Overview
As players of Edge of the Empire will already be familiar, a great Star, uh, let’s say Cosmic Conflict game often revolves around the Crew being tied to a particular ship. One which they usually don’t own—perhaps they’ve stolen it, borrowed credits to buy it, or owe some sort of debt. This debt plays a part in motivating the characters to take risks for credits, or stay on their toes or one step ahead of their creditors.
In Scum & Villainy the ship itself is much like a character, and can be substantially upgraded to provide various benefits or facilitate additional downtime actions. It also tends to determine the type of jobs you’ll likely be focused on.
The stardancer is a ship best suited for illicit merchants, smugglers, and blockade runners. This is much like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon.
The cerberus is the ideal ship for bounty hunters and extraction specialists. It's like Boba Fett's Slave I.
The firedrake is a much larger ship, the smallest of the capital-classes, like Princess Leia's Tantive IV. It is for criminals, or "freedom fighters" as you'd call yourselves, to fight the Emp, uh, the Hegemony.
Note that choosing one or another doesn’t mean you can’t engage in a different style of mission. It just means that your particular ship will be more effective at those types. But there’s nothing stopping a smuggling crew from taking on bounty hunter jobs.
However, the core activity of the ship is how the crew will most frequently earn cred and xp toward advancement.
Future Intent
I would like to work on some of these ship types to create a far greater variety, especially as the other “modes” come online. In some, the ships won’t be quite so important in terms of their function (ie. if the group were military types on some colossal super-capital ship in orbit of a planet they’re defending or laying siege to). In others it might still be important, but not in the sense of having to maintain it financially (ie. in the case of a refitted civilian shuttle if the group were undercover spies or something).
Rather than naming them, I would likely create categories, such as “freighter”, “light cruiser”, “assault shuttle”, or “battleship of the line”, and give each of those categories particular strengths and weaknesses (relative to the others), and advancement options of their own.