Shipwright

Of the 8 Career Skills, choose 4 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Engineer Career Skills: Athletics, Computers, Knowledge (Education), Mechanics, Perception, Piloting (Space), Ranged (Light) and Vigilance

Shipwright Specialization Skills: Gunnery, Knowledge (Education), Mechanics and Piloting (Space)

In peacetime, a Shipwright designs, oversees, and launches custom ships to grace the hyperspace lanes. During the era of the Republic, Shipwrights crafted ships with elegant fins, spires, and curves that made people wonder, “Who built that?” Currently, the Empire favors ship designs that express power and inspire fear. The Core World shipyards have followed suit, as the Empire remains the dominant culture in the galaxy. Elegance is a bygone ideal, a symbol of Republic corruption or a lost fancy. Even the Alliance often must eschew aesthetics for practicality and utility, something many Shipwrights in the Rebellion understand but mourn.

In the Alliance, Shipwrights primarily maintain and repair the various ships it fields. An important secondary task is the breaking down and retrofitting of commissioned starships. Since the majority of these vessels come from smuggled sources, civilian donations, or scrapyard rescues, Shipwrights have to determine if they should be utilized, scrapped, or junked.

For ships to be added to the Fleet, they then oversee the installation of new or updated equipment and basic repairs. Then comes crew training, space trials and testing, readying the hull for hyperspace travel, and, for some lucky Shipwrights, naming and serving aboard them.

Alliance shipyards tend to be hidden, remote, or highly mobile—often all three. As always, materials, supplies, and labor are the main factors limiting construction, along with time; at any point, the Empire may suddenly discover the location of the shipyard, prompting a rapid evacuation.

Shipwrights can work on a space station or in its shipyard. Mobile Alliance shipyards can house weapon platforms or support mining and refining facilities. The more advanced shipyards resemble a fully staffed mining colony. In such a shipyard, Shipwrights must incorporate industrial components into their designs as well as handle worker accommodations and support. At this level, Shipwrights resemble civil engineers. Even something as basic as organic waste elimination can be important to the Alliance. Only Shipwrights, for example, might know that the station’s trash disposal hold can hide an allied light freighter attempting to illude Imperial patrols!

On the rare occasion when the Alliance requires a new ship design, Shipwrights usually must throw aesthetics out the transparisteel window to aim for utility, safety, and reliability. Primarily, their designs must try to ensure that the ship and its crew can accomplish the mission and hopefully return in one piece. Good Shipwrights keep in mind that their creations should be easy to repair, offer a modicum of comfort, and be able to throw enough firepower at enemies to make crews happy to fly aboard them into victory.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Academic: Shipwrights who hail from academia are typically trained naval Engineers well versed in naval history and technology. Academic Shipwrights are more skilled in theory than in practical, hands-on ship building or maintenance. These individuals know a lot about how ships are built and the decisions behind choices in materials, systems, shape, and size, but they usually know precious little about maintaining vessels and even less about fighting them. Shipwrights with this background are primarily employed by Alliance R&D groups, developing new ships for the Rebel Navy and upgrading existing vessels with new and improved technology.
  • Eccentric: Shipwrights with an eccentric streak design impossible, fanciful ships that defy the norms of naval architecture. They constantly strive to expand the boundaries of starship performance and design, often pushing new and untested technologies into production before they are quite ready, with dangerous results. The Alliance’s B-wing starfighter is a perfect example of a ship designed by an eccentric Shipwright, and a very successful example at that. Many designs and prototypes developed are neither as successful nor as viable as the B-wing; however, those that are successful often make valuable additions to the Alliance Fleet.
  • Journeyman: Journeyman Shipwrights are second only to Mechanics on the Alliance leadership’s most wanted list. As an organization that lives and dies by its mobility, the Rebel military relies heavily on its starships— ships that are often ancient, heavily used, and held together with tape, wire, and wishes. Journeymen Shipwrights often have experience working with outdated ship designs, knowledge that academy-trained Shipwrights typically do not possess. Their experiences in all manner of starships, often trading work for passage, gives journeyman Shipwrights an edge.
  • Talented Amateur: Amateur Shipwrights are somewhat similar to amateur Mechanics. They tend to obsess over ship classes and starfighters, read exhaustively on naval architecture and history, volunteer at museums, and generally consume as much information as they can about the building and maintenance of starships. Many find work on backwater worlds where trained Shipwrights are rare and expensive. They make do with secondhand tools and lean heavily on the HoloNet and shipyard manuals to diagnose problems. Although most spacers would never step foot on a ship maintained by an amateur Shipwright, let alone go into space aboard one, they are sometimes the best option available to the desperate crew of a busted ship.