Airships are massive aircraft, that function like navel vassals.
Star Wars Airships[]
Sail Barges[]
Sail barges are massive vehicles that are long on luxury and short on practicality. They feature massive sails, as a throwback to the legendary days of early planetary explorers, and are covered with gaudy ornamentation. They are normally used as pleasure craft, vacation vessels and touring vehicles, able to cross any smooth, rolling, or flat surface. They are slow (they seldom travel faster than 100 kilometers per hour, and most have to struggle to reach that speed), and have a low flight ceiling (normally less than 10 meters).
| Khetanna-class Sail Barge | |||||||||||||
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The 'Khetanna-class sail barge with three decks. The primary propulsion system is a three-chambered repulsorlift engine. A pair of decorate steering vanes at the stern of the vessel provided the vessel with its maneuvering capabilities. The entire vessel is powered by a series of batteries and power cells at the forward part of the vessel.
The middle deck can serve as a passenger deck for five hundred people or as a cargo hull for two thousand tons of freight. It was not unusual for people to decorate the ship and make it into a recreational vehicle. In this case, the middle deck would be modified into living area for about fifty people. The lower deck servers to hold most of the ship's systems, as well as workshops and additional storage area.
The 'Khetanna, like other sail barges and skiffs, can easily be modified to suit local conditions. Among the most common of modifications to the original design was the installment of an enclosed upper deck which protected both the passengers and crew from the elements, whether heat, cold, rain or pollution. Otherwise it as not usual to instal two large sails on the upper deck on luxury models. The sails are primarily for a decorative purpose, but they also protected passengers from sun or rain, and could propel the vessel at a moderate twenty miles per hour. Another, less common option, was to use force field rain screens, but this usually ate-up power. Aquatic models are enclosed and can move underwater like a submarine, while desert models have sand filters and modified cooling systems installed. Military versions where used when military-grade vehicles were in short supply. They had the hull reinforced to add to the protection of the troops riding it (AC 1) and blaster cannons bolted to the front, rear and side railings. They can also be customized with other vehicle customization kits.
| Eclipse-class Sail Barge | |||||||||||||
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The Eclipse-class sail barge were a fairly common sail barge manufactured by Gefferon Pleasure Craft. This 80-foot barge is smaller than the 100-foot Ubrikkian-class luxury sail barge, but the interior are considered to be more luxurious for its smaller quantity of passengers, and add-on weapons were also produced.
| Seltiss-2 caravel-class Sail Barge | |||||||||||||
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The Seltiss-2 caravel was a pleasure ship manufactured by Ubrikkian Industries. An expensive model for the time, the inside of the Seltiss-2 was covered with greel wood and chrall-crystal.
Many caravels carried concealed weapons to lull potential enemies into a full state of security. The armored front of the ship could be opened up to reveal the front cabin. If there was an emergency, the whole cabin can be ejected. The caravel also contained a kitchen and four small servant cabins, which could not be ejected.
Skiffs[]
Skiffs are used for any large cargo and relatively lowspeed and low-altitude transportation. They tend to be slow and clumsy, and can be easily operated, even by low intelligence labor droids.
| Bantha-II-class cargo skiff | |||||||||||||
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The Ubrikkian Industries Bantha-II-class cargo skiff had one open deck with a simple control station located near the rear of the vehicle. The vehicle is controlled by a control pedestal that allowed it to be piloted even by unqualified laborers or amateurs. Due to its cheap price tag, Ubrikkian was able to sell many of its Bantha-IIs to even the poorest or most under-developed of nations where they were used both as cargo and as passenger transports.
The skiff's repulsorlift engines, which are under its deck, also allowed it to hover up to a hundred and sixty feet off the ground while its rear thrust nozzles propelled the craft forward at a top speed of 150 miles per hour. A pair of steering vanes on the rear also provided very limited maneuverability which made it dangerous for both the crew and vehicle if it was traveling at a fast speed. Skiffs are also poorly suited for combat and a standard blaster could disable its steering vanes or repulsor engine.
Like many other skiffs, the Bantha-II was designed to transport cargo and was common in most spaceports and warehouses on many cities across the world. However, most of these skiffs could also carry passengers. Most variants of the vehicle were equipped with retractable magnetic lifters and loading ramps for transporting cargo onto the skiff's deck. Once onboard the craft, the cargo would be held in place by magnetic fasteners and cargo straps. The average Bantha-II is able to carry around 100 tons or cargo though as many as 16 seats could be installed on its deck, thus allowing the vehicle to also operate as passenger transports or even pleasure craft.
| SuperHaul Model II cargo skiff | |||||||||||||
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The Ubrikkian Industries SuperHaul Model II cargo skiff is a larger, and more robust craft then the Bantha-II-class cargo skiff.
Buck Rogers Airships[]
| Han Airship/Mongol Raider | |||||||||||||
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So-called “airships” are massive armored metal eggs 630 feet long, actually held aloft by a quartet of repellor beams that do almost as much damage to objects on the ground as the ships’ disintegrator weaponry. The “passengers” are usually paratroopers armed with disintegrator rifles which operate via power broadcast from the mother ship. Fliers and their weaponry, likewise, draw power from the airship’s generators and can’t operate beyond its broadcast range (3-5 miles). The disintegrator cannon fire a 10-foot diameter beam of destructive energy with effects similar to the Disintegration mutation (Mutant Future, Page 29). The ray dissipates with distance, limiting attacks to targets within 600 feet. In a similar vein, maximum range for paratroopers’ disintegrator rifles is 150 feet, about the same as for a black powder pistol.
“Heavy” airships sacrifice passenger and crew space (14 crew, 20 passengers) for additional generators and an extra set of disintegrator cannon (two forward, two aft).
Han Flier (see Advanced Aircraft)
Notes[]
- The Khetanna-class Sail Barge, Eclipse-class Sail Barge, Seltiss-2 caravel Sail Barge, Bantha-II-class cargo skiff and SuperHaul Model II cargo skiff are based on the repulsorlift craft seen on Star Wars Episode VI: Returen of the Jedi and Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, by Lucas Films (1983).
- The Han Airship/Mongor Raider and Han Flier are from Buck Rogers XXVC, by TSR (1993) (notes by Kevin Scrivner)