Suggestion / review on society starship weapon layout

[Adder007USA]

Didn't see anywhere specific to post this, so I'm just putting it in the general SFS forum. Mods, feel free to move this if it's not in the right place.

For society scenarios where players get a choice of starship....most of them are fairly balanced from what I can tell...but I'm seeing an issue with some of them. Part of this has been through experience in one scenario where we ran into the problem, but I can see it being an issue later.

Bottom line, I believe some of the ships need a re-design, balance and practicality wise. The most glaring issue is that some of the ships (Notably the tier 2 drake, where we first ran into this issue) have only a single missile weapon on an arc or turret. If the PCs have really bad luck with rolls, or run into enemies with point defense weapons in their scenarios...well, they've only got 5 shots. And once that weapon is depleted, even if it does have a big whammy when it hits, it's totally worthless.

In one scenario, where the group picked the tier 2 drake, they didn't finish before the combat ended....and then it was just their single forward mounted coilgun that could actually hit the target. The coilgun has an average damage of 8-9, vs an enemy ship that can regenerate 5 shield points if they succeed at a fairly easy engineering check. This makes for long and tedious combat, especially since in a group of 6, you have 2 gunners.

Other ships have really weird configurations. Sometimes it's just weapons that are different (Less of a problem, though it does mean more stats to look up since they're not listed on the sheets). Other times, it's a serious "Why would you design it like that when you could do it better".

Anyways. Both from the standpoint of a GM and a player, starship combat should feel fun and engaging, not confusing and tedious. I'm aware we aren't being given state of the art, min-maxed ships where victory is guaranteed, but an organization such as the starfinder society should probably go with practicality. Here's a list of the ships, and the issues I feel need addressing.

Drakes: Mostly limited fire weapon issues here.

Drake 2: Only weapons are fwd coilgun, aft gyrolaser, turret missile launcher. Once missiles are gone, this thing puts out less damage than the pegasus 2.

Drake 4: This one is actually good. Has a decent balance of weapons, and isn't totally neutered once missiles are gone.

Drake 6: Less of a problem than the Drake 2, since it has other weapons, but once the missiles are gone, the turret is useless. Designers spent 9 BP (3 for the new mount, 6 for the weapon) to add a weapon to the port arc. Was this really a better option than adding the mount to the aft arc, possibly the gyrolaser that we saw on the tier 2?

Drake 8: Mostly good, but again the odd port slot, instead of reinforcing the forward, aft, or turret arc

Drake 10: Awesome ship. No issues here.

Drake 12: Same as the 10 but better.

Pegasus ships: Most of these aren't reliant on missiles, so they can keep fighting longer. Most of them however, have very strange weapon placement. I understand it's usually maneuverable enough to face the way it wants vs. an opponent for special weapons, but initiative easily spoils that advantage. And turning your side for a shot with an EMP weapon instead of a big hit from your forward weapons...it just doesn't seem logical.

Pegasus 2: Solid ship, no issues, actually a better fighter IMO than the Drake 2 outside of the durability.

Pegasus 4: Weird placement for the laser net. Exceedingly short range (5 max), and it's only on the port arc. Why not put this in the turret, re-distribute points among the other weapons as needed? That way it can actually be a point defense weapon, not just if the players are lucky enough for a missile to hit their port side.

Pegasus 6: Again with the weird placement on the laser net, and a single missile launcher on the starboard side that is worthless once it runs out of ammo. Turret and fwd weapons are...functional.

Pegasus 8: AGAIN with the laser net. Turret and fwd weapons are good at least. EMP weapon is worthless against shields and limited to side arc, but if the shot is there, might as well take it.

Pegasus 10: Laser net again. Other weapons are decent.

Pegasus 12: Laser net, and that EMP weapon is back. Rest of weapons are solid.

Again, I understand players aren't being given min-max vessels. But there should be some thought as to where very specialized weapons (Such as the laser net) are placed. And again, in scenarios that are played with limited time, combat that becomes tedious due to limited ammo just isn't ideal.

[TwilightKnight]

As you said, the ships are not min/max optimized. This gives the developers the option to not maximize the encounters to make it challenging. Sure, one of the perceived flaws in Starship combat is the battle of attrition feel it takes on with lots of hull points and defense systems, but optimizing the weaponry of every ship is not the answer, IMO. Thee are other, better ways to improve starship combat then to simply make it an arms race.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

There's also a bunch of the con boons that let you customize the weapons on ships. Don't like the net, give it a plasma cannon. Of course that's if you are lucky enough to have one of the boons.

[Belafon]

There is a learning curve for the writers and developers trying to make combats that are challenging without being a grind.

Brief side story:

It can also be a case of GMs who aren't good at moderating their playstyle. I've GMed the quests 5 or 6 times now. I sat in as a player to make a table of 4 a couple of weeks ago. All others were new players but the GM had run a couple of times before. And he was making every choice for optimal survival. Running away, evading, captain encouraging the pilot to boost his initiative roll, you name it. Always getting into the quadrant where we were least effective. I leaned over to him about an hour into the combat and said "take it down a notch! We're trying to teach new players how starship combat works, not how much of a slog you can make it."

Now, these were clever tactics. And probably reasonable once players get experienced. But here at the beginning of the campaign, it can be a real joykill when the players don't know/have a counter.

But I agree with Bob. If the Society Starships get optimized then you get a quick victory pushover victory. So you need to optimize the enemy starships as well if you want a challenge. Which leads to far more situations where a (much shorter) series of bad rolls leaves our Pathfinders floating along with 0 Hull Points.

As to Eric's point, I think you'll see a lot more upgrades as players get more Starship chronicle boons. Or get more fame and reputation. Here's one you can pick up from the SFS RPG Guide:

Abundant Ammunition wrote:

Your faction provides you with ample starship ammo for important missions.

Prerequisites: Acquisitives Tier 1
Cost: 1 Fame
Benefit: When this boon is slotted, select one starship weapon with the limited fire special property on the group’s starship. The selected weapon increases the value of the limited fire value by half (rounded down). For example, a limited fire 5 weapon would become limited fire 7. This boon can be used to improve weapons gained as a result of other Starship boons.

Special: Multiple copies of this boon can be used on a starship, but each copy must affect a different weapon.

[Thurston Hillman]

As with most things, I'm watching how starship combat develops over the course of the season. I wouldn't expect to see any starship re-designs in the near future, but it's something we'll certainly take a look at when it comes time to publish a new version of the Roleplaying Guild guide.

That being said, people here have already hit on a lot of the topical points. We're steadily introducing various starship boons that should assist PCs with configuring their vessels. We also introduced a boon that can upgrade a weapon to be a broad arc (exceptionally useful to allow multiple shots.) We've also got, via some special Chronicles, at least 2 different starship hulls available for use in certain circumstance. In fact, I just finished working on another Chronicle sheet that should open up another starship—stylistically a departure from the existing hulls!

As I've mentioned in the past, I freely admit that I'm still getting a solid handle of what works / what doesn't work for starship combat in an Organized Play setting. I'm also well-aware that the Society ships are NOT optimized murderboats; many of the BPs go to luxury expansions that make more thematic sense for a Society ship, than say another missile launcher... That being said, I've got that in mind when developing starships. In my development passes on scenarios I've had to tone down / request the author tone down some of the more egregious optimizations on starships. So, don't worry, I'll be doing my darnedest to have the Tier 1-4 PCs avoid a group of enemy fights with tactical nuclear missiles :P

The Tier 2 Drake is certainly on my "hit list" of ships to adjust. While the missiles are incredibly powerful, the random nature of unleashing all 5 missiles and then having little else to use is not ideal.

[Adder007USA]

Awesome. Honestly the tier 2 drake is the biggest offender, since it just makes starship combat "Un-fun" once the missiles run out.

And yeah, I get it, we're not looking for total optimization (murderboats, as you said). The luxury and flavor addons to ships make total sense. I'm just talking about ones where for the same, or even less points, you could do something that will get more use, and actually be fun to fly, instead of having one of our gunners twiddling their thumbs because they don't have a weapon mount that can hit a target, or have neat weapons like the laser net that don't do anything because of how limited/specialized they are.

[Marc Waschle]

Yes, it is much to early in the system to encourage Murderhoboating! lol

[Darkling36]

I'll admit I haven't gotten to play much with starship combat yet, but the main issue I've seen is that a lot of the ships have one very strong arc and one or more arcs with no weapons or virtually so. Turrets help, but so far in all the fights I've both run and played the only roll that's mattered is that pilot initiative roll. After round 2 the ships are always in close quarters and just dart and dance around each other with whoever won initiative moving into the others blind spot. Turrets help with this, but they can only do so much. This is a particular problem for large tables as since the ship never takes any damage extra engineers and the science officer don't really have anything to do. Making sure every arc has some sort of weapon even a weak one would help with this, gives the crew something to do and means initiative isn't the only roll that matters. Has anyone else run into this?

[Gary Bush]

Thurston Hillman wrote:

The Tier 2 Drake is certainly on my "hit list" of ships to adjust. While the missiles are incredibly powerful, the random nature of unleashing all 5 missiles and then having little else to use is not ideal.

At GenCon, I believe I heard you mention how much you liked a certain boon that was available that would re-load a limited fire weapon and how important it might be in a certain early scenario.

Well, I played that certain scenario and slotted that boon, and it was a good thing because I ended up using 8 of the 10 missiles.

Yea, the Drake Tier 2 does need something else in the turret with the missiles.

[Kadasbrass Loreweaver]

Of course there will be a 3rd ship option for a select few later on... I only just saw that boon the other night and its sibling capstone boons.

[Gary Bush]

Capstone? No one should be close to a Capstone yet, should they?

[Kadasbrass Loreweaver]

Gary Bush wrote:

Capstone? No one should be close to a Capstone yet, should they?

No, not until level 6 or 7. I just discovered it in the guide was all, never had a chance to sit down and read it before.

[Thurston Hillman]

Expectations Management Department: Don't expect to see any of the special capstone boon rewards (new race and starship specifically) until we get out a new version of the Guide. We want to make sure that both of these options integrate into the ongoing narrative of the campaign.

[Bureau of Managing Expectations]

Mathematics Management Department:

Barring an unforeseen “super-rep” boon it’s going to be close to impossible to get 45 reputation with a faction during Season 1. 18 scenarios with perfect success is only 36 rep. Add 3 for the faction-specific slotless boon (such as Theoretical Historian). Estimate 4 or 5 potential rep for faction-specific scenario goals. The total is still short of the 45 reputation for Tier 4.

Summary: next year’s Guide will likely be out before anyone can reach a Capstone.

[Sebastian Hirsch]

Not too keen on updated versions of the Society ships at this moment, already spent quite a bit of time and money printing and laminating several filled out ship sheets for these.
That said, adding more optional ships could work, I haven't seen the chronicle sheet boon ship in action thus far but I like the concept.

[schattenstern]

My biggest Problem is that the point defense is mounted in the aft and not in the turret most of the time, that leads to very wierd gameplay if you are fighting enemies with missiles.

[Adder007USA]

Alexander Lenz wrote:

My biggest Problem is that the point defense is mounted in the aft and not in the turret most of the time, that leads to very wierd gameplay if you are fighting enemies with missiles.

Or on one of the sides. Again, not looking for a murder-machine...just looking for ships that actually put things in positions where they can be useful.

[Freedom Snake]

TL;DR The Drake is a combat ship and as is thematically appropriate, requires more tactics and skills to operate effectively, but the real problem is more than likely a GM who is entirely too neutral or too aggressive toward the humans throwing the dice with a new system/mechanic.

It has been my experience that people who have issues with the T2 Drake are in need of some GM tactical help in three areas.

First, as a GM with newer (to starship combat) players, you should be encouraging them to take advantage of the ship's design, which is to align yourself to have two weapons available (turret plus front or back) not point your broad side at the opponent. This is a ship meant for "kiting" or "ramming" not playing Ring Around the Rosie. Divert to shields in the engineering phase if you're down. If not, divert to engines (something almost nobody seems to do). Diverting two weapons gets you a small amount of damage boost, but you're essentially trading ship DR (shield regen) for + damage. This is the glass cannon approach and incurs risk. During the helm phase, encourage the Science Officer to delay decision making until they are aware of what the pilot is going to do and whether or not they succeed (my next point). Scanning is important! The PCs need to know what weapons are installed where on the NPC ship. Until you give them the details of expansion bays, it's incredibly valuable to scan.

Second, STUNT, STUNT, STUNT. With the new DCs, you should never "just move." If you do nothing else, evade. The drake does very well with +2AC and +2TL. It is very rare to get a table without a pilot able to easily make the evade DC.

Third, know your players' "Point" weapons AND "Broad" weapons. The -2 out of arc penalty isn't bad, especially if you offset the shot with a +1 from your ship's computer. The opposed check for a point weapon is very balanced. If attacking with a High Explosive Missile Launcher (HEML), your missile will defend against a point weapon with a DC of 22 (10 + speed 12). An enemy NPC with a Flak Thrower will be rolling a d20 + 8 gunnery check to hit it. This effectively a DC14 defense for your missile versus a d20 attack roll. This has a 70% chance to hit, so long as you didn't fire beyond your range increment. Even if your opponent has a Laser Net installed, the HEML the check becomes a DC12 vs d20 equivalence, which still have a 60% chance to hit.

Sometimes, poor rolls happen, but this isn't a starship combat system or ship design problem. Even in a drake, the advantage typically goes to the PCs. The only real disadvantage to the PC's is a GM who isn't familiar enough with the system (highly possible, given how new the system is) or a GM who exploits their expertise at the expense of the PCs. Either way, there IS NOT a morale block for any starship encounter in any scenario or adventure path to attempt to annihilate the PC's with extreme prejudice while they are still learning the system.

As I said at the beginning of the post, The Drake is a combat ship and as is thematically appropriate, requires more tactics and skills to operate effectively, but the real problem is more than likely a GM who is entirely too neutral or too aggressive with a new system/mechanic.

[EC Gamer Guy]

As you pointed out, with 2 gunners even after the missiles run out you still have a fore and aft gun available. Use Flyby to get both guns in action. Target only 1 enemy arc which hasn't been an issue in any game I played except 1 with gobbie fighters.

If I recall, a coilgun is 4d4 damage. Use your engineer to "make 1s 2s" and your average damage goes up to about 12.

Your PCs just need to get more creative once your big gun runs out.

Adder007USA wrote:

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[thistledown]

What I'd like to see changed is the stat block layout itself, so that it shows how many missiles it carries and how much shields the engineer recharges per round. Yes, it can be calculated, but it'd be a time-saver for new players.

[EC Gamer Guy]

Honestly, it would be quicker to do it yourself or look for someone that has posted it online. I do know some of our GMs and players have transferred then to the actual ship sheet.

James Anderson wrote:

What I'd like to see changed is the stat block layout itself, so that it shows how many missiles it carries and how much shields the engineer recharges per round. Yes, it can be calculated, but it'd be a time-saver for new players.