
Opsylum |

Wait, what? AI? :D
Oh please oh please oh please have disembodied AI rules that would be so incredible thank you very much.
In all seriousness, this looks incredible. Can’t wait to play it with my group.

Opsylum |

Aww man, its not Aboleths, its Sivv yeah :D Aka those who created Dead Suns' super weapon
Or an evil ancient bantrid empire! Roly-poly li’l stormtroopers of spaz-destruction! Also friendly acquaintances of Darth Jar Jar next galaxy over.

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Announced for October! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.
Preorder shows as expected in September, perhaps because Devastation Ark 1 and 2 both show as expected in August.

magnuskn |

Hooray! I get to write the highest-level Starfinder adventure EVER!
Congratulations!
I hope, though, that many more of them will follow, written by you or others at Paizo. That's how Starfinder will keep me as a customer. :)

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If it's at all possible for the PCs to take control of the Devastation Ark, then it will be VERY bad news for the Swarm, Corpse Fleet, Cult of the Devourer, and many other of the Pact World's threats.
Kinda sounds like ye need to in progress cripple the ship really badly though :p
Depends though, is Devastation Arc a Tier 20 ship, Tier "21+" ship(I hope not because I don't think Starship rules make much sense to be able to be higher level than PCs since one level higher is already impossibly hard) or just so super mega powerful ship it doesn't have stats

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Is *that* what a Sivv looks like?
Lord...
I take it ye didn't notice them on the banner image/trailer? :D The shrimp people with guns?(its same as cover of this book)
Though I do like concept art shown in one of con streams little bit better, probably because perspective of directly in front of face makes face look bit too flat

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It's really ambiguous word at least as it just means they are part of bureaucracy, so term itself is extremely general if they don't give details of what they do.
Like counter to common belief, bureaucrats don't just do "bureaucracy things", they do actually have a job besides stamping papers :p So not sure what writer means with it

John Mangrum |

It's pretty obvious to me that the authorial intent is simply that...

John Mangrum |

Except in the "If the Players Fail" section ** spoiler omitted **
None of the endings suggest that the surviving sivv are actually a bunch of nice, misunderstood fellas. But the difference between "If the Players Fail" and the post-campaign options are...

Ixal |
So whats the justification given for that
a single ship can apparently somehow withstand the entire pact fleet military, including several Tier 18 dreadnoughts and then has enough manpower to actually conquer anything instead of being swarmed by a million soldiers as soon it touches down on a major pact planet?

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Tier 20 or higher ship with its own drone fleet and its military is composed solely of super high level creatures?
That is my guess at least :p
(also "being swarmed by million soldiers" isn't a thing because of logistics purely. you don't just "throw thousand soldiers" to blindly shoot target RTS style in real life wars as far as I understand)

Ixal |
Tier 20 or higher ship with its own drone fleet and its military is composed solely of super high level creatures?
That is my guess at least :p
(also "being swarmed by million soldiers" isn't a thing because of logistics purely. you don't just "throw thousand soldiers" to blindly shoot target RTS style in real life wars as far as I understand)
No, but you still have the occupants of a single ship fight against the entire army of a planet which also includes high level characters or high level combat droids.
At best the only thing the Ark can hope for is to hold an area. But attrition works against it.
Same in space. How can a single ship which is still vulnerable to PCs, hold out against many tier 18+ ships (maybe even tier 20 in case the driftmaven gets involved because of the starstone) + support fleet.
Imo a realistic "if the PCs fail" probably should be
The Veskarium conquers the Pact World, swooping in after the Ark and the Pact fleet fight it out, saving the day but never leaving and instead occupying the weakened system.

AnimatedPaper |
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For a less flippant answer,
A single ship was able to meet and answer the entire pact worlds armada. That's canon. Whether or not they were successful is determined in this adventure and the previous. If the attack is successful, they go on to hold off any counter-attack for weeks (including whatever Vesk, who have both a moral and cultural imperative to attack the Ark Prime, sends), destroy Absalom Station, and conquer the pact worlds.
So. What, logically, must that single ship be capable of if all that is true? Is the power it used to shut down the Starstone a critical component? What effect might that have on a planetary surface, especially somewhere like Aktion, Aballon, or the Solar colonies?
But yeah, if all of that is too much to swallow, just change it for your table.

FormerFiend |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

No. (They're fairly powerful on an individual level.)
That's... a massive disappointment. Like, sours my desire to buy this, level disappointment.
I'm still going to because I bought the other two volumes and I can only avoid the sunk cost fallacy in so many aspects of my life, but playable sivv stats was far and away my single most wanted thing from this AP.

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John Mangrum wrote:No. (They're fairly powerful on an individual level.)That's... a massive disappointment. Like, sours my desire to buy this, level disappointment.
I'm still going to because I bought the other two volumes and I can only avoid the sunk cost fallacy in so many aspects of my life, but playable sivv stats was far and away my single most wanted thing from this AP.
I'm kinda surprised only thing you wanted from ap was playable stats for ancient evil empire? I mean yeah it would have been cool, but umm yeah bit confused why you thought the product featuring them as enemies would have playable stats for them?
(I mean, if they don't have playable stats for Jinsuls by now, I'd be surprised if Sivvs got jump on them)
I'm mostly biased though since my desire to buy this ap was for "I want to see what level 13-20 starfinder looks like in game/in setting/storywise"

FormerFiend |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

FormerFiend wrote:John Mangrum wrote:No. (They're fairly powerful on an individual level.)That's... a massive disappointment. Like, sours my desire to buy this, level disappointment.
I'm still going to because I bought the other two volumes and I can only avoid the sunk cost fallacy in so many aspects of my life, but playable sivv stats was far and away my single most wanted thing from this AP.
I'm kinda surprised only thing you wanted from ap was playable stats for ancient evil empire? I mean yeah it would have been cool, but umm yeah bit confused why you thought the product featuring them as enemies would have playable stats for them?
(I mean, if they don't have playable stats for Jinsuls by now, I'd be surprised if Sivvs got jump on them)
I'm mostly biased though since my desire to buy this ap was for "I want to see what level 13-20 starfinder looks like in game/in setting/storywise"
I have an unhealthy addiction to new playable races in starfinder. Honestly can't even really explain it myself.
Also I'm salty af that jinsul haven't been given playable stats.
The story's all well & good & is mostly why I'm still going to get this book.
But new playable races are the thing I look forward too most in any given SF book.

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CorvusMask wrote:FormerFiend wrote:John Mangrum wrote:No. (They're fairly powerful on an individual level.)That's... a massive disappointment. Like, sours my desire to buy this, level disappointment.
I'm still going to because I bought the other two volumes and I can only avoid the sunk cost fallacy in so many aspects of my life, but playable sivv stats was far and away my single most wanted thing from this AP.
I'm kinda surprised only thing you wanted from ap was playable stats for ancient evil empire? I mean yeah it would have been cool, but umm yeah bit confused why you thought the product featuring them as enemies would have playable stats for them?
(I mean, if they don't have playable stats for Jinsuls by now, I'd be surprised if Sivvs got jump on them)
I'm mostly biased though since my desire to buy this ap was for "I want to see what level 13-20 starfinder looks like in game/in setting/storywise"
I have an unhealthy addiction to new playable races in starfinder. Honestly can't even really explain it myself.
Also I'm salty af that jinsul haven't been given playable stats.
The story's all well & good & is mostly why I'm still going to get this book.
But new playable races are the thing I look forward too most in any given SF book.
Would be really cool to gets stats for Sivv though I kinda worry that wouldn't happen because 1) they are strongly tied to this ap 2) this ap apparently provides option for pcs to be evil upon evil and genocide them :p 3) starfinder isn't old enough for them to have made sequels to another aps, so setting material ignores aps as 1e did.
Like I do understand that its good thing that aps don't force gm to buy them just to stay up with events in setting, but sometimes when really cool stuff happens in them you want to see the aftermath xP

FormerFiend |

FormerFiend wrote:CorvusMask wrote:FormerFiend wrote:John Mangrum wrote:No. (They're fairly powerful on an individual level.)That's... a massive disappointment. Like, sours my desire to buy this, level disappointment.
I'm still going to because I bought the other two volumes and I can only avoid the sunk cost fallacy in so many aspects of my life, but playable sivv stats was far and away my single most wanted thing from this AP.
I'm kinda surprised only thing you wanted from ap was playable stats for ancient evil empire? I mean yeah it would have been cool, but umm yeah bit confused why you thought the product featuring them as enemies would have playable stats for them?
(I mean, if they don't have playable stats for Jinsuls by now, I'd be surprised if Sivvs got jump on them)
I'm mostly biased though since my desire to buy this ap was for "I want to see what level 13-20 starfinder looks like in game/in setting/storywise"
I have an unhealthy addiction to new playable races in starfinder. Honestly can't even really explain it myself.
Also I'm salty af that jinsul haven't been given playable stats.
The story's all well & good & is mostly why I'm still going to get this book.
But new playable races are the thing I look forward too most in any given SF book.
Would be really cool to gets stats for Sivv though I kinda worry that wouldn't happen because 1) they are strongly tied to this ap 2) this ap apparently provides option for pcs to be evil upon evil and genocide them :p 3) starfinder isn't old enough for them to have made sequels to another aps, so setting material ignores aps as 1e did.
Like I do understand that its good thing that aps don't force gm to buy them just to stay up with events in setting, but sometimes when really cool stuff happens in them you want to see the aftermath xP
I feel that could be covered with a side bar offering suggestions ranging from only allowing sivv as playable in future games if your players didn't genocide them, or given that the sivv had a vast, interstellar empire - with the first two volumes of the AP at least covering former sivv-controlled planets in their Codex of Worlds - there could be some other small outpost with sivv in stasis that a pc sivv might have emerged from.
But the impression I got from John's (admittedly brief) answer is that sivv being "fairly powerful on an individual level" implies to me that they just have some natural, innate abilities that would put even a sivv civilian above, say, a level one soldier of an existing playable race. If that's the case then I have opinions about it but that's premature without having read their entry yet.