Now I feel bad for opening my mouth. Didn't realize that you'd cutomized it for us, and thought it was a screen shot of the Paizo jpeg.
That said, it is a little hard for me to see. I can see fine for normal life, but nights, and small details are getting harder. And I can't play video games any more. So I appreciate understated backgrounds.
ANd that said, did you lift the image off NASA's site? How'd you superimpose the grid?
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LOL, Paizo don't like people using their images verbatim. But they have no problem with people improvising/copying from scratch for PbP....
I found the image using a creative commons Google image search, then used a hex plugin in GIMP to layer the hex on top....
Fading it out a bit is no problem, when I'm next playing with it....
Oh and *damn you Paizo Servers!* they've been down a *lot*.
I think that we are up to the point where Aubrey blasts the Eoxian ship with any bonus Korskal was able to djinn up with his scan.
And get blasted in return.
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Yeah, I don't quite have my head around ship combat yet either.
I'm thinking that maybe Latheera should act as a back up gunner for this combat rather than in the captain's role. Although I guess when combat breaks out it might be good for her to be able to add bonuses to people's actions through the captain's 'encourage' or 'demand' abilities.
My question is how does switching roles work? In general it says the role must be vacant, but can Tofana jump from pilot to gunner and Korskal, Wayf, or Latheera slip into the pilot's role immediately? Or will we lose a turn of guided flight? Would she be able to fire guns right away? It doesn't seem fair that Tofana would be able to pilot and then gun in the same turn.
I may be wrong about all of this, but I think we're going to want more gunners. I think Wayf and Tofana have the best gunnery mods using pilot skills for those checks. Based on Korskal's scan Threnody is slow and half as maneuverable as us. Once we're in her six it should be pretty easy to stay there.
Can gunners switch weapons at will? If we're jinking left and right behind Threnody, could a gunner fire the left side on one turn, and the right side on the next? Or would there be a 'switching delay'?
I can't figure it out. I'll be reading the rules again tonight.
Range:
Weapons have one of three ranges: short range (5 hexes), medium range (10 hexes), or long range (20 hexes). As with character scale ranged attacks, an attack with a starship weapon takes a cumulative –2 penalty for each range increment (or fraction thereof, beyond the first) between it and the target. A gunner firing a tracking weapon takes a range penalty only on her first gunnery check, when the target is first acquired. A starship weapon can fire at a target up to 10 range increments away.
Coilgun is long range; light laser cannon, short.
I should have had a speed penalty of 1 on my first piloting roll because we went 12 hexes.
Damage: they are going to hit our shields in the front arc. OUr sheild strength is 10. Any excess damage will our hull points. If they roll a 20 to hit and score 11 points of damage, we could be facing a critical hit that will disable a system.
Aubrey hit them for 12 on their facing shield. I'm not sure if their shields are starting at full strength or not.
If you get tired of talking about rules, just cut me off. I'm not arguing for or against anything, just trying to sort the rules out.
Changing Roles
You can switch between roles (or assume a role if you don’t already have one), but this change must occur at the start of a round before the engineering phase. You can switch to the captain or pilot role only if that role would otherwise be vacant (or if the character in that role is unable to take actions).
Thanks for the rules reference. I thought I'd seen something like that, but couldn't find it again. So if at the top of the round, I say "Tofana switches to gunner." Is the spot instantly vacant and open to be immediately filled by another crew member? That's a nice reading of the rules. Or -- if changing roles occurs simultaneously for all crew members, is the role not vacant for them to fill in until next round? That's a nasty possible reading.
Good catch on my math error. That will teach me to use pencil and paper, and not just think about the answer.
Redirecting power as a means to temporarily shore up shields makes more sense to me than as a means to permanently fix them. It seems the shields take a long time in combat rounds to repair out of combat.
4 out of 55. No need to sweat yet, we could take 3 or 4 more shots.
Maybe I can try to pick it up tonight.
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Nope, that's fine.
As far as the swapping roles go, I assume that a "round" is a few minutes rather than the 6 seconds of normal combat.But it's not really defined. I think you swap at the top of init so that you can't take actions in two roes (which would break stuff) but that taking actions as a different role each round isn't really hindered.
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My short description was a little too short, maybe. Here's the full rules for target system.
Target System (Helm Phase, Push)
You can use your starship’s sensors to target a specific system on an enemy starship. This action requires your starship to have sensors. You must attempt a Computers check, applying any modifiers from the starship’s sensors. The DC equals 15 + the tier of the enemy starship + its bonus from defensive countermeasures (see page 298). If you succeed, choose one system (core, engines, life support, sensors, or weapons). The next attack made by your starship that hits the enemy ship scores a critical hit on a natural roll of 19 or 20. If that attack deals critical damage, it affects the chosen system. For any further critical damage resulting from the attack, determine which system is affected randomly as normal.Your starship’s sensors can target only one system on a specific
enemy starship at a time, though this action can be used to
concurrently target systems on multiple starships.
Here's a question, does 'next attack' mean next single attack roll, or all the attacks made in the next gunnery phase?
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Critical Damage
Starship systems can take critical damage, causing them to become less functional and eventually stop working altogether.
Critical damage is scored whenever a gunnery check results in a natural 20 on the die and damage is dealt to the target ship’s hull. The critical range is expanded to a natural 19 or 20 on the die if the target starship was the subject of a successful target system science officer action (see page 325).
Critical damage is also scored whenever the target starship’s hull takes damage that causes its total amount of damage to exceed its Critical Threshold (see page 292) or a multiple of that threshold. For example, a starship with 100 Hull Points and= a Critical Threshold of 20 takes critical damage each time its total amount of Hull Point damage exceeds 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 points (and so on). An individual attack does not need to deal more than 20 damage to score critical damage against this starship; it just needs to be the attack that pushes the starship’s total damage above a multiple of its Critical Threshold.
A starship can take critical damage even when its total Hull
Points are below 0.
Base hit points for a heavy freighter are 120; 24 to the first damage based crit. We're a little over half way there.
I'm thinking at low level Target System is the go to offensive Science Officer option. The defensive option is Rebalance Shields. Opening with a scan is probably a good idea.
I think the piloting check at the beginning of helm phase to see who moves first is critically important. Maybe it's too important.
In this combat, if Threnody goes first, I think I can always stay in her rear arc. If she goes first, I'll have to veer away or risk her getting around to our front shields. Admittedly, Threnody is a sow and we are a terrier, but with two evenly matched ships, I think the advantage in going second is still huge. If you go second, you can certainly protect a weak shield, or maybe even guarantee which shield your enemy will hit. And at close range if the ship to move first doesn't run away, the second ship will probably be able to maneuver to fire on a weaker shield. That leaves the second ship with an option to disengage or not.
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I agree those are the preferred options for a science officer. And with multiple science officers you can afford to do a lot of those options.
Winning the initiative piloting roll is absolutely key when you have just two equally matched ships. Slower, bigger ships can end up not really worrying about it though as they have multiple weapons and stronger shields all round.
Merry Christmas to all!
Nevyn,
I messed up. The ship's AC is calculated as 10+ other stuff + number of "pilot ranks", not pilot modifier. So our AC did not get hugely better. Sorry that I misread that.
In the game does your last post mean that Threnody moves 6 hexes directly toward us?
Congratulations, Nevynxxx. I hope everyone is doing well.
One was enough for me. We were able to double team him. Man coverage seems doable. But a 2 against 4 zone. I simply shudder.
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The jump from man marking, to zone marking was indeed hard. There's a 7 year gap between the last one and this though. So that side of things is a little easier.
11, 9, 7 and 0....
They are expensive Aubs... or rather all the nice things that are fine as a pair are *really* expensive as a six! They don't seem to get any cheaper as they get bigger I'll warn you ;)
Looking back now, I sometimes wish we'd had another child.
Best of luck, guys.
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Congratulations, Nevynxxx! That's quite a team you've started. If it makes you feel any better, I'm the oldest of five - the youngest is almost 20 years younger than I. My folks have gone on record as saying they planned to stop at two.
The best response has been "You know, science has discovered what causes those things (children) to show up..."