You can swap the roles every round. This might even be useful for those once per combat intimidate checks, depending on how they are written and interpreted by your GM.
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the game needs rule so a mechanic captains can take on a normal captain character so we all don't get.Railroad in to one ship?
No, it doesn't. That would be the same as saying "a technomancer needs to be on equal footing with a soldier in a fist fight." Different classes have different talents - areas where they are strong and not-as-strong. That is a core component of this, or any, RPG. If the mechanic is the captain, that's fine but they won't be as good as, say, an envoy. Nor will the envoy be as good an engineer. That is balance.
Even a moderate gunner firing has more impact on the fight than the captain. Hand everyone a gun and you can all be captain
How hard are the DCs for captain checks anyway? My group never had much trouble hitting their respective DCs in ship combat, but we never had a captain. Are the DCs low enough that a few points in CHA, max skill ranks, and a skill focus feat could make it viable? I made a soldier for a friend like that and it worked great.
Encourage with diplomacy is a flat 15, so anyone can sit in the captains chair and say go team and have a reasonable chance of adding the plus 2.
Demand is a lot harder.
If you have a spare gun, you're almost always better off shooting it yourself instead of having the gunner fire twice at a -4 penalty.
If you use skill focus: intimidate and a vampire voice necrografts to get an enhancement bonus to intimidate, you can be good enough at taunt and demand, also, if you really want to do captain stuff.
Orders is based on other ship skills already.
If they're flying tiny 1-2 person ships, you need to fly and shoot, having a captain takes away from that. If they're flying a larger ship with an NPC crew, let the 1st mate NPC take care of it. The player can still be in charge while assuming an appropriate role for their build. If you really want to stick with a Star Trek feel where they're the captain, then they need to rework their characters with their desired starship role in mind.
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I'm not sure what you're looking for OP.
You can only have 1 "captain" per ship.
The "captain" role should probably be changed to the role of the Ship's Counselor, that way no one is worried about that particular combat role.
I believe the OP is looking for PCs to be captaining their own individual ships, each with its own crew. I think it sounds like the kind of situation that screams for using houserules, instead of expecting a system change.
The ship combat rules are (naturally enough*) designed around a single ship with a small crew (4-6). Of the ship roles, there can only be one captain and one pilot per ship (per the RAW). There are basically two ways around this: have the party in multiple ships or modify the ship combat rules to have a "captain" for each "department" on a larger ship.
For multiple ships, an explorer or transport frame with a couple launch rails for fighters can allow a larger party to control up to three separate ships or just one.
For larger ships, this would be more of a variant campaign with the PCs taking on the roles of ship's officers in charge of various groups of NPCs: bridge crew, engineering crew, gunnery crew, and scanning/countermeasures (science officers) crew.
*- since the assumption is that the party has their own ship and they are the crew
Even a moderate gunner firing has more impact on the fight than the captain. Hand everyone a gun
I would agree, especially when you typically have a fairly small ship crew (4-7). You're generally better off with more gunners.
Obviously the importance varies with ship and situation.
However, INMSHO, the position importance is often something like:
- Pilot
- Gunner 1
- Engineer
- Gunner 2
- Science Officer
- Captain
- Gunner 3
If you're in combat and have multiple weapons, I wouldn't recommend tying a person up as captain unless you have 5+/6+ people or you're really having a hard time with DCs. Even in the latter chance, a moderate chance of 2-3 people hitting is better than a good chance of one person hitting.
if the PCs are each taking control of a ship, allow their character's to fulfill the role they normally would (Mechanic takes the engineering role, etc...) and then fill in the other roles with NPCs, using the ship's tier to determine the quality of the crew. The players control all of the actions/make all the roles and your proceed as normal. Simple.