Ships & Airships

At vessel scale the ship or airship normally receives one meaningful Activation per round unless its profile says otherwise. Each broadside is one aggregate action, not a roll per cannon: manoeuvre, fire, run, repair, or close. The relevant officer resolves the aggregate action. Crew quality, rigging, lift and gun crews all express themselves through Risk and Effect.

• Stable

  What it means

  The relevant system functions normally.

• Impaired

  What it means

  The relevant system is compromised. Its condition changes Risk, Effect or available actions when the fiction makes it relevant.

• Disabled

  What it means

  The relevant system cannot function meaningfully until the problem is addressed. Other intact systems are not automatically Disabled.

1. Name the objective and relevant systems: Structure, Rigging/Lift, Weapons, Crew, Command and, for airships, Éterlumin Reserve. Track system conditions, not hull HP.
2. Choose the meaningful action: manoeuvre, fire, run, repair or close. Set Risk and Effect from range, facing, firing arc, crew condition, weapons and target scale.
3. Roll the relevant Capability once for the uncertain aggregate action, regardless of cannon count.
4. Resolve the stated objective and consequence. Great Effect may disable a relevant system; Standard may Impair it or make major objective progress; Limited supplies partial damage or position where fiction supports it. These are permissions, not automatic damage conversion.
5. Reassess actions: repair damage, resupply depletion and tune miscalibration. These are different problems requiring suitable access and means.

Boarding, sabotage, repairs under fire and attacks on exposed crew zoom to Personal Scale with each relevant combatant acting individually. Fleet manoeuvres and batteries can zoom to Battlefield Scale. Intact hulls normally prevent personal weapons from directly harming internal machinery until boarding, a breach, hatch or exposed mechanism supplies physical access.

Airships add lift as a failure axis: lift-lungs, the sky-keel and trim can each be Impaired independently of guns and rigging. Lift failure is separate from weapons or steering failure. Damaged lift, depleted Éterlumin Reserve and miscalibration require different remedies; no universal lift countdown is invented here. The setting chapter How Airships Work is the canonical description of the machinery these rules abstract.