Sorry for the long title.
But I was wondering how you might go about building a world where you want to have things like kaiju that remain a threat to the populace, requiring 'adventurer' hunting and the like, but not just otherwise easily solved by having a cruiser in orbit shooting godzilla in the head with a capital grade railgun shot, or sanctuary wall mounted heavy-class turrets.
or 'nuke it from orbit' (nukes or not).
I don't want to do some sort of large scale orbital reason, like 'magical planetary shield' or 'sensor readings are fuzzy from orbit' because that wouldn't solve, "Well, why not just send some fighter craft with nukes?" to fly in closer.
A bit more background, I'm thinking of a world that sorta generates monsters/mobs ala Anime trope of "semi-traditional seeming fantasy creatures and giant mobs, but not really sentient." The 'these monsters leaves cores when they die, otherwise poofing into smoke'. kind of thing.
Higher concentrations and letting the mobs exist leads to bigger and more powerful ones (Dragons+) will spawn. Which also tends to mean that closer to 'homebase city' spawns tend to be weaker because they get culled more often, but sometimes get push-ins by higher powered mobs seeking to consume the weaker ones/etc.
Additionally I'm trying to find a reason why PCs/NPcs would bother, some sorta special resource, in addition to the cores that makes the planet attractive enough despite risks.
But again I want to avoid a solution of, "Well, hell, we just take our fighter and launch a plasma torpedo. x10 damage and at best we'll need 2 of them."
Maybe the monsters are endangered, and the planetary inhabitants are primarily scientists and their support staff who wish to study them. Killing the beasts would only serve to disrupt their important research.
Even if they respawn like you describe, maybe the spawn/expiration rate is set, so a mass extermination without careful forethought would permanently disrupt the natural balance/cycle, and by extension, the scientist's studies.
Planet's/solar system's magnetic field borks up targeting sensors something fierce. There is no "mark 1 eyeballing" any starship weapon system as far as I can tell.
Presumably the planet is remote from places with lots of capital ships to hand, or the "kaiju" thrive in and appear from multiple environments that aren't easy to assail orbitally (underwater, places with heavy cloud cover and so on), or both. There's a kaiju planet in the CRB called Daimalko whose kaiju are called kyokor, you might like to check it out for inspiration.
Suggestion 1: The kaiju are clusters of reincarnated souls made flesh, towering and walking mass graves, entire communities of returned dead that can still think and feel. Their souls can be saved by "killing" the kaiju and performing a ritual to ferry the souls to the boneyard for judgement, but if nuked or otherwise annihilated with such large scale weaponry their souls are lost to oblivion.
2: The atmosphere is damaged from previous nukes, so using more threatens complete destruction of all life on the planet. Additionally, high winds and violent global storms prevents small aircraft/spacecraft from being used in battle. Radioactive particles in the air make orbital strikes impossible, as scanners and targeting systems fail. Reaching space is only possible by space elevator, a juicy target for kaiju.
Kaiju are kaiju ... the smaller ones are already starship-scaled whilst the really big ones can shoot back at targets in space.
Also/alternatively, the planet and its moons are themselves a type of kaiju. Ships start dropping nukes/rocks/tungsten rods/[insert orbital bombardment of choice] from orbit, the satellites and/or planet itself hits back .. a LOT harder.
A bunch of fleas lands and kills the local fauna in such a way that Big Momma and her Not-Quite-as-Big-Firstborn do not find irritating, no big deal.
But again I want to avoid a solution of, "Well, hell, we just take our fighter and launch a plasma torpedo. x10 damage and at best we'll need 2 of them."
The game states that you can't target creatures with starship scale weapons and can treat them as hazards instead.
If you're building the monsters, you can build kaiju that have starship statistics in addition to their normal statistics.
The answer depends on the level of interaction you want the PCs to have with the kaiju.
-If you want PCs to be annoying fleas who need to evade the kaiju, then boost the kaiju to be able to take out spaceships. Maybe high tech weapons attract kaiju, so ship-level weapons would bring in a swarm of laser-eyed flying kaiju who enjoy snacking on starship metal. Heck, the kaiju might thrive when blasted with nukes or whatever flavor of weapon ships usually unleash. "Well, now you've done it. It's bigger."
-If you want PCs to tackle single kaiju, but without using starships then the kaiju could evade ships. Whether it's sci-fi/fantasy weather/foliage, or innate abilities like burrowing or invisibility to sensors, the kaiju simply cannot be targeted well. These same abilities can make for an interesting hunt, where the PCs aren't so sure who's hunting whom.
Of course, you could mix the extremes, with high-powered kaiju eating starships (but ignoring low-energy shuttles) and low-powered ones using more guile and their environment (likely with skills acquired trying to survive the high-powered kaiju).
The trouble I see here is the lack of plot. It's an intriguing setting, but leaves little room for PC interaction other than "hunt the Macguffin". How might the PCs be pivotal to events on this planet? What other factions are at play here and how might they interact with PCs over time? How might the whole suite of PC skills come into play?
Good luck & Cheers.
Flying Kaijus, with the ability to enter near space. This way the space around the planet is a "no go area" for capital ships, since Kaijus attack them on sight.
Thanks for the responses.
I'm also thinking maybe a 'Monster Hunter" approach where even massive monsters have weakpoints that can be exploited by small groups, (man sized) that can reach them and not as easily reached with higher order direct fire weapons (like vehicle+)
So while maybe missiles and cannon fire can weaken/slow a creature, you'll still need 'people' to go in and deal with it.
alternately I was thinking, 'maybe I can make this a 'sponge' world. where the layer that we would consider normal 'surface' of say our planet Earth is actually a big porous other layer that allows a non-direct-linear approach from outer space to 'ground level' You have this layer covering the whole planet which still allows fairly easy access to the ground but winding,hm....
might have to change how the ecosystem works if its mostly blocked from its star.
This would allow 'sanctuary cities' to have starship grade wall defenses to keep a perimeter but they lack the line of sight/effect to do more.
Hmm maybe a terraced layer kinda thing. There's the 'surface' visible from space but it has the least valuable resources, with all the good stuff being below, where all the nasties are.
An ice world might have people living in/under the ice by preference. Those living in domes on the surface might have strong feelings about fighters launching plasma torpedoes through the dome. The kaijus presumably can burrow thru the ice, and maybe thru the ground as well. Your starship grade walls can protect some areas but may be too expensive or require too much material from offworld to build (Starfinder transports can't carry that much).
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You only need to go kill a kaiju if there's people for it to stomp, kaiju only exist to stomp people, and can kaiju can only exist where people are there for it to stomp.
If you unleash weapons of mass destruction on the kaiju that is presumably going to be worse for the planet and the people than the kaiju itself.
It doesn't make sense to kill the patient to cure the disease.
I'd argue it's probably the economics - what kind of money can the starships make from shooting down all these kaiju?
I'm guessing the inhabitants trying to survive amongst the monster won't have a lot of income to pay for such an extermination job.
And shooting down every living single one of them would create serious environmental consequences, from the loads and energies released to the kaiju corpses leaking around, contaminating soil and water.
If anything, such a crappy infested planet would make for good hunting grounds, kaiju safari, a regulated sport that forbids exploding them from orbit.
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There's actually an animated Godzilla movie on Netflix that does this very thing. You should watch it. Or at least check out the parts that are pertinent. It's called Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, and happily enough, it has a sequel coming out next month!
it's pretty good.
this is coming from a die hard Godzilla fan.
Starfinder Design Lead
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1. The atmosphere has volatile chemicals in it that are harmless--unless hit by something of high enough power like a starship weapon. then they both become toxic to normal life and provide a big boost to kaiju (the elements are likely why kaiju exist on that world anyway).
2. All the kaiju move through major waterways or underground, and firing on them from space would create ecological disasters. They may even only attack underground settlements, making starships useless against them.
3. The planet is in a powerful electromagnetic nebula, which starships can only barely operate in. Firing starship-scale weapons makes the nebula's ionization worse, knocking out systems.
4. The atmosphere has polarizing elements that bend light and other energies over the long term. Unless you are close enough to a kaiju for it to bite you, any attack you make is likely to bend wildly away from it.
5. It's all underwater, and starship weapons will create shockwaves that kill all local life, not just kaiju.
Any planet with an atmosphere is going to severely dampen high energy weaponry as its going to expend a lot of its power before getting to the target. Also what is the actual range of capital ship weapons. I am not sure what the listed hex size is but I get the impression it is more starwars type close quarters fighting and not so much long range thousands of miles type slug fests. And if it is more like starwars most capital ship energy weapons are simply going to lack the range to hit ground base targets unless the ship itself comes into the atmosphere pretty far opening it for potential kaiju counter attack.
For my macguffin cores reasoning, I'm thinking, "Cores are valuable for harvesting because even small cores result in particle material of a quality that allows other stuff to work better (guns get zappier, reactors get more potent) but also rather than just some sorta NOS like boost to an engine, the effects can linger quite long, making it a very helpful additive to power generation or the like. Not enough to replace conventional stuff and just run it on pure 'core dust' but still valuable enough.
Bigger mobs = higher quality core material and more quantity.
While such material can be artificially/mechanically collected, the 'spawn' nature of small to large to omfg-giant mobs happens in a much quicker and efficient fashion that you're better off hunting mobs.
Sounds like a Vehicle Tactical Rules (page 280) situation.
Lend them a Police Cruiser (or equivalent) and let them start hunting a kaiju puppy.
It occurs to me it could also be a "sure you can use capital weapons, but that tends to destroy the core/lewt you were looking for." Hm and then maybe mix in, "Since the macguffin core is very useful in power generation tech and boosting weapons tech, when you shoot a really big macguffin core with capital grade weapons....bad things happen."
I'm also considering a Scarif type approach. In this case a world otherwise locked behind a major artifact+ quality planetary shield with the only entrance being the shield-ring facility of a lost race. Unlike the Scarif ring, it can't be closed, so there will always be an opening, unless you physically block it with ships or something.
Otherwise it acts as an impressive (and kinda scary) chokepoint of planetary access. Basically anyone that controls the ring controls the planet access. And the existence is a little unnerving, I mean, how safe would you feel living on a planet that only had one exit and that exit was made by some powerful alien beings for god knows what reason. What if the owners show up one day to cap that open mason jar?
Capital ships could sit in orbit and bomb it all they like and not make a dent in the shield.
For further stuff I'd go, "it seems the shield is there to act as the magnetotype atmosphere shield of the planet, since it doesn't seem to have one of its own', oh, and giant monsters and stuff.
Well unless I'm mistaken, and I could be, I thought that starships cannot target individuals on planet, they could hit the same "hex" as a living target which may affect them, but you can't specifically target something which means the same for a Kaiju, no matter how big it is.