One of my players came up with the following idea, and wants to know if there is anything preventing it from essentially being an auto-win button (within the rules, or in the encounter dynamic itself).
First, you need to have a ship with at least one long ranged tracking weapon and great sensors that will allow you to see an enemy ship before they see you.
Then you fire all of your tracking weapons at the enemy from far away, moving up each round to keep pace with the tracking ordinance before firing another shot.
If done correctly, by the time the first missile strikes the enemy vessel, the remaining four will arrive at the same time.
Furthermore, you can unload with your close ranged heavy hitters, effectively alpha-striking someone with 5x missiles (or more if you have more than one tracking weapon) plus whatever weapon(s) you might have to bring to bear in the final round.
Is there anything we're missing? Is there anything preventing this from working the way I've described? Would it be bad if a GM did this to his players to make for a a more intense start to an encounter?
EDIT: How would such an encounter even start?
GM: Roll initiative, ship alarms begin to blare. Sensors show 6 bogies inbound, coming in hot.
Pilot: I take evasive action!
Science Officer:[b/] I check the scanners to see who is attacking us!
[b]GM: Your sensors show that it is not 6 bogies, but 1 bogie and 5 missiles.
Gunner: I open fire on the nearest missile with our point defense weapons!
GM: Good job! You took it out, but now the remaining four contact with the ship's hull just as the pirate opens up with his own blasters!
Each of those missiles has to make its attack roll each turn that it is moving toward it's target. It's not very likely that all of them hit.
Doesn't each missile need a dedicated gunner continually rolling attacks to keep up?
Also, typically, starship combats occur at 3d6+5 hexes apart, that doesn't sound like a lot of room to build up the 'my ship is dragging mines' situation.
Well, there's a few things that would tie into this, so let's look at them.
First up, sensor range. Long range sensors have an increment of 20 hexes, and from pages 300-301, this means that they can detect an object in passive mode 40 hexes out, or 100 hexes on an active scan. I see 2 main consequences here:
1. To start your theoretical barrage at further than 40 hexes, you would need to know when and where to make your active scan, since the active scan is a targeted probe, not the general 360 degree view. This could be possible with some kind of spotting probe, or if you know where the target ship will need to be, or some other preparation.
2. If the target ship has medium range sensors, their passive perception range is 20 hexes. If they have short, 10 hexes. This will matter for determining when you cross that threshold of not being seen.
Second, you've got to make attacks with the tracking weapons each round that they haven't reached their target yet, to not lose lock. So, if we start off at, say, 60 hexes with a heavy plasma torpedo launcher (so that our ship with a speed of 12 would match up nicely with the speed of 12), then the first torpedoes fired would need to make an attack roll at -4 (60 hexes), an attack roll at -4 (48 hexes), an attack roll at -2 (36 hexes), an attack roll at -2 (24 hexes), and an attack roll at -0 (12 hexes).
If any one of those rolls would be a miss, that torpedo is lost. Depending on the sensors of your target, you might enter their passive range after 2 shots are fired (long), after 4 shots are fired (medium), or not until you last round (short range sensors are a bad decision). If they started moving away from you at this point, more missles will drop off.
As for whether it would be bad to do this, I suppose it would depend a lot on how the missles being used match up against the ship the players are in. If the GM rolls were lucky enough to have all the missles still be there on arrival, the party had the short sensor range, and they were suitably heavy ordinance, you could end up with your party being disabled before they have a chance to act, with nothing but luck determining the outcome. That's not a very fun game. On the other hand, if your party's sensor range isn't that bad, and they have a chance to maneuver and try to lose a number of the missles before impact, you could end up with an interesting fight.
Each of those missiles has to make its attack roll each turn that it is moving toward it's target. It's not very likely that all of them hit.
Yeah. This was my first thought too. Not able to be exact on the probabilites, but doing the same roll repeatedly dramatically increases the chance that one of them will fail.
Other than that, this sounds somewhat cool.
Some things that would/should throw a wrench into this:
* The sensors of the target ship could be long enough to detect the incoming missiles/ship. Probably from quite a ways away. I think passive sensors work in a longer range than the active sensor range listed in the sensor equipment table. I would have to look up the rules to make sure I am remembering correctly though.
* In the case of multiple missiles, active countermeasures from the science officer would be more useful than point defense.
* If this does become a problem in the game for some reason, then it could be houseruled that a successful tracking weapon lock would trigger the ship sensors no matter the quality or range. So the target ship would immediately become aware of the first missile, even if they couldn't hope to detect the ship that launched it (unless the ship's sensors were missing or wrecked/destroyed).
Since they are supposedly unaware, I imagined the target ship being stationary, but that's not really the way things work in space. I hadn't accounted for the notion that the ship might sense the attack far enough off to simply run away while the missiles exhaust their fuel.
I had considered the range penalties and the fact that they aren't all likely to hit (which would likely be the case in conventional combat anyways, so I don't really see it as much of a minus).
Still looks like it might be a situationally useful tactic, especially against a target that can't easily run away (such as a space station or satellite).
Doesn't each missile need a dedicated gunner continually rolling attacks to keep up?
The players need to keep rolling, yes, but I don't believe the gunners need to keep spending their actions. I'm fairly certain the rolls are meant to represent the missile locking on with automated systems, not the gunner sitting at his console remote controlling the missile like a drone pilot. The gunner just needs to spend his action making the initial lock, then it's all actionless rolls from there.
Won't work.
1) No matter how good your sensors are the other ship KNOWS when you're locking on them.
When the crew of a starship has hostile intentions toward another vessel, they go to their battle stations and activate their starship’s targeting systems. This is clearly obvious to all other starships in the vicinity with working sensors, though there could still be a chance a hostile vessel can be talked down, if the GM allows it.
Even if your uber scopic laser scan works from 3 lightyears out, their el cheapo laser detection tin cup sitting on the hull picks it up .
2) It's fairly likely that guiding the missile takes up the gunners action for that round.
I've already addressed point 2 above with some of my thoughts. For point 1, can you quote the rules that say that, BNW?
Insofar as I'm aware, if I have long sensors, and they happen to have shorter sensors, they might not be aware they are under attack (at least not initially).
It would certainly strike me as odd that clandestine starship assaults are somehow totally, completely impossible. That simply breaks my suspension of disbelief.
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There is this, on page 316.
BEGINNING STARSHIP COMBAT
When the crew of a starship has hostile intentions toward another vessel, they go to their battle stations and activate their starship’s targeting systems. This is clearly obvious to all other starships in the vicinity with working sensors, though there could still be a chance a hostile vessel can be talked down, if the GM allows it.
I don't see anything for the idea that a new gunner action is required for the check to maintain lock, though.
It's probably the most realistic part of starship combat. If you're using the EM spectrum, people can see you
When the crew of a starship has hostile intentions toward another vessel, they go to their battle stations and activate their starship’s targeting systems. This is clearly obvious to all other starships in the vicinity with working sensors, though there could still be a chance a hostile vessel can be talked down, if the GM allows it.
Thanks HammerJack. It seems to me that, that would only apply if the attackers or their incoming ordinance was inside the maximum sensor range though. If the target's passive sensors can only "see" 10 hexes, and I'm 20 hexes out, I'm clearly not within the vicinity of working sensors.
It looks to me like the sensor rules indicate that a ship's crew is unable to detect anything outside their passive sensor range, unless they happen to be using active sensors (at which point, their range of perception is merely increased).
Did you edit your post BNW? I didn't see your rules quote earlier.
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It's hard to reconcile how sensor ranges are laid out with basically anything.
The passive and active ranges seem to suggest that you shouldn't even be able to keep track of ships outside of your 10, 20 or 40 hex range without someone using a scan action, but that would be a massive effect on how starship combat runs to never be mentioned elsewhere, like under the scan action, and is probably wrong. If not, I don't think I've ever even heard of someone running ship combat correctly.
The in-atmosphere sensor range of 250 feet is so absurdly short that everyone would be relying on looking out the window to land.
Sensors, as written, make about as much sense as the published starship tonnages.
Did you edit your post BNW? I didn't see your rules quote earlier.
I don't HIC think so....
Thanks HammerJack. It seems to me that, that would only apply if the attackers or their incoming ordinance was inside the maximum sensor range though. If the target's passive sensors can only "see" 10 hexes, and I'm 20 hexes out, I'm clearly not within the vicinity of working sensors.
It says any ship with working censors. Not any ship with censors in range.
I'm pretty sure what it represents is the fact that the sensors only need to see your energy bouncing off their hull , or detect your sensors energy in nearby space.
Thanks HammerJack. It seems to me that, that would only apply if the attackers or their incoming ordinance was inside the maximum sensor range though. If the target's passive sensors can only "see" 10 hexes, and I'm 20 hexes out, I'm clearly not within the vicinity of working sensors.It says any ship with working censors. Not any ship with censors in range.
I'm pretty sure what it represents is the fact that the sensors only need to see your energy bouncing off their hull , or detect your sensors energy in nearby space.
Alright, so under that interpretation, the target knows they are a target. They just don't necessarily know what's coming at them or from where, not until it enters their sensor range.
Does that sound about right to you?
What's the range on this targeting auto-detect system, do you think? If I could lock onto someone from the other side of the galaxy, would they somehow magically become aware of it? Just how far is "in the vicinity?" If nothing else, you have to admit it's a bit of a grey area in the rules that the GM will ultimately need to rule on. Ruling that "outside maximum sensor range" is not "in the vicinity" seems like the easiest solution to me, but to each their own.
While "magically" becoming aware of something isn't actually a perjorative in a starfinder universe rules set where...that may in fact be what your ship does, it isn't remotely necessary. When your ship is scanning you're emitting beams trying to locate something. Picking up on one of those beams hitting you is a LOT easier than sending one of those beams hitting something else: like a radar detector. Doesn't matter how far out the cop is if he can radar your car you get a ping.
Being able to avoid that would be either a tech level boost or maybe a ships "superpower gimick plot device"
Alright, so under that interpretation, the target knows they are a target. They just don't necessarily know what's coming at them or from where, not until it enters their sensor range.
I don't really see another interpret ion. The wording is pretty rock solid and the intent is specifically to avoid the kind of surprise round shenanigans they're looking to pull.
It sounds about right. Mind you, the first thing any ship being scanned with another weapons hot ship and not seeing anything is going to do is duck behind a fantasy asteroid (you've said you like to use terrain) or screw it and hit the drift engine. If your MISSILE BARRAGE DOGSLED OF DEATH! tactic is physically possible in your world people are aware of the tactic and KNOW what being scanned from outside their range is going to lead to in a few seconds.
Screw you guys i'm going to the bar on absolom in 1d6 days.
If your MISSILE BARRAGE DOGSLED OF DEATH! tactic is physically possible in your world people are aware of the tactic and KNOW what being scanned from outside their range is going to lead to in a few seconds.
Screw you guys i'm going to the bar on absolom in 1d6 days.
lol. That's a good point.
I'm seeing that it could possibly work, but requires very specific ambush setup, plus luck, and the enemy gets at bare minimum a turn or two to run and try to stay ahead of the missiles (so it's not viable for smaller/faster enemies). Add that to the need to keep making TL rolls for every missile, and it gets relegated to "if the players can actually pull this off, they deserve to have it work"
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Oh, and just to ballpark the probabilities - because I don't think people actually realize what I meant when I said that rolling the same roll repeatedly will dramatically increase the chances of it failing.
Assuming that this setup is going to take 6 rounds before the missile pileup hits. That means that the first missile launched will be in flight for 6 rounds, the second for 5, and so on.
If you have a 85% chance of succeeding at the gunnery check for the missiles - meaning you need to roll a 4 or better. Then the chance that the missile will actually hit the target are:
Missile 1: 37%
Missile 2: 44%
Missile 3: 52%
Missile 4: 61%
Missile 5: 72%
If you are going up against something that is actually in your 'significant threat' range and need to roll something like a 12 to hit - so 40% chance of keeping the missile live each round:
Missile 1: 0.4%
Missile 2: 1%
Missile 3: 2.5%
Missile 4: 6.4%
Missile 5: 16%
I really don't consider very long range missile combat to be viable.
Wow. Those are some interesting numbers, breithauptclan. Much lower than I anticipated.
Can you tell us the odds that all missiles will hit in those scenarios? :P
It's a roughly 4% chance (3.876%) for the first case and effectively 0% chance (1.08*10^-6%, or roughly 1 in every 100 million attempts) in the second. The odds of multiple identical rolls succeeding can drop off extremely quickly, because it boils down to the odds of the roll succeeding raised to the power of however many rolls you're making.
Missiles don't actually like long range combat very much.
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It's a roughly...0% chance (1.08*10^-6%, or roughly 1 in every 100 million attempts)...
Never tell me the odds!
Ship blows up
Also, ships move almost as fast as the missiles, so if there's no asteroid, and you can't spin up the drift engine that fast, running away at full speed will add another 3 or 5 rounds to their time (which the hard to spell kitty has pointed out will do to their odds)
Wow. Those are some interesting numbers, breithauptclan. Much lower than I anticipated.
Can you tell us the odds that all missiles will hit in those scenarios? :P
I think that an expected value calculation would be more meaningful.
Value of a hit is 1 x missile damage. Call it M to make the result a function of the missile used.
Expected value is the sum of (value x probability). So for the first case...
(M x .37) +
(M x .44) +
(M x .52) +
(M x .61) +
(M x .72)
Some algebra later, I am getting .37M + .44M + .52M + .61M + .72M
Which is 2.66 x M.
Shortcutting here for the second case.
.004M + .01M + .025M + .064M + .16M = .26 x M.
So about a quarter of a missile damage in typical damage from this alpha strike.
Though to actually answer the question of having all of the missiles hit...
hmm... That would mean that all of the rolls succeed. So 6 rolls for the first missile, 5 for the second ... down to 2 for the fifth one. 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 = 20 rolls.
At 80% success rate for each roll (the first case) I have 0.80 ^ 20 = 0.011 or 1.1%
At the 40% chance, I get 0.40 ^ 20 = 1.099e-8 or 0.000001%. I think. I may be off by a decimal place. But you get the idea.
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@breithauptclan: did you factor in the decreasing range penalties?
For example, I fire a missile at 5x range increment and normally in first range increment I'd have a 70% chance of hitting; so against a stationary target I'd be rolling:
70% - 5th range increment = 30% chance
70% - 4th range increment = 40% chance
70% - 3rd range increment = 50% chance
70% - 2nd range increment = 60% chance
70% - 1st range increment = 70% chance
So the chance for all five rolls to be succesful (for the first missile) are 0.3*0.4*0.5*0.6*0.7 = 0,0252.
So even if you were a pretty good shot, you'd have only a 2.5% chance of your first missile hitting.
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As for whether it would be bad to do this, I suppose it would depend a lot on how the missles being used match up against the ship the players are in. If the GM rolls were lucky enough to have all the missles still be there on arrival, the party had the short sensor range, and they were suitably heavy ordinance, you could end up with your party being disabled before they have a chance to act, with nothing but luck determining the outcome. That's not a very fun game. On the other hand, if your party's sensor range isn't that bad, and they have a chance to maneuver and try to lose a number of the missles before impact, you could end up with an interesting fight.
I think this is the other important issue to consider. Even if you could fix the bad odds of hitting with multiple missiles, you should think about what kind of scene you really want.
Do you as a GM want to have the players show up for a game, settle down, then you take about five minutes doing dice rolls behind your screen, and say "hey your ship is suddenly disabled by massive missile fire. Don't look at me, it's just what the dice say."
This is a lot like "hey, everyone roll Perception. Oh, none of you rolled really absurdly high. John, your character gets hit by a realistically deadly sniper. Your character is totally dead." The player had no chance to do anything. That's also not especially fun.
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That said, it can totally be interesting to have some combats start with the PCs getting hit with a heavy first barrage, and starting off-balance. Plenty of good Star Trek episodes have a space combat with the ship getting hit by surprise and them struggling to get back in control again.
If I wanted to do that as a GM, I would not roll the dice for the missiles traveling in the beginning; I'd pick however many missiles I wanted to arrive, no more no less. Not hiding behind the luck of the dice (and probably not getting the result I need for my story), just plain old plot fiat. I'd pick a number of missiles high enough to hurt the PCs but few enough that it's certain they won't be disabled before getting to do anything.
@breithauptclan: did you factor in the decreasing range penalties?
No, this is a straight-up ballpark calculation. Pick a probability and stick with it from there. The math is complicate enough as it is ;-)
I just wanted to give example numbers so that people could get a better feel about what happens to probabilities when overall success of an event requires multiple repeated successes with no failures allowed.
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Now, if I remember correctly.......
Yeah. It is somewhat hidden here. And looks like it somewhat conflicts with the tracking weapon rules in the starship combat rules. But anyway:
A gunner firing a tracking weapon takes a range penalty only on her first gunnery check, when the target is first acquired.
Now, the starship gunnery rules later in the chapter say that if the tracking weapon doesn't hit on its first round in flight, then subsequent rounds it must make a new attack roll with no bonuses from crew actions or computers on the ship, but it can take penalties. But it looks like the range penalties are not included in that.
Also, it doesn't say which character is making the check. So I guess the players can choose between either the gunner that first fired the missile, or any of the characters that are being gunners in the new round. Not sure what to do if no characters are filling a gunner role. I guess someone has to use snap shot?
If I wanted to do that as a GM, I would not roll the dice for the missiles traveling in the beginning; I'd pick however many missiles I wanted to arrive, no more no less. Not hiding behind the luck of the dice (and probably not getting the result I need for my story), just plain old plot fiat. I'd pick a number of missiles high enough to hurt the PCs but few enough that it's certain they won't be disabled before getting to do anything.
That is a good option. Tell the story - use dice if you want to be surprised by how the story unfolds.
I'm also trying to put together an encounter option using several low tier ships with missile launchers. The low tier ships wouldn't provide much threat to the player ship on their own, but for a couple of rounds at the start of the combat, they could pile on missile damage. When they run out of missiles, get destroyed, or feel that things are getting too hot and retreat - then the combat can continue as normal between the player ship and whatever main enemy ship is there.
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Yeah, I'm not some dice-hating woolly-headed indie hipster, no worries :P
But I think dice are better for when the encounter is actually "happening on-screen", than in a bunch of rounds before the players are even aware anything is happening. What happens before is better handwaved a bit, so that you don't randomly come out too low (dud encounter) or too high (unfair GM power trip encounter).
I think dice are better for when the encounter is actually "happening on-screen", than in a bunch of rounds before the players are even aware anything is happening. What happens before is better handwaved a bit, so that you don't randomly come out too low (dud encounter) or too high (unfair GM power trip encounter).
Yup. No argument from me on that one.
I don't think anyone is going to argue that one.
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Thanks HammerJack. It seems to me that, that would only apply if the attackers or their incoming ordinance was inside the maximum sensor range though. If the target's passive sensors can only "see" 10 hexes, and I'm 20 hexes out, I'm clearly not within the vicinity of working sensors.It says any ship with working censors. Not any ship with censors in range.
I'm pretty sure what it represents is the fact that the sensors only need to see your energy bouncing off their hull , or detect your sensors energy in nearby space.
Alright, so under that interpretation, the target knows they are a target. They just don't necessarily know what's coming at them or from where, not until it enters their sensor range.
Does that sound about right to you?
What's the range on this targeting auto-detect system, do you think? If I could lock onto someone from the other side of the galaxy, would they somehow magically become aware of it? Just how far is "in the vicinity?" If nothing else, you have to admit it's a bit of a grey area in the rules that the GM will ultimately need to rule on. Ruling that "outside maximum sensor range" is not "in the vicinity" seems like the easiest solution to me, but to each their own.
I would also say that a ship being 'pinged' would at least have a probability cone for where it is coming from. Might be a pretty broad cone in some cases, but you are unlikely to think an enemy ahead of you is behind you.
I kind of like this idea, but not sure when I could use it against my players. :)
What inertia? Ships come to a cold stop without a pilot to spend actions; missiles run out of fuel and stop. There's no inertia in "Starfinder space."
;P
Indeed. Non-Newtonian space physics generally.
Etherial Anchor starship thrusters or something like that...
Doesn't mean that they can't houserule in some sort of coasting missiles to support their plot.
I believe the ships positions on the map are relative. A ship without engines will drift at half its speed whichever way it was going when it lost power until rescued or suddenly stopped.
What inertia? Ships come to a cold stop without a pilot to spend actions; missiles run out of fuel and stop. There's no inertia in "Starfinder space."
;P
I've decided to chalk this up to "emergency brakes" that kick in when ships are unpiloted. If someone wants to get hacky with the ship's systems and figure out how to coast, they're more than welcome to. "Continuing moving" isn't the primary benefit of having a pilot, "not having jack squat for defense" is.