
stat block are explained in detail:
THE SHIP'S LOG IN DETAIL
NAME: This is simply the name that the spacecraft is
registered under.
CRAFT: This is the make and model of the spacecraft.
TYPE: The category of the spacecraft. This usually includes
its general size (light, medium, or heavy) and it's function
(orbiter, short-range, or inter-planetary). A spacecraft's
type will influence the kind of main drive system it has, its
range, power-plant, and many other characteristics.
LENGTH: The spacecraft's length along its longest axis.
This is usually the vessel’s thrust axis, but for some inter-
planetary ships it is the perpendicular axis. This
measurement is given in meters.
SKILL: This is the primary skill needed to fly the craft. It is
always some specialization of the Spacecraft Operation
Skill. The specializations are according to the spacecraft's
type. Additionally, there may also be a Skill Focus that
deals with a specific craft.
CREW: The number of organic crew needed to operate the
spacecraft. Ships with AI installed (or the ability to have AI
installed) can be operated by a single individual. The
largest number given is for the optimum or standard
number of crew.
PASSENGERS: The number of organics that the ship is
designed to carry in addition to its crew. The spacecraft
can also carry one additional passenger for every number
of crew below the standard number.
CARGO CAPACITY This is the amount in metric tons of
non-essential weight the spacecraft is designed to carry.
One map square equals approximately one metric ton of
cargo capacity.
CONSUMABLES: This entry deals only with the supplies
needed to sustain the organic crew and passengers. It
represents atmospheric gasses, food, water, air scrubbers,
bio-hazard containment, and any other resources needed
to support healthy life. The value is given in crew-days; the
number of days a single organic individual can be
sustained. The more organics carried aboard a spacecraft,
the less amount of time they can be supported.
The Consumables value can be increased by carrying
additional supplies as cargo, but these extras must be
replaced manually while en route. Obviously, extra
Consumables decrease the about of cargo the spacecraft
can transport.
FUSION POWER?: This indicates whether or not a
spacecraft has a fusion reactor installed to generate
electricity. Light spacecraft are too small to safely carry
fusion reactors and usually the only Medium spacecraft so
equipped are military.
SAFETY THRESHOLD: The Safety Threshold of a given
spacecraft is the amount of battery power it has available
in excess of its Delta-V. The Safety Threshold must be at
least equal to the spacecraft's Consumables divided by its
standard Crew number. Spacecraft with fusion power do
not consume their battery power (and hence their Safety
Threshold) except when landed, the Propulsion system is
disabled, or other special circumstances.
ACCELERATION: The Black Desert takes into account the
frictionless environment of space. The Acceleration entry
measures the number of hexes on a combat-scale space
map a spacecraft can move in a single round. The
spacecraft's movement across the space map per round is
equal to is acceleration multiplied by the number of rounds
it accelerates. In order to come to a stop, a vessel must
flip (taking a round to do so) and decelerate along the
opposite vector for the same number of rounds it
accelerated. To change course, a spacecraft must turn
(free action in the forward arc, one round in the rear arc)
and accelerate along its new vector. Unless the spacecraft
comes to a stop first, it still moves along its original vector
as well as its new vector.
This can be confusing; see the Scenarios at the end
of this chapter. The important thing to remember is that it
takes the same number of rounds to stop that it took to get
started.
DELTA-V: This is the most important value in the Ship's
Log -even more so than consumables. More ships are lost
in the Black Desert due to miscalculating Delta-V than in
combat. This is because while fusion plants make power
virtually unlimited, its takes propellant to make a rocket
move.
Delta-V is the measure, given in rounds, of how long
a spacecraft can fire its main engines in vacuum before the
propellant tanks are exhausted. Each time a spacecraft
accelerates, it expends one round of Delta-V. The shielding
effect of Plasma Sails also expends Delta-V; for every point
of damage the shielded spacecraft would have taken, it
loses a round of Delta-V. Once a spacecraft has used up its
Delta-V, it can no longer accelerate; it continues along its
last vector, at the same speed, forever.
HULL STRENGTH: This is the number of dice that the
spacecraft has to roll against damage. Hull Strength also
determines the Damage Range of the spacecraft.
Spacecraft hulls are very robust; vacuum is a highly
dangerous place. All orbiters are armored against the
extreme heat of re-entry and micro-meteoroids, which can
hit with the impact energy of the same amount of TNT.
Inter-planetary spacecraft are more fragile, but are
equipped with shields and are far, far larger.
DAMAGE RANGE: This is the number of points of damage a
spacecraft can sustain before dropping one level on the
Condition Table. The Damage Range of a spacecraft is the
number of dice in its Hull Strength (rounded down)
multiplied by 4.
AVIONICS: Avionics include the spacecraft's guidance
system, navigation, communications, sensor equipment,
and the computers associated with them. These systems
are grouped together because the information they display
and the commands they receive come from centralized
“smart” stations; any console can control any function in
the avionics package. The bonus therefore applies to
Spacecraft Operation, Sensors and Communications skills.
WEAPONS: This is a subcategory that details any offensive
systems that a spacecraft has installed. Typically, there is
one entry per weapon type. The entries in the weapons
category are as follows:
Fire Arc: The direction that the weapon points in
reference to the spacecraft (forward, rear, port, starboard,
dorsal, ventral and turret. A turret cannot fire in an arc
opposite its installation (ex: a dorsal turret cannot fire in
the ventral arc).
Fire Control: This is the bonus dice that a character
receives to their Spacecraft Weapons roll when using the
weapon. Each weapon system uses a separate avionics
package for fire control, so loss of one weapon system will
not disable the fire control of another weapon system.
Weapons of the same type (lasers, missiles, etc) are
usually fire-linked to the same avionics, so the loss of one
weapon will usually knock out the fire control for all
weapons of that type.
Capacity: Put simply, this is the number of shots a
weapon has. The value represents how many missiles in a
launch rack, mines or bombs in a bay, or how many shots
worth of dedicated battery power there is for the lasers.
Spacecraft with fusion power-plants can recharge their
laser batteries at the rate of one point of laser capacity per
round. The power-plant only charges one laser system at a
time, but can change the laser system being recharged
every round.
Damage: The number of dice rolled for damage for
each successful attack by an individual weapon system.
There is a space to the side of the weapons system's entry
where players and GMs can record the remaining Capacity
of their weapon systems. Like what you've seen?
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Includes four tracking boxes at the bottom of the stat
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DELTA-V: Each time a spacecraft fires its main engine (or a
ship with Plasma Sails takes damage) the number of
remaining rounds of Delta-V can be written here.
DAMAGE: This box shows the Damage Range of the vessel.
Each time the Damage Range is exceeded, the spacecraft
moves down once on the Condition Table.
DISABLED SYSTEMS: When one of a spacecraft's major
systems are disabled, it is recorded in this box. Once a
system is repaired, it is removed from the Disabled
Systems box. There are separate circles available for each
type of weapon system a spacecraft may have installed.
CONDITION TABLE: This is where the spacecraft's condition SHIPS OF THE BLACK DESERT:
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functional again and can be taken off the Disabled Systems
list. If the spacecraft's Damage Range is exceeded again,
and
the GM must roll 1D6 again to randomly determine the
disabled system; the newly repaired system is not COMING SOON...
automatically disabled.
SHIPS OF THE BLACK DESERT:
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