Proposed Errata for Multiple PC Starship APL Rules

[SiliconDon]

The current rules for calculating effective encounter difficulty is as follows:

Quote:

If the PCs have more than one starship, use the highest-tier ship’s tier as a base and add 1 to this value for each additional starship within at least 2 tiers of that starship. If none are within 2 tiers, add up the tiers of all the additional starships and add 1 to the base value if the total is equals or exceeds the base starship’s tier. Use this modified value when determining the encounter’s difficulty.

However, the way this is worded, as long as there are at least one ship within two tiers of the highest tier ship, then you are free to add as many ships that are more than two tiers lowers than the highest ship as possible without changing the encounter difficulty.

For example, you could have two tier 4 ships and 174 tier 1 ships and the official way to calculate the appropriate challenge level would be to add one to the highest tier ship for the one other ship within two tiers for a total of tier 5. Obviously this is ludicrous and any GM worth their salt would never let the players get away with it, but I think it would make sense to clarify this section. Here is my proposal.

Quote:

If the PCs have more than one starship, use the highest-tier ship’s tier as a base and add 1 to this value for each additional starship within at least 2 tiers of that starship. If there are starships not within 2 tiers, add up the tiers of all the additional starships and add 1 to the base value for each multiple of the highest starship's tier (rounded down). Use this modified value when determining the encounter’s difficulty.

Example:

Two tier 5 ships and six tier 2 ships.

- Highest tier starship is (5)
- There is one starship within two tiers of the for a (+1)
- The sum of the additional starships not within 2 tiers is 12, which is two multiples (rounded down) for a (+2)

This would give an effective Starship level of (8)

[Isaac Zephyr]

First, there need to be rules that accomodate PCs getting multiple starships. At present, there are not. Second, you would need pilots for all of these ships so radically high numbers aren't very viable. Third, low tier ships are pretty much incapable of harming higher tier ships, between shields and larger ships having DT.

I'm currently trying to test if even the current Starship rules for multiple ships accurately gauge CR for a ship encounter. The results are... Not good. 4 APL-3 ships don't stand much of a chance against ships of the tier they're supposed to be able to fight. There tends to be a lot of one shotting of the lower tiered ships, as rarely can they be larger than tiny or small and still be outfitted with appropriate weapons and shields, whilst still being pilotable by a crew of one.

[Raia of Jabask]

See the discussion here for why multiple ships significantly below the Tier of the opponent do not matter for starship combat.

[Wingblaze]

This feels like it's putting a toe in the water of trying to turn Starfinder in to something I don't think it was designed to be.

Starfinder isn't Starfleet Battles.

SF is trying to recreate things like the Millenium Falcon, or Firefly. It's not trying for Battlestar Galactica with a carrier and squadrons of fighters.

I'm not saying this is bad in concept - if that's where you want your game to go, nothing wrong with it. But we're in homebrew territory, not official errata. Changing this one rule doesn't make any difference if you don't re-examine the entire system of ship battles to see if it works for scenarios like this change permits. It opens up a new way of doing stuff without changes necessary to support it (if there are any).

Again, I have no problems with people extending the system. But it is an extension of the system, not errata.

Some people think ship combat is fine, some don't. But I suspect a lot of people would agree that if you stretch it too far beyond what it was intending, it'll break.

The fact that SF has a hard time with, say, a 7 player crew is a related problem, but for another day