Starfinder Armory

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Starfinder Armory
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Gear Up!

It's a dangerous universe out there, and often the difference between survival and being the next meal for an angry ksarik is having the right equipment. From guns to augmentations to high-tech and magical devices for every imaginable situation, Starfinder Armory is your guide to everything you need, whether you are a frontline fighter, stealthy spy, or scholarly spellcaster. Inside this book you'll find the following:

  • Scores of new weapons, filling out the options for weapons of every category, level, and type and rules to customize your weapons through weapon accessories, weapon fusions, and different weapon manufacturers.
  • New suits of armor, including light, heavy, and powered armor for nearly every level and numerous armor upgrades.
  • A wide range of new equipment-themed player options, including class features for every class!
  • Dozens of new pieces of technological, magic, and hybrid items, as well as numerous personal items, new augmentations from cybernetics to magitech and necrografts, and more!

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-041-5



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Hero Lab Online
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SoundSet on Syrinscape
Archives of Nethys

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Yup, it's an armory alright

5/5

Must-have.


4/5


Something for Everyone

3/5

In some respects, Armory is Starfinder's version of Pathfinder's Ultimate Equipment: a book filled to the brim with weapons, armors, adventuring gear, and magical items. However, unlike Ultimate Equipment, Armory isn't a compilation of equipment that has appeared in other books--it's mostly all new material and also includes some new class options. It's the sort of book that certain types of gamers will absolutely love (spending hours poring over the detailed entries for how to best outfit their PC) and others will find a relatively boring reference book to be pulled out occasionally. I should also note at the beginning that it's only 159 pages, continuing the Starfinder trend of comparatively short but expensive books compared to the first edition of Pathfinder.

The book starts with a two-page overview that's essentially a series of very general, sentence-long descriptions of each section of the book. It can be safely skipped without missing out on anything.

Formally, the entire book contains only two chapters: "Equipment" and "Class Options". But each of these chapters is broken down into several sections--the "Equipment" chapter, for example, has fifteen sections and is 137 pages long. A book like this isn't exactly a joy to read cover to cover--much of it is table after table of gear, with occasional two-page spreads of artwork and brief descriptions. I have to give credit to the writers of the equipment descriptions--I don't know how often people actually read the fluff (compared to just evaluating stats), but some of it is pretty interesting! As an aside, I find Starfinder's economy hilarious at times--you can buy something like seven armed helicopters for the price of one set of spiked knuckles that do 6d10 damage. Anyway, here are some very brief comments on each section.

CHAPTER 1: EQUIPMENT

* WEAPONS: The section introduces dozens of new weapon special properties, such as "free hands", "guided", and "subtle". There are also some new critical hit effects, including some really powerful ones like "suffocate." I'm glad the disintegrator line of weapons from Dead Suns made it in. The section also includes some basic "legacy" type weapons like greataxes, lances, and mauls. I've never taken the time to use them, but there are some new special manufacturer modifications that can be added in to any weapon. In sum, there's something like 50 pages just on new weapons, which gives you a sense of how much gear is crammed into the book.

* WEAPON ACCESSORIES: These are things like scopes, collapsing stocks, flash suppressors, etc. I don't like how bayonet brackets make every pistol-wielding character able to take AoOs, and I've also encountered problems in games due to bipods and scopes/sights serving as very cheap and easy ways to negate cover.

* WEAPON FUSIONS: There a lot of clever, useful ones here. I particularly like "advancing", "conserving" (a life-saver for one of my PCs), and "guarded".

* SPECIAL MATERIALS: These provide pretty minor changes--I probably wouldn't bother.

* ARMOR: I like the description and artwork in this section. There are a lot fewer types of new armor then new weapons, but there's also a lot fewer variables to work with. I've used the new "mining jack" on a dwarf PC and "regimental dress" on a Steward PC. As an aside, I've never really noticed before that around level 8 or so, the difference between light and heavy armors of the same price isn't very significant.

* POWERED ARMOR: This section has a special new rule that makes all powered armors upgradeable to any level (if you have the credits to pay for the alterations). It also introduces several new suits of powered armor, and there are some cool concepts here, though I've never tried any of them.

* ARMOR UPGRADES: There's over 70 new armor upgrades here, and although there are definitely some "meh" ones, there's bound to be some good ones too. I particularly like the auto-CPR unit, the auto-injector, and the computer interface ones.

* AUGMENTATIONS: Be the Bionic (Wo)Man! Some good choices here, including regenerative blood and synchronous heart. My favourite might be the optical laser just because I love the image (even though it doesn't really do much damage).

* TECHNOLOGICAL ITEMS: A ton of stuff here, and something for everyone. Dermal staplers, grenade scramblers (!), and a lot of useful drones. Tool kits are overpowered, giving really big bonuses to some skills for a very cheap price. It's also weird that every single thing you can buy here gives some sort of mechanical bonus, even goofy things like board games.

* MAGIC ITEMS: There's a good selection of some classic and some new ones here. Consumables are still way over-priced for what they do. A couple of items, like the containment tesseract and the trafodi paradox, would make for good plot devices.

* HYBRID ITEMS: These are techno-magical items. The captive star amulet is useful, and I like the creator capsule. Mischievous folks will have lots of fun with wonder grenades.

* PERSONAL ITEMS: If you want to buy an umbrella, some perfume, or a sleeping bag, this is the place. Aerosol spray is a really cheap way to find invisible foes!

* DRUGS: My drug-addicted solarian would like to note that drugs are still way-overpriced for what they do. It costs 23,500 credits for just one dose of an excitant to gain immunity to sleep effects for four hours! That's more than it costs to own outright a Level 8 Armored Transport vehicle.

* OTHER PURCHASES: This catch-all section actually has some really important information. There are rules for buying medical treatment and for hiring NPCs to serve crew roles on starships (great for small gaming groups). I like the little capsule descriptions of the different cuisines of the Core Rulebook races.

* VEHICLES: I've never really done anything with vehicles in Starfinder, but if you have 3,750,000 credits to buy a Level 20 Ultimatum Hover Carrier, this would be the place.

CHAPTER 2: CLASS OPTIONS

This section is 16 pages long and contains two pages dedicated to each of the Core classes. A two-page intro contains a new archetype, "Augmented", which is a Verces-themed option for characters who are heavily into artificial personal upgrades. It's passable.

* ENVOY: They receive some new improvisations and expertise talents, and overall there are some good additions to the game.

* MECHANIC: Some new tricks; "Tech Tinkerer" adds a lot of versatility to a character. Many of the options also help with starship combat. For drone fans, there are four new mods.

* MYSTIC: There's a new mystic connection, "Geneturge", which is all about DNA. Two new spells support the connection. Kinda fun, and I like the idea of having a self-help guru Mystic.

* OPERATIVE: I'm firmly of the opinion that operatives should be stripped of options rather than getting more. Anyway, this section contains several new exploits, with Trap Spotter extraordinarily useful (providing an automatic chance to detect traps just by getting close to one). There's a new operative specialization, "Gadgeteer", that's fine (and fun when combined with the "utility belt" exploit).

* SOLARIAN: Several new stellar revelations and a couple of new zenith revelations. Solarians who use stellar armor get a couple of nice choices. I love the quantum entrapment zenith revelation--send a foe out of reality for a few rounds!

* SOLDIER: Several new gear boosts accompany a new fighting style called "Shock & Awe". It's kinda silly, but fun to imagine.

* TECHNOMANCER: Four new magic hacks and three new spells. The "enchanted fusion" magic hack could be useful in helping to exploit particular enemy vulnerabilities.

And that's the end of the book. To be honest, if I wasn't a collector/subscriber, I probably wouldn't buy this book--all of the gear and class options will appear on Archives of Nethys anyway, and there's no major campaign setting details or other flavour that can be found only in the PDF or physical copy. Starfinder Society players, however, will no doubt find it handy to have so many additional options.


Worth the price

5/5

Got mine today and am very impressed. Read it through cover to cover and wow, does this ever fill in gaps that were glaring. Some new goodies that will be very welcome, especially for beefing up a Solarian. Will probably get the PDF too to have it handy.


Space Equipment Galore!

5/5

Simply a great and useful book with, of course, a LOT of equipment, but also good info' for backgrounds, creating deeper characters.
Really adds to the scope of the story.


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Gedalya2K wrote:
Wasn't the release moved to August?

If this is the Gencon release for Starfinder, a preorder date of early July would be correct. The street date would be in early August, of course.


That and if it is even somewhat reasonable to hold a release of a new hard cover for gen con release it makes massive sense to do so. So even things that could technically ship in the last week of july should just hold till gencon anyway.


Kittyburger wrote:
Tectorman wrote:

*Crosses fingers for an extra page, paragraph, sidebar, or something that gives a satisfactory answer to why shields and armor work they way they do; i.e., why your shields don't take damage until after your armor has already failed to do its job despite shields being traditionally envisioned as OUTSIDE and IN FRONT OF the armor.

It's not a gameplay issue at all; it's a world immersion issue.

There's nothing actually inherently wrong with that conception. The issue with traditional shields is that there's no known mechanism to "bound" a force field in the way that traditional shields are shown (a "hard" bubble of force that acts as a second layer of armor). So while shields as an intermediary layer between the hull and the armor isn't a TRADITIONAL depiction of how shields work, it's one that is at least within the realm of physical possibility (and it's actually one I've used in writing).

And I have no problems with that being the conceptual paradigm they're using. Just that if that's how shields are supposed to work here, recognize that that isn't the traditional depiction and come right out and say that's what it's supposed to look like.

Or just don't call them shields in the first place. Call it a Structural Integrity Field instead, since that is something that traditionally operates in the same fashion that these "shields" are supposed to.


VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.

He was probably talking about samples of ships, which a Starship book will be filled with, but there's quite a number out there already.

But I agree that starship combat is really lacking in options for anybody outside of gunner and pilot roles; buffing every single round will only go so far to keep players interested. I'm starting to consider just splitting the party into a main ship and a couple of fighters tagging along.

Sovereign Court

"exactly what you need to explore new worlds and wonders"

My players say 'challenge accepted' as they try to up-armor their buggy.

Paizo Employee Developer

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Sparrowhawk_92 wrote:
My hope is for more non-magical gear augments, specifically for weapons. Ex: Bayonets or scopes.

That would be cool...

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

So excited for this to come out!

Scarab Sages Starfinder Design Lead

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Joe Pasini wrote:
Sparrowhawk_92 wrote:
My hope is for more non-magical gear augments, specifically for weapons. Ex: Bayonets or scopes.
That would be cool...

Wouldn't it?!


Okay, ya'll are just teasing, now. 6 weeks to wait is too long. :)


Will there be any species or world lore in this book? Or will it be closer to Pathfinder 1st Edition's Ultimate Equipment?


Steven "Troll" O'Neal wrote:
Very excited about this. I'm a gear junky, I have problem.

it's okay i am a gear hoarder myself. You never know when that sting or stick or carrot will come in handy. Gear is life.

I really want shields back old style sheilds that could provide a cover of some sort. Since ranged is so heavily used.

Sovereign Court Creative Director, Starfinder

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Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
Will there be any species or world lore in this book? Or will it be closer to Pathfinder 1st Edition's Ultimate Equipment?

There's a little bit of world flavor (such as weapons manufacturers, which provide modifications to baseline weapons), but Armory is very much similar to Ultimate Equipment (with more lasers, of course!).


Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.

A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

Dark Archive

Pagan priest wrote:
Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.
A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

I think it's possible to install two hangar bays in a gargantuan starship for 16 interceptors, but i get what you are saying.

It's probably for simplification reasons.

Maybe the article in Dead Suns #6 about larger than colossal starships adresses this?


Robert G. McCreary wrote:
Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
Will there be any species or world lore in this book? Or will it be closer to Pathfinder 1st Edition's Ultimate Equipment?
There's a little bit of world flavor (such as weapons manufacturers, which provide modifications to baseline weapons), but Armory is very much similar to Ultimate Equipment (with more lasers, of course!).

Thankies for the answer!

Hmmm, might not be something I'm after, but the weapon manufacturers modifications is intriguing, plus, more Starfinder Art.


Marco Massoudi wrote:
Pagan priest wrote:


A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

I think it's possible to install two hangar bays in a gargantuan starship for 16 interceptors, but i get what you are saying.

It's probably for simplification reasons.

Maybe the article in Dead Suns #6 about larger than colossal starships adresses this?

Oops. I meant to say 16. Really.

Oh, I am sure that it was done for reasons of simplification, I just don't think that is a good enough reason to short change carriers by so much. With 16, it is practically too small to even be used as convoy escort for piracy suppression. Maybe 8 to 16 squadrons of fighters or interceptors, but that is still rather small for the size of the ship. I am thinking somewhere above 200 small craft.

Of course, this is not a ship for PCs, unless they are captains or admirals in somebody's navy.


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

Game designers are notoriously bad at spaceship design.


Pagan priest wrote:
Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.
A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHT tiny spaceships???

In all cases and under all circumstances, a modern day aircraft carrier is never more than one planetary diameter away from a ready source of air, water, food, fuel, and other consumables. Running out of any one of those is an inconvenience at best compared to running out in the middle of the Vast. So the Starfinder-verse may be running on the assumption that each individual person needs a WHOLE lot more redundancy allocated to them across all the possible consumables, resulting in starships much larger than aircraft carriers fielding crews much smaller.


Tectorman wrote:
Pagan priest wrote:
Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.
A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHTSixteen tiny spaceships???
In all cases and under all circumstances, a modern day aircraft carrier is never more than one planetary diameter away from a ready source of air, water, food, fuel, and other consumables. Running out of any one of those is an inconvenience at best compared to running out in the middle of the Vast. So the Starfinder-verse may be running on the assumption that each individual person needs a WHOLE lot more redundancy allocated to them across all the possible consumables, resulting in starships much larger than aircraft carriers fielding crews much smaller.

Air and water are recyclable. Food could be grown in hydroponics, and supplemented with freeze-dried, concentrated, or fresh as circumstances dictate. Modern carriers use nuclear reactors, they only refuel once every couple of years.

One significant difference between modern and SF carriers is that modern jets take a lot of fuel, whereas the SF craft have a power core similar to that of the ship, thus have no need of refueling. In all versions of the RPG Traveller, ships require HUGE amounts of fuel to jump between stars, yet a Traveller carrier still has many more fighters than a modern carrier. I'm not positive, but I don't think that any of the published versions of a carrier in any edition of Traveller exceeds a mile in length.


Pagan priest wrote:
Tectorman wrote:
Pagan priest wrote:
Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.
A modern aircraft carrier, with a length of only 333 meters, has a crew of 5000 and carries 90 aircraft. A gargantuan SF carrier at 2000 to 15,000 meters (1.24 to over 9 MILES)only has room for 200 crew and a maximum of EIGHTSixteen tiny spaceships???
In all cases and under all circumstances, a modern day aircraft carrier is never more than one planetary diameter away from a ready source of air, water, food, fuel, and other consumables. Running out of any one of those is an inconvenience at best compared to running out in the middle of the Vast. So the Starfinder-verse may be running on the assumption that each individual person needs a WHOLE lot more redundancy allocated to them across all the possible consumables, resulting in starships much larger than aircraft carriers fielding crews much smaller.
Air and water are recyclable. Food could be grown in hydroponics, and supplemented with freeze-dried, concentrated, or fresh as circumstances dictate. Modern carriers use nuclear...

You're not wrong, but remember that you're saying "could". SF ships "might maybe can" do all of those things, hoping nothing goes terribly wrong enough to seal the ship's doom. But what happens when a modern carrier completely runs out of food? They get more shipped to them. "Less than a planetary diameter", remember? SF ships that run out of food in between star systems are vastly (pun loosely intended) worse off. So for all that they "could" rely on recyclable air or hydroponically grown food alone, there are probably volumes of textbook examples in every flight academy in the Pact Worlds explaining how many different reasons why that's a bad idea. So, repetitive, repeating, redundant, repetitious redundancy at minimum.


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Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

The Fourth Imperium's Utu class planetoid Dahak had a crew of some 250,000 and, if I remember correctly, some 80 or 100 "parasite ships" plus smaller craft. Dahak spent 50,000 years, give or take, disguised as Luna, Earth's moon.

"Commander, you are laboring under a misapprehension. I am not in your moon, I am your moon." :-)

Dark Archive

This should release on august 2nd - 50 days and counting! ;-)

I hope well get an update soon.


Are there going to be shipped in this book? I can't remember if I have seen anything one way or another. Does anyone know??

I have found the weight of the ships of Tine and small to work well enough. Not sure on Medium I will have to do more research. Large on up is not right full stop.

I did the analysis found on the forums here. But the long and short is change the weight from tons for, Large to Colossal ships, to kilotons (ktons). This gives you a nice separation between player-intended ships Medium size (especially at low level), and the NPC/Organization size ships the Large to Colossal ships. Large ships are the first that have a minimum crew size greater than 1.

Pagan priest, the length for starships is in feet. not meters so the length of a carrier is between .38 to 2.8 miles.

I think that carriers in the sense that we use in the modern day are not highly supported by the current rules. Hopefully, more will come out about carriers that would give the game more options! Personally, I am also looking forward to rules supporting commanding a fleet, I want to be an Admiral!!


Tectorman wrote:
You're not wrong, but remember that you're saying "could". SF ships "might maybe can" do all of those things, hoping nothing goes terribly wrong enough to seal the ship's doom. But what happens when a modern carrier completely runs out of food? They get more shipped to them. "Less than a planetary diameter", remember? SF ships that run out of food in between star systems are vastly (pun loosely intended) worse off. So for all that they "could" rely on recyclable air or hydroponically grown food alone, there are probably volumes of textbook examples in every flight academy in the Pact Worlds explaining how many different reasons why that's a bad idea. So, repetitive, repeating, redundant, repetitious redundancy at minimum.

"Could" only in the sense that might be better options, including magic, that I did not mention. If those are the best available, then any combat ship would be using all of them. For air and water, other than magic replacement, there is no real option other than recycling with stores to replace battle damage losses.

As far as a modern carrier that ran out of food, 1) the captain would be "allowed" to retire just about immediately, 2) the carrier would radio the supply ship that is accompanying the battle group and arrange for a couple of hours steaming along side for underway replenishment. However, I would not say that that being only 1 planetary diameter or less from resupply is very helpful. That carrier may be a week or more away from any port from which they could be resupplied. A SF ship is always within 1d6 days or less from Absalom Station.


C_Trigger wrote:

Pagan priest, the length for starships is in feet. not meters so the length of a carrier is between .38 to 2.8 miles.

I think that carriers in the sense that we use in the modern day are not highly supported by the current rules. Hopefully, more will come out about carriers that would give the game more options! Personally, I am also looking forward to rules supporting commanding a fleet, I want to be an Admiral!!

Sigh. Mentally shifting back and forth between Starfinder and Traveller.


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I think part of the problem with having massive hangar bays is that the Starship combat rules really struggle with fights that have more than a half-dozen ships in them. Starship Combat shines when it's dealing with fighter-on-fighter or cap-on-cap combat, and works okay but can get slow when there's more than a few enemies involved.

Say we use the modern carrier as a baseline but double the fighter capacity since the smallest possible gargantuan carrier would be roughly twice as big (~600m) - it would be able to carry 180 fighters. Assuming it launches every fighter it has, the fight would look a bit like this. There is no way in hell that encounter could work with the starship combat rules as they are today.

Massive Sci-fi ships is a huge trope. Plane-size space fighters is a massive trope. Releasing a space combat system that doesn't cover these bases would be a massive hole. So instead we get some curiously undersized hangars to keep the numbers somewhat manageable.

I fully expect to see these rules revised and expanded upon, either in the Armory or in a book devoted exclusively to space combat. Personally I'd consider some kind of "swarm"-type mechanic to let larger fighter wings fight as a single entity.


Changes to ships and ship combat will not be addressed in this book. It is entirely devoted to gear, magic items, weapons and the like. While I am eager to see starship combat expanded upon I believe we will have to wait for a book devoted to ships and ship combat at some point down the line.

What I am most eager to see is how well they fleshed out weapon attachments (scopes, bayonets, grenade launchers etc.) as well as variety of ammo. These are basics that most gun centric games have and Starfinder currently lacks. I think it will really flesh out the current offering quite nicely and hope to see some expanded gear based combat options as well.


Pagan priest wrote:
Tectorman wrote:
You're not wrong, but remember that you're saying "could". SF ships "might maybe can" do all of those things, hoping nothing goes terribly wrong enough to seal the ship's doom. But what happens when a modern carrier completely runs out of food? They get more shipped to them. "Less than a planetary diameter", remember? SF ships that run out of food in between star systems are vastly (pun loosely intended) worse off. So for all that they "could" rely on recyclable air or hydroponically grown food alone, there are probably volumes of textbook examples in every flight academy in the Pact Worlds explaining how many different reasons why that's a bad idea. So, repetitive, repeating, redundant, repetitious redundancy at minimum.

"Could" only in the sense that might be better options, including magic, that I did not mention. If those are the best available, then any combat ship would be using all of them. For air and water, other than magic replacement, there is no real option other than recycling with stores to replace battle damage losses.

As far as a modern carrier that ran out of food, 1) the captain would be "allowed" to retire just about immediately, 2) the carrier would radio the supply ship that is accompanying the battle group and arrange for a couple of hours steaming along side for underway replenishment. However, I would not say that that being only 1 planetary diameter or less from resupply is very helpful. That carrier may be a week or more away from any port from which they could be resupplied. A SF ship is always within 1d6 days or less from Absalom Station.

And I'm not saying they wouldn't also be exercising those better options. But that would be in addition to those lesser options, not in place of. Remember, this is my attempt to provide a rationale for why the ships would be bigger while the crews would be smaller, by saying that the space is taken up by, for example, not the ship's water reclamator and atmospheric reconstitutor, but the fifty water reclamators and seventy atmospheric reconstitutors per person, with spare parts enough to make another few hundred of each (also, per person).

And remember, an SF ship is only 1d6 days away from Absalom Station IF they have a working Drift drive and IF they have working thrusters for once they get into Drift space and IF they don't get a random encounter along the way. It's like Bruce Wayne's line about Superman in BvS; if there's even a 0.00000001% chance of those factors contributing to stranding them away from help, simple prudence demands that they treat it as a 100% certainty.


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Tectorman wrote:

And I'm not saying they wouldn't also be exercising those better options. But that would be in addition to those lesser options, not in place of. Remember, this is my attempt to provide a rationale for why the ships would be bigger while the crews would be smaller, by saying that the space is taken up by, for example, not the ship's water reclamator and atmospheric reconstitutor, but the fifty water reclamators and seventy atmospheric reconstitutors per person, with spare parts enough to make another few hundred of each (also, per person).

And remember, an SF ship is only 1d6 days away from Absalom Station IF they have a working Drift drive and IF they have working thrusters for once they get into Drift space and IF they don't get a random encounter along the way.

Except that for a ship of war, the first and foremost consideration is its ability to perform its mission. A battleship needs to be able to hammer away at other ships without taking too much damage in return. A destroyer needs to be able to prevent missiles or small craft from reaching the capital ships, or escort convoys, or suppress pirates, etc. And a carrier needs to be able to carry small craft. Life support for the crew, even the crew itself, exists to serve the mission. Extra capacity on the water and atmosphere recycling, sure, maybe enough to support 150% of the expected maximum. But not multiple redundancies. The crew will be in space suits during battle, so air is not an immediate concern. Perhaps a full day's expected usage of water, and enough air in compressed storage to replenish the ship once or twice.

Then too, none of these ships should be going into battle alone. A modern U.S. Navy carrier battle group includes the carrier itself, a supply ship, a cruiser, and a couple of destroyers. (Plus an attack sub, but no one is supposed to know that they are there.) If battle damage damages life support, the surviving crew can be evacuated to one of the other ships while repairs are made.

I think that to a large extend, we are talking at cross purposes. You are looking for a rational to justify RAW, while I am stating how I think the rules should be changed to better reflect the way things are in the real world, extrapolated into a science fantasy realm as if it could be done in a straight forward manner.

Tectorman wrote:
It's like Bruce Wayne's line about Superman in BvS; if there's even a 0.00000001% chance of those factors contributing to stranding them away from help, simple prudence demands that they treat it as a 100% certainty.

Ah, man! Spoiler warnings! I haven't seen that yet.


I'm hoping we get some options to help out with sniping in this book. Without range penalties to perception, that -20 prevents all but the luckiest snipers from remaining undetected. I think there was an NPC sniper in one of the APs that had an ability that imposed a range penalty on opposed perception checks, something like that would be nice as a feat.

Dark Archive

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Subscribers should start getting their pdf's in 1 month! ;-)


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Tectorman wrote:
Pagan priest wrote:
Tectorman wrote:
You're not wrong, but remember that you're saying "could". SF ships "might maybe can" do all of those things, hoping nothing goes terribly wrong enough to seal the ship's doom. But what happens when a modern carrier completely runs out of food? They get more shipped to them. "Less than a planetary diameter", remember? SF ships that run out of food in between star systems are vastly (pun loosely intended) worse off. So for all that they "could" rely on recyclable air or hydroponically grown food alone, there are probably volumes of textbook examples in every flight academy in the Pact Worlds explaining how many different reasons why that's a bad idea. So, repetitive, repeating, redundant, repetitious redundancy at minimum.

"Could" only in the sense that might be better options, including magic, that I did not mention. If those are the best available, then any combat ship would be using all of them. For air and water, other than magic replacement, there is no real option other than recycling with stores to replace battle damage losses.

As far as a modern carrier that ran out of food, 1) the captain would be "allowed" to retire just about immediately, 2) the carrier would radio the supply ship that is accompanying the battle group and arrange for a couple of hours steaming along side for underway replenishment. However, I would not say that that being only 1 planetary diameter or less from resupply is very helpful. That carrier may be a week or more away from any port from which they could be resupplied. A SF ship is always within 1d6 days or less from Absalom Station.

And I'm not saying they wouldn't also be exercising those better options. But that would be in addition to those lesser options, not in place of. Remember, this is my attempt to provide a rationale for why the ships would be bigger while the crews would be smaller, by saying that the space is taken up by, for example, not the ship's water reclamator and atmospheric...

and let's not forget that it just lists the people currently running it not their replacements and other extra people in the ship waiting for their shifts plus the amount of advanced computers to help run things so just because it lists a low amount of people there could be more cause we list the WHOLE crew for aircraft carriers not the ones on duty at once


serithal wrote:
Tectorman wrote:
Pagan priest wrote:
Tectorman wrote:
...
and let's not forget that it just lists the people currently running it not their replacements and other extra people in the ship waiting for their shifts plus the amount of advanced computers to help run things so just because it lists a low amount of people there could be more cause we list the WHOLE crew for aircraft carriers not the ones on duty at once

They would need more than 200 just for flight ops.

Web Product Manager

Updated with final product description and cover image!


Ooo it looks snazzy!

*peers closer*

Is that a... coffee mug?

Dark Archive

So,when is this book actually coming out? Amazon,ebay,and several others say August and paizo says July. I'm confused!?!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

I think you can always believe the actual publisher over any third parties.

Dark Archive

Jello Ninja wrote:
So,when is this book actually coming out? Amazon,ebay,and several others say August and paizo says July. I'm confused!?!

Street date is august 2nd, so amazon & ebay are right.

Subscribers will receive access to their pdf's when they get their shipping notice, with shipping normally starting roughly 16 days before street date.
In this case because of Gencon 51 & other conventions, it can very well be a little later.
The Paizo warehouse probably will have this in stock in late july (unforseen occurances aside).

So in this case, both dates are right.
I hope i could help you a little. ;-)

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Kittyburger wrote:
VoodooSpecter wrote:
OK But I'm just going to say it here because one thing in the interview read to me as a bad misconception. They are NOT good on space ships as we currently stand. The game is presently completely lacking any kind of stealth system for starship battles, and there's all kinds of amazing third party stuff that has come out that blows away the meager offerings we've seen so far. New hulls, new hull sizes, new modules and systems. So that's not accurate. Starships aren't in a good state where they just don't need any more content. There is so much more creativity to be plumbed.
I think more important is how utterly AWFUL the existing charts are on the size and crew complements of the ships. A 3,000 meter deep-space dreadnought bristling with weapons ranging from laser self-defense nets to weapons of mass destruction should NOT weigh the same as a modern Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It just SHOULDN'T.

Agreed. At 3,000 meters in length and let's say, 900 meters wide, it should have at least a crew of 1,000 sailors+ minimum if not much more. As for tonnage, I'd say somewhere around 750000000 metric tons.


Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I like how laid back the final cover is


"Scores of new weapons"

Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
JiCi wrote:

"Scores of new weapons"

Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?

That's very simple, "scores" is more than "few" and less than "many".

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

A score is also, technically, 20. But is more commonly used in the rather imprecise version Gorbacz suggest.


"A wide range of new equipment-themed player options, including class features for every class!"

Ok, I'll take archetypes that give you a customizable AHAV or powered armor please ;)


Gorbacz wrote:
JiCi wrote:

"Scores of new weapons"

Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?

That's very simple, "scores" is more than "few" and less than "many".

It actually means "dozens" but with extra pretension.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Xenocrat wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
JiCi wrote:

"Scores of new weapons"

Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?

That's very simple, "scores" is more than "few" and less than "many".
It actually means "dozens" but with extra pretension.

well... as mentioned, a "score" is 20.

so, it means, truly, "twenties"


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Yakman wrote:

well... as mentioned, a "score" is 20.

so, it means, truly, "twenties"

Indeed, and since the next name we have for a set of things is a gross (numbering 144), saying you have scores of something is effectively saying it numbers between 40 and 143.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

But since we do talk about "hundreds" of things but not "grosses" of things, I would put the upper limit of "dozens" at 199.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

The supercolossal ultranoughts detailed in Dead Suns 6 have no limit to the number of expansion bays they can have, or the number of medium ships they can carry.

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