Starship Construction Manual & Starship Recognition Manual

I have two more supplements for the N.E.W. RPG system to review here - Starship Construction Manual and Starship Recognition Manual. The N.E.W. rulebook covers a lot of ground, including the use of starships in a game, starship combat rules and roles for PC crew members. However, what it does not cover are rules for designing a starship. For that you need to purchase the Starship Construction Manual. There are 13 steps to designing a starship as follows -

1. Select a hull class.
2. Choose command and control systems
3. Determine crew, troops and passenger numbers.
4. Choose sub-luminal engine(s).
5. Choose FTL engine(s).
6. Determine initial ship superstructure.
7. Select deflector shield(s).
8. Add point defences if required.
9. Allocate weaponry if required.
10. Select additional ship equipment.
11. Select shuttle/fighter bays (if any).
12. Choose ship facilities.
13. Determine final values.

Once done, you can record your starship statistics from the Ship Construction form to the Ship Recognition Readout form, both of which may be photocopied from the book or downloaded from the WOIN website. I'll be honest with you, designing a starship does involve a lot of work and you are presented with a staggering amount of choices for the various starship components. Plus, there is maths involved. Fortunately, there is an extremely helpful resource on the WOIN website, which does all the calculations for you. All you have to do is select which components you want to add. If you're not happy with your design it is a simple matter to go back and make changes. This is what I did to design The Ace of Spades and a few other starships. Then I just printed out the results and transferred them to my own design of the Starship Recognition Readout form.
The supplement includes examples of 9 pre-designed starships of various sizes, which are helpful in deciding how to design your own starship. The Ace of Spades is a Class IV Scout ship and given its components and price tag, would be classed as top of the range. It is way better than a ship of its size should be.
Is this an essential buy or not? That all depends upon whether you want starships to feature prominently in your campaign and if you do, do you want to design your own or use the pre-generated examples? When I ran my old Space Opera and GURPS Space campaigns I totally avoided starship combat and my starships were either a means to get from A to B or a place to stage a fight on. My attitude changed when I bought the N.E.W. rulebook and tried out starship combat for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed it. So for me, yes, this was an essential purchase. I should point out that this supplement was written for version 1.1 of the N.E.W. rulebook and there are a few changes you need to make to bring starships in line with the latest 1.2 version of the rulebook. Also, sadly, a rewrite is not on the cards. That said, I wouldn't let that put you off buying this supplement as the changes are few and relatively minor.
At the time of writing, Amazon UK have this 56 page supplement on sale for £9.99, which is a very good price.

As a complement to the above supplement is the Starship Recognition Manual and this is a much heftier tome, running to 110 pages, the vast majority of which are stats and pictures of over 70 pre-designed starships belonging to the United Space Force (USF), the Royal Spartan Armada, along with a range of Borian, Ogron, Venetian and civilian starships. Now this is one very impressive supplement. The sheer number and variety of starships presented here is an absolute godsend for any games-master. The USF is similar to the United Federation of Planets (UFP) that I'm using in my The Ace of Spades of Campaign but my campaign is set over 200 years ahead of the timeline given in this supplement. Not that that matters very much. I'll happily include any of the starships from this supplement in my campaign.
I did mention that there are a few minor changes between the version 1.1 and version 1.2 rules. One of those was in regards to the ship's traits. A starship can have up to two traits selected from a list of 19, all of which are listed in this supplement. Ships of different sizes are designated certain specific traits but you may, if you wish, change these to any other trait. Going back to The Ace of Spades, as a Scout ship it originally had the Explorer trait, which increased its operational range by +20%. In addition, I added the Lander trait to it, so it could land on planets. However, under the version 1.2 rules, the Explorer trait has been changed so the ship can perform long range scans in 5 minutes instead of one hour and the ship's sensors increase their range by +50%. I opted to change this to Fast, thus adding +1 to its FTL speed and +2 to its SUB-L speed. I still kept the Lander trait. Kimberley likes a fast ship, so that she can run from trouble if need be and spend less time in travelling from planet to planet.
Special mention must go to Russ Morrissey for designing so many ships in this supplement (I can't imagine the amount of work involved in that!) and to Ian Stead for his stunning starship illustrations, all in full colour. This is definitely a "must buy" supplement if you are at all interested in sci-fi role-playing but especially so if you like starship combat. This superb supplement is available from Amazon UK for £14.45 and it is worth every penny!
By the way, thanks to my new-found interest in starship combat and design, I have amassed quite a collection of starship miniatures in a relatively short time. The four main star-faring organisations of my campaign are very well represented, with the United Federation of Planets having, by far, the most ships, followed by the Azuriach Imperium, the Galactic People's Republic and the Mercantile League. Other races are covered. I do plan on showcasing them all on this blog in the future but at present only a few have been painted. I also plan on conducting more starship combats in my The Ace of Spades Campaign.