Considering how my group works now, either:
A) The millenium falcon + either a single pilot fighter or a second falcon. Everyone can skip the 'boring jobs' until they're needed. Action economy is skewed just a bit more to the players. If they have NPCs along for the ride, those guys can handle the boring stuff under PC direction while the players do the fun stuff.
B) Star Trek style. Either the players are the bridge crew, or you take a hit to player autonomy to benefit starship combat. Either way, one big beefy capital scale ship vs. the standard encounter of several smaller ships with the occasional boss fight where the engineer wants to readjust the shields to get an edge on their opponent.
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I'm sitting here wondering "what have we actually done on our ships except fly to our destination and fight something that's in the way", and I'm not coming up with much. In SFS and Dead Suns just about all the action has taken place outside the ship, usually on the surface, or as a space combat.
Compare that to Star Trek where quite a few episodes pass on-ship without space combat. People have roles on the ship, and those roles matter, even outside of space combat.
Put me down for rather liking the Star Trek model, but with many more different things for each role to do and much more going on besides combat.
I don't do Spaceship combat, out there. The Night Wolf (my PCs' ship) exists in a Universe where combat in space doesn't happen. However, on planet there is plenty of combat. So strike me down for neither. In my game, the PCs keep finding solutions that are non-violent however, and so get XP for that.
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In my group, what we have now feels like both Star Wars (Millennium Falcon) and Star Trek. No, we don't have a crew of 400 to do our bidding, but we're essentially the bridge crew of the Enterprise at a scale similar to the Millennium Falcon.
We seem to like the assigned roles and don't really have a problem with one person "doing more" than any other. Sure, I get to roll more dice as a gunner, but I don't really have a lot of thinking to do about my action for the turn. The Engineer and Science Officer usually have the most to worry about. Our Pilot is simply too good for the NPCs to have any hope, so we almost always have initiative. That makes the maneuvering less interesting, but it's less interesting in our favor.
I played a lot of Star Fleet Battles (a LOT of SFB) and so our Tier 6 Sunrise Maiden is a bit overpowered. (And by "a bit" I mean "can easily defeat Destroyers".) So I feel like the Starship construction rules could use some tweaking. But the roleplaying elements of Starship combat seem to work really well for our group.
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I'd like if it was either Star Wars/Fighter Aircraft-based combat, or if it was Star Trek/Submarine-style where everyone has a role on the same ship.
The current system tries to do the Star Trek/Submarine style, but it is very easy for characters to exist that aren't good at any role, and there aren't really many interesting choices for characters aside from the pilot role currently, so more roles and actions would probably be needed and mechanics to make the environments more than just "EMPTY VOID with enemies".
The engineers choice is kind of not a choice at all. Diverting power to weapons is so insignificant once you're not rolling a couple of d4s that you're just
1) fixing the shields or
2) if you have a short combat skip the engineers position entirely. Putting everyone on the guns to avoid the -2 for broad siding
I don’t think the rules are terrible at all, I just feel like every role needs way more options. Specific class abilities would be awesome too. I have a feeling we might see some options in the COM when it comes out.
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My group favors the Star Trek bridge crew combat system that it is now but a system that could handle both would be even better. I am all for and believe it is in a lot of need for the construction rules to be balanced and given more guidelines and absolutely for more expanded options for all the various crew positions. A starship focused book would be most welcome.
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Starfinder ship combat has a lot of problems.
There are problems with the bp costs, building a ship (shields and turrets are much too cheap).
There are problems with the scaling of shield restoration (too much is restored at the very low levels, if the weapons that seem to be intended for tier 1-2 are actually used.) That problem goes away quickly with rising level, though.
There are big problems with the lack of variety of actions. Adding in specialty equipment to to things like Star Trek Online's ridiculous science officer space magic. Or technomantic gear for actual mysticism based space magic would help.. but I fear that putting all the points in guns and shields would remain so effective that it would see sadly limited use.
Scale, though? That's something that I think is fine where it is. While the kind of large scale thing Pantshandshake described would be cool, I don't think it would fit this game.
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I personally think that the base frame for starship combat is just fine. The only alterations to make would be tweaks here and there for better balance at different points and to find ways to engage players better.
That said, and I have said previously on the boards, I believe that if you build a character that has nothing to do during starship combat, it is not the system's fault. If you look at some of the sci fi tropes, you will see characters that don't really do anything during starship combat because their skills are elsewhere. This is fine. I do not ascribe to the mentality that you can build whatever character you want and the system has to make sure that you can still participate in starship combat.
I plan, once I have a regulated life schedule, to get together with some folks and binge starship combat, trying out different tweaks I have thought up and seeing if we can come up with some in the moment as well.
I like the idea of how fights between space craft are shown in Mass Effect, btu I'm not sure there is a way to make that into a fun table top game system.
I also like the idea of individual fighters, but if you're didn't build the character to include piloting then you'd be pretty hosed. And I don't like the idea of making it mandatory.
I don't really have useful suggestions, more just observations of what I do and don't like and what I don't see working.
You do have a point though, you can have an entirely different progression if you wanted everyone to be star fighter pilots that is completely divorced from the rest of character mechanics.
It wouldn't necessarily be bad, it'd eb about like everyone just having a separate starship ship sheet for each character with their special abilities and stats on it.
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I really like the idea of having "individual fighter" as an option for people/characters that it makes sense for, and anyone who doesn't opt in to that system fills a role on the multi-person party ship, as that system exists now. Since ships' BP is tied to Tier and not credits, in theory I think there's no reason you couldn't just use the BP budget as a total for all party ships, and built two (or however many you want) ships using that budget.
Has anyone tried that? Are both ships just really weak? Maybe some kind of additional BP bump-up, for each new ship the party uses, to keep them both roughly competitive with single-ships at that tier (so that you aren't all stuck using Armour and Defences like 5 Mks below your tier or whatever.)
The problem with that Kishmo is that having a main big ship for people who don't want to have fighters means that the big ship is usually going to end up with not enough PCs to crew it for combat. Remember the normal party size is expected to be 4.
I'm not sure if the extra action economy from a big ship + fighter would make up for the loss of ability to do things for the big ship.
I think balancing it becomes really hard. The amount of damage weapons do really increases for bigger ships, such that you could potentially be one shot/one rounded as a fighter craft from an enemy. Leaving the main ship down a crew with nothing to make it up.
Not sure if that's how it would play out, but it's just my concern.
Maybe have an ability to launch fighter drones somehow? Gives the players something to control but doesn't cost you much if they get shot down.
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When I get to the aforementioned binge, my main focus will be making big ship + fighter(s) work. Having multiple ships in combat ups the tactics exponentially. Also, as people have stated previously, some of the best tactics is to have as many guns firing as possible. That concept lends credence to multiple ships as the end result is the same. It is definitely worth experimenting with.
The only trouble becomes that "death by a million papercuts" because the solution.
Starship combat, get as many guns firing at the enemy as possible. Doesn't matter if the only deal 2 points of damage, if you can overwhelm their shield with a bunch of cannon fodder fighters you can have the big ship launch their nastiest weapons to disable an enemy ship.
My group has had the pleasure of using our spore cannon multiple times after stripping shields in the first round and basically hamstringing the enemy from the get go.
Now this isn't bad for PCs to do to NPCs. The problem would be explaining why the Eoxian fleet or the Azlanti fleet that the PCs encounter in the course of their adventures don't just send 30 fighters at them and kill them with superior numbers.
Unless you try to fix that by having NPCs fill a bunch of fighter ship roles. But that gets messy too.
If PCs crew individual fighters, does that mean they individually get blown to bits and die? Because 1/4th the build budget might not be enough to survive with if you get targeted at higher level.
Again, that's one of my significant concerns and part of why I think with the current rules we have fighter craft just aren't a good option for PCs to utilize, without completely revamping the rules.
I think the closest you could get is remotely controlled fighter craft from a PC on board the main ship.
Well, when a ship or fighter hits 0 hull points, it's drifting useless in space. It's not until the enemy keeps firing at the disabled fighter that they explode and die horribly.
Which also doesn't fit too well with the fighter combat visualization, but makes it less likely to kill pcs left and right if you really want to try to make that route work in this system.
the first Starfinder game we played we did individual fighters at full BP for level.
It was a lot of fun, but it did become clear that later on, there is only so much you can pack on a fighter frame to make it combat effective. Larger ships are relatively immune to your weapons at a certain point, but that is ok IMO, a fighter shouldn't be a threat to a capital ship.
This problem is easily handled though, you as GM just don't put your small wing of starfighters against a capital ship in a standup brawl. While our GM made a lot of missteps in his first game, he actually handled that quite well (probably because of his experience with Star Wars Saga, where large ships aren't normally opponents, but objectives or hazards), in having larger ships be essentially countdown timers (as in how fast they could reach or destroy a critical McGuffin), set pieces, or just swarm generators.
So you can pretty easily do a wing of individual fighters, you're just going to have to realize what type of opponents and scenarios you can throw at the group, but then if you don't already do that, you're a pretty terrible GM and should probably just stick to board games.
the first Starfinder game we played we did individual fighters at full BP for level.
It was a lot of fun, but it did become clear that later on, there is only so much you can pack on a fighter frame to make it combat effective. Larger ships are relatively immune to your weapons at a certain point, but that is ok IMO, a fighter shouldn't be a threat to a capital ship.
I disagree, a group of fighters 100% should be a threat to a capital ship. A single fighter, no, not so much, unless the pilot gets hilariously lucky.
This just isn't the system to actually model that, which is too bad.
well yeah, enough fighters would, but games don't typically have hundreds of players in them. I'm talking a standard group (4-6)
I personally believe even a small number of fighters should be able to carry enough firepower to disable a capital ship. If they can't, then they shouldn't be deployed to fight capital ships - no pilot wants to die needlessly on a suicide mission that cannot succeed, and no commander would order them to die for nothing.
The only reason to deploy fighter craft against a capital ship is if the fighters are actually capable of disabling it. Further, the number of fighters I have in my fleet should be sufficient to disable any ship I send them against (if it takes 20 fighters to have a real chance, then I MUST have 20 and use all 20 or I will use ZERO instead).
The USS Hornet was destroyed beyond salvation by 6 hits from Japanese fighters plus two fighters crashing into her (the crashes did less damage than the bombs and torpedoes). She was fully disabled with no power and no ability to move, no ability to fight, and couldn't even land or launch her aircraft.
On the other hand, these 6 fighters were not the only ones to attack the Hornet; she was attacked by more than 30 fighters. Many of them spent their payloads without scoring any hits and more than a dozen Japanese fighters were shot down in that battle by the guns of the Hornet or her escorts. So the attacking fighters paid a heavy price to sink the Hornet, but in the end, only 6 hits took her out.
That seems like a reasonable number for Starfinder too. Or around that number, anyway.
Note: They didn't actually sink the Hornet but they did thoroughly disable her. She was being towed back for repairs by another ship when the Japanese fleet got too close, so she was scuttled deliberately to keep her from being captured.
Note: I'm defining "fighters" as small one-man or two-man craft. I know that the "fighters" that disabled the Hornet were actually dive-bombers and torpedo planes that carried ordinance designed to destroy capital ships. They were not actual "fighters" by earthly definition of the term, but they were (basically) the same size and shape and crew-size as other "fighters", the main difference being that they carried bombs and torpedoes rather than carrying weapons designed to shoot down other fighters. By Starfinder designations, they would all just be "fighters" with different weapon configurations.
if you're comfortable giving fighters weaponry capable of taking down a capital ship in small numbers, then go for it.
But by the rules of Starfinder, and most sci-fi conventions, a small squad of fighters aren't taking down a capital ship (ala Star Destroyer), and so yes, most fiction doesn't deploy 4-6 spacefighters to take down a capital-class ship.
But if we want to use your real world scenario, given the nature of hp (hit or hull) in the gaming genre, those 30 other fighters that "missed" were actually taking off hps, but only the hits that actually scuttle or destroy a vessel are "direct hits" :P
Me?
I prefer Starfinder COMBAT to be medium sized ships like Millennium Falcon, Serenity, Prometheus, or Rocinante. Some of these are bigger than others but they all function well with a handful of crew.
I prefer that a medium ship can wipe out a small flight of fighters, like the Millennium Falcon vs. those 4 TIE Fighters, but will always lose to larger flights of fighters (like what SHOULD have happened if the Death Star sent 50 fighters instead of 4 - assuming they weren't tracking the Falcon and preferred to just destroy it).
I prefer that a medium ship will ALWAYS run from a capital ship because it's just too outgunned - even if it does have ordinance that can defeat a capital ship (see my previous post), it also knows that the price is way too high to risk it - assuming running is an option.
I prefer that building turrets and maximum guns is not the easy "I WIN" button for all ship designs. Other systems like engines, power, non-turret weapons, shields, armor, etc., need to be viable options so that ships BP spent on these things are still useful.
I prefer each crew member to be useful with real things to do. Things that matter. Decisions to make and options that actually affect the combat more than just giving a buff or adding a few points to a shield. Watching the pilot and gunner take up 90% of the 90-minute battle while the captain, science officer, and engineer play on their cell phones and roll a few dice for that other 10% is not ideal.
I prefer combat not be in short rounds where each PC can only do one thing. Pilot, scan, shoot, etc. Make each round represent a longer amount of time. Let people who aren't flying or shooting make multiple checks to help the pilots and gunners as well as do other things too.
I prefer the battle to not be win/lose based on the piloting/initiative check. Nothing matters nearly as much as that one check. Nothing is even close.
I prefer to use smaller numbers of hexes. Ships don't need to move 12 hexes, guns don't need ranges of 20 hexes. I don't have hex mats big enough for that. Nobody does. Let's have ships move something like 4 hexes each turn with a bonus or penalty for good or bad pilot checks. Gun ranges adjusted accordingly. Etc. Let's try to fit this battle into a big hex map instead of needing to lay out 9 of them like a tic-tac-toe board on the floor.
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Ideally, I want a fight to be like this:
1. PCs detect an incoming ship. They scan it. Good sensors and computers can make this scanning more successful. High success can mean permanent bonuses during the fight so it's worthwhile to invest in these systems and have a PC with a good skill for it.
2. Raise shields. They should not be always-on. Somebody needs to divert power and maintain the shields. Having shields up should reduce the ship's firepower. Bolstering the shields to deflect damage should reduce firepower even more. Risking a high-firepower-low-shields fight should be a risk.
3. Pilot. No pilot should have to complete his entire move without seeing at least part of the other pilots' moves. Initiative should matter. Pilot skill should determine move order and maybe number of hexes moved. But each pilot should move 1/4 of their ship's full move, then the next pilot, then the next, until we get back to the top where the first pilot moves another 1/4, etc. This way no one ship gets fully screwed by having to go first while the enemy ship gets a game-winning advantage because they made that one piloting check the best.
4. Gunnery. Always important, but really, no ship should just be a giant turret with engines. Choosing which weapon to fire, and how much power we want to draw from shields, and maybe even finding firing solutions to deliberately disable things like engines, or enemy turrets, should be part of this job. Firing solutions might come from other crew members so they can be part of the gunnery, even if they are not gunners.
5. Captains should matter. Not in the stupid Star Trek way where nobody defends the ship, fires the guns, or does any of their job expertise before the captain tells them to, even AFTER the fight has started (I love the shows but they have some really dumb ideas about bridge crews in combat). But in a better way that could be modeled by meaningful buffs to different crew members rather than the tiny insignificant ones (my PCs don't even bother with a captain). One easy way to do this is to make everything else really matter so when the captain buffs a crew member, that buff matters because the crew member matters.
6. Everyone else. Make engineers really need to fix things - have shields only partially deflect damage and have ship systems actually get impacted and need immediate repairs. Make science officers really need to constantly scan so they can bolster the right shields against the right kind of attack type or predict the enemy pilot's maneuvers or find the firing solution to disable an enemy system.
7. And do all this while shortening the combat. I don't need 10 rounds of moving, positioning, firing, shield-balancing, other checks. The easiest way to do this would be:
a) Shields are harder to balance. Shield damage is harder to restore. It doesn't need to take 6 hits to finally get through shields because the enemy keeps re-balancing and restoring them.
b) Shields only partially absorb damage. Even if we keep those shields up, systems are failing from all the damage that keeps getting through with all those hits.
Maybe that way the combat would only take 4-6 rounds instead to 10-12.
So, the most iconic Starfighter scenarios are with Star Wars, I think.
They do send fighters against Star Destroyers, and even Super Star Destroyers. There are specific weak points that have to be targeted, the shield generators on the star destroyers, IIRC. After those are taken out the shield on the main bridge are gone and a fighter carrier a missile payload can be used to destroy the bridge making the ship unable to fight (very well).
But this sort of thing is very hard to simulate in the mechanics we have for starship combat in Pathfinder.
So, the most iconic Starfighter scenarios are with Star Wars, I think.
They do send fighters against Star Destroyers, and even Super Star Destroyers. There are specific weak points that have to be targeted, the shield generators on the star destroyers, IIRC. After those are taken out the shield on the main bridge are gone and a fighter carrier a missile payload can be used to destroy the bridge making the ship unable to fight (very well).
But this sort of thing is very hard to simulate in the mechanics we have for starship combat in Pathfinder.
Star Wars does this, but they don't send a player's group worth of ships to do it. There are corvettes and battlecruisers and their own capital ships duking it out, while the fighters try to get in little tactical strikes and even then there are a lot of them. More than any normal player group has.
But you could do this, you'd have to treat the capital ship (Star Destroyer) like an objective, and not an actual opponent. As otherwise, it's weapons pick apart the fighters while rolling minimum damage. Star Wars Saga edition recognized this, and had specific rules for adding capital-class ships to combat, and I think a similar idea would work in Starfinder, actually I know it does, as I've played in games that did it and ran my own space combat that did so as well.
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a bunch of stuff
you know all those wants directly conflict with your last point? You can't give more options and expect things to take less time. Does. Not. Compute.
but we'll continue the discussion point by point.
1. PCs detect an incoming ship. They scan it. Good sensors and computers can make this scanning more successful. High success can mean permanent bonuses during the fight so it's worthwhile to invest in these systems and have a PC with a good skill for it.
forgoing your desire to have a smaller battle area, current sensors are worth their relatively little cost because the range advantage is pretty nice, since given the speeds and ranges of weapons, the game seems to assume that starting distance is pretty far off. Now I do like the idea of having some mechanical advantage to go along with the knowledge, because as is, it's neat to know that the enemy has a super-duper synchro-cannon, but it doesn't effect anything.
2. Raise shields. They should not be always-on. Somebody needs to divert power and maintain the shields. Having shields up should reduce the ship's firepower. Bolstering the shields to deflect damage should reduce firepower even more. Risking a high-firepower-low-shields fight should be a risk.
Maybe giving the position you want to be in charge of the shields have access to some sort of floating bonus that they can give to the shields, engines or weapons? May take the load off some of the math/brainpower needed (everything starts at a base value and then goes up, as power is diverted). So like all those systems have a value of 1, then the engineer (or whoever) has 3 points they can assign each turn, so they could balance out the power load (1 point apiece), or split it up as they see fit (kind of like Elite Dangerous power management). I don't know if I'd want to slow this down with a check, but maybe a check can squeeze an extra pip or two out, with some drawback for doing so and a catastrophic occurrence for failing?
3. Pilot. No pilot should have to complete his entire move without seeing at least part of the other pilots' moves. Initiative should matter. Pilot skill should determine move order and maybe number of hexes moved. But each pilot should move 1/4 of their ship's full move, then the next pilot, then the next, until we get back to the top where the first pilot moves another 1/4, etc. This way no one ship gets fully screwed by having to go first while the enemy ship gets a game-winning advantage because they made that one piloting check the best.
I don't dislike the idea in theory, but I think in practice that is going to slow things down a whole lot. Maybe 1/2 movements? One reason initiative is so important is that it allows you to stay on someone's weak shield, maybe the science officer should be able to move shields after movement to help mitigate this?
4. Gunnery. Always important, but really, no ship should just be a giant turret with engines. Choosing which weapon to fire, and how much power we want to draw from shields, and maybe even finding firing solutions to deliberately disable things like engines, or enemy turrets, should be part of this job. Firing solutions might come from other crew members so they can be part of the gunnery, even if they are not gunners.
I up the damage and lower the cost of fixed weapons, to help mitigate the reliance on turrets (ala Elite Dangerous), I also allow all crew members to Snap Shot (cause everyone wants to pew pew). With the science officer targeting a system, a gunner can disable (give a malfunction) to a targeted area if they do enough damage to do so normally, at least by how we read the ability. I think gunner's should also have the ability to give covering/harrying fire as well.
They also have a few weapons that do different things depending on if they hit hull or force field, they need to up these numbers to make it so there is more tactical choice than just the biggest plasma weapon available.5. Captains should matter. Not in the stupid Star Trek way where nobody defends the ship, fires the guns, or does any of their job expertise before the captain tells them to, even AFTER the fight has started (I love the shows but they have some really dumb ideas about bridge crews in combat). But in a better way that could be modeled by meaningful buffs to different crew members rather than the tiny insignificant ones (my PCs don't even bother with a captain). One easy way to do this is to make everything else really matter so when the captain buffs a crew member, that buff matters because the crew member matters.
maybe. I've found the +2 or +4 that the captain can hand out to be the difference between success/failure, life/death several times so far in my games, though I think taunting is typically better (with the pilot evading, that's a solid defense boost). We also allow the captain to hand out the computer bonuses, easier for book keeping, since one person is now in charge of who's getting what, but also adds something else for the position to do.
Maybe instead of a bigger bonus to a skill check, give some other mechanical boost when the captain gets involved with a check? Like if an engineer can boost a shield by 10%, then with the captain's orders, increase it by 15% (total 25%), that makes it a very meaningful boost and an important position to have.6. Everyone else. Make engineers really need to fix things - have shields only partially deflect damage and have ship systems actually get impacted and need immediate repairs. Make science officers really need to constantly scan so they can bolster the right shields against the right kind of attack type or predict the enemy pilot's maneuvers or find the firing solution to disable an enemy system.
in my experience, the engineer and science officer are kind of snooze-fests, UNTIL things start to turn. When multiple hits are breaching the shields, systems are glitching everywhere and things are looking bleak, all eyes and attention snaps to those two and the gunners and pilots become second fiddle (especially when their own systems are in need of repair and the engineer is trying to balance the need to shot with the need for everyone to breathe). Which makes sense in a way, those jobs should be boring until they aren't.
I guess my point is that currently we have rules for capital class starships, and that wont work with it.
We would have to throw those out and rework the system. Which would be fine with me. My point is that this isn't a system we can "tack on".
Honestly I don't like the idea of capital ships because if capital ships are regularly available PCs should be able to get them. But they require a minimum crew of 125. You're talking about something many times that of what the party in theory supports.
Are we just supposed to assume that PCs hire NPC crew members to help them run these ships?
The dreadnaught frame is a colossal size category with capital ship weapons. It costs 200 BP, out of the 1000 BP budget a 20th level group would have.
Edit: Just found this:
Cs can purchase Huge and larger base frames only at the GM’s discretion, as these usually require large crews and thus are normally reserved for NPC starships.
If PCs can only purchase large size ships, how are you ever supposed to deal with the largest class of ships? Will you ever even encounter those as part of an AP? If not why even bother to write them up and give them rules. Just make them a hazard to avoid.
a bunch of stuffyou know all those wants directly conflict with your last point? You can't give more options and expect things to take less time. Does. Not. Compute.
Actually, it computes just fine if you think about.
Combats are too long now. As in, they require too many minutes of real life time to resolve them.
The main reason is that damage can be ignored for a long time. At first, it only affects a shield. So we rotate our facing to present an undamaged field.
Then, we restore some shield strength and/or re-balance shield points from strong shields to weak ones.
We keep rotating our best shield toward the enemy.
If any damage gets through, it's just a few HP of damage. If a system gets damaged, we patch it.
Eventually, after quite a few rounds, our shields are so battered on all sides that we finally start taking hull damage consistently now.
But, even so, we keep working on those shields so we always have some shield reducing the incoming damage, and we're patching any glitching systems.
Finally, by the end of the battle, our shields are pretty close to 0 and our hull reaches 0 and we're disabled.
This is happening on the enemy ship too. Whoever wins that looooong war of attrition is the victor.
Some of the things I suggested, like shields not preventing all damage and like not being able to fiddle with the shields as much and like not always getting to choose our facing all time will mean reaching 0 hull points much faster.
Fewer rounds. Fewer minutes of real life time.
The other suggestions I made were to get additional players involved with the game rather than spending the whole long battle on their cell phones. Giving them more to do will, obviously, add minutes to the battle, but I also suggested that the things they do should MATTER far more than they do now. Some examples included providing firing solutions to do extra damage or disable enemy systems. Those kinds of things would actually shorten the battle too.
So, yeah, it all does compute just fine.
Other than that, it looks like your responses and my points are headed in similar directions.
Don't forget we have rules for ships bigger than colossal in Dead Suns 6, that are even more expensive.
If PCs can only purchase large size ships, how are you ever supposed to deal with the largest class of ships? Will you ever even encounter those as part of an AP? If not why even bother to write them up and give them rules. Just make them a hazard to avoid.
They are hazards and need to be avoided.
I know of one that is statted in one AP. They players have stuff to do that involves that ship, but they don't get to own it and they are not encouraged to fight it.
Why is it statted up then? Despite not fighting it, they do need to fly near it. Some shots may be fired. Not all the shots may be fired at the little PC ship, but a couple hits will definitely get their attention!
I personally like having stats for stuff even if the PCs won't engage it in any way that requires me to use all those stats.
Besides, who knows, some GM might happily let their PCs get control of a capital ship and crew and fight a battle. Maybe a bit like Luke, Han and Chewie taking over the bridge of a star destroyer for a while and using it to cause destruction to other nearby destroyers. Could be fun!
the Skittershot AP, has the ship with an advanced systems that allow it to be piloted with far fewer than the normal needed for such a ship, could be we see some module in a similar vein in later supplements, giving the possibility for a PC to crew larger ships.
But I'm also, just fine with high level characters just being in charge of a capital ship and its massive crew.
There's nothing wrong with characters having a larger ship with a crew under them, but it does change the shape of the campaign. I wouldn't want it to be a core assumption, needed to make the game work.
I could easily envision this game taking a Star Trek approach.
It would almost eliminate the need for skills, most of the time. After all, that's why Captain Kirk (with an "i", not a "u") had a crew of 430 people. All of them were experts in a field. If he needed a biologist there was one on his crew. If he needed an archaeologist, there was one on his crew. If he needed a diplomat, he was the one - that was his primary field of expertise (though he was a bit of a "superman" character who seemed to be an expert at just about everything).
But sure. Hop on board your Constitution class starship and explore the Vast, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where noone has gone before. Bring you crew of highly skilled experts, including a bunch of soldiers (a.k.a. "security red shirts") and off you go. Each Saturday you and your group of friends can violate the Prime Directive and, of course, take their stuff.
I could easily envision this game taking a Star Trek approach.
It would almost eliminate the need for skills, most of the time. After all, that's why Captain Kirk (with an "i", not a "u") had a crew of 430 people. All of them were experts in a field. If he needed a biologist there was one on his crew. If he needed an archaeologist, there was one on his crew. If he needed a diplomat, he was the one - that was his primary field of expertise (though he was a bit of a "superman" character who seemed to be an expert at just about everything).
But sure. Hop on board your Constitution class starship and explore the Vast, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where noone has gone before. Bring you crew of highly skilled experts, including a bunch of soldiers (a.k.a. "security red shirts") and off you go. Each Saturday you and your group of friends can violate the Prime Directive and, of course, take their stuff.
I mean, this is arguably true with Star Wars vessels as well, we just don't see it on screen. Their larger ships are filled with 100s of people as well, presumably specialized in their specific roles.
PCs make for an excellent bridge crew being supported by NPCs.
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Well, that was the original topic of the thread. What should be part of the core assumption of SF in your opinion.
take my love take my land, take me where I cannot stand....
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*Spaceballs vacuums up the atmosphere*
TAKE THAT BROWNCOATS!
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If PCs crew individual fighters, does that mean they individually get blown to bits and die? Because 1/4th the build budget might not be enough to survive with if you get targeted at higher level.
A bit late to the discussion, but...
I think if you're going to give the PCs more ships, you shouldn't just split up the build budget, you should split the total starship tier to account for multiple ships, on a similar scale to scaling enemy ship encounter difficulty.
A single tier 6 ship, or two tier 4s, or a tier 4 and two tier 2s. You can't loan BPs from one ship to the other.
It lets them capture enemy ships and crew them, but they don't get to upgrade until their APL is higher than their ships' combined tier.
The main issue being that a single tough enemy combatant could be a little too deadly to a group of PCs in numerous underleveled ships.
Multiple 2-3 man ships, where the PCs are deciding between a better gunnery phase, or the pilot snap shooting while the enigneer balances the shields sounds like it would keep my players the most engaged.
If PCs crew individual fighters, does that mean they individually get blown to bits and die? Because 1/4th the build budget might not be enough to survive with if you get targeted at higher level.A bit late to the discussion, but...
I think if you're going to give the PCs more ships, you shouldn't just split up the build budget, you should split the total starship tier to account for multiple ships, on a similar scale to scaling enemy ship encounter difficulty.
A single tier 6 ship, or two tier 4s, or a tier 4 and two tier 2s. You can't loan BPs from one ship to the other.
It lets them capture enemy ships and crew them, but they don't get to upgrade until their APL is higher than their ships' combined tier.
The main issue being that a single tough enemy combatant could be a little too deadly to a group of PCs in numerous underleveled ships.
Multiple 2-3 man ships, where the PCs are deciding between a better gunnery phase, or the pilot snap shooting while the enigneer balances the shields sounds like it would keep my players the most engaged.
at lower tiers there wouldn't be much of an issue, but after probably 5th or so, the GM would need to start scratch building enemy ships, as even most fighters are going to be a problem one-on-one if you're splitting the budget.
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You can't split the BP budget, you have to split up the 'encounter budget' as though you were a GM designing a multiship encounter, then give each ship their standard amount of BP, and prevent PCs from sharing between ships.
Two tier -2 ships tend to have around 150% the build budget as a single on tier ship. Since the PCs are higher level than their own ships, checks are easier, and they'll probably do just fine against pre-written encounters.
Four tier -4 ships have closer to 200% the build points in total, but only 50% per ship. They are more likely to require changing pre-written encounters in APs.
Telling your players to take a tier __ ship's BPs and split them up would result in vastly underleveled ships.