Ok... I need to get this out of my mind...
I'm pretty sure that players and GMs alike would like to eventually build their own armada, with a lot of spaceships to conquer worlds or to explore. Dude, if you have a party of six players, there's a good chance that each one would like their own vehicle... or vehicles...
However... people seem to forget that 1) there's an actual cost to ships and 2) there's an actual building time to them :P
Yes, the universe is vast and yes, there is magic to aid technological advances, but let's face it, there is a HUGE resource management to be done when building ships, such as steel and batteries.
I haven't seen a machine/artifact that can create items out of thin air either, so unless you overmine a planet or several planets, you will never get a huge armada if you consider resources.
So yeah... how do you guys feel about this? How would you manage this issue?
Firstly, Universes are huge. There are probably near-infinite planets to pick from, so I wouldn't be too concerned if a lifeless dust ball got strip mined.
However, there's also something tgat exists in the Starfinder world that we don't have: Planes. Other planes of existence like the elemental planes don't play by the same rules. Time doesn't even need to be linear, so find a plane or dimension full of the resource you need and it's just a matter of how hard is it to mine?
However, there's also something tgat exists in the Starfinder world that we don't have: Planes. Other planes of existence like the elemental planes don't play by the same rules. Time doesn't even need to be linear, so find a plane or dimension full of the resource you need and it's just a matter of how hard is it to mine?
Now I feel stupid to even question that ^^;
The Elemental Plane of Earth has an infinite ammount of ore...
The Elemental Plane of Fire has an infinite ammount of heat...
The Elemental Plane of Air has an infinite ammount of electricity...
The Elemental Plane of Water has an infinite ammount of chemicals...
Now I feel stupid to even question that ^^;
Don't feel stupid. It's a good question.
Only reason I even thought about it was when they talk the history and the Drift it talks about how the Drift is a cheap, accessible alternative because they used to make pacts with gods to use other planes. That bit of fluff also means that an abundance of a resource means nothing for the economy when getting into the places where they can potentially be located is still a costly endeavor.
Now I feel stupid to even question that ^^;Don't feel stupid. It's a good question.
It was more about: "Oh right... Planes still exist in Starfinder; Golarion's gone :p"
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I haven't seen a machine/artifact that can create items out of thin air either, so unless you overmine a planet or several planets, you will never get a huge armada if you consider resources.
While starfinder doesn't quite go into this level of realism, i'd like to point out that space is far bigger and more vast than credit is given.
To quote Issac Arthur on starlifting:
In the starlifting episode, we saw that a civilization could pull 1000's of earths worth of metal out of their own sun, but even 1/1000 of an earths worth of building material would be enough to build an aircraft carrier mass spaceship 100 trillion times over.
You do not need planet mining to field large fleets by any stretch of the imagination. After all, star ships have a lot of empty space in them compared to how much materials they use. Not to mention, there's little need to planet mine unless you are going for truly colossal mega structures like dyson spheres. Excuse my vernacular, but asteroid mining is 'hella lucrative.
In 1997 it was speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (1 mi) contains more than US$20 trillion worth of industrial and precious metals. A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km (0.62 mi) could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron–nickel ore, or two to three times the world production of 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×10^19 kg of nickel–iron, which could supply the world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also be precious metals.
To give you an idea of the scale here, a Nimiz-class aircraft carrier (one of the largest in the world and would classify as huge starship in starfinder terms) has a mass of a mere ~88,000 metric tones.
When it comes to asteroid mining, not only the raw materials are important, but the fact that unlike planets, they have tiny gravity wells and do not need a lot of work to get access to and process them. This makes obtaining resources in space FAR easier than planets as the ease of building space-based infrastructure goes up dramatically the easier the access to space is. And keep in mind, all of these speculations are being done with real-world technologies and limitations in mind like limited delta V and no access to FTL. In the starfinder setting where for all intents and purposes, starship travel is extremely easy, fast, common, and cheap by real world metrics... let's just say the pactworlds can produce more than enough supplies to fuel all of the infrastructure they will ever need in the near-future and then some.
And to really drive it home, all of this is before factoring fusion power and particle accelerators for transmutation, so if the demand was high enough, materials can be directly synthesized. After all, where do you think those antimatter mega-missiles come from?
@WhiteWeasel
O...k... O_O I stand corrected then, thanks for the info :)
Starfinder has the Sun and its own asteroid belt, the Diaspora.
So, well then, I supposed that the only resource to consider is money, but... a powerful lord wouldn't hav eto worry this much about that either :P
@WhiteWeasel
O...k... O_O I stand corrected then, thanks for the info :)
Starfinder has the Sun and its own asteroid belt, the Diaspora.
So, well then, I supposed that the only resource to consider is money, but... a powerful lord wouldn't hav eto worry this much about that either :P
In a society where materials are super abundant, the chief limiting factors for logistics are going to be labor, manpower, transportation, and bureaucracy. Like the other Isaac said above, it would be less about the materials, and more about the actual time and effort to get them.
I was a little disappointed to find out that ships were not purchasable items. Mostly because putting a price on it has a few implications. First of all, GMs are going to see that cost and say "If it costs this much, it must be for X level characters only," since that's how gear works in Starfinder and since any reasonable number for the cost of a ship would be huge, that would put ships out of reach of low-level players. Since a lot of the campaigns they want you to run with Starfinder involve spaceships and spaceship battles from the beginning (For example, Star Wars would suck if nobody in the party could afford the Millenium Falcon), they couldn't restrict access to them.
And if they create any financial loophole to artificially lower the price (like the fact that nobody drops the cash to buy a new car these days. It's all loans and leases), that just means that someone is going to use that same loophole to get their hands on some crazy high-level weapons or other nonsense. (Imagine getting a car loan and then buying guns with that much money.)
It's meta and not terribly satisfying, but there it is.
Also technical talent. If you want to build a ship, for example, you need high skilled shipbuilders to do the job. Automation theoretically could substitute for this, but in practice it probably just shifts the skill requirements to AIs ( which are also skilled workers ) and the technical staff who build and maintain and design the machinery.
So, in a lot of cases, the bottleneck for how much you can build is "How many talented engineers do you have?"
Under the same reasoning, building these ships is all well and good but you're gonna need the crew to man that fleet....
Correction, the problem is getting LOYAL crews.
Loyal *and* skilled. Even the best battleship is going to be relatively wasted if the officers and men manning it only barely know what they are doing. Imagine how effective a Tier 20 battleship would *not* be, if it had only Tier 2 crew.
That would be the next step, and you need to have one crew per ship. Here is the list of roles:
Captain (only one needed, can have officers)Engineers (any number, often with crews)
Gunners (technically one per weapon mount, often with crew)
Pilots (only one, often with a crew)
Science Officers (any number, often with crew)
As a reminder, the captain and officers are the ones rolling for checks. While no rule is given, it's save to assume that the captain should be at least of the same level as the ship's tier. Any subordinate should be qualified, but it's safe to assume, again, that they shoudl be one or more levels lower than the captain, in order to establish a hierarchy.
Some roles are beter suited for some classes, based on skills:
Captain (Diplomacy, gunnery, Intimidate, Piloting)
- Envoys; Mystics and Solarians have Diplomacy and Intimidate, but would need more ranks in Piloting.
Engineers (Engineering)
- Envoys, Mechanics, Operatives, Soldiers and Technomancers
Gunners (gunnery)
- Solarians and Soldiers; any class can technically fill this role, but as base attack bonuses are used, so the higher, the better.
Pilot (Piloting)
- Envoys, Operatives, Soldiers and Technomancers
Science Officer (Computers)
- Envoys, Mechanics and Operatives
I was a little disappointed to find out that ships were not purchasable items. Mostly because putting a price on it has a few implications. First of all, GMs are going to see that cost and say "If it costs this much, it must be for X level characters only," since that's how gear works in Starfinder and since any reasonable number for the cost of a ship would be huge, that would put ships out of reach of low-level players. Since a lot of the campaigns they want you to run with Starfinder involve spaceships and spaceship battles from the beginning (For example, Star Wars would suck if nobody in the party could afford the Millenium Falcon), they couldn't restrict access to them.
And if they create any financial loophole to artificially lower the price (like the fact that nobody drops the cash to buy a new car these days. It's all loans and leases), that just means that someone is going to use that same loophole to get their hands on some crazy high-level weapons or other nonsense. (Imagine getting a car loan and then buying guns with that much money.)
It's meta and not terribly satisfying, but there it is.
You mentionned the Millenium Falcon, there's a scene in Solo: A Star Wars movie, when Han finally gets into the cockpit: he's in awe. That's pretty much what they went with here ;)
Loyal *and* skilled. Even the best battleship is going to be relatively wasted if the officers and men manning it only barely know what they are doing. Imagine how effective a Tier 20 battleship would *not* be, if it had only Tier 2 crew.
This is becoming a terrible disconnect for me, breaking my suspension of disbelief
In Dead Suns 6
In short, the crew is lvl 20 because the ship is tier 20 and this the DC to use it are huge. While the DC of a tier 20 ship is huge, because the crew is lvl 20. Creating a circular reasoning, which does not really work in the game lore
In short, the crew is lvl 20 because the ship is tier 20 and this the DC to use it are huge. While the DC of a tier 20 ship is huge, because the crew is lvl 20. Creating a circular reasoning, which does not really work in the game lore
Assistance can come by as extra officers, AIs and even magic items.
While the rules never state a clear requirement for ships, it's safe to assume that an officer has more than one resource to help him or her out.
In short, the crew is lvl 20 because the ship is tier 20 and this the DC to use it are huge. While the DC of a tier 20 ship is huge, because the crew is lvl 20. Creating a circular reasoning, which does not really work in the game loreAssistance can come by as extra officers, AIs and even magic items.
While the rules never state a clear requirement for ships, it's safe to assume that an officer has more than one resource to help him or her out.
Assistance helps with rolls. But somne things in the SF starship combat refer to ranks, which is why the skills in ships are listed as both a bonus, and a rank (Ie: Pilot 17[rank 10]). Also, in that particular example of the ship in Dead Suns 6, yes, there are things that help the officers (magic items and such). But they are stated in the ship sheet, and those are aditional to the skill checks the crew has, as a crew.
Besides, a Tier 20 ship does not need to be a huge ship with thousands of crew who help each other with aid another. You could have a tier 20 medium explorer too. Which would have the skill checks of a tier 20 ship.
There is a case, in Dead Suns, where the PC fight a ship, and can board (or be board by) after the combat. So we have the stats of the individual soldiers taht crew the ship. And they don't match with the stats of the ship, as crew.
Now, I can understand that it might just be an abstraction. That's fair, and I can get behind that. But... it's an abstraction in a thread mill. The crew in a TIER 20 battlecruiser need to be stated as a lvl 20 character, because otherwise, they'd not be able to fly a TIER 20 battlecruiser. And the DCs of a TIER 20 battlecruiser are really high, because they need (want?) to keep the DC high for high level characters.
If the DC of using a Starship would not be artificically fixed to the Tier of the ship itself, you would not need to artificially fix the crew stats to the Tier of the ship in order to be able to beat the DC you arbitrarily choose to put in the system. A Tier 20 ultranought could be piloted by CR 11 undeads (ie: the real officers of the ship) without problem, if the DCs would not escalate orders of maginude because the Ship is tier 20.
Yeah, my interpretation, though there is not yet the mechanics to support it, are "The skill codes for high level ships are based on the cumulative contributions of the entire team". There aren't rules yet for this, because PCs are realistically only expected to operate ships where they *are* the only crew.
But, again, you can have high tier fighters. Or high tier small sized shuttles, or high tier frigates of corvettes (ie, large sized ships) that can be crewed with 6 guys.
The skill ranks of the crew does not increease because you pick a "huge" sized ship instead of a "medium" sized ship. It increase because you pick a higher Tier. A tier 16 luxury yatch with 6 crew members have 6 crew members with the equivalent of CR 16 skills. A tier 4 colosal sized ship, with thousands of crew, and maybe 100 guys per team (ie: 100 engieneers per engineering officer) would roll like a CR 4 character.
I would rather have a system where the TIer of the ship is not directly tied to the CR of the crew. You could have a high level Ace Pilot in a really low tier starfighter, and a high-tech, state of the art powerful battleship, crewed by rookie soldiers who have never been in a real fight, for example. Both are relatively common in the genre.
But that can't work in SF system, because in SF system, the DC of doing something is directly tied to the Tier of the Ship. That's the root of all problems in SF, I think. You have a high Tier fighter, with the best possible thrusters, best possible computers, best sensor, etc. You try to do, say, a barrell roll. You realize it's really hard to you. So you choose to strip things from your best-that-money-can-buy fighter. So you go back, and pick the lowest, cheapest freighter in the market.. Now it's a low tier ship, and thus, you can do barrel rolls with ease. Because of that, high quality ships have to be crewed by high level characters / NPCs
Yeah, my interpretation, though there is not yet the mechanics to support it, are "The skill codes for high level ships are based on the cumulative contributions of the entire team". There aren't rules yet for this, because PCs are realistically only expected to operate ships where they *are* the only crew.
But, again, you can have high tier fighters. Or high tier small sized shuttles, or high tier frigates of corvettes (ie, large sized ships) that can be crewed with 6 guys.
The skill ranks of the crew does not increease because you pick a "huge" sized ship instead of a "medium" sized ship. It increase because you pick a higher Tier. A tier 16 luxury yatch with 6 crew members have 6 crew members with the equivalent of CR 16 skills. A tier 4 colosal sized ship, with thousands of crew, and maybe 100 guys per team (ie: 100 engieneers per engineering officer) would roll like a CR 4 character. And this is so, because it's needed to make the system work. A Tier 16 luxury yatch would face MUCH harder rolls than a tier 4 gargantuan battleship, so the crew in the luxury yatch needs to be higher level than the soldiers in the battleship.
I would rather have a system where the TIer of the ship is not directly tied to the CR of the crew. You could have a high level Ace Pilot in a really low tier starfighter, and a high-tech, state of the art powerful battleship, crewed by rookie soldiers who have never been in a real fight, for example. Both are relatively common in the genre.
But that can't work in SF system, because in SF system, the DC of doing something is directly tied to the Tier of the Ship. That's the root of all problems in SF, I think. You have a high Tier fighter, with the best possible thrusters, best possible computers, best sensor, etc. You try to do, say, a barrell roll. You realize it's really hard to you. So you choose to strip things from your best-that-money-can-buy fighter. So you go back, and pick the lowest, cheapest freighter in the market.. Now it's a low tier ship, and thus, you can do barrel rolls with ease. Because of that, high quality ships have to be crewed by high level characters / NPCs