If I'm GMing a starship combat, should I allow a ship to escape into the Drift? Suppose the crew wants to chance leaving the thrusters off for a minute in order to prepare to enter the Drift. I'd assume very sensitive navigation equipment needs to synchronize with the currents in the drift and calculate travel without the added interference of thruster induced motion and vibration. Would you allow it?
If it's possible, I'd need to know about how many rounds of starship combat need to be survived to pass the 1 minute threshold of drift entry preparations. I found one other thread about the Length of a Starship Combat Turn, in fact this tactic was mentioned as a possible reason for needing to know the length of a starship combat round, but as far as I could tell, there was no conclusive answer.
As a GM, I'd like to say yes, it can be done; and you need to keep the thrusters off for 2 rounds (putting a starship combat round at 30 seconds, although the rules specify rounds are not an exact amount of time, CRB 317). If it's a PC ship, then all players should be filling roles to hold the ship together or maximize the shields facing the enemy (or praying to Triune). What do others think, is 2 rounds too long, too short, or should it be somewhat random (2d2 rounds?) in keeping with the inexactness indicated by the rules?
I believe that the entire purpose of a drift engine requiring time to spin up is to prevent you from doing this. I mean what is the point of mentioning an additional minute on top of a 1d6 day trip?
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I plan to rule that one round of starship combat is six seconds, the same length of time as tactical combat. This will be crucial for the very plausible circumstances in which they intersect (such as some PCs engaging in a firefight to take over a ground based shield generator, while other PCs are above the planet in an epic space battle attacking a giant planet-killing "murder sun"). Completely hypothetical example I made up myself.
Seriously, though, the biggest mistake I think Starfinder made was designing starship combat as a separately little mini board game that has very little interaction with the rest of a PC's abilities or the mechanics of the system as a whole.
They'll probably introduce some upgrade that lets you take your ship into the drift instantaneously or at least in a length that can be measure in rounds, but RAW, it can't be done - starship combat rounds can't be measured in regular time units.
Just as you can't ram into other ships, for now.
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I don't mind the minigame aspect of it , i just dislike that the pilot has ALL of the cool minigame.
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Variable starship combat round duration allows a couple of things.
1. Different groups can allow different conceptions of what exactly the starship rules are abstracting.
To me, anything less than half an hour per round is deeply dumb. Anything up to hours for a helm phase followed by many minutes for a gunnery phase (which involves a lot more than a single actual shot) would fit "realistic" space battles, and non-drift system travel times fit realistic real space speeds.
Others will want silly Star Wars type atmospheric swooping. For them shorter times make sense (I guess light speed weapons have awful targeting systems in this scheme, explaining resulting in terrible ranges on a planetary scale), at least for
Somewhere in the middle would be Star Trek speed, with minutes for a round so that the various crew roles can do something at a reasonable human speed (engineers aren't just effectively flicking a switch with exceptional skill to have nanotech systems repair a glitching system in less than 6 seconds) and coordinate in phases, but you ignore the implications of extreme detection ranges, light speed weapons, and relatively slow movement across a system scale.
2. Different tactical situations can adjust time scales.
If both ships just left dock with zero relative speed and short range, very short real combat times make sense for shorter helm and gunnery phases. (Why engineers can repair stuff faster is less obvious.)
If all ships are engaging at high starting velocity while dodging around the dozens of moons in orbit around a gas giant, a longer time frame is appropriate.
3. Unfortunately, this leads to almost entirely arbitrary GM decisions on why a ship can't easily escape into the drift during most combat. One way to justify it is to say that if you stop moving (which to me means stop accelerating/decelerating, your'e on a straight glide path) to engage your drift engines, you're not doing the constant dodging and stuff that I assume is part of long time scale realistic space combat, so the majority of shots that are missing in a gunnery phase aren't anymore. Rather than this result in increased damage, it results in gunnery time dilation, and they can now target you much more frequently (and more effectively rotate/twist their weapons on your stationary profile, which is abstracted by the piloting checks and arc vs. arc minigame), so you get more rounds in during that minute.
I think 2-3 rounds of combat is a fair adjudication if you want to kill thrusters and escape into the drift.
Our group is enjoying the mini-game aspect of starship combat, but I wanted to open another option to the PC's if they are desperate to escape (or a GM that see's a ship combat dragging out way too long when it's not relevant to the main story).
I don't want to prevent escape into the drift, just discourage it. I want it to be risky enough that it's mainly PCs that will use this tactic, and I definitely don't want it to become a commonplace response to coming under attack. And yes, turning off the engines does make you a sitting duck, same as if the engines have the "wrecked" condition, affecting all piloting actions.
I realize I'm in the area of house rules here, but possibly a science officer check is needed to find a "Drift resonance area", or some other weak space between the drift plane and the prime material plane (metagame-speak for "the GM is still in charge of whether this tactic is an available option, and how difficult/costly it will be to attempt").
As others have noted, we are outside the territory of the rules as written.
My interpretation: Escape into the drift is an option, but a desperate one. It is designed to be possible but nearly suicidal. Outside mechancis, it's also tense, and desperate and therefore good story and good fun. But you don't want the enemy fleeing every time either.
So in that spirit, I would say you have to survive five rounds of combat. It has nothing to do with how long rounds are, and everything to do with story and theme. If you can survive five gunnery phases of you being a sitting duck, not moving and the other ship is blasting everything it has at you, you can escape.
Engineering checks may shave off some time.
If forced to put a time frame on starship combat rounds, I would default to 6 seconds as well. Which would be 10 rounds of combat, to basically make escaping via drift not a real option.
Not unless you feel you can weather the attacks of the enemy for 10 rounds while not moving.
I feel that's really how its supposed to work.
The Hellknight NOPE! device in Pact Worlds (drift shadow projector?) shows the opposite - escapes into the drift are so common they felt the need to research ways to prevent it.
The only things that can prevent escape in real space are poor thruster speed build decisions (few NPC ships are fast), tractor beams, critical objectives that must be met (e.g. defending an installation, convoy ship, or planet), or widely dispersed enemy ships across the system.
The Hellknight NOPE! device in Pact Worlds (drift shadow projector?) shows the opposite - escapes into the drift are so common they felt the need to research ways to prevent it.
The only things that can prevent escape in real space are poor thruster speed build decisions (few NPC ships are fast), tractor beams, critical objectives that must be met (e.g. defending an installation, convoy ship, or planet), or widely dispersed enemy ships across the system.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. If ships are on equal footing (in terms of CR) there is a decent chance they could survive 10 rounds (although probably be heavily damaged). Especially if the ship trying to escape fires back, nothing bars them from doing so and they focus on disabling the enemy ships weapons.
I think the existence of the Drift Shadow Projector would be more about multiple small ships being able to lock down an area against a single more powerful ship or a single powerful ship being able to lock down an area against multiple weak ships.
I think an interesting question this raises though, is why wouldn't any important area have these sorts of devices to extend a "no fly" zone out to a "safe distance" to prevent sudden attacks.
The drift shadow projector also helps 1 large ship lock down a fleet of small ships trying to flee. Hellknights probably trying to stop convoys of smugglers etc from fleeing.
The Hellknight NOPE! device in Pact Worlds (drift shadow projector?) shows the opposite - escapes into the drift are so common they felt the need to research ways to prevent it.
The only things that can prevent escape in real space are poor thruster speed build decisions (few NPC ships are fast), tractor beams, critical objectives that must be met (e.g. defending an installation, convoy ship, or planet), or widely dispersed enemy ships across the system.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true. If ships are on equal footing (in terms of CR) there is a decent chance they could survive 10 rounds (although probably be heavily damaged). Especially if the ship trying to escape fires back, nothing bars them from doing so and they focus on disabling the enemy ships weapons.
I think the existence of the Drift Shadow Projector would be more about multiple small ships being able to lock down an area against a single more powerful ship or a single powerful ship being able to lock down an area against multiple weak ships.
I think an interesting question this raises though, is why wouldn't any important area have these sorts of devices to extend a "no fly" zone out to a "safe distance" to prevent sudden attacks.
The Hellknights aren't worried about tag teaming bigger ships that will try to get away (which are almost always going to be owned by lawful organizations), they're worried about stopping weaker outlaws that will try to flee. Thus cruisers with gravity guns (that can only freeze Huge and smaller ships) who can run down smaller, faster ships and prevent them from dodging into the drift.
As for why others don't have them to make them safe, (1) only the Hellknights have this tech for now (at least as far as the Pact Worlds know), and (2) it's entirely unclear how accurate drift navigation is. I for one doubt that a ship can even decide to come out of the drift close enough to to be stopped by one of these.
The drift shadow projector also helps 1 large ship lock down a fleet of small ships trying to flee. Hellknights probably trying to stop convoys of smugglers etc from fleeing.
It doesn't do that at all. They just scatter in different directions. The ship with the projector can only chase one.