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Woah, more or less finished my first pbp starship combat. That definitely took much longer than I expected. I checked - we took almost 3 weeks to run this, and that was with you guys being rather prompt in posting! At the risk of giving too much away, any suggestions on how we can speed things up for the next one? For example, shall I simply have everyone posting their actions rather than split into two batches per round? Workable so long as the rolls are in spoilers?
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Not really. I am doing this same one on another character and they are doing that, it didn't speed it up much at all. The issue is that we are all new to SFS ship combat, and in time it will get better.
I really love that you post the ship statuses, although I question why you post the enemies. (How much would we really know about their ship?). I took what you did and showed the other GM and he took it and ran with it. It does make things work well when we know what is wrong, and what to do to fix it.
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Frankly, I think the table is at the mercy of the gunners. If they can't roll well enough/if their modifiers are low, it will just take a lot longer. I can't imagine how long it would take if we only had a single gunner!
Thankfully, just about anyone can gun (even me). Its basically just your DEX + BAB. But, yah, Someone with a decent chance to hit something makes ship combat go faster....
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My 2 cents on the topic - I feel that in an attempt to create a more collaborative experience ( all players engaged in combat as a single unit ), starship combat will always be slower than the usual type, where every player does their own thing. I think the phases are a nice touch, and are not really a problem. The problem, I believe, lies in a different aspect of this encounter in particular. Or rather, the starship weapon design ( damage modifiers in particular - there are none - and I believe this is what extended the encounter to a period of 3 weeks ).
I believe it took that long due to the hull point values and gun options we had. When was the last time you fought a 100 HP creature on level one? I'm talking about Pathfinder now. Even if it were a lumbering beast unable to attack you, at level one, if you only have 2 people doing damage, while others provide the movement, defense, and utility - it would likely take just as long. ESPECIALLY, since there are no damage modifiers available in starship combat. Even a level 1 character with a stick applies their STR mod to their damage, but there is nothing like that on this ship.
Hakrinag's 4d4 on guns is comparable to a melee 1d6+4 in terms of damage (which is not that hard to achieve in melee). Interestingly enough, I feel as Paizo had this DEX-o-phobia for a while, and they cut themselves in the foot with starship combat implementation, since starship combat has esentially nothing to do with STR. It's all DEX in terms of attacking.
Since it makes no sense to apply STR mod on such attacks, I feel like it should be a bonus based on a skill check instead. Either a sense motive (anticipate movement of the target), engineering (knowing what is the target ship capable of, and where to hit), or some sort of related profession ( gunner, etc ). This way people who build for STR (and are usually performing well in regular combat), can stay relevant in starship stuff. Everyone else does skill checks. Why not gunners? This is baffling to me, and moreso after this encounter.
On the topic of damage modifiers, I would say that adding an extra die to damage with each multiplier of 5 by which you beat the target AC with a skill check is fair, but I suppose we'll see.
With this in mind, I understand Hakrinag's frustration - they built for melee combat, but are put into a gunner seat pretty much by virtue of being the only one with a nonzero BAB, and not having ranks in other starship combat related skills. And I would like to point out, that this is not me saying it's Hakrinag's fault for not having those skills. If I made a soldier, I probably wouldn't put anything in them either. To compare mine and their character, I built to max piloting, which is what I was doing, and they built for melee, which is what they will probably do now. But starfinder being starfinder, I -think- there will be a focus on starship combat (with focus, I mean at least one such encounter in each scenario), and STR soldiers - and probably solarians as well - will be irrelevant in it. At least solarians can captain with their charisma, even if it is a secondary stat for them, pretty much, but solarian class design is a completely different topic for now.
TL;DR: Everyone else, but the gunner, makes skill rolls for their posts on the ship. Why not gunner? Make gunnery rolls a BAB + d20 + skill modifier check instead of a standard attack roll, and up the minimum DCs for targeting ships. AND add damage modifiers for surpassing the DC by a large amount.
ps. Look at me rambling in walls of text that can be summed in 1 line.Good job, morning brain.
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I saw a DM take the liberty of changing the way an encounter (a kind of race with gun firing) was run by having the players take turns.
Instead of everyone doing 1 thing (aiding, piloting, shooting...) he had each player, in turn, handle everyone's actions and rolls.
I was wondering if it might not speed space combat up?
It is unorthodox, but it really made things a LOT faster.
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Thanks, Eli, for that detailed analysis. Yes, I pretty much agree with you. The enemy had 100 hull points, and the total damage you could do is 6d4 with both guns, i.e. average 15pts per round. That is minimally 7 rounds, assuming you hit all the time, which we didn't, and hence taking a total of 11.
I am also uncomfortable that certain builds are less effective in ship combats, namely mystic, salarian and non-ranged soldiers. Yes, for the first two, pumping Cha would help as captain, but there being only one captain, if there's an envoy in the party, then the mystic and salarian would be less useful.
That being said, while gunnery does not use skills like other crew actions, the AC of ships is also vastly lower than that of most crew action DCs. For example, the Endless Threnody has an AC of 11, so even with Pangea-Epsilon's +2 for gunnery, that's still 60% of hitting. In comparison, most of the crew action DCs are 17 or 19, so even with an optimised +8 to +10, the chance of success is still about that of an unoptimised gunner. So I guess in a way it balances out. We'll see the next combat how it goes, though.
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Pangea-Epsilon, that is a very intriguing idea. How do the rest of you feel about that? We do have another starship battle coming up if you guys want to try this out.
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I saw the DM do it in PbP, for a race, but that is close in mechanics to Space Combat (piloting, shooting, helping etc.).
He had people post what their scores were, and then it was each PC's turn to play everyone.
Quite unorthodox, but saves a lot of time.
And all get to play, since you let all run the entire round 1 time, then on to another player etc..
And example, would be me posting one big post with something like:
Madrigal does her enthusiastic captain's encouraging: 1d20+x
It succeeds and gives +2 to Eli for her piloting
Enthused by Madrigal's words, Eli tries to speed the vessel up to turn around while doing an Evasive manoeuver (DC whatever): 1d20+x+2 from Madrigal
But it fails and she simply turns it around a bit
Then such and such tries to Patch the glitching turret gun: 1d20+x --- fail (or succeed)
Hakgrinag fires X for this or that dam'
Pan-Ep fires Y for this or that dam'
Then, the GM reacts with the other vessel and interjects and narrates what happens
Then another PC takes over the entire actions
The time-gain is that one person does the actions of all 6, and you do not have to wait to see who is boosting who etc.
It changes things since one is kind of botting the others, but I guess you just say what you do (either only 1 thing, or a choice of a couple) and it moves from person to person...
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I was surprised by the idea, but it worked well for that race. And I think it works because there are not many choices (not like combat), the Gunners will shoot, the Engineer will either do Shields or aim guns (or patch if things are glitching).
As Asier said, we can say what we prefer to do.
And the one at a turn rule means we all act.
The way the GM did it was: the first one to post just ran all the PCs in his or her turn, but then did not post again until all the others had done this.
I will be out of town for the next four to five days. I will try to post, but if I seem to be taking too long, by all means, DMPC my guy.
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So I'm sitting here, signing up for games, and notice a new post in the thread. Cool. Someone rolling survival and failing spectacularly. I open the thread, and -every now and then- take a sip from my water bottle. I notice a long post. Okay, story time, I guess. But this is not kuey's post...
I read, and this mental image of a vesk in a flight attendant uniform ( with a skirt, to boot ) enters my mind, giving pre-flight security instructions.
Actually made me spit and laugh. Well done.
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That I've put up the Odyssey's stats should make it obvious that there's a starship combat coming up. :)
A few things to note about the ship that I thought to point out. (There might be more so please chip in.)
- It is a tier 4 ship, not tier 2 like Loreseeker. This allows it to have better HP, stronger shields, more weapons, etc, the higher tier also means many of your checks becomes harder.
- It is slower and less maneuverable than Loreseeker, so the same tactics used previously might not work
- Also, some equipment is worse. The sensors are worse so no bonus to Computers check for scanning. Due to its worse maneuverability, it also gives no bonus to piloting. At least it has a trinode computer so 3x +1 checks per round.
- It has two weapons at front and two weapons on turret, so assuming more people are assigned to gunnery than the usual 2, you could technically fire 4 times in one round (if front is facing the enemy ship).
- Odyssey has a tracking weapon, the high explosive missile launcher, so read the rules on that (pg 303). Among other things, it travels 20 hexes it round, it targets TL rather than AC, and needs gunnery check until it reaches the target. Also, it has only 5 charges per combat.
- Assuming that Eli pilots, don't forget that actual AC and TL is 15, as we add her piloting rank.
Also, for this combat, we'll try the method of each person taking turns to run the entire combat round. Moreover, to speed things up, I'll do the init roll at the start or each round, rather than at the helm phase. It changes the rules somewhat, but I don't feel it is significant enough to warrant splitting each round into two phases.
As for how you take turns, we can either (1) determine the order right at the start, i.e. now, or (2) of those who haven't taken a round yet, whoever post first would go. #1 is more organised so you can roughly predict when's your turn, while #2 might move faster as it prevents the situation of someone's turn coming up when he/she is not free. If you prefer #1, I'll do a roll-off to determine order. If you prefer #2, we do have to have some way from two people ninja-ing each other accidentally.
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Hello!
I will be flying out on Thursday, Oct' 5 (tomorrow) and then back on Monday, Oct' 9, and will be out in the Romanian countryside in between those dates.
I've arranged to have Internet access, so I should be able to post a couple times a day.
But I am giving this warning, so, in case I go dark, it'll be because something went wrong, so just bot me for those days if it happens.
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Asier-23-7 brought up a good point about posting of other characters' dialogue and descriptive text. Honestly, in our last battle, reading that was one of the best part of running the combat. Otherwise, it is just some tactical battle, which while fun, isn't exactly a roleplaying game. (Might as well play Warhammer.)
Can I suggest this. Whoever is running the actions for that round, just focus on posting the actions that each characters' actions and dice roll, in as clinical way as possible. After that post comes out, the rest of you can then post as your respective character to describe your characters actions, thoughts, and reactions. How's that?
The other reason is that I know as the GM in running the last combat is that planning and posting one entire round of actions is a lot of work! (I took more than an hour to get that first round out. :P) So by cutting down what required of the one taking that round of combat, it should lighten the load.
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I am curious. What is this hack action, exactly? I checked the starship combat section fo the core book and I didn't find it there. Checked the skills section then and it's not there either. Did i do a dumb? because I am a bit hungover and sleep deprived and that might have been the cause of this failure of mine. What page is it on?
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Alright, that brings us to the end of the SFS Quest! Well done!
1. I didn't expect that combat to suddenly end so early, so haven't asked you guys to roll your boon yet. So roll a d20, if you get a 19-20, you win a boon! Then roll a d2 to determine which boon you get.
2. We tried a different combat system and would welcome feedback. While it moves things quite quickly, I felt that (1) because it ended quite fast, Jonas and Pangea-Epsilon didn't get to go, and (2) a lot of the fun banter was lost. I would prefer the the previous method, except I'll combine all 3 phases together, rather than split the engineering from the helm+gunnery. Thoughts?
3. Will get the chronicle sheets out hopefully by tomorrow. (Again, didn't expect to end so quickly!)
4. Want to confirm if everyone is game to carry on with The Commencement?
5. Hakrinag, I don't have your day job roll, if any.
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1.
2. I agree with your thoughts. There isn't much opportunity for RP, but the combat resolves MUCH more quickly. Providing all the phases together might work better since theoretically one round should occur a day with everyone posting once per day. Should still be a nice pace and give opportunity for fun!
4. Let's do it!
5. Hakrinag does not have a day job roll.
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1. Boon attempt
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2. Space Combat
Seems like a good way, to combine all. Can simply ask people to put certain rolls in Spoiler and not have others check before they roll (like not check Gunnery roll to see if hit or not before deciding to boost Gunnery or not).
3. Thanks for great GMing! (and no probl' on Chronicles)
4. Sadly I cannot go on with you on The Commencement (I am going to be moving from Romania to Austria, and though I'll have Internet there for sure, will be working a lot for a while, so little time - bad timing). Have fun!
5. Day Job - cannot remember if I rolled or not, I normally take 10, which would be 10 +13 = 26 x 2 = 52 Cr.
Epsilon will send a note to all Starfinders to join for Mass, celebrated by the Starfinder Chaplain Pangea-Epsilon, and circulate a credstick at the end, to gather some alms...
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Yup, congratulations everyone!
1. Boon roll:
2. I agree, putting everything into one free for all action works a lot better than having someone post all of the actions. Maybe that one would work if a game is ever pressed for time.
3. Yup, that was a bit of a surprise for me too!
4. I am all for it! Though we may want to advertise for someone to fill Epsilon's position if we can, (And on that note :'(, goodbye Epsilon! We will miss you!)
5. No trained profession, so no rolls.
1.
2. I think I also agree with you. It sounds like a pretty good compromise between the two methods.
3. Cool! And thanks for a fun game!
4. Alas, due to some RL life changes mostly regarding work load, my free time has grown somewhat erratic, so I am not entirely sure how stable my posting is going to be. So unfortunately it seems I will not be able to join you...
5. No day job for me either, so no rolls.