I have a game with 3 players and they are going to recruit the rest of their starship crew as NPCs.
Also, the captain is the least important role in Starship combat so you can forego that role. Make sure the PCs use two gunners.
You can fire any two guns with a -4 to each gunnery check, or just have other PCs leave their positions and man another gun. In order of necessity, I'd make available first the captain, then science officer, engineer and finally pilot.
If possible, let them install at least two guns on the turret, and always have two people available for them. Ship combat goes fast if you focus on attacking.
You can very effectively crew a ship with only 2 players. It is be no means necessary to have a full crew. It is an advantage, but it is not a necessity.
With a smaller crew you will want to consider using the minor crew actions. A good pilot is almost by definition a good gunner, and so snap shot (which is only a -2 to a gunnery check) performed by your pilot is often a good idea with a short handed ship. The one caveat to this is that it limits you to firing a single gun each round as you can't perform any other gunnery actions.
Also remind players that they can change roles every round at the top of the round. So for instance after a good scan or two the science officer typically is not needed, and so should switch to either being an engineer or a gunner. Captain while not necessary can help out a lot by taunting an opponent and then switching to something else, or encouraging your a crew member. This works particularly well with a pilot/gunner if your captain has no other role they can do effectively.
ok last game session we had a talk if the group like playing starfinder.
they said when they are not on the ship its fine but ship combat they feel somewhat out gun by other ships.which i find kinda funny is that the APs are geared for 4 players but ship combat looks geared for 6 players.
my group is only 4 players when they have ship combat where some ships can fire multiple guns do to 2+ gunners they can on;y fire one due to that minor crew action cann't be taken if someone went in that phase.
They can buy a fully automatic captain, and for credits, not BP - just buy a computer with an AI upgrade to beat the DC 15 Encourage check, and give everyone else a remote control, so they can turn it on when it's their turn to consume the encouragement.
After that, you need only 4 more roles: Science, Engineering, Pilot, and Gunner, which is one per PC. Should be fine. Firing more guns is usually worse than firing one bigger gun - do they have a linked coilgun yet?
They can buy a fully automatic captain, and for credits, not BP - just buy a computer with an AI upgrade to beat the DC 15 Encourage check, and give everyone else a remote control, so they can turn it on when it's their turn to consume the encouragement
Don't you need a tier 7 computer for that, so they never fail the diplomacy check? If so, that's 44,000cr. At what level is that trick feasible?
Don't you need a tier 7 computer for that, so they never fail the diplomacy check? If so, that's 44,000cr. At what level is that trick feasible?
You don't need it, but it's definitely the optimal point for an automatic captain.
Depends on party size, because you're buying the thing to upgrade a party-wide item, so you should assume the cost is spread across the party. Unlike BP, where all parties of a given level have the same BP pool, regardless of party size, credits scale with party size.
Assuming you have 4 party members, that's 11,000 per member. Computers don't actually have item levels, so you can buy anything you can afford, but they're clearly intended to correlate with level=tier*2, i.e. it should be more or less considered a level 14 item, and a level 14 character has 333,000 credits - easily enough to afford 11K to chip in. It first becomes buyable at level 6, but it will cost each party member more than half of their budget, which I don't think is reasonable.
If you had 6, you'd need 7333 credits per member (and some change), which is possible at level 5 (by spending most of your budget - not advisable).
One benefit is that if you miniaturize it, which should only about double the computer's price, you can give everyone in the party an account on it and carry it with you for all your computing needs - far more efficient than buying a computer for every member.
One downside is that we have no way to correctly price the control module for a starship, so the GM has to heavily houserule it when you try to employ your automatic captain to do things like tell your ship to pick you up at the space bar because you're drunk.
Might be cheaper just to buy an android or two from a foundry.
Cheaper maybe but I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most civilized societies now days.
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Cheaper maybe but I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most civilized societies now days.
Like that's ever stopped a bunch of greedy murder-hobos.
Cheaper maybe but I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most civilized societies now days.
From what I recall having read, legit corporations continue to do this all the time, though they can't legally enslave the androids they create.