Can a vehicle according to rules speout a starship size weapon?


General Discussion


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Ism wondering wjat options sre to take down a starship if you have none yourself.
Boarding came to mind. Then gm spproving targetting the ventilation dhaft,.,.,
But still i wonder if it is possible to habe weapons capable of damaging starships on normal vehicles or moved by characters (akin to heavy char wespons,...)


Ummm...is English your primary language? I only ask because your post seems to have a lot errors (by normal US English standards) that make it slightly difficult to understand.

However, my understanding is that you're asking if there is any rules mentioned way to attack a starship besides the normal starship combat rules. And at this time, no there is not. There aren't even rules for boarding the other starship. There also aren't rules for vehicle mounted weapons that are as strong as starship weapons, we just don't have any at this time.


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Claxon wrote:

Ummm...is English your primary language? I only ask because your post seems to have a lot errors (by normal US English standards) that make it slightly difficult to understand.

However, my understanding is that you're asking if there is any rules mentioned way to attack a starship besides the normal starship combat rules. And at this time, no there is not. There aren't even rules for boarding the other starship. There also aren't rules for vehicle mounted weapons that are as strong as starship weapons, we just don't have any at this time.

Thanks. My peoblem is mostly that iam trying to type on phone and my fingers are too big while autocorrect is off.


Ah, I understand.

Yeah, anyways we don't have the kind of rules you're looking for yet. I'm hoping Paizo will release these kinds of rules in the near future, but currently you have to make it up.


Note the difference in size scale between ships and vehicles. You would need a pretty big surface vehicle even to mount a light ship weapon, let alone anything bigger. I'm dubious that a heavy mount is even practical, unless your looking at a 'surface vehicle' that is something like a Bolo or an actual sea-going battleship.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

If you're looking for a strict RAW interpretation, then in the current rules I don't think vehicles can load out starship weapons. But most/all of the vehicles I've seen so far in starfinder are relatively small compared to starships (even tiny ones.)

While I don't think it should be impossible to mount star ship caliber weapons on a vehicle. A Tiny starship is only 20-60' in length so I'd assume a 20-60' vehicle could mount a similar amount of ordnance. I tend to think these vehicles would be more akin to mobile ICBMs launchers than tanks or infantry fighting vehicles.

And that fixed emplacements are probably for direct fire weapons as I don't think many vehicles would be able to aim them with enough ease to make them worthwhile.


Maezer wrote:

If you're looking for a strict RAW interpretation, then in the current rules I don't think vehicles can load out starship weapons. But most/all of the vehicles I've seen so far in starfinder are relatively small compared to starships (even tiny ones.)

While I don't think it should be impossible to mount star ship caliber weapons on a vehicle. A Tiny starship is only 20-60' in length so I'd assume a 20-60' vehicle could mount a similar amount of ordnance. I tend to think these vehicles would be more akin to mobile ICBMs launchers than tanks or infantry fighting vehicles.

And that fixed emplacements are probably for direct fire weapons as I don't think many vehicles would be able to aim them with enough ease to make them worthwhile.

Yes, this is valid. A Tiny starship is capable of atmospheric flight, which means you can bring it to some fights intended to be fought on a vehicle scale.

Unfortunately, this will stick your GM in the hot-seat for house rules, as we have absolutely no rules support for what happens when you do this.


I don't think there will ever be rules for vehicle mounted starship weapons. They already want to separate both systems as much as possible, so I don't see it happening.

Vehicles I imagine will just have regular weapons mounted on to them, like a tank using a reaction cannon for its attack, for example.

Attacking a starship in atmosphere with a vehicle will resolve as attacking another object. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, there aren't any rules for building objects of various sizes.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

A starship could easily be designed without the means for starflight. That would leave you with something akin to a mobile anti air weapons platform.

There are no rules yet for adding such weapons to existing non-starship vehicles.

I for one would certainly allow such weapons as stationary planetary defense turrets or stationary weapons platforms in space.


Just take the stats of a small starship weapon, say it mounted on a trailer, that you can "borrow" from a nearby military base. of course the target will have to be in atmosphere on your side of the planet. You could probably use the captain roll and the gunner roll, maybe if you were near an external power source the engineer could tap into it. I don't see a role for the pilot, I doubt that heavy a weapon could be fired while moving.


A tank would work, no?


From lore point of view, I guess the biggest problem would be energy. Spaceship weaponry has huge range, besides big damage, and that draws from the ship power core. At first glance, it seems the power core of spaceships produce much much much more energy than, say, the engine of a trailer. So the problem is not if the space light laser "fits" in the cargo hold of a trailer, it probably does. The problem is the trailer engine probably can't support it, because it doesn't have the energy output to do so.

Stationary defenses, as Ravingdork suggested, certainly could work. And any starship sized vehicle without starflight could too. Something like WH40k Titans, Heavy Gear Landships, or similar sized vehicles, could mount spaceship sized weaponry


Tiny starships are comparable in size to larger military vehicles like tanks, so your surface vehicle wouldn't even need to be *that* big. You aren't exactly going to impress an attacking cruiser with fire from a bunch of surface tanks using coilguns, mind.

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