Of course it also makes it easier to bring in an attack fleet.
This is the main reason I can't figure out why anyone bothers with (military) ship sizes larger than Medium in the Starfinder universe; they only seem to make sense defensively, and you'd think a space station would be even better at that. Being 5 times faster to Drift away from or into a position than a Colossal or Gargantuan seems like a pretty severe advantage.
This is the main reason I can't figure out why anyone bothers with (military) ship sizes larger than Medium in the Starfinder universe; they only seem to make sense defensively, and you'd think a space station would be even better at that. Being 5 times faster to Drift away from or into a position than a Colossal or Gargantuan seems like a pretty severe advantage.
The time is mostly a problem offensively only if your enemy has perfect (or at least very good) information about your movements. If they know where you're heading and they can get there first, being slower is a huge positioning disadvantage. But if they think your super carrier is heading to planet X and they rush to defend it only to have you show up at planet Y instead, it's still a very useful tool for overwhelming whatever is left at planet Y. Plus, there are still variables in all of that, even if they predict correctly where you're headed, if they roll high and you roll low, the bigger ship can sometimes beat the smaller ships.
If I were a government in the SF galaxy, I'd want a mix of ships of various sizes/speeds/armaments, same as in real life. The bigger slower ones would probably be put on regular (but changing) patrols primarily for defense and generic force projection, sure, but I'd occasionally use them for offensive maneuvers, because it's worth the cost if you can bring 10x the firepower to bear against your enemy. There's also some potential uses of divination and teleportation magic to move information around faster than drift, so you can potentially change plans in real time.
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That implies that a Drift beacon is a Drift beacon is a Drift beacon, regardless of who placed it or how it came to be. So if it's only beacon density that determines whether a world is in Near Space or the Vast, how is it that the Azlanti Star Empire is in the Vast? Do all of their worlds lack the critical density of Drift beacons? And does that mean that it takes them 5d6 days to go between their own worlds?...
Or it means there are ways to 'tune' drift beacons so that Near Space may be dependent on which beacons you're aware of/able to contact. In this scenario, the ASE has their own 'versions' that the PW ships can't use for drift and the ASE is considered Near Space for it's own ships.
I'm sure there are other explanations I haven't thought of, but those seem to me the most likely.
I find the second scenario more compelling, personally, but I'm waiting to houserule it that way, because I'm afraid the 2nd AP is going to completely throw whatever I decide out the window.
That's what I'm thinking, too. But there's nothing even hinting at that possibility in the SCB.
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Fair enough. The lack of other options was something I was... exceedingly upset about, and along with other setting details made me write off the entire setting off as a lost cause for me. The ASE is one of the few things I've found somewhat interesting, so I wasn't entirely certain.
I just hate the Drift with the undying passion of a thousand suns. >_>
I'm with you on the background. If/When I start running Starfinder, I'll be making more than a few changes.
I just hate the Drift with the undying passion of a thousand suns. >_>
I don't have that magnitude of passion, but I do agree that the Drift as a setting element has problems. (Not thrilled about the game mechanics of it either.)
But, what kind of FTL would you replace it with?
I just hate the Drift with the undying passion of a thousand suns. >_>I don't have that magnitude of passion, but I do agree that the Drift as a setting element has problems. (Not thrilled about the game mechanics of it either.)
But, what kind of FTL would you replace it with?
Since I'm not using the default setting, I just go with 1 light year per point of "Drift" rating per day in hyperspace, or 1 light year per week in "degenerate" space, barring occasional shortcuts like wormholes. Among other things, it keeps civilizations from spreading out absurdly - just our perfectly average galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across and so would take 273 years to cross with the by far most common rating 1 drive if you could go in a straight line. Which you can't, because of the degenerate space of the galactic core. Lets me define my own form of hyperspace as well, and bring in other tropes I like such as cold sleep being mandatory in hyperspace to not go crazy.
I just hate the Drift with the undying passion of a thousand suns. >_>I don't have that magnitude of passion, but I do agree that the Drift as a setting element has problems. (Not thrilled about the game mechanics of it either.)
But, what kind of FTL would you replace it with?
Depends on the situation. I might be overstating my hatred slightly, but it's enough that it took Starfinder from an insta-preorder to buying after it was on the shelves.
I should note that I'm an novel author, so I've been toying with a large number of sci-fi settings, and haven't settled on one yet.
So, if I was using one of the settings I've been toying with for, oh... a decade, there'd be three drive systems, possibly more. Jump Drives for the classic 'jump point' networks to get from one system to another. Expensive warp gates that are artificial wormholes would be the second. The third are the rare self-propelled jump ships that can actually rip open warp gates for themselves. But of course, this doesn't account for magic, and the races that can, with a lot of preparation, teleport their planetoid homes from one system to another.
Another idea is to make the drives have speed ratings, much like they already do in Starfinder. I'd have to find my notes, but I believe the setting in question had starship drives allow transit at 1, 2, or 3 light years per 8 hours. I may be misremembering, mind you. The higher end the drive, the faster you could go, but no matter how good your ship, going at 3 light years is easily detected by others within a several light year radius. There are ways to conceal the 'wake' of the ship, but they require slowing down and special upgrades. FTL comms propogated at about 24 times the speed, but had a maximum range, thus requiring chains of comm stations or physical transit of data.
I have plenty of others, but the easiest for me is to simply remove the current setup of Absalom Station vs. other areas and regard it kind of like hyperspace in Star Wars, where the outer rim is easy to navigate to because the stars aren't as dense, and just classify the random times based on that.
Of course it also makes it easier to bring in an attack fleet.This is the main reason I can't figure out why anyone bothers with (military) ship sizes larger than Medium in the Starfinder universe; they only seem to make sense defensively, and you'd think a space station would be even better at that. Being 5 times faster to Drift away from or into a position than a Colossal or Gargantuan seems like a pretty severe advantage.OTOH, if you're trying to mount any kind of attack through Drift your ships are going to arrive scattered over at least a day, possibly a month, depending on where you're going and your Drift Engines.
If you've got a bunch of Medium ships Drifting in one at a time, they may be intercepted individually. If you've spent your budget on one Colossal ship, it may take longer to get there, but it all arrives at once.
Yes it is easy to bring in an attack fleet although I am not entirely sure how fleet movements work in the drift. Can you actually move as a fleet in the drift and all arrive at the same time or is the random duration in drift to get to your destination different for every ship?
Depending how it works you would still have problems attacking any specific target by jumping directly to it as you would come in dribs and drabs. For most major fleet insertions you may need to plan to go to a more distant rendezvous point to gather up for an attack.
I am hoping the drift info in the new adventure path book coming has a bit more data on how exactly this works.
Yes it is easy to bring in an attack fleet although I am not entirely sure how fleet movements work in the drift. Can you actually move as a fleet in the drift and all arrive at the same time or is the random duration in drift to get to your destination different for every ship?
Depending how it works you would still have problems attacking any specific target by jumping directly to it as you would come in dribs and drabs. For most major fleet insertions you may need to plan to go to a more distant rendezvous point to gather up for an attack.
I am hoping the drift info in the new adventure path book coming has a bit more data on how exactly this works.
It doesn't say anything one way or the other whether ships that jump out together arrive together, or roll their own random arrival times, so you'll just have to houserule it unless they give guidance in an adventure or errata.
Linking said weapons deal 4d12 (26 average), which regularly passes the threshold. At least there's that.
It doesn't say anything one way or the other whether ships that jump out together arrive together, or roll their own random arrival times, so you'll just have to houserule it unless they give guidance in an adventure or errata.
I'd love this, but I really wouldn't go into this expecting that to happen. It's part of the mystery (....mystery...mystery...) of the drift.
In fact, I expect they'll leave as much as they can about the general parts of the setting vague. I don't expect that the pact worlds book coming out in March will tell us how many colonies the pact worlds has. I don't expect the Aeon Throne AP to list all the planets and star systems and monsters and races in the Azlanti Star Empire. They just aren't going to give full detail on anything they don't have to. Almost every game today has that philosophy, and try to give you as many hooks as they can while not giving too many restrictive details or rules.
The marketing line about that is that it gives you the freedom to create your own stories how you want to create them. You can make the drift work however you want it to.
Personally, I miss the old days where I could buy a boxed set with a street by street map of Waterdeep that had the names of half the stores already mapped out (and most of them had the kinds of items you could buy listed there, and the names of the NPC proprieter, et cetera).
See, from where I'm sitting, rule 0 allows me to change whatever the heck I want, anyway. I don't have the time to write up every NPC and store in a city (or space station) of 2 million people. I don't need to, but I want it to feel like the players that I did, that the world is real and full of tiny details and a rich tapestry of places and people and things to do and see. It is really really hard (for me) to make that stuff up on the fly and have it be internally consistent. That's one of the main reasons I buy the books rather than just using an SRD and my imagination.
Meh, sorry, I'm digressing again.
Trust me, I get you. I actually do make up most stuff in my settings myself, I've changed how FTL works in Starfinder, etc. But part of the reason I still buy adventures and setting books is for both inspiration, and to find stuff I like enough to outright steal and reskin to fit my own settings and adventures. It's hard to adapt things which are vaguely defined, which reduces the incentive to buy the product.