Gunships, dropships and personal starships

[Temennigru]

A few issues with how starships work:

1- Starfinder rules say you aren't meant to use a starship in a character battle, and even suggests you make starship fire into hazards, because they are supposed to target starships, but what about starships built SPECIFICALLY to target characters, such as gunships?

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9iXTBcBlQ4#t=43

2- There is currently no way to drop vehicles and people from a starship without having to land the ship itself. There should be options for both drop pods and dropships (see example above)

3- If a player wants to build a personal starship that he pilots during missions, he would have to take resources out of the group pool. Small crafts should be available for purchase without having to ask the group for alternative money. Perhaps personal crafts could even be included in the vehicles part instead of the starships part.

[GinoA]

That dropship looks a lot more like a vehicle (CH 8, pg 278) than a starship (CH 9).

[Temennigru]

GinoA wrote:

That dropship looks a lot more like a vehicle (CH 8, pg 278) than a starship (CH 9).

Things that move through SPESS are supposed to be starships.

That was just an example. I was talking about something like this:
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Thunderhawk
https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c1/Thunderhawk_T ransporter.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/640?cb=20110405103434
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Low_Altitude_Assault_Transport

[Lane_S]

I think the "starships could not target a person" is a but silly when they can target a 20' long fighter at 10,000'or more.

I think the Transport is meant to be a dropship. The main limitation as a single cargo bay can only hold large (character scale) vehicles. In contrast a hangar bay holds 8 tiny (huge in CS) ships for 4 expansion bays, but only in the largest ships. The rules do imply multiple expansion bays as cargo holds can hold larger cargo.

If you assume each extra expansion bay increases carried size by one your shuttle, lt freighter and transport become viable drop ships.
A shuttle could drop 6 PA flight frames.
A transport could bring 24 troops in Jarlslayer PA
Shuttles could also be configured for 2-3 APC or a single heavy tank

Drop ships like the Thunderhawk are essentially Starfinder shuttles without Drift engines.

[Cyrad]

You can already do these with the rules.

1. If you want an antipersonnel ship, then you can install antipersonnel weapon security systems. Alternatively, you can mount a bunch of heavy weapons on your ship and have them remotely controlled with a computer using a control module.

2. Dropships do exist; they'd likely use the shuttle framework. Hangar Bay and Shuttle Bay expansions exist so you can dock a dropship. You could also use an escape pod expansion as a "drop pod."

3. What resources pool? The game doesn't price starships. Purchasing any starship (not just a personal ship) is left to GM discretion. Based on existing vehicles, I would guess a personal ship would cost 8,000 to 15,000 credits. That's pricey, but it doesn't make any sense that a 1st level character would have the resources to buy a starship. Heck, they can't even buy a car, which is realistic as even most people in real life can't afford cars unless they get a loan. So if you want a personal starship, you need to work it out with your GM. That's not a flaw of the game.