What’s that? In chapter 6 of Starfinder Tech Core? It’s a Star Dragon! It’s a Canopyskipper! No, wait: It’s Tactical Starship Combat!
A pod of oma are using their sonar to freeze a hellknight starship, allowing their Xenowarden allies to finish it off with a powerful blast of primal magic. By Gunship Revolution.
Tactical starship combat combines the round-by-round threats and action of a typical combat encounter with strategic nature of a starship-scale space battle. Characters move on a battle map of their own starship, using their three actions per turn to helm a station, repair damaged portions of the ship, bolster their allies, or defeat enemies and hazards that appear aboard their ship during the encounter. Meanwhile the distance between your starship and enemy vessels is tracked using a sensor map, giving your ship’s pilot the opportunity to tactically Boost Thrusters, Change Heading, and Juke enemies to make them more vulnerable to your ship’s Gunners, Drone Pilots, and Spellcasters.
Gunners are able to fire starship-scale weapons using their own proficiencies and feats the same way they would their trusty laser pistol. This means soldiers can hit multiple enemies at once using Area Fire actions, while Operatives can do extra damage to a single starship by using the Aim action. Drones give characters a chance to play more tactically, planting mines or blocking incoming attacks. Meanwhile spellcasters can use a retinue of powerful starship spells by channeling their magic through the ship’s magic conduit. And using other battle stations and upgrades you can further customize your starship to suit every member of your party.
Space pirates retrofit and upgrade a captured Hellknight starship in dry-dock. By Gunship Revolution.
Choosing your starship’s battle stations is only the beginning. Each battle station has upgrade slots that allows you to grant bespoke abilities to the character helming those battle stations, including class specific upgrades that allow for alternative uses for each class’s most important features. Whether it’s deploying your turret as a starship weapon, installing your own mines into a drone, or turning the prow of your ship into a solar weapon capable of ripping apart enemy vessels when you ram them! There are additional customization options for your starship, including expansion bays like a medbay or holoden, upgraded escape pods, and guidelines for how to introduce, upgrade, and use starships in your campaign!
There’s so much more to tactical starship combat that we thought the best way to show you was with a copy of our ship’s Starship Sheet!
Dustin Knight (he/him)
Lead Designer