nomotog's page

Torbyne wrote:

I would assume that the Millenium Falcon is supposed to be crewed by 5, two gunners, a pilot, a co-pilot and an engineer. Under my assumptions above, i would say the ship can be minimally manned by 2 (In Episode VII with just two people they have trouble even getting the shields up and with just Hand and Chewie onboard they have to give up some functionality to man the guns) and optimally manned at 15 to provide multiple shifts for each position and the ability to have a few people down for recovery or conducting repairs without significant impact.

15 is pretty overkill. The thing with the gunner positions and maybe even the co-pilot (to a much lesser extent) is they'd don't have to be crewed 24/7. The gunner slots in particular would be filled by otherwise off duty crew only when something happened.

If it were a dedicated military attack ship, you might see your numbers, but for cargo or especially smuggling, 15 is way too many.

Loading down a cargo ship with extra people just isn't practical, even if they're time-sharing bunks (wherever those happen to be on the falcon). Really I'd say the optimal number is six, enough to have backups for engineer and pilot, 2 on guns when necessary, a co pilot, and someone in the 'communications/sensor' chair behind the pilot- where we see a random rebel in the attack on endor. But from a practical standpoint you'd wake those people up in a crisis, not strain resources (more life support, more food/water, less cargo) and ship space to have people standing around for hours.

Of course, this is only necessary because Lucas wanted to show the guns as ww2 bomber turret blisters. If it were practical and like most other ships in the SW universe, the guns would be fired from the cockpit, and an active duty shift would be 3 or 4.

15 is overkill because where are you going to get that many players. (Also giving everyone a turn and something important to do would be annoying :S)

A neat feature I saw in one game was giving classes starship components in their gear set. So your fighter gets a starship shield along with their armor and laser gun. The starship got it's core components like engines for free, but everything else was based on the classes of the party.

How much do we know of spaceships so far? I haven’t read every post on the forum.

I’m just worried because they always seem to be either priced outside of any PC’s possible ability to buy, require some kind of extreme number of crew members that it removes some/all the ships out of most games or even without thousands of crew you need to have 4-6 PC’s specialized in just running it. It can really throw a wrench into things especially when players start to just steal them.

I’m just hoping that people are thinking about and looking at that. It’s hard enough to rope 4-6 people together as a unit without them needing to know how to use sensors or things after all.

For my take, they should only have small ships focused around catering to player teams.

Smaller crews allow the players to have more of a impact. They are also easier to run.

As someone who has logged over 1000 hours in FTL, I'd have to say Nomotog's suggestion is a very good starting point to build a Ship-to-Ship Combat system from.

I would have to disagree with the ship not having HP though. I'd say give the ship HP, but have it's 'AC' be determined by the Pilot. Or maybe instead of AC, do something like 'Roll Reflex/Pilot Skill vs the opponent Attack roll', although that might get rather tedious in large scale fights. Still, just throwing ideas out there.

The real trick here, is how to incorporate magic properly. If this were strictly tech based, it would be simpler. But magic with tech, always causes a complication somewhere.

I was thinking AC would be based on a pilot roll too. (I didn't want to post my whole rule set at the start. It's long and it's also in 5ed format.) With HP my current idea is to not have it because I want to keep focus on the crews, but I am also thinking including it can help with the systems ability to handle larger battles. It's rather in depth, so you can't really use it for massive battles or massive ships. (That mostly works for me though. It's going to be rare that the players will get there hands on a really big ship or a fleet.)

I have an idea that I have basically riped from FTL, but they riped it from battlestations so turn about. :P The idea is to focuse on the players rather then the ship.

The ship would act more like terrain. A ship would consist of a set of rooms with different systems for players to use. The ship itself doesn't have HP or AC. It's more about the players skills in using the ship systems.

All space weapons are AoE, To fire them, you pick a room on your target ship and everything inside makes a save or takes damage. So the ship doesn't actually protect the player from attacks. (It gives the ships medic something to do and also it keeps the depth of normal combat. Your HP, DR, Saves, ect all still matter.) The system in the room can also take damage and might have to be repaired. (Something for the engineer to do. They get to make a choice about what is important to fix fist or even what they can fix.) Weapons would also often come with an lingering environmental effect too. Like a missile might breach the hull, or a laser might start a fire. Now the players have to deal environmental hazards on changing terrain.

Different characters can operate different systems with the idea being that no system is needed and that you will have more systems then players. So a ship for five people would have A helm, Shields, Weapons, Engineering, life support, A Drone Bay, A Teleport, and maybe a cloaking field. Any system can be maned by anyone. Players would be moving between systems to use the one most needed at the time well avoiding hazards (If this was 5ed, then I would make them tool proficiency, but maybe just have every system use the same skill in starfinder.)

nomotog wrote:

Here are my wild thoughts

I think there will be a stronger focus on gear and that will lead to gear proficiency being a replacement for some abilities. Like to balance out a grenade launcher being a grenade launcher. It's a weapon proficiency you can only get if your a level 10 fighter. Well a class might get proficiency with a mind probe in the same way a wizard might get a mind reading spell.

I also think we won't see BAB work the same. Specifically I think it won't give you extra attacks. The number of attacks you get will be based on the weapon you use.

I also suspect the ship rules will be bad. Just based on experience.

I suspect that BAB will still function like it does in 3.X but that most classes designed for Starfinder will be 3/4 BAB progression. i agree that weapon fire rates will be limiters for number of attacks. At higher levels dual wielding pistols may afford more attacks, and more DPR, than two handing a rifle. In general the 3.x systems dont model "one big damn hit" very well so far.

I really hope powerful weapons arent locked behind high level feats, that just seem so... artificial to me. lock them behind resource gates or in setting legal requirements, something that makes sense to the story but dont lock it behind level X just "because"

I really want good and easy to understand ship rules... i really really, do. trying to not be too optimistic for it though.

I think they will make BAB less complex rather then more complex, so I don't see them limiting attacks based on ROF. 3/4 BAB sounds about right though.

I think locking powerfull weapons behind a level is a lot cleaner then locking them behind money gates. Money is such a squiggly thing. It's even more squiggly when you bring in a ship like you would expect for most space games. You have a ship and logically a ship would cost tons. If you have money for a ship, you have money for hundreds of grenade launchers. Locking them with proficiency isn't that out there. You already have exotic weapons locked behind feats, or martial weapons locked behind classes. (Though money locks are kind of a big thing in 3.5/pathfinder so they might just go with that.)

I have seen working space ships rules, but never any that feel good. They often feel like a new game onto themselves. Lately I have seen a few systems just not bother. My idea for working spaceships is to copy FTL/Battlestations where you get really micro and treat a spaceship more like a piece or terrain more then a entity itself.

Here are my wild thoughts

I think there will be a stronger focus on gear and that will lead to gear proficiency being a replacement for some abilities. Like to balance out a grenade launcher being a grenade launcher. It's a weapon proficiency you can only get if your a level 10 fighter. Well a class might get proficiency with a mind probe in the same way a wizard might get a mind reading spell.

I also think we won't see BAB work the same. Specifically I think it won't give you extra attacks. The number of attacks you get will be based on the weapon you use.

I also suspect the ship rules will be bad. Just based on experience.

Anyone play FTL. I kind of hope startships play out like they do in that game.

I did a quick searched and apparently no one asked, but will starfinder be SRD content?

Also I am wondering how different starfinder will be then pathfinder. Like will it just be pathfinder with new paint or are you planing on tinkering with core systems?

nomotog wrote:

I thought that chart was needlessly complex. Your like rolling randomly to move along a chart with almost zero context. I think I liked "Return to the Temple of the Frog" way better. It basically described the items in very basic descriptions and think the idea was for the players to RP them guess what the item was and what each button did.

nomotog, the only problem with descriptions is coming up with sufficiently vague descriptions that aren't too non functional. The flow chart had little context (except charting how far along you were) but when it comes to fiddling with unknown...

True. It's something I puzzled over myself trying to think of a way to make an items description descriptive, vague and complex. Some items are kind of easy. Like color coded medicine. Call something strange blue icor in a glass jar and the players will have a hard time guessing it's a healing potion. Others are a little hard. Like how do you describe a gun without players imminently saying oh that's a gun and knowing everything about it. (I tried to do this myself once before and it didn't do all that well.)

Then there is the question of how many often do you want to do the laser caveman thing in an adventure. On every item, or just the big ones.

R_Chance wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

nomotog wrote:

I have a question about the book as well. Are you including rules or guidelines for PC learning how to use tech artifacts? I really don’t expect a barbarian to be able so simply pick up a laser gun and know exactly how to use it without at least a little fiddling, and maybe a little bit of accidentally shooting their foot off.

Yes. The rules work pretty similar to how folks identify magic items, in fact, but have some gateways that folks need to pass through in order to do so.

For those familiar with Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, we do not use flowcharts to model this, though. I thought about that, but then discarded it in favor of a less complex, faster method that allows the identification of technological items to work better with the skill system.

Too bad. I can see why you'd skip the Gamma World type flowchart thing and integrate it into the skill system but it was both fun and cool to go through back in the day...

True. They were fun. Imagine doing that for every single magic item you find in an adventure, though... it gets old fast.

I thought that chart was needlessly complex. Your like rolling randomly to move along a chart with almost zero context. I think I liked "Return to the Temple of the Frog" way better. It basically described the items in very basic descriptions and think the idea was for the players to RP them guess what the item was and what each button did.

Oh I just love this idea. This is book is what drew my attention back to pathfinder.

I have a thought on why the engerysword doesn’t work. A big part of crashing spaceships into castles is that spaceships don't fit in next to castles. When you see a wizard with a laser pistol, it looks odd. They clash and the clashing is what makes this kind of setting unique and appealing. (For me at least.) The reason a laser sword doesn’t quite fit is because it fits too well. A laser sword is an harmonious mixture of SiFi and fantasy. It doesn’t clash with the setting, but you want it to clash. (I am guessing that in place we will have some kind of energy prod like a shock club.)

I have a question about the book as well. Are you including rules or guidelines for PC learning how to use tech artifacts? I really don’t expect a barbarian to be able so simply pick up a laser gun and know exactly how to use it without at least a little fiddling, and maybe a little bit of accidentally shooting their foot off.