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Starship combat can be interesting, but it's clearly still lacking in a lot of areas. Pilots have an entertaining minigame trying to squeeze the maximum Pilot skill bonus to win initiative, then try to get in the enemy's least favorable arc. Other roles tend to be more boring, either diverting power to shields every round, or rolling a die to hit or to boost someone else's roll. This is an attempt to give each crew role more tactics to choose from. Obviously, a change as big as this is going to throw the balance off completely, so a lot of numbers would have to be fiddled with. Ships probably will need more shield and hull points because this is going to really increase the aggression level. So when commenting on this, please don't get stuck on the numbers, but look at the structure of the ideas :)
* Each PC can take 2 actions per round, although most actions can't be used more than once per round. This should reduce the "always do the same best thing" phenomenon a bit. For example, you can divert the auxiliary power to only one system per round, so as an engineer you can do one other thing too.
* You're not totally tied to your role. You can "run to another chair" and perform an action from a different role, although the second roll will be at a -2 taunt penalty (so -4 for push actions). For example, at the beginning of combat, the ship is undamaged and the shields are at full strength, so the engineer diverts power to weapons and then dashes off to do some science officering with his second action.
* When running starship combat with less than 6 people, the GM can choose to allow each PC to take more actions and/or reduce the "run to chair" penalty, instead of having to scale down enemies.
* NPC officers get somewhat different rules from PC officers, to streamline the GM's turn. Otherwise he'd have to decide on, and roll for, 12 different actions. Most of which the players can't even observe, like a captain encouraging other NPC officers.
* Enemy ships can be taunted more than once, although any given "department" cannot be double-taunted. Taunts last for a number of rounds based on the captain's skill (result or ranks, tbd); generally longer than the current 1d4 rounds.
* Captains can try to remove a taunt penalty (from actual taunting or running to chair). Because taunts can be done more often and last longer, a captain becomes more needed to maintain morale.
* The captain can spend one of his actions to push another crew member to act another (third) time. This can be useful if that one member is the only one with several crucial skills.
* Diverting power to be split into two tasks: using auxiliary power, and rerouting power from other systems. Auxiliary power is like the current Divert Power actions; rerouting power from other systems causes penalties elsewhere and is more of a desperate measure.
* Damage to the power core no longer affects all other parts of the ship; it causes some initial loss of Shields and makes using Auxiliary Power harder.
* Can desperately borrow power from next round for a final effort, but serious consequences in the next round.
* Diverting power to shields now adds 10% PCU to that arc instead of 5%. Easier to calculate with, and compensates for gunners firing more often and having a shield-rip action.
* The Engineer gets the Rebalance Shields action that used to belong to the Science Officer. He can either move any number of points from one arc to another, equalize shields in all arcs, or move all shields to one arc.
* By giving the engineer sole responsibility over the shields, and making the power core affect only him, it's not as important for the engineer and science officer to sit next to each other at the table.
Gunners gain more choices in how they want to shoot. Each gun can perform only one of these actions per round.
* Regular shot.
* Careful shot, increased accuracy but reduced damage.
* Rapid Fire with a gun at -4/-4 to each shot.
* Shield-ripping fire, does extra damage against shields but less against the hull.
* Shoot into adjacent arc at penalty.
* Pinpoint shot a critical system, dealing minimal damage but scoring a crit against that system if it penetrates shields. A given critical system can be targeted only once per round regardless of the number of gunners/guns used; but they can target a lot of different systems.
* Add a Full Throttle stunt to go faster, which cannot be combined with Evade.
* Can attempt to shake off rockets.
* Raise the DC to Evade a bit to make it less certain (but not critfail too much).
* Make some of the other stunts a bit easier (Flyby) to make life easier for badly-turning ships.
* Split the Scan Ship action into scanning the ship and scanning the shields for weaknesses. Allow players a bit of priority-setting for what order they learn about weapons.
* Scanning the shields also increases the crit range for all attacks to 19-20 as the science officer enables more opportunistic shots (but without precise control).
* Target Systems action now provides a to-hit bonus to any gunners taking the Pinpoint Shot action against a particular vessel (regardless of which particular system they target).
* The Science Officer no longer has the Rebalance Shields action.
* Gains a new Hack Missile action. Degrees of success slow down a missile (easier to hit with point weapons as well), shut it down, or even change its target. This action is also a template for the science officer interfering with other non-ship tech objects.
The Stargazer brings a more mystical bent to starship combat. They're often mystics and solarians, although the role is not class-locked. They use either Wisdom and Mysticism (which everyone can train in) or Solarian levels and Charisma for most checks.
* Shoot a Stargazer Weapon, using [Wis]+[Mysticism ranks] or [Cha]+[Solarian levels] to hit. (These alternative stats only work for these weapons; gunners can also use them the normal way.)
* Summon spatial anomalies, distorting gravitational forces and pulling debris from the drift to shape the battlefield. (WIP)
* Push/pull enemy ships, hindering their attempts to close in, get away or turn (you choose).
* Temporarily boost shields, providing temporary hit points for one round.
* Solarians gain a special form of stellar attunement during space combat that enables heavier attacks when they nova.
* Laser and graviton weapons get the Stargazer tag. Solarians especially have affinity with these weapons.
* Revision of weapon properties; instead of being the only way to do some things, now most of them make particular gunner stunts (like shield-ripper) easier.
* Several rocket types ignore shields, flying through them before exploding.
* The size categories of weapons are made a bit more granular, so that for example coilguns and lasers are no longer the same size.
* Turrets can never hold weapons as big as those you can put in the forward or perhaps even side arcs. They remain useful for point defense and extra flexible fire using pinpoint targeting of critical systems. But the heavy damage will still come from main guns in the arcs. Now that gunners have a stunt to shoot into adjacent arcs, this is less punishing on slow-turning vessels.
* Damage to weapons applies to the arc in which the shot landed if possible.
* Damage to life support also causes damage to occupants of the ship.
* Damage to power core only affects the Auxiliary Power and Reroute Power actions, but also causes a one-time loss of some shields in all arcs.
* Damage to engines can worsen speed and turn distance, or randomly spin the ship's orientation.
* Slight adjustment to just how simultaneously all shots are fired in the gunnery phase. At the beginning of the gunnery phase, establish who can shoot who and from what arc, at what penalties etc.; then each side does its shots sequentially, so gunner 1 of red team shoots before gunner 2 of red team. This is important for when shields go down which enables other attacks to crit. It's expected that shield-ripper fire will go before pinpoint shots for example.
* Enabling more shots per round (by giving more actions) before shields can be restored in the next engineering phase should result in more damage. Also the extra options for shield-ripper fire, and science officers scanning shields
* It's expected that shields will come under higher pressure in this system. While the recharge rate goes up, so does the number of shots fired at them because gunners gain more actions. The Scan Shields action increases the threat range so it's attractive, but also gives good information about where enemy shields actually are, allowing more focused fire. Because you can't Balance Shields after movement anymore, it's harder to consistently present great shields to the enemy. All in all, this should boost the aggression rate in spaceship combat by a lot. It will also increase the number of critical hits a lot, and should put more difficult choices in front of the engineer: what to repair first?
Conduct spaceship combat while handcuffed or blindfolded.
There are several things in there that I like and will probably incorporate. I like having players have the opportunity for multiple actions. I also like being able to taunt enemy ships more than once. Oh, and the player's priority for what gets learned from scanning an enemy ship.
Constructive criticism:
I think the penalty for moving from one role to another during a round should be a separate type than the taunt penalty. The penalty is based on the lack of full time that you are spending on either of the roles, yes? And in fact the penalty should apply to both of the roles that the player is taking. At that point it feels like the gunner's original Fire at Will ability.
I'm a bit undecided on moving the Balance Shields action to the Engineer. It seems appropriate in either role. The Science Officer is the one running the computer systems on the ship, so it makes sense that the shields are computer controlled. But having the Engineer in charge of the shields makes sense too.
Instead of buffing both the damage and the shield recharge rate (which effectively nerfs hull points), you could instead make the Rebalance Shields action have a maximum transfer amount. You can only rebalance, say 10% of your total (or maybe even current) shield points. That will allow enemies to focus fire a hole in the shields instead of having to burn down the entire shield system.
And if you want to allow burning down shields faster, you could instead have all attacks do +x per die extra damage against shields. That would replace giving all weapons the option of shield ripper.
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I think the penalty for moving from one role to another during a round should be a separate type than the taunt penalty. The penalty is based on the lack of full time that you are spending on either of the roles, yes? And in fact the penalty should apply to both of the roles that the player is taking. At that point it feels like the gunner's original Fire at Will ability.
The not-so-well-explained idea was that the captain could remove his taunt-removal ability to ease moving someone to another chair. But I think that needs polish.
I'm a bit undecided on moving the Balance Shields action to the Engineer. It seems appropriate in either role. The Science Officer is the one running the computer systems on the ship, so it makes sense that the shields are computer controlled. But having the Engineer in charge of the shields makes sense too.
The idea here was twofold. First, I've seen a lot of cases where at the end of the helm phase, when people see from what direction they'll be shot at, they'll switch shields around. That's an interesting tactical move, but it does delay the moment when nat-20 gunnery hits start penetrating shields and causing crits. When you have to decide where your shields will be before any movement happens, balancing the shields is a lot more about, well, balance. Or if you're going to try really hard to get the enemy in the front arc, move some shields there; or if you're trying to outrun the enemy, put your shields in the aft arc.
The second idea is to straighten out timings. I wanted scanning shields to be something you do more often, but that doesn't work if people can still move them around afterwards. So I wanted all shield changes to happen before scanning. And I want movement to happen after scanning (so that if you have a science officer, you have information you can use to try better tactics).
So if I kept shield balancing at the science officer, he'd be acting in two different phases, which is untidy. And putting all the control of the shields in the hands of the engineer is also convenient with just one player needing a tracking sheet for them. Like I said, with this change they don't have to sit next to each other anymore.
Instead of buffing both the damage and the shield recharge rate (which effectively nerfs hull points), you could instead make the Rebalance Shields action have a maximum transfer amount. You can only rebalance, say 10% of your total (or maybe even current) shield points. That will allow enemies to focus fire a hole in the shields instead of having to burn down the entire shield system.
And if you want to allow burning down shields faster, you could instead have all attacks do +x per die extra damage against shields. That would replace giving all weapons the option of shield ripper.
Well I want gunners to be making choices on how they try to shoot, instead of just keeping their thumb on the red button all the time. So specific firing modes for taking down shields were a thing.
It also encourages having multiple guns so you can use one to strip shields and another to lay into the hull, not just one maximum strength turret.
I think the penalty for moving from one role to another during a round should be a separate type than the taunt penalty. The penalty is based on the lack of full time that you are spending on either of the roles, yes? And in fact the penalty should apply to both of the roles that the player is taking. At that point it feels like the gunner's original Fire at Will ability.The not-so-well-explained idea was that the captain could remove his taunt-removal ability to ease moving someone to another chair. But I think that needs polish.
I think it would feel better and work better as a separate penalty type. A 'cold start' penalty caused from having to get their bearings at the new role suddenly (probably needs a better name, but that is the idea). Then the Captain would have a new action 'Guide' or 'Coach' or something like that. It would remove or reduce the cold start penalty.
With it being a 'taunt' penalty it would interact strangely with the taunt ability of the opposing ship's captain. If your crew is under the effects of a taunt by another ship, could the Captain of your ship reduce that penalty using the 'ease to another chair' ability?
I'm a bit undecided on moving the Balance Shields action to the Engineer. It seems appropriate in either role. The Science Officer is the one running the computer systems on the ship, so it makes sense that the shields are computer controlled. But having the Engineer in charge of the shields makes sense too.The idea here was twofold. First, I've seen a lot of cases where at the end of the helm phase, when people see from what direction they'll be shot at, they'll switch shields around. That's an interesting tactical move, but it does delay the moment when nat-20 gunnery hits start penetrating shields and causing crits. When you have to decide where your shields will be before any movement happens, balancing the shields is a lot more about, well, balance. Or if you're going to try really hard to get the enemy in the front arc, move some shields there; or if you're trying to outrun the enemy, put your shields in the aft arc.
The second idea is to straighten out timings. I wanted scanning shields to be something you do more often, but that doesn't work if people can still move them around afterwards. So I wanted all shield changes to happen before scanning. And I want movement to happen after scanning (so that if you have a science officer, you have information you can use to try better tactics).
So if I kept shield balancing at the science officer, he'd be acting in two different phases, which is untidy. And putting all the control of the shields in the hands of the engineer is also convenient with just one player needing a tracking sheet for them. Like I said, with this change they don't have to sit next to each other anymore.
OK. I'm sold.
I would still include a restriction on how much of the shields can be moved around each round. That way even without a science officer, a ship crew can mentally keep track of where they are hitting the other ship ad know that that arc is likely weaker than the rest of the ship.
Well I want gunners to be making choices on how they try to shoot, instead of just keeping their thumb on the red button all the time. So specific firing modes for taking down shields were a thing.
It also encourages having multiple guns so you can use one to strip shields and another to lay into the hull, not just one maximum strength turret.
I think the two ideas are working at cross purposes. If all weapons are able to do shield ripper, then we don't need to have multiple types of weapons.
When we were creating the ship for our family's game, I didn't let them choose the frame. I deliberately chose a frame that didn't include a turret. That forced them to make choices on which types of weapons to include on which arcs. They have a broad arc weapon on the port side so that it can cover the rear arc (which doesn't have a weapon mount).
One change that might be useful to deal with this in general is to break up the turrets. Instead of letting them shoot into all arcs, make them pick two arcs at install time for where they can shoot. Then for each turret built into the standard frames, they instead get two 2-arc turrets.
As for giving more firing modes for the gunners to choose between...
We already have the option to fire two different weapons at an attack roll penalty. It wouldn't be too much different to allow two shots from the same weapon with an attack roll penalty. Maybe a bigger penalty, and probably with some restrictions such as not able to be used on tracking weapons.
Another option would be to make weapons less expensive and provide more weapon mounts. Then the ships could be equipped with more weapons of different stats and abilities that the gunners could choose between. Would probably need to impose a limit on the number of gunners per arc each round in order to avoid huge damage spikes on ships with larger crew.
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I think once you get past tier 1-2 ships you can already afford multiple smaller weapons, but it wasn't done because there's not enough crew actions to use them. The extremely limited number of crew actions favors one big gun.
I've thought a lot about turrets and I think the best solution is to simply mandate that turrets cannot hold guns as big as the ones you can put in fixed position. If you can put a 4d4 coilgun in your forward arc, then maybe you can only put a 1d8 laser in the turret. Originally I wanted to use pricing, but because a turret covers four arcs you'd have to make guns in turrets 4 times as expensive, which might be unacceptable too. So that's why I want to make gun sizes a bit more granular at the bottom of the scale.
My idea for shield ripper weapons was kinda inspired by Stellaris, where kinetic weapons do well against shields but poorly against armor, and energy weapons do well against armor but poorly against shields. So you're choosing a weapon load-out either to really nail an enemy whose ship design you know, or a balanced one that can cope with all situations.
While most weapons could be used for a Ripper action, kinetic weapons would be much better at them. (I was going with a theme of, most weapons can do most things, but each of them is really good at something specific.)
In my take, kinetic weapons and "stargazer" weapons would not really overlap. A gunner can fire both equally well, a stargazer can only substitute Mysticism ranks+Wisdom/Solarian level+Charisma on those weapons that they really have affinity with (light- and gravity weapons). Then again, stargazers also gain some actions that are completely different from gunners.
Terrain etc. only makes things more interesting for the pilot. Its really not where the problem is.
I don't think I know Starfinder well enough to help, but this does look like a good idea.
From my very limited experience with SF space combat the shields can be too much to penetrate in any reasonable time at level 10. Is that enabling shield-ripper is about?
Since there are a few Azlanti weapons which can be fired with mysticism ranks + Wis mod now, any changes you're thinking of making to the stargazer weapons? I admit I have no real idea what an aeon caster is.
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Terrain etc. only makes things more interesting for the pilot. Its really not where the problem is.
A starfinder society combat (which I will not name here for spoiler reasons) includes asteroids that you can shoot to cause splash damage on nearby starships. In a battle with multiple enemy starships, this could be real fun for the gunner, provided (yes) that the pilot is any good.
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I personally really like the idea of the engineer tracking the shields completely. When I play the Engineer, I lay out four sets of d% in the diamond shape so the other players can glance from even across the table and see what our current shields are. We almost never have a science officer.
Question: How do Minor crew actions fit into this? Does everyone get the chance for one still? Or is it two? or does this replace the minor crew action system?
everyone wants to shoot down a tie-fighter. I just let everyone take the snap-shot action. So captain can give orders and blast a ship, pilot can juke the asteroid and blast a ship, science officer can scan a ship and then blast it. I also give gunner's a few more options (basically covering fire and harrying fire that covers a specific arc) to give them more than just; blast a ship.