SFS and ship ownership


Starfinder Society

Sovereign Court 3/5

I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5 **

Given that the ship is supposed to be a group-owned affair (I think!) in standard SF play, my assumption is that each tier would have a pregenerated ship supplied by the SFS for the mission, where appropriate.


The concept as i understand it is that the group owns a ship that scales with the average party level. That scaling is determined by a point pool that the PCs decide to spend to upgrade various features. I suppose it would be similiar to a group owned Eidolon perhaps? What is left in the air though is groups that want to fly individual fighters or operate in a capital ship as opposed to a Serenity, Millenium Falcon or Rocinante. We dont know if you can pool other resources together and buy a second ship or change hulls from what you started with aside from just upgrading the one ship. Also, the existence of a dedicated resource for ships makes me wonder if you could buy upgrades with more traditional wealth.

Hmm, now i am wondering how fun it would be is players each ran their own fighter or worked in 2 man teams on each ship fighting against GM controlled forces. You could work in a lot of interesting scenarios since Facing is now a thing for ships. Wonder if you could pass target locks along or something. Like, the Solarion, Soldier and Operative are all in fighters while the Envoy and Technomancer are in a support ship locking, jamming and directing the hits.

Sovereign Court 3/5

Torbyne wrote:

The concept as i understand it is that the group owns a ship that scales with the average party level. That scaling is determined by a point pool that the PCs decide to spend to upgrade various features. I suppose it would be similiar to a group owned Eidolon perhaps? What is left in the air though is groups that want to fly individual fighters or operate in a capital ship as opposed to a Serenity, Millenium Falcon or Rocinante. We dont know if you can pool other resources together and buy a second ship or change hulls from what you started with aside from just upgrading the one ship. Also, the existence of a dedicated resource for ships makes me wonder if you could buy upgrades with more traditional wealth.

Hmm, now i am wondering how fun it would be is players each ran their own fighter or worked in 2 man teams on each ship fighting against GM controlled forces. You could work in a lot of interesting scenarios since Facing is now a thing for ships. Wonder if you could pass target locks along or something. Like, the Solarion, Soldier and Operative are all in fighters while the Envoy and Technomancer are in a support ship locking, jamming and directing the hits.

A group pool of points is a nice way to do it. It could also work if each player had their own pool of points to spend on their position in the ship.


crashcanuck wrote:
Torbyne wrote:

The concept as i understand it is that the group owns a ship that scales with the average party level. That scaling is determined by a point pool that the PCs decide to spend to upgrade various features. I suppose it would be similiar to a group owned Eidolon perhaps? What is left in the air though is groups that want to fly individual fighters or operate in a capital ship as opposed to a Serenity, Millenium Falcon or Rocinante. We dont know if you can pool other resources together and buy a second ship or change hulls from what you started with aside from just upgrading the one ship. Also, the existence of a dedicated resource for ships makes me wonder if you could buy upgrades with more traditional wealth.

Hmm, now i am wondering how fun it would be is players each ran their own fighter or worked in 2 man teams on each ship fighting against GM controlled forces. You could work in a lot of interesting scenarios since Facing is now a thing for ships. Wonder if you could pass target locks along or something. Like, the Solarion, Soldier and Operative are all in fighters while the Envoy and Technomancer are in a support ship locking, jamming and directing the hits.

A group pool of points is a nice way to do it. It could also work if each player had their own pool of points to spend on their position in the ship.

Maybe whenever a player levels, along with normal level stuff they have the option to get special cool upgrades and bonuses to their position on the ship (similar to getting feats, but specifically for the ship). That'd be cool.


The thing that confuses me is how the player split points thing will work in organized play. I suspect they may use ships that in game belong to the organization and players will have a lot less to decide on what the ships are capable of. Or the base system lets ship customization do a lot less than i have been hoping :(

Sovereign Court 3/5

Torbyne wrote:
The thing that confuses me is how the player split points thing will work in organized play. I suspect they may use ships that in game belong to the organization and players will have a lot less to decide on what the ships are capable of. Or the base system lets ship customization do a lot less than i have been hoping :(

That's why I thought of players perhaps having individual pools of points to their position, less headache about how to distribute points.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Given the "throw a group together" method of organized play, PCs may have to be flexible as to which ship positions they take as well. Could be awkward if four pilots all show up to the same table.


but positions arent supposed to be tied to classes so i am picturing more of: 4 players total with 5 points each to spend on what ever upgrades they want... but what about when players cant agree, someone wants 6 points of weapons and someone else wants 7 point sensors etc. etc.


What if captains gave untyped bonuses though, five captains each barking their orders that give you +3 to gunnery rolls results in one very stressed gunner and a lot of slagged enemy fighters. ;P

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Positions not being tied to classes does not mean that you can't specialize or somehow be better at one position than others. I hope positions aren't so interchangeable that a party can freely shuffle them at will with equal effectiveness.


crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Depends on whether the ship is just transport or whether there's ship action.


thejeff wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Depends on whether the ship is just transport or whether there's ship action.

If ship action is involved then there would be a scripted ship for players to be on as it would be in a PFS scenario. I assume that for the mmost parts, ships will be simply transport to where the action oft he scenario is supposed to happen.

Like PFS, SFS can't assume that they'd be dealing a consistent table group, more likely a pickup set of players.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 5/5 **

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Ship ownership exists outside the usual credit economy as far as we know. It's entirely possible for a 1st level party to have a basic, 1st-level ship, according to the spoilers we have so far received.


ryric wrote:
Positions not being tied to classes does not mean that you can't specialize or somehow be better at one position than others. I hope positions aren't so interchangeable that a party can freely shuffle them at will with equal effectiveness.

The problem with that would be a SFS session where you end up with only Ship's Engineers or only Captains which could be worse than general skills based off of Character level.

Actually if we are going off of Star Trek rules than a ship full of Engineers would be terrifying. If we are based off Star Wars than a ship of only Captains would be invincible...


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

I believe that they have already states that all parties will have ships from the get go. Some modules or adventures may lock them away for story reasons but ships are common enough that apparently just having a space worthy frame isnt much to write home about.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Depends on whether the ship is just transport or whether there's ship action.

If ship action is involved then there would be a scripted ship for players to be on as it would be in a PFS scenario. I assume that for the mmost parts, ships will be simply transport to where the action oft he scenario is supposed to happen.

Like PFS, SFS can't assume that they'd be dealing a consistent table group, more likely a pickup set of players.

I dunno, from the photos and interviews released they seem to be putting a lot of effort into making ship combat both robust and an integral part of the core game. I wouldnt want them to avoid it just to make SFS easier to run. Society owned ships with a few pre-generated loadouts for PCs to choose at the start of the session would even be better than just making a part of the core game completely optional.

1/5

Torbyne wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Depends on whether the ship is just transport or whether there's ship action.

If ship action is involved then there would be a scripted ship for players to be on as it would be in a PFS scenario. I assume that for the mmost parts, ships will be simply transport to where the action oft he scenario is supposed to happen.

Like PFS, SFS can't assume that they'd be dealing a consistent table group, more likely a pickup set of players.

I dunno, from the photos and interviews released they seem to be putting a lot of effort into making ship combat both robust and an integral part of the core game. I wouldnt want them to avoid it just to make SFS easier to run. Society owned ships with a few pre-generated loadouts for PCs to choose at the start of the session would even be better than just making a part of the core game completely optional.

I can imagine SFS will have some growing pains with this and we can anticipate us not getting everything we want in the first season.

4/5 5/55/55/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis

Traveller started groups out with jump-2 scout ships that you could eventually try to upgrade.

Assuming everyone isn't bringing their own ships, you are probably looking at a standard chassis and each player bringing upgrade pools. Better flight computers, targeting computers, perhaps a gimmick that allows you to exceed normal limits in some way. To make this work, you would need some conformity in the ship systems, but that is useful anyways.

I think a bigger question is going to be how do tech ships mix with magical ships.

Scarab Sages 5/5

My understanding of Starfinder, is that the ship acts as a kind of home base for the characters. Similarly to Homlet in Temple of Elemental Evil. A place you can go back to for rest, succor, and recovery before adventuring out again.

I'm guessing in SFS, the ships will be kinda the "lodge" in the same way that Calissro Benary has a ship.

There could be adventures that fully take place on the ship, with the player characters as the crew. But there also could be adventures where the ship is ancillary to the adventure. Just a plot hook as a way to get the player characters to the adventuring place.

I don't think it would work well if each character could carry around their own ship.

5/5 5/55/55/5

4 people marked this as a favorite.

maybe it's like voltron, everyone gets a lion?

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5

That would be awesome

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

BigNorseWolf wrote:
maybe it's like voltron, everyone gets a lion?

I'm thinking maybe more like Voltron I (the one based off Dairugger XV) where your ships come together in groups of 5 normally to form a Sea, Land, or Air team. Only in the multitable specials do you actually get enough ships together to form Voltron.

Dark Archive 3/5 **

Torbyne wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
crashcanuck wrote:
I'm curious how this will work out for SFS Scenarios. I'm guessing owning a ship will be far more than a mere vanity like in PFS but how will it play out in SFS. Will the group be forced to take a ship provided to them or will they have to decide which players ship to use.

Probably the exact same way it does in PFS. The Society sends you some where and arranges for a ship charter. There really is no real reason to be different. If a player happens to have a vanity, the players vanity might be used. Some missions might require that you use a pre-arranged vessel as they do in PFS.

Ships are expensive, it's not really likely that player characters can start out owning one.

Depends on whether the ship is just transport or whether there's ship action.

If ship action is involved then there would be a scripted ship for players to be on as it would be in a PFS scenario. I assume that for the mmost parts, ships will be simply transport to where the action oft he scenario is supposed to happen.

Like PFS, SFS can't assume that they'd be dealing a consistent table group, more likely a pickup set of players.

I dunno, from the photos and interviews released they seem to be putting a lot of effort into making ship combat both robust and an integral part of the core game. I wouldnt want them to avoid it just to make SFS easier to run. Society owned ships with a few pre-generated loadouts for PCs to choose at the start of the session would even be better than just making a part of the core game completely optional.

This is something I've mused about since Starfinder was released. If I had to guess, each "Tier" will have a default craft the PCs get access to if ship combat is to be a thing (i.e. A standard fleet ship appropriate to their standing in the society). The ships are setup to operate on a 4 person crew, but can flex up to 6 people. You can take this ship or just use a PC's ship.

From here, I can only imagine that folks would likely be able to have their own custom ships, ranging from an uncommon to rare sort of thing. Maybe we'll see fighter craft as a thing, letting dedicated space combat characters do their thing without debates on whose ship is used in the scenario.

My ideal arrangement, however, is as follows:

1) PC owned ships, outside "fighter class", are rare and the domain of PCs who want to focus on starship stuff. More often than not, PCs use on of the default fleet ships the society provides appropriate to their tier.

2) All PCs, as part of their "chronicle loot", gain access of Modules/Enhancements tied to particular ship stations.

3) PCs, when they sit down at a table, use their Ship Boons/Modules/Enhancements to fill out the default fleet ship. More than likely, folks will pick an enhancement that corresponds to their role/station as part of the crew.

This way, everyone at the table offers something to make the group's ship better rooted in their own resources/play experience. Folks can focus on gaining access to upgrades that relate to the crew position(s) they most often occupy. And that means a special ship brought in by one PC could be made even better by everyone at the table. Or, perhaps, you have to choose between getting that really cool PC owned ship OR the one the PCs can load out with custom enhancements for that scenario that match their own preferences.

Sovereign Court 3/5

bdk86 wrote:

My ideal arrangement, however, is as follows:

1) PC owned ships, outside "fighter class", are rare and the domain of PCs who want to focus on starship stuff. More often than not, PCs use on of the default fleet ships the society provides appropriate to their tier.

2) All PCs, as part of their "chronicle loot", gain access of Modules/Enhancements tied to particular ship stations.

3) PCs, when they sit down at a table, use their Ship Boons/Modules/Enhancements to fill out the default fleet ship. More than likely, folks will pick an enhancement that corresponds to their role/station as part of the crew.

1) I would see fighters/shuttles be the most common. Something that can move a group of Starfinders but not much else.

2) Makes sense

3) Ditto

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Just wanted to pop in here and say that starship combat will certainly be a factor in Starfinder Society organized play. We're not ready to go into specifics on how this will work in an organized play environment yet, especially since the rules on starship combat aren't released, but there are plans in the works.

You may now continue rampant speculation!

2/5

Each tier has a "Pathfinder-Class Fleet Starship" that is deliberately designed to be quickly modified and retrofitted. Each player has their own equipment that gets stapled onto the base ship when the mission begins, and gets removed when it's over. If you've got 5 gunners, then the ship had 5 gunners worth of gunnery equipment, base engines, and base defenses.

But hey, that's just me rambling thoughts. I'm a suckered for playing around with acronyms

5/5 5/55/55/5

"It's based around something called "the ISS" and runs on duct tape...

4/5 5/55/55/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis

I just hope the designers have played either Star Fleet Battles or the much more recent Babylon 5 star ship battle system.

Those two systems were fun, blasting away sections of the ship and shields. Star Fleet Battles had facing and arcs of fire, probably more detailed than StarFinder wants. The Babylon 5 system was simpler but I felt it needed some work on the balance.

Silver Crusade 2/5

I agree with BretI. SFB was a great game, true, but VERY bogged down with specific rules.

Silent Death (long out of print) is a fast-paced and very easy space fighter combat game. A group from Canada called Ottawa Red Shirts ran/runs an even easier space fighter combat game at Gen Con for many years. An there are many more such games out there.

On a side note, at the very least I am hopeful that Paizo words these rules well, and avoids ambiguity and confusion due to lack of proper grammar and context.

Game on!

Paizo Employee 5/5 Starfinder Society Developer

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Is now a good time to mention that I've been scouring the basement (after my recent home move) to find my old Babylon 5 Wars hex maps and associated counters? :)

Note: I wasn't involved on the design team that put together the Starfinder starship combat.

Silver Crusade 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

So does this mean I'll finally get to use the "other side" of my big Chessex roll-up vinyl mat? It's 1 inch squares on one side, hexes on the other. I use it for big Pathfinder maps that don't fit on a folding flipmat, but I don't play any games that use hexes, so I've never used that side.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have a smaller version of one of those Chessex maps. I've just left the map from Assault on the Wound on it. I might actually have to erase it now.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Superscriber

...if you can!


What about having rent-a-ship companies being common and fairly affordable to patronize? This would work well for both SFS and Starfinder play more generally. It could even provide plot hooks (you are on somebody's trail, and you have to research their ship rental records, or you or the company find something that they left in a rental ship.

Silver Crusade 4/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I think Starfinders should take Johnny Cabs to all their missions.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/55/55/55/5 **** Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta

Fromper wrote:
I think Starfinders should take Johnny Cabs to all their missions.

10 points to the first person who plays a Johnny-cab owing character in SFS!

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