Starfinder Society Scenario #3-16: The Vast Experiment: Fast Choices

This scenario was quite interesting, and while short it had a good social part, one combat part and a good two-parter in the starship.

The chase was a interesting changeup and worked better than the vehivle chases in previous sceanrios, as the rules seem to flow better and less new rules to focus on.

As my players said "Its pretty standard scenario". Like I personally had more strong opinion on this(I really liked starship chase), but its essentially "okay let's get players into mindset they are doing influence thing- HAH surprise attack by random silly group with cool pets!" followed by starship chase and for once, not painful and actually pretty fun starship combat. (I played up the cultists for comedy because come on, eco terrorists using innocent animals as weapon just writes for itself. But yeah plot wise they are really random and disconnected)

I do think scenario does showcase bit of a problem with pegasus: There is no reason to take it along ever since even starship skill checks don't benefit much from it ^^;

Anyway, starship chase is highlight of the scenario though with good rolls pcs can get enough many successes (with four players) by round 2 or 3 so after that they can just stop rolling since rolling gives them higher chance to actually take hits. So that was bit weird yeah, plus it feels kinda weird that "Okay, okay, so hits don't matter unless you take too many of them, its successes that actually define how much damage you have taken"

So I like to break my reviews sometimes down into the classic: good, bad, & ugly.

So lets jump in.

The good.
-The concept was good. A mission to try and get the society better starships. Awesome love it.

The bad.
-The above concept was not executed well. I don't feel like anything we did in this mission ultimately made an impact on the overall story, or meta-game of Starfinder Society.
-The Eco-terrorists. I don't understand why they were brought in. I just feel like it killed the entire mood and feel of what this adventure was going to be and ulitmately, the reason they are protesting doesn't make a lot of sense. We are polluting space? What?
-I felt like the plot was all over the place on this one. I thought we came in with a really cool coprate espinage thing, and then it just goes off the rails.
**
The Ugly.
-The Chase Scene. I am going to break down this into multiple sections here.
1. Effectively only 1 player did anything in the entire chase. The rest of us kinda just waited around for it to end.
2. It isn't clear how the chase scene actually impacted the rest of the scenario. Like what happened exactly? And I worry what is suppose to happen in general in future scenarios with this.
3. Its not fun. It just feels like a skill check challenge to say you have a skill check challenge. In traditional skill check challenges you are allowed to utilize you abilities and creativity to overcome the obstacle. For example earlier in this exact scenario, I schmooze with the guests at the galla, I talk with the vesk, with Prof Lawyer/Law, about legal jargon to get away with more knock-offs. That was neat, other players found it funny. But unless you were our pilot in the chase, you didn't do much of anything at all.
4. This is really a piggy-back on the last thing: but chases in the car chase work better because they reward choice and creativity. WHen I did the starship chase, you are affectively given a sheet with what you are allowed to do and told, have fun. But with the vehicle chase, because you can just utilize your normal skills and abilities in interesting ways a lot of fun things happen. I saw in a vehicle chase, a person cast Hold Person on the enemy driver. I saw someone cast grease to create an oil slick. I have seen gunners shoot down trees to create obstacles.
**
My suggestions:
-Create a multi-series story arc where characters go out and test ships and vote on which ones they liked. Like each scenario you use two different ships. So maybe 6 prototypes in all. Then with the 4th adventure you bring in the two most popular, and there is some big space battle and the only ship avialable to the PCs is the 1 of hte 2 prototypes. Then 1 if not both of the final two get added to the list of legal starships.
***
Post-Edit suggestion:
-I would also not have starship chases again. Let starship chases be unique to vehicle's. Where everyone is involved everyone is doing something fun and cool. Where it isn't just a pilot who does 95% of the work. And the rest of the party doesn't actually do anything.