Vehicle Modular Abilities

[Anders]

Am binge-watching Star Trek TNG now, and they're always diverting power to engines or phasers or shields or whatever they may need for the moment. If you build vehicles as characters, this would probably be best modeled by some high-power modular abilities. Probably worth something like 2+5 or even 2+6 (for instant rerouting rather than one second per point). What do you think?

[Anaraxes]

Not bad. You'll want some sort of trait- or focus-limited Limitation, since they at least give some lip service to the main deflector dish doing energy projector sorts of things. And to emulate Star Trek, you'll need to throw in Limited Use on the slot, so they promptly forget the configuration once the episode ends, rather than reusing it every time it would be convenient.

[Anders]

The low point cost of each slot reflects the limited number of options.

Rant

A problem with Modular Abilities is that there are guidelines in Basic Set for reflecting narrow scope or clumsy rearranging... and then the rules in Powers represent an alternative way of doing the same way, with Limitations. It disturbs my sense of simplicity.

Rant over.