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So I'll be kicking of a military themed campaign soon and I'm really looking to have the players be fighter pilots instead of a shared ship.
With that in mind I have some home rules I'm looking at implementing to try and make it work.
First off to address build points to spend, I'm using the section in the CRB to give each player a single ship of a specific tier. Player tiers are calculated per this formula APL - (Number of PCs - 1). For values less than one, the progression goes 1, ½, ⅓, ¼. This results in more BP spent than a single ship, but a lot of that is on redundant pieces so that's probably fine.
Second since action economy is the real killer for single man ships, each of their ships has a single generic AI that can fill the pilot, gunner, science, or engineering role as needed. This gives them two actions per round and the possibility of performing a minor action (likely usually snapshot). The AI has a flat skill bonus progression in all piloting, computers, and engineering of roughly equal to a player with it as a class skill, full ranks, and a starting ability score of a 10, but increasing it at each level based increase.
One player will be deemed the squadron commander and can perform captain actions for other player within the squadron (but not to boost the AIs).
That is the core of the system that I will be testing prior to the campaign. I'll report on my findings as testing commences.
I also have some advanced options unique to my campaign. I'll share those once I have sanitized them and solidified them.
I also created two custom frames that break some of the rules. Meet the Bomber and the Gunship. Each are tiny ships with the ability to mount a single heavy weapon (of the appropriate type), though at the cost of having no ability to gain additional weapons in their front arc.
Gunship
Size Tiny
Maneuverability average (+0 Piloting, turn 2)
HP 35 (Increment 5); DT —; CT 7
Mounts forward arc (heavy [direct fire only, no additional weapon mounts allowed]), turret (light)
Expansion Bays —
Minimum Crew 1; Maximum Crew 2
Cost 10
Bomber
Size Tiny
Maneuverability good (+1 Piloting, turn 1)
HP 30 (Increment 5); DT —; CT 6
Mounts forward arc (heavy [tracking weapon only, no additional weapon mounts allowed])), rear arc (light)
Expansion Bays —
Minimum Crew 1; Maximum Crew 2
Cost 8
Second since action economy is the real killer for single man ships, each of their ships has a single generic AI that can fill the pilot, gunner, science, or engineering role as needed. This gives them two actions per round and the possibility of performing a minor action (likely usually snapshot). The AI has a flat skill bonus progression in all piloting, computers, and engineering of roughly equal to a player with it as a class skill, full ranks, and a starting ability score of a 10, but increasing it at each level based increase.
This is actually defined under computers. A ship of Tier X comes with a computer of Tier X/2, and a computer with a control module (which is what you're implying) has relevant skill bonuses 2.5*Tier of computer, meaning the math would work out to skill bonus 1.25*X, where X is the Tier of the ship.
One player will be deemed the squadron commander and can perform captain actions for other player within the squadron (but not to boost the AIs).
This is particularly interesting, because the ship rules we have aren't designed to work with radios - e.g. they don't cover having one ship's science officer scan an enemy ship, then report the results to the rest of the fleet. I think it would be particularly interesting to sit down and work out which actions can be made to work across squadrons and fleets.
I also created two custom frames that break some of the rules. Meet the Bomber and the Gunship. Each are tiny ships with the ability to mount a single heavy weapon (of the appropriate type), though at the cost of having no ability to gain additional weapons in their front arc.
Right now Tiny and Small ships are essentially worthless precisely because they can't mount heavy weapons, so this is potentially interesting, particularly because you forced them to put the weapon in a non-turret arc (which I approve of; it matches how capital ships carry capital weapons). I'm interested in how that works out for you.
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This is actually defined under computers. A ship of Tier X comes with a computer of Tier X/2, and a computer with a control module (which is what you're implying) has relevant skill bonuses 2.5*Tier of computer, meaning the math would work out to skill bonus 1.25*X, where X is the Tier of the ship.
I had actually forgotten about that rule existing (though it doesn't seem to work with starships as RAW). Interestingly it actually comes pretty close to my own calculations (mine being just slightly ahead on skills) That said the control modules are absolutely terrible at attacking it seems. (Also in this case the AI is based on the pilot level and not the tier which is good since fighters are going to be several tiers behind the players. In this case the AI's are effectively NPCs in the second crew slot that just happen to be computers.
This is particularly interesting, because the ship rules we have aren't designed to work with radios - e.g. they don't cover having one ship's science officer scan an enemy ship, then report the results to the rest of the fleet. I think it would be particularly interesting to sit down and work out which actions can be made to work across squadrons and fleets.
That's part of the advanced shenanigans I'm working on. Basically a set of system upgrades that allow sharing certain crew actions, or making them more feasible in a single pilot scenario.
Here's an example:
Remote Repair Drones
You may perform the Hold it together or Patch actions on ships within short range of you.
Right now Tiny and Small ships are essentially worthless precisely because they can't mount heavy weapons, so this is potentially interesting, particularly because you forced them to put the weapon in a non-turret arc (which I approve of; it matches how capital ships carry capital weapons). I'm interested in how that works out for you.
It's definitely going to be interesting. The real question will be if it completely invalidates the swifter fighters and interceptors. I'm also looking at an advanced upgrade that will later improve the base frame's abilities to handle heavier weapons but I want to test how these go first.
I'm also looking at an advanced upgrade that will later improve the base frame's abilities to handle heavier weapons but I want to test how these go first.
No, don't. What you have is great. The only upgrade I'd consider would be allowing a maximum of 1 heavy weapon per non-turret arc, to match capital ships with capital weapons - don't let a Tiny ship have a linked direct fire heavy weapon, for that way lies madness, and larger ships suddenly become useless.
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No, don't. What you have is great. The only upgrade I'd consider would be allowing a maximum of 1 heavy weapon per non-turret arc, to match capital ships with capital weapons - don't let a Tiny ship have a linked direct fire heavy weapon, for that way lies madness, and larger ships suddenly become useless.
That's basically what I was planning. The upgrade would grant a single weapon non-turret weapon to be upgraded to heavy. But like I said, I want to do some testing with what I have before I get to that. Need to build some test ships at different levels.
Here are some of the system upgrades I am looking at adding to the fighters. I haven't figured out a BP cost for these, but they are currently limited to 1 per ship (and in this case are themed to match my players specifically).
Advanced Comm Suite (Squadron Commander only)
You may perform the Encourage action as a minor action if you did not perform any other captain actions once per turn, however the bonus is halved.
Autothrusters
When neither you or your AI fulfill the pilot role, you may still use your AI’s pilot skill for initiative checks. Additionally you may perform the fly or maneuver action as a minor action, but treat your maneuverability as 1 category worse and your speed as two less.
Deep Scan Subroutine
You may perform the Scan action once per enemy ship as a minor action with a -2 penalty. You and your AI gain a +1 bonus to Gunnery checks during any turn you used a scan action.
Linked Targeting Assist System
When you perform a snapshot or fire at will action, reduce those penalties by 1.
Remote Repair Drones
You may perform the Hold it together or Patch actions on ships within short range of you.
Targeting Relay
When you use the Target System and Lock On actions, you may take a -2 penalty to your check to allow all ships in your squadron to benefit as if they had taken the action themselves
I just had a huge post eaten by the site messing up, and I don't want to type it all out again, but basically, Sideromancer is right. I recommend changing Lock On to apply an Insight Bonus, and modifying Scan, Target System, Lock On, Improve Countermeasures, and Taunt to rely on handing out debuffing tokens, to make managing a fleet battle easier. This usually involves buffing a rule (letting anyone in the fleet consume a token) while also nerfing it (reducing the total number of tokens a target can have on it, since you're not allowing an entire fleet to spam totally identical actions on one target any more).
Also, your Enhanced Comm Suite doesn't do much - Encourage has a flat DC, so the ship's AI can, for most ships, just Encourage for you. You can even buy a computer with credits whose only job is Encourage. We still have no idea how much spare room is available in a computer, but assuming you can just ignore the computer's bulk for a ship-mounted computer, the base price for an automatic captain that can't fail Diplomacy Encourage is 44,000 credits (a T7 computer with an AI module). The price for one that can't fail the easier encourage is impossible to cost - the base computer would be T4, so 5,000 credits, but the control module's cost would require a house rule and probably be measured in BP.
Another buff you can give fleets would be allowing ships to hand over tracking weapon control - right now, a gunner who fires a torpedo has to manage that torpedo for its entire flight. Squadrons become a lot more compelling if one ship can fire a torpedo and then let another member take over that torpedo, because it becomes a lot harder to counter torpedos by eliminating the original firer, and it lets you avoid needing to manage knowing who owns which torpedo for a map with many, many torpedos on it. Right now, every torpedo has to "remember" both its original gunner and its target. Easiest way to buff the fleet is to just let any friendly ship's Gunner "fire" any friendly torpedo on the map, so you can entirely stop tracking who owns which torpedo. There's no way to let torpedos "forget" their target without a huge change, because torpedos are supposed to only gain bonuses from computer systems and crew actions, and only suffer range penalties, on the initial shot.
In the next month my table is going to undergo a squadron test adventure. I'll report back with what rules we use and how it goes, but the discussion here has been very useful for brainstorming.
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Any update on any of this? I’m interested to see all of your results!