Using a Vehicle
Personal vehicles, including automobiles, powersuits, and smaller spaceships, generally have a single pilot. This pilot makes their own initiative roll, but the vehicle itself may limit what partial actions they may take. When a character is piloting a vehicle, their normal actions can be used to make vehicle actions, as seen below. Each action will be listed with the type of character action used to make the vehicle action, but modifications to the vehicle can change what actions these may be. Pilot facets often gain additional actions that can only be spent on various vehicle actions.
(Hand) Move/Maneuver: A vehicle has a listed max speed, which is at a different scale than normal speed depending on the ship's size. By making a move action, the pilot may both set the throttle of the vehicle and use its maneuver. The vehicle must move a number of spaces equal to its throttle, which is any positive number up to its max speed(Or any negative number up to half of that on a mecha) forward, and may make a number of 60 degree turns(One 6th of its radius on a hexagon map) up to its maneuverability when a move action is taken. If a pilot does not use all of their maneuver as turns during a move/maneuver action, the remainder is applied as a bonus to the vehicle's difficulty to be hit. Certain terrain, atmospheric conditions or vehicle status effects can require more move or maneuver to get through. If a move/Maneuver action was spent, the pilot may make a piloting skill/stat roll, which differs from vehicle to vehicle, to set its difficulty to be hit, with the additional maneuver bonus added. Otherwise, its difficulty to be hit is equal to 5. Additional move actions can be made to re-roll the vehicle's difficulty to hit, and in these cases the higher result is kept.
(Hand) Fire Weapons: Standard vehicles have power plants strong enough to support them firing continuously, which is once per round per weapon. Firing shots requires a Targeting roll, which is listed with the vehicle's stats. The damage weapons deal is listed with the vehicle's stats. Weapons must punch through shields before damaging a ship's armor, as described in the Shields section. After the first shot, every additional shot taken during the same firing action. suffers a cumulative -3 penalty. Each weapon has a listed range in its description, and firing with those weapons at a target further than the range(the closest you can count in spaces away) imposes a -1 penalty for each range set beyond the first.
Linked Weapons: Weapons dealing identical damage which are linked can be fired simultaneously, dispersing their damage across shields but concentrating them all on a single target, making it likely to deal more damage. Firing any number of linked weapons in a linked shot counts as a single attack for the purposes of determining difficulty, but if it hits, the additional shots past the first deal only half their damage.
Leading Shots: When firing weapons, you may choose to aim your shots to prevent an opponent from being able to maneuver safely rather than directly target an opponent. Every shot taken in this manner has a base difficulty of 5, and when successful imposes a -1 penalty to the target's difficulty to be hit plus an extra -1 penalty for every 5 rolled over the difficulty.
(Hand) Shields: A pilot may use their vehicle's shields actively, if the vehicles are equipped with shields, once per round at any point when they are hit by an attack. If a vehicle has shields, those shields will be listed as X+YdZ. X is the shield's passive rating. All attacks that hit the vehicle automatically deal X less damage. YdZ is the dice rating of the active shields, which are added to the passive shields against a single attack when the shield action is spent. If there is no Y rating, as is the case for most shields, Y is assumed to be 1.
(Speak) Comms: A vehicle with communications equipment can engage those comms to speak with others equipped with comms(or in some cases, broadcast via speakers in atmosphere). These comms have the ability to be switched to different targets, and may impose a penalty to your other rolls depending on how you use them.
(Speak) Sensors: Some vehicles are equipped with targeting systems that not only reveal the positions of all other vehicles in the vicinity, but can assist with aiming weaponry at desired targets. Targeting a vehicle in this manner uses a Sensors action, and is referred to as "locking on". The benefits provided by locking on to a target are described in the equipment of a given vehicle.
(Hand) Power Management: Most ships have reactors that provide enough power to cover all of the ship's needs even at maximum load, but some may be designed to theoretically draw more power than they have available. Adjusting the flow of power is generally a result of using the systems in question, turning the engine speed, maneuvering jets, sensors or shields down before using the high-powered equipment, and when a ship requires power management such as this, the power drains of its various systems will be listed on the ship. Some of these, particularly biowarp-capable fighters, may be more simplified, and simply disallow the use of certain systems while the biowarp drive charges. Biowarp mages of various types can use their own MP to supply power to these systems if the ship is equipped for it. In this case, the ship will have BioWarp controls at a level of X/Y, where X is the amount of MP per turn a biowarp mage can spend powering the ship and Y is the amount of ship MP each personal MP is converted to. Ships with dedicated engineers may be able to use more involved power management actions that boost the effectiveness of particular parts of the ship or coax additional power out of the reactors.
(All)) Repair: All ships have a dedicated engineering hatch, compartment or section and may be repaired on the fly by a skilled engineer. Engineering is both intellectually and laboriously intensive, so a pilot attempting to engineer their own ship cannot perform any additional actions with the ship(though they may speak and listen through the comm channel they were already set on and the engine will continue to thrust them forward at the last speed they were set to, providing them with some passive dodge). Many larger ships have their own engineer or even team of engineers to quickly assess and repair damage.
Extra actions: Like with character-to-character combat, if a pilot has an initiative higher than 10, they may regain addiitonal partial turns. These partial turns can be spent on actions, and these count as a refresh of sorts. If a pilot uses a partial action to gain a new maneuver action, they could not change the vehicle's speed, but they could re-roll their maneuver roll. If they choose to use the additional partial action to fire weapons, they could not fire weapons that have already been fired this round, but they could fire any additional weapons they have with the additional weapon firing penalty reduced back to 0 as though no weapons had been fired that round. The pilot may hold any extra actions to use as additional shield actions, but they only gain the die part of the shield, rather than the constant part of the shield. Any other actions, such as sensors or comms, can be used with an additional action without imposing their penalty on the piloting or maneuver rolls.
Ship armor: As ships take damage, their armor is decreased like a character's hit points. A ship with 0 armor remaining is not destroyed, but every shot that hits will deal critical damage to the ship, which will eventually render it unusable until it is repaired. Certain ships have the Throwaway modifier. These ships actually do outright explode at 0 of Armor remaining.
Critical Damage: When a ship is hit by a weapon with an attack roll that is at least double the ship's defense and the weapon deals at least the ship's size in HP damage, the ship takes additional "Critical Damage" as well. Critical damage has effects on the ship's systems, and must be repaired for the ship to be at full capacity. Once a ship's HP is reduced to 0, all shots that deal damage to the ship also deal critical damage, and the damage dealt is likely to be more severe as t takes more critical hits.
Multiple Crew Members: A few smaller ships and most larger ships have crews of more than one. This is generally to the ship's benefit, as each crew member can handle a specific portion of the ship's duties, there will be less likelihood of any one crew member suffering a penalty to their actions, and a commander can lend bonuses to other crewmates by assisting in their coordination. Each crew member acts on their own initiative, and can delay to coordinate better.