First and foremost, I'm excited to play Starfinder pbp. But I'm curious about a couple of aspects.
The first is I watched the Starfinder playthrough and it seemed that ship combat is linearly driven by the roles - pbp is already very slow and my current pbp uses block initiative to speed things up. Any ideas to speed things up in Starfinder?
The second is I'm sure there will be a learning curve as we all jump on it. But this will leave the first pbps in a mess as everyone, including the GMs, try to figure out what they can and can't do (which is related to my first concern about the speed of play). Any thoughts on how to keep the energy going?
Having done a playthrough of starship combat in Starfinder at PaizoCon, you're correct that the phases of Starship combat can slow things down. But I don't see any reason why we can't 'block' some of the combat rounds together, or have folks paste their desired actions in advance.
We'll find a way to make it all work.
Hmm
Ah, very promising. Thank you for answering that question. I know you probably cannot say more until the SFCRB is released, but thank you. By the way, did you know that Alpacas make a humming sound that goes, hmm? I'm not saying your an alpaca, I'm just saying.
Wow, yeah. If each round has three phases and players are only posting once a day, it could take three days just to resolve one round. And since your actions in an engineering or gunnery might be different depending on how the previous phase resolved... (Sorry, kind of repeating what y'all already said, just thinking "out loud".)
I'm sure this community of smart and enterprising folks will figure out some good solutions, but it's a good question.
So, Hilary, how are YOU planning on handling this?
Oh, hello voice in my head. I'm really glad that you ask me these questions, so it does not appear that I am talking to myself.
While it is true that Starfinder has different phases for Starship Combat, I think that it could be possible to ask people to spoiler their intentions and actions like this:
____
"Ha! Who's the giant sucker, now? Eat SQUID, you corporate flunkies!"
We might also have standard operating procedures for ship combats or botting spoilers. We'll feel our way as we go, and come up with something awesome to avoid slowing down over much.
Hmm
It's been a few weeks since anyone has posted here. Surely some have gone through some starship combats on pbp.
What are your experiences? How did you make it work?
I was just talking about this with my Table 1 group of Into the Unknown. I think if we were live, it could be done in about 10-15 minutes - the rolls would come quick, and if you had a good Syrinscape set of sounds / music loaded up, it would be very exciting.
Since PBP moves a little slower, we're on round 9 of combat, and it's taken us about 2 weeks. I think that even having pre-rolled conditions in place, it entirely depends on which player is controlling the Pilot. If that player is posting regularly and updating the position of the ship, then things'll move well (the pilots at my two tables have been really on the ball about this, for which I'm grateful).
The scenario is a little tricky, spoilered just in case...
At this point, I'm going to hand-waive the remainder of the starship combat for Table 1, since we're basically done and I don't want to take another week to wind it down, and re-think my approach for Table 2. All in all, Starfinder is lots of fun! I'm looking forward to other responses.
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We did a ship combat and it went pretty quickly actually - but we're all steady posters and I suspect that will matter more than anything.
We had basically two phases, everyone except the gunners, and the gunners. The captain just leapt in wherever.
That said, I was somewhat confused at times with what was going on thanks to rolling initiative each round for the Pilots. I think I could do without that, but it did add to the excitement so there's that. :)
It helps if you stop calling it initiative. It's not initiative. It's Helm Phase Movement.
You roll for movement each Helm Phase, and the lowest pilot score goes first, giving the higher pilot scores tactical advantage (as they can see what their enemy is doing before they decide how to move).
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Here's how I handled each round of Space Combat.
I'd start off like this:
We are now starting Ship Combat!
Remember, there are summaries in the player handouts, or you can read up on Starship Combat on page 316 of the CRB.
★ ---- ★ ---- ★ ---- ★
Captain Keskodai:
The Duonode Computers on the Pegasus offers +2 to any two checks per round. Where would you like to apply them? To the pilot, the guns, sensors?
Also consider whether you want to taunt or encourage, and where you will give your bonus.
Engineer Quig:
Are you acting as Engineer or a Second Science Officer this round? What is your action?
Science Officer Raia:
Go ahead and let me know whether you acting as a Second Engineer or as Science Officer. What is your action?
Pilot Iseph:
Please do the Piloting Roll-Off versus the Goblins to determine who moves first! Iseph, can you beat this roll?
If you can’t... It’s your turn to move the ship!
Gunners Altronus & Obozaya:
Please put your gunnery rolls under spoilers now. (Though any RP can be outside spoilers for everyone to enjoy.) We'll add all modifiers to them when we resolve this round in the gunnery phase.
Then everyone would tell me what they were doing. Meanwhile the pilot would make his rolls and I'd know if I had to move my ships first. Once we were done moving, I'd usually have all the rolls from the gunners and the modifiers to add to them, so then I'd resolve everything in the gunnery phase with the attack rolls from the goblin ships.
To make this faster, the GM could do both piloting checks for both PCs and NPCs at the start... But I'd only do that with a slower moving group. My group was responsive enough that they had some fun in seeing if they beat the Goblin's piloting checks!
Hmm