Search Posts
Seeing that Gryggax and Blacklock are choosing to abandon Breaker to face the charging akata alone and instead rush past him to shut the bridge door, Boris shouts back at them. "Don't waste yer time shutting the door, ya' yellow bellied cowards! We gotta kill these damned things anyways if we're gonna get to the bridge. Me and Digdig can hold 'em off in the doorway, you two keep that thing off Breaker!"
For the people that seem to be worried about it, its pretty unlikely anything important in the room will actually be damaged by a feeble Mk I frag grenade. And if something was damaged...well we have a mechanic and a technomancer on board. Just sayin'. Page 409: Hardness: Each object has hardness—a number that
represents how well it resists damage. Each time an object is damaged, its hardness is subtracted from the damage. Only damage in excess of its hardness is deducted from the object’s Hit Points. On average, a sturdy piece of equipment (such as a weapon or a suit of armor) has a hardness equal to 5 + 2 × its item level. Any other piece of equipment has a hardness equal to 5 + its item level. Hit Points: An object’s Hit Point total depends on its item level and is modified by additional criteria. On average, a sturdy piece of equipment (such as a weapon or a suit of armor) has a number of Hit Points equal to 15 + 3 × its item level. Any other piece of equipment has a number of Hit Points equal to 5 + its item level. Any item of level 15th or higher receives an extra 30 Hit Points. Very large objects may have separate Hit Point totals for different sections. Objects do not have Stamina Points. Damaged Objects: A damaged object remains functional (though it has the broken condition; see page 273) until the item’s Hit Points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed. Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Engineering skill or a number of spells.
"Aggadd, I think this varmint just injected something into me!"
Boris orders Digdig to get behind the Akata so they are flanking it on both sides. "Use the buzzsaw blade, Digdig. These things don't burn so good, so we'll see if they bleed!"
Boris grips his flame doshko in both fists and a blade of bright red flame bursts out from the end of the weapon. Boris squares his body to face the "space dog" and expertly jabs at it with the burning end.
Digdig whirs to life, his weapon arms spinning around him. "COMBAT PROTOCOL: CLOSE COMBAT. BEGIN." Digdig steps to the side of the monster attacking Boris and swings the arms wielding the doshko at it.
"Aye, yer a might religious too, eh, Shirren? Never hurts to have another god on our side. I pray to Three-in-One myself." Boris loosens the cargo straps holding Digdig in place, muttering a litany to the drone as he inspects its armaments one last time. Boris loads his buzzsaw shaped starknife into the quick release holder and briefly turns the flamers on his doshko to make sure that it is working correctly. Boris gulps nervously as their transport nears the Acreon. "Well, I guess I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. Let's get this over with."
Watching the Necroglider fly off into space, Boris cheers, "Fly away in the face of Dwarven fury and don't ya think about coming back here!" After the fight's over, Boris logs in to assist Alpha with scanning the Acreon. Under his breath he mutters, "I don't like the way that ship looks over there, floating all quiet and lifeless."
It's the GM's call, but the book basically says no. It basically says that most spells and effects won't have a significant effect during space combat. Think about it like this. The best real life analog to what we're doing would be a dog fight between two fighter jets. A modern fighter jet can fly up to 1500 mph, which ends up being around 2,000 feet per second. Even if we were moving only half that speed, then Blacklock would have to maintain a bumber to bumber following distance for at least 12 whole seconds as detect thoughts only reveals the presence of thought on the first round. 18 seconds if you actually wanted to pick up surface thoughts. That would be some pretty intense flying.
Boris growls over the comms in an irritated voice.
Boris pivots the coilgun around, preparing to get a good bead on the darting the Necroglider. Quick little bugger.
"Shields are up at full strength and all systems are are humming beautiful. Cap'n Gryggax, since everything is going good engineering wise, I'm gonna get ready to link into the turret gun fer now." Boris links into the gunnery and pivots the turret gun around, hoping that he can line up its firing arc with whatever fancy maneuvers Blacklock decides to try out. "Just line us up so I can give 'em a good spray on their broadside."
@Breaker: Ranks in Piloting count as your BAB if its higher and you have a 16 Dex. Actually, it looks like everyone here has a gunnery bonus of +6; Boris has a lowly +5. Technically, we're all good gunners. But I agree; the bonus from the Captain is a lot more useful than the Engineers ability to divert power to the guns or the science officer's ability to target systems. Gryggax I think you should do captain so that you can provide that encouragement bonus; UNLESS both me and Breaker are busy boosting/re-balancing shields.
My opinion is that we will want to cycle the Gunner role. So I'll start running right away, but if our shields go down, I'll need to get them back up. If things go really south and we start having a malfunctioning system, then I'll pretty much be a full time engineer doing patching actions. When that happens, you could take over as a gunner.
Boris straps his drone down with thick canvas straps. "We don't need you running round the ship while we're flyin'. Boris seats himself near the power core, laying out his tools and running some last minute diagnostics. He then familiarizes himself with how to remotely access the various guns on the ship and uses it as an opportunity to make sure that they are properly turning within their arc and that they are properly calibrated.
"Yeah, that's my interpretation. Astral Extractions hired the Hardscrabble to prospect for minerals; but that don't necessarily mean that they automatically get all rights to salvage, cause they didn't put that into the contract. Ay' guess we're gonna need to actually go up there and see what's actually up there, since no one's really saying what they actually found on on the damned rock. And I guess we'll hafta talk to the other two, hear about what Astral's side in this is."
Boris pulls the contract over and carefully pores over it. Boris tries to recall the few contracts he had the chance to see during his days as an asteroid miner. "I ain't no lawyer, but I've seen a couple a contracts. Usually there's something specific in there about salvage rights because ya never know what yer gonna find out in the Diaspora. I've heard a' crews finding crashed ships from the Vesk war out there, with weapons still ready to go. I heard a one crew findin' a live tactical nuke. Still worked. I think they decided to turn that one into the Stewards though. Anyways, whoever wrote this contract up; not putting a line in there about salvage was just down right sloppy."
"What do you think about this contract, 83? Do you see anything interesting?"
Boris came in, dressed in the professional garb of an asteroid miner. Digdig follows closely behind him, its conical copper hull polished and its weapon arms shining with new grease. Boris looks around the ship, clearly impressed with what he sees.
"I'd be pleased to sit with ye' and have a bite to eat. Ay'd take a cold beer too, if ya' got it. Would ya' mind if I said a little grace to to the Machine Gods before we tucked in? I'm not tryin' to beat my religion over yer head, but the Triune's been too good to me not for me to show them a little gratitude."
Boris is eager to talk to Otal in his native tongue and agrees to meet with him. "I gotta let ya' know, I think Astral Extractions gonna be reachin' out to one of my crew. We gotta get a consensus as a team; but if was up to me alone, I'd prefer helping you guys out over them scrazzy suits. I'll do my best though to get 'em on your side." Boris calls Breaker up shortly after the call. To Breaker: "Hey, I just got a call from the Hardscrabble. They want us to help them out with their claim to the 'Rock'. My sympathies are always gonna be with the workin' man and I'm gettin' the impression yours might be too. I'm not sure Blacklock cares about much more than the who will pay the most and I just don't know the shirren well enough to make a guess. Do you got any thoughts on what we should do?"
"I don't suppose yer gonna tell us what's in that special cargo of yers, are you?" Boris uploads the specs on the ship and looks them over.
@Breaker: I saw that you bought a quick release upgrade. Do you just want to have the one that we found? I'm expecting to be taking about 100% of the heavy armors and advanced melee weapons we're going to find, so I think maybe you deserve to take this upgrade. @Grygax:You're definitely a good gunner, but I wouldn't discount the bonus you can give people as captain. Its a nice option to have, especially because everyone in the group can gun, but you're really the only one who can reliably captain. If no one wants that other incendiary grenade, I could definitely use it.
"I'm gonna need to take a look at the ship before we go out. Make sure everything was set up to standards. I'm sure your people did a good enough job, but I share Blacklock's paranoia about flying around in an unfamiliar ship; especially one that's been retrofitted for something outside its original purpose." "I suppose we might as well head out. Don't care to be working for an elebrian bloke, but a job's a job, I guess. Let's just remember to keep our guards up."
I think we should be fine with just four players doing space combat. I kind of like the idea that we might be switching roles at times. @Blacklock: I see you weren't adding your Operative edge into your skill calculations. That would make you our best pilot. I wouldn't worry about never having done it yet. Really, the main stunt you need to do is the defensive one. Most of the other stunts are pretty niche.
I was thinking about space ship combat for us and think we should talk about roles. What's kind of tricky is that there are only 4 of us, so after the pilot we can only fill three roles. The good thing is that all of us can do multiple roles, which is nice. From my experience with space combat, I think its usually best to have two gunners whenever possible; a primary gunner to operate the turret gun and someone else manning whatever gun is the arc facing the enemy. I think it is almost always better to make another attack than do one of the Engineering or Science Officer actions. The exception is if we start taking hits...then getting shields back up might be more essential. Boris has the worst Dex in the party, so he's going to be the weakest gunner and pilot. Boris is also not quite as good at Computer Science as Breaker, but he is still pretty strong in this area. He is a good engineer; but unless our shields are down, I think his actions are usually going to be spent doing something more useful. Basically, Boris can do everything except captain and is ready to be flexible and move where he is needed. Do other people have any thoughts on starship tactics?
"Aye, I have had some experience with Eoxians before. It is a tale of sorrow and woe. I'll spare yeh the whole saga and just say that I was an unwilling contestant on one of their damnable game shows. A cruel piece of "entertainment" by the name of "Meat Blender." I survived only through the divine intervention of the Triune; but I had to do unspeakable things to earn my life and freedom. All so that some Eoxians could make a few credits and get a few laughs." Boris is quivering with rage but manages to calm himself after a few forceful deep breaths. "I suppose we need to hear the ghoul out but I think it would be best if I wasn't doing any of the talkin'. And heed my warning, if we do decide to work for 'em, just remember what we need to watch our backs, cause they won't have no qualms about sticking a knife in it if they can find a way to profit from it."
|
