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I have noticed a heavy pull in the system currently towards having your PCs act as a 'bridge crew' on one ship.
But what about options and opportunities for Squadron Based groups?
Should players and GM's wanting to have epic stories in the vein of Wing Commander, Battle Star, Rogue Squadron, Space Above & Beyond, Cowboy Bebop, StarFox, or even Macross/Battletech be left out in the cold?
We will need some sort of formula to decide the tier and build points of individual fighter ships (one per PC) vs. those of a single ship shared by the party.
Simply dividing up the build points could give each player fewer build points than even a 1/4 tier ship would have (not to mention an indeterminate tier value).
On the other hand, creating a squadron of identical ships whose tier values would combine by the rules to make an encounter of the same CR as the single ship assumed for a standard game has its own issues.
The book does discuss how to handle players having multiple ships in a very very minimal way on the last page of the Starship chapter.
It discusses how to calculate the appropriate CR for a group of player ships of possibly differing tiers, but not any specific way to assign tiers or build points to those multiple ships in the first place.
So, if some allies with ships of any tier just happen to show up to help out the PC ship in a space battle, you have a way to calculate what CR of opponents would be fair competition for that group of ships. What you don't have is a definitive way to decide how to form a group of such ships as the party fleet on a non-temporary basis.
It discusses how to calculate the appropriate CR for a group of player ships of possibly differing tiers, but not any specific way to assign tiers or build points to those multiple ships in the first place.
Considering it's been said that tier should be based on BP spent rather than the other way around, it'd just be
1. Spend your BP on multiple ships.2. Calculate their tiers based on the BP spent on each ship.
It discusses how to calculate the appropriate CR for a group of player ships of possibly differing tiers, but not any specific way to assign tiers or build points to those multiple ships in the first place.Considering it's been said that tier should be based on BP spent rather than the other way around, it'd just be
1. Spend your BP on multiple ships.
2. Calculate their tiers based on the BP spent on each ship.
"It's been said" -- by who? I don't think the math works out at all that way.
Personally, I'd like to see something like this:
Essentially a scaled-down shuttle bay, an interceptor bay can be installed only in a Large or larger starship and takes up two expansion bays. An interceptor bay provides space for a single Tiny starship to dock.
PCU 10; Cost (in BP) 4
You still need to leave at least 6 PCs/NPCs on the "mothership" (as Large starships have a minimum crew of 6) but using multiple PC attack craft becomes a bit easier to justify.
You could have a Destroyer frame with two Fighters or a Heavy Freighter frame with four fighters (4 PC Pilots and 4 NPC Engineers/Gunners/Science Officers?).
I fully expect in some book down the road they go into more space ship options and flesh space combat out more . What they have in the core book is totally fine for playing now but clearly there is a lot of room to add stuff to it.
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A few months later, and I jump in!
I was wondering about this from another viewpoint:
If humongous spaceship weapons can't reliably aim at little spaceships (I'm using the size terms loosely), and little spaceship weapons can't reliably get through humongous spaceships' natural DR, is there a point to humongous spaceships releasing swarms of fighters?
If you're up against such a carrier, couldn't its fighters be safely ignored, the PCs just staying in their big ship and blasting the carrier to pieces with their heavy/capital weapons? Then they can just fly right through the fighters who now have nowhere to dock.
Plus, if the PCs have to shoot at an enemy base on a planet's surface, Starfox-style, wouldn't they be better off all in a single heavily-armed shuttle than in their own smaller dogfighters?
As far as I can tell, the only advantage to this is if the GM's enthused by this and makes up a GMPC to stay in the carrier while each PC gets their own interceptor. Even then, they'll be missing out on advantages like scientist scans.
A few months later, and I jump in!
I was wondering about this from another viewpoint:
If humongous spaceship weapons can't reliably aim at little spaceships (I'm using the size terms loosely), and little spaceship weapons can't reliably get through humongous spaceships' natural DR, is there a point to humongous spaceships releasing swarms of fighters?If you're up against such a carrier, couldn't its fighters be safely ignored, the PCs just staying in their big ship and blasting the carrier to pieces with their heavy/capital weapons? Then they can just fly right through the fighters who now have nowhere to dock.
Plus, if the PCs have to shoot at an enemy base on a planet's surface, Starfox-style, wouldn't they be better off all in a single heavily-armed shuttle than in their own smaller dogfighters?
As far as I can tell, the only advantage to this is if the GM's enthused by this and makes up a GMPC to stay in the carrier while each PC gets their own interceptor. Even then, they'll be missing out on advantages like scientist scans.
It really depends on how the carrier is fitted. Generally, carriers are used for their range to strike targets at a distance much farther than the carrier's weapons could normally reach, and if a carrier is doing ship to ship combat, something has gone wrong.
Also starship don't have Damage Reduction, they have Damage Threshold, which means if you deal damage over that amount, the attack does full damage. In addition, weapons can be linked to do that damage as a single attack, making circumventing DT with light weapons not that hard as long as your ship is specc'ed correctly.
Even the crappiest weapon linked (Light laser cannon) has a mean of of 10 and a standard deviation 2.24, and a more sensible and still cheap set up is linked coil guns with a mean of 20 and a deviation of 3.16. so only colossal ships are be going real problem with fighters, and that's with fairly weak ones, as a dedicated anti capitol fighter would likely be fitted with linked light particle beams or light plasma cannons, maybe even have a secondary squad with linked rippers.
A few reasons a huge starship would use fighters could be:
1) Fighters can more easily deal with other fighters, and leave the big boys free to slug it out.
2) Fighters are generally lower tier than the big starships, so the checks for crew actions will be lower, and thus, more fancy maneuvers.
3) Fighters are generally harder to hit, so they can tank damage for the larger ship by dividing it's fire amongst multiple, smaller targets that are harder to get a bead on.