starship combat with 2 players

[Silverymist]

Our GM will have us play, but we will be only 2 players. We also will have a starship. How exactly can you fill all roles on the ship with 2 players. I'm not sure I understand how it works. It seems starship combat is only made for 4 to 6 players with roles. Minor crew actions can only be taken once per round, so it leaves some roles unattended, and for a campaign where we'll have combats in space, rather limited.

How would you adapt rules for a campaign for two in spaceship combat?
I'd appreciate any clue.

[Vidmaster7]

NPC's Just have to put NPC's in charge of it.

[Zwordsman]

Lots of NPCs.
If either of you are a mechanic... then ask if your drone can use its one free action to use its BAB as a gunner.

[Friendly Neighborhood Glabrezu]

Your GM could change the rules to allow each of you 2 actions each round, instead of the normal 1, so that 2 players fill out the expected 4 player's worth of actions.

[Hithesius]

The short answer is that you can't. If you have only two players, you cannot fill every starship combat role in every round by RAW. There are basically four possible approaches to this. First, your GM could just give you a ship that already doesn't worry about it - the fighter only holds two people, so as long as you're fine being in cramped quarters the whole flight, it's designed for this situation anyway. But outside specific campaign ideas, that's hardly ideal because of how limiting it is.

Second, they could just see how you manage in a larger ship with just two people. Mechanically, that's not ideal either. You can get away with two people in a fighter because a fighter can only hold two people to begin with. But even a shuttle with just two crew members starts getting a little bit lonelier, and it's definitely not using all its potential. Would this be ideal? From an optimal mechanical perspective, no - you only have two people, and there are five roles - being able to do something necessarily means not being able to do several other things. Is it doable? As long as your GM accounts for it, most definitely! And the trials of a two-person starship crew could certainly be interesting.

The third is to give you more actions, and allow you to personally fill more ship roles. How many actions? Two actions each will get you all but one role, so you'll probably always have a pilot and a gunner. That leaves the captain, engineer, and science officer being shuffled around as needed. Three actions means you can double up on one specific thing.

Finally, they could just give you more crew members. These could be actual NPCs, or they could just be the ship's computer taking actions on its own. Or maybe both! The important thing here is that more actions are being made, but your characters aren't the ones doing them. Now, this isn't necessarily the same as you not doing them - the other characters might be NPCs, but your GM might let you control them for ship combat anyway. Or they might not! Either way could work, and they both could have their own implications.

[Dragonchess Player]

Silverymist wrote:

Our GM will have us play, but we will be only 2 players. We also will have a starship. How exactly can you fill all roles on the ship with 2 players. I'm not sure I understand how it works. It seems starship combat is only made for 4 to 6 players with roles. Minor crew actions can only be taken once per round, so it leaves some roles unattended, and for a campaign where we'll have combats in space, rather limited.

How would you adapt rules for a campaign for two in spaceship combat?
I'd appreciate any clue.

For ships with only two crew members, the normal starship combat rules allow:

Pilot, using the Snap Shot minor crew action to fire a weapon. Remember that you can use Piloting skill ranks in place of BAB to fire starship weapons.

Engineer/Science Officer (choose which role to act in for the round), using the Snap Shot minor crew action to fire a weapon; alternately, could act in the Gunner role with no minor crew action. Note, this could be a Themeless soldier (for full BAB) with max. ranks in Computers (selected as the Themeless class skill) and Engineering.

[Silverymist]

Thank you all for all your answers. I can now see all possibilities thanks to you. Our GM want space fights so I have no doubt about either possibilities being okay with him. All have their pros and cons but all are doable (even if not by RAW, which is not a priority for all of us as long as it allows the gameplay to flow and stays in the spirit of the game). I don't know what he'll choose but in my opinion, at least at first, doing 2 actions per round seems the best option. Beginning at level 1 (with a Tier 2 ship), we'll have not yet met NPC and it could be actually fun to recruit them in time.

You all helped a lot, thank you so much.

[Steve Geddes]

I'm in exactly this position (I'm the DM).

My plan is to allow the players to take two, different roles (ie they can't be a gunner twice).

I'll see how that goes, but I'm also considering coming up with some minor actions for the other roles besides gunner/pilot of a similar "useful, but not as good as a real crewmember" level as the ones in the book.

[That Kind Of Orc]

I'm playing in a game with my son, with my wife running. We do pretty much this - when we don't need a science/engineering action, one of us pilots and the other guns. When we do, we BOTH have ranks in Engineering and Computer so we just glide and snapshot while reinforcing the shields or patching glitched systems. We're actually BOTH mechanics. He's got a drone and I've got an exocortex. It works remarkably well. I can't wait until my exocortex can start hacking shit while I'm doing other things.