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.
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).*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.
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.
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.
So excited for this to come out!
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?
Creative Director, Starfinder
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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!).
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???
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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???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.
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?
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.
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.
Game designers are notoriously bad at spaceship design.
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???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.
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.
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.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 ofOK 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.EIGHTSixteen tiny spaceships???
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.
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...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.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 ofOK 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.EIGHTSixteen tiny spaceships???
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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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." :-)
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!!
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
Updated with final product description and cover image!
Ooo it looks snazzy!
*peers closer*
Is that a... coffee mug?
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I think you can always believe the actual publisher over any third parties.
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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. ;-)
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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.
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 ?
"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 ;)
That's very simple, "scores" is more than "few" and less than "many"."Scores of new weapons"
Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?
It actually means "dozens" but with extra pretension.
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It actually means "dozens" but with extra pretension.That's very simple, "scores" is more than "few" and less than "many"."Scores of new weapons"
Huh... my English isn't this perfect, but... how does that translate into a numerical value :P ?
well... as mentioned, a "score" is 20.
so, it means, truly, "twenties"
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.
But since we do talk about "hundreds" of things but not "grosses" of things, I would put the upper limit of "dozens" at 199.
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.