Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I don't know the ship building rules that well yet, so I wanted to run this by the boards to see if there's something I'm missing.
As far as I understand it, your ship's size limits what sort of power core you can install, and what sorts of weapons you can install (no capital weapons on tiny ships), but it does NOT limit what sorts of shields you can install. Is that correct?
So, provided you have the PCU and the BP for it, you can buy outrageously powerful shields for your little Medium explorer ship.
Context:
My players just started book 4 of Dead Suns today. They upgraded their ship to Tier 7, and spent a big chunk of their BP on a Nova Ultra Power Core (300 PCU) and Heavy Shields 480. This gave them 120 SP in each arc.
We had a laugh about it, and the players enjoyed feeling like badass space explorers. However, unless we're all missing something in the rules and their ship build is illegal, I'm probably not going to run another space combat for them anytime soon.
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Shields are limited only by budget, yes. Medium ships in particular can take advantage of this since they can mount an extra power core if they invest in it, so the main limiting factor is really the total BP of the ship. You can comfortably achieve the full Superior Shields 600 relatively early on depending on your weapon choices, and I'd be surprised if combat-minded groups put it off much later than maybe tier 10 if given free reign in design.
You could ask them to redesign, mandate it, or even do it yourself, but that might not go over well if you've given them free reign to do as they wish within the rules thus far. If you have time for it, redesigning the ships they fight might be worthwhile... or, as you say, just skipping the starship combat for a bit instead of dealing with that headache.
I kind of thought that leveled ship upgrades with 15-22 options like shields, armor, etc were limited by ship tier. Sort of like players can't get just go buy a level 10 weapon at level 2 and only get one if the GM gives it to them. So a tier 7 ship wouldn't be able to acquire more than a tier 10 shield upgrade (Medium Shields 100), given the level+3 limit on all other equipment.
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No such limitations are spelled out for starship construction, and the level+2 purchase limit isn't relevant anyway since none of the individual components have an actual item level; mk x is not the same as level x. Some of them could be converted to an equivalent fairly easily, but it's not RAW. A GM is within their rights to impose restrictions on what systems can be bought at what times and at what levels, particularly since it's not a given that the players have free reign in design or even much influence over it at all, but it's not mechanically enforced.
Eh, its fine. My GM'ing mantra was, "If you can think of it, so can the NPCs" which generally meant that if the PCs were going to really min/max then the threats would have to do the same to remain true matches. Which has been a historic limitation of published adventure module/path types stuff that aims for a more generic balanced play.
I mean the notion that the PCs are unique in looking at the build rules and exploiting it like they found some sorta secret would be kinda silly if everyone has access to the same rules (and they do by design).
In this case at tier 7, the party has invested what...1/3rd their resources into shields. Of course, in relation to the other sample ships they're running shields twice as good as the Tier 16 dreadnought....
A quick example to counter? Hm. Id think Irradiate type weapons, though looking at it using Irradiate is kinda nerfed since once beyond level 7 gear (personal armor) it protects completely vs Medium irradiate and gives +6 save to higher. So even by the time you're facing super-grasers the chance of getting really screwed with radiation is practically nil, which kinda removes the point of the weapon entirely...
unless you rule something like 'continued application of a radiation source to any already radiated area increases its rating over time' or somesuch.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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Alright, so I’m not wrong. Thanks for confirming, folks!
I’ll probably kick this back to my players and see what they want to do.
If they really like space combat, I can either rebuild the future encounters (I’m digging the idea of radiation weapons, for plot reasons as well as mechanical), or we can talk about some houserules to push them back toward a more balanced ship build.
Alternatively, I joked with them that they’d have probably enjoyed this past encounter more if they let the enemy board them, since then they could have looted some cool gear off the enemy pilots. They seemed pretty receptive to that idea, so we might try swapping out future space combats for boarding actions.
non-AP wise it could lead to hooks for adventure. Being approached by shady people in port cause they hear the PC ship is equipped to be really durable, so maybe they might be interested in making a run.
Also to note: If your players do the same as mine, and upgrade the ship but do not buy ANY physical security whatsoever, there might be a very easy break-in since the basic measures are easy to overcome by hacking. We are playing the AP with a little side flavors which included an enemy tapping their ship and hacking their computers while they were landed at one point :) Meaner person might even rob them :D
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You could also give enemy ships mining lasers, a new weapon presented in the Pact Worlds book. Half their damage bypasses shields entirely.