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It is curious to me that people dislike starship combat because of how boring it is and many of the same people play characters who do the same thing over and over in regular combat. I mean really?... Do you not see the inconsistency?
Secondly, it seems that regardless of the tier I play in, I have to explain or give guidance to my fellow players on how to do starship combat. Starship combat takes so long because many of you refuse to learn it (assuming because you don't like it). Starship combat may be less than exciting, but many of you make it unenjoyable. For the sake of your fellow players, will you just learn it so that you can speed through it?
Starship combat exists and likely is not leaving. Please deal with it like adults so that we all don't have to suffer through every time it comes up.
Venture-Captain, Michigan—Mt. Pleasant
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I've had some space combats that have been really fun, others are just a boring slog. It could be the players I suppose, but it also feels like if the GM is prepared and has good handouts for players that it helps things go smoother and players enjoy it more.
To go more along with the OP, if players would at least learn one starship combat role that their character is decent at it would help. If you don't want to learn everything, fine, at least learn one role, even if its just the gunner role which seems the most exciting since you're doing the damage.
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The two big beefs about Starship combat (and what can be done)
GMs: If the GM is very tactically capable she can often make the combat very slow as the NPC ships "play to win." Solution: unless the scenario has specific tactics play your ships for fun, not optimized actions! Flip and Burn. Do a flyby even if you don't have to. Commit to an action, then calculate the course. Don't calculate first.
Players: If one player is better at visualization than the others the players' turns are often solitaire. Where the one player tells the others what to do. Solution: If that's your group, make that player the captain. Regardless of what role you are "best" in, if you want to tell the engineer to prioritize patching the forward weapons, tell the pilot to come around to the enemy's port side, and plan for a broadside, you should be in the captain's chair. Tell them what to do in general and let them do it.
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Pointing out the shortcommings of starship combat can have several beneficial effects for those that don't like starship combat
1) You can try to those specific shortcomings fixed. Some of this has already happened via the chief mate and magic officer positions, giving the strength and wisdom based characters something to do in starship combat. The starship operations manual has been in the works for some time, and a starship combat focused book is the perfect place to put in something like a sliding scale of success/failure or crew actions that can compete with recharging the shields in a meaningful way. (overpowering the weapons has so little impact on damage that it's not meaningful)
2) Scenarios can include fewer overt starship combats
2a)and make up for it with starship skill challenges where participation is a bit more even)
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I've been playing Starfinder with mostly the same group of people since it came out, and starship combat hasn't gotten any more enjoyable to me simply because we've learned the rules better. Probably less so, as the optimal actions most turns have become very clear: evade, divert power/redirect shields, encourage gunner, shoot most damaging weapon. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The combats just slog on regardless, as shields are easily restored, hull points only occasionally get chipped away, and critical hits are rarely significant.
I go into more detail in my review of the Core Rulebook, but for now I'll just say I've played lots of other SF games and had a blast with starship combat. But it's just not done well in Starfinder. Opinions vary, of course, and that's okay. But blaming on the problem on a poor understanding of the rules is not persuasive to me.
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By no means am I saying that it gets more enjoyable with better understanding. Nor am I saying that people fall into two categories. I am expressing my frustration with those who make starship combat less enjoyable due to their lack of preparedness. I am saying that games get really bogged down with starship combat when people fail to put forth the effort to learn the mechanics because they don't like starship combat.
I have patience for those who are new to starship combat. I do not have patience for people who have level 8 characters and don't know how it works. Such things often lead to the criticisms about sessions being too much about rules. While the game is sufficiently crunchy, such situations can happen because folks fail to put the effort in and learn the rules. (Admittedly, some people are enthusiastic rules lawyers)
I am also not opposed to pointing out the shortcomings of starship combat. It could potentially become the fun storytelling device it is intended to be. Until that point, dislike of starship combat is not an excuse for lack of knowledge of the mechanics of starship combat.
A vast majority of the time, I am all about a "you do you" style of play. But everyone is held hostage in starship combat.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Recently ran a scenario with a starship combat. I think the combat took about 45 minutes to resolve, and had an interesting enough gimmick that it was fun for the players. But it also took 45 minutes to divide starship roles, choose between the pegasus and the drake, and figure out who would slot which boon. And I was bored out of my skull on that part as GM.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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Secondly, it seems that regardless of the tier I play in, I have to explain or give guidance to my fellow players on how to do starship combat. Starship combat takes so long because many of you refuse to learn it (assuming because you don't like it). Starship combat may be less than exciting, but many of you make it unenjoyable. For the sake of your fellow players, will you just learn it so that you can speed through it?
For me personally, the rules just aren't "sticky" enough. It's mostly a combination of the rules not being engaging, there's a lot of them, and me not doing them regularly enough. I learn very much by doing, and doing repeatedly. If I have a starship combat once a month, my previous month's experience will have faded away.
In the combat Lau above was complaining about, I was the Engineer. There's basically four things an Engineer can do. Five, if you count the level 12+ ability. In my entire Starfinder career so far, I've literally only seen the Divert action used. And of the four sub-options, only two see regular use. Science Officer has the same problem: the Balance action is so important that the other options rarely see use. And even then, there's no interesting choices to be made by these two roles. You make a check, things happen. Pilots have to do their whole maneuvering thing and Gunners get to shoot, which are exciting. Science Officers/Engineers press a button and are done. That doesn't help with making it stick in my mind. >_>|
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It is curious to me that people dislike starship combat because of how boring it is and many of the same people play characters who do the same thing over and over in regular combat. I mean really?... Do you not see the inconsistency?
Counterpoint 1st: Ground combat has more texture to it because there are individual characters. At any point in ground combat, the enemies can get some lucky crits and knock out one of your four PCs, causing that PC to sweat and the others to plan how they're going to help them get back up. Losing a character feels like a minor failure state, but also adds drama and challenge. In starship combat, its always all or nothing - your group has one HP pool and one actor in the fight. You can't have moments of drama where individual players are in dire straits.
Counterpoint 2nd: If you had a ground combat where both sides only have ranged rifle soldiers, there's no cover or concealment or abilities, and you all fire away like its a shooting range, I expect ground combat would also be pretty dull.
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Other big problems in Starship Combat:
- At low levels, combats are way way too long due to poor balance between shield divert, weapon accuracy, damage per hit, etc.
- At high levels, combats are over in a flash thanks to bad ship design limitations that allow for tons of weapon stacking and overwhelming broadsides. (Possibly fixed by budgets in the SOM)
- Ship design has the PF1E problem of falling into character building traps. The difference between a weak and strong ship is night and day.
- Even in the most boring ground combat, there's still some small amount of choice to make. In Starship combat, some roles (like engineer) can preroll and jot down a script and go off to play something else. Many roles don't need to make choices.
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I've felt that starship combat is theoretically one of the better 'prolonged skill checks' I've seen in PF/SF. However starship combat was highly hampered by
a) the poor scaling DCs at launch (hence errata'd)
b) poorly balanced initial/intro combats (HP/shields/shield regen too high)
c) featureless early combats (if you only have opponent and your ship and no other 'terrain', neutral ships, escort ships, gravity wells, etc, then
maneuvering choices lack interestingness)
d) Straddling the border of 'too complicated unless used nearly as often as non-starship combat
If a, b, and c had been solved at launch, I think d would have been surviveable on its own, and would have greatly decreased the number of players who strongly dislike starship combat. However once that 'ugh not another starship combat' feeling as been entrenched in the community its tough to redeem it.
I still think it works well for a group that plays together often, knows their role well, and is willing to let the pilot do what the pilot wants to do, instead of driving by committee every round. It works in home games better than society play as a result. :(
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It is curious to me that people dislike starship combat because of how boring it is and many of the same people play characters who do the same thing over and over in regular combat. I mean really?... Do you not see the inconsistency?
I disagree with this assertion. In regular, party-level tactical combat, I can move and attack every round. In starship combat, I can do one of those things, *if* I'm lucky enough to be sitting in the right chair. If I'm not, then I'm a healbot (remember how much people love being those) or a bard at best, providing marginal bonuses to other people while sacrificing any chance to affect the combat directly.
Furthermore, even if I'm doing "the same thing every round" (which I often don't, by the way), I'm still making choices in positioning, taking attacks of opportunity and cover into mind, such as to flank, or provide a passive bonus to allies like Coordinated Shot, and deciding what kind of damage to attempt to deal, and if it will be a full attack, or defensive fighting, or a combat maneuver, or whatnot. When was the last time you decided what kind of damage to deal in Starship combat? Trick question, there are no damage types in starship combat. You fire the rockets until you're out, then plink with lasers or gauss guns. Rinse, repeat.
I'm not bagging on anyone who likes starship combat. Far from it. You do you. Just don't try and say that it's exactly like traditional d20 encounters, or that I'm being irrational by thinking they're different.
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...I wasn't saying that they are exactly like d20 encounters. I was saying that "many" folks I have played with don't play characters that move around during combat. Congrats if you do. Clearly I'm not referring to you.
Look, as I have stated many times, I am not claiming that starship combat is exciting or interesting. I am begging people to learn how it works so that when it comes up it doesn't take half of the session. Is this request unreasonable?
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Look, as I have stated many times, I am not claiming that starship combat is exciting or interesting. I am begging people to learn how it works so that when it comes up it doesn't take half of the session. Is this request unreasonable?
Not at all. I'm actually pretty good at starship combat because I just want to get through it as fast as possible most of the time. But that's precisely because it's nothing like normal encounters that I know most players are going to have more fun with.
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I've had captains go "well i encourage the gunner on a 1 so... Heres your plus 2 I'm getting coffee"
I am seriously often tempted to do that, and while I try to be a bit engaging and do the RP when I am in that role, in a recent starship combat we were fighting some sort of drone... really not a lot you can do there. While I have been given to understand that it does have some very GM friendly changes, I would still regard it a as a barrier to the experience I am looking for.
To be blunt; I could say the same about some of the other roles, and I am much more than tempted to just say to the table here is my gunnery modifier, I am going to clean my bathroom or do some outer household chores I should be doing.
Some starship combats can be fun, but it is apparently not all that easy to write engaging once since the vast number of them are against very underwhelming enemies or have so many tactical differences, that the "optimal choices" are very likely to become obvious quickly and then you are just doing some rolls.
My biggest bugbear however are boons and starship roles and how long it usually takes a party to go through their list of boons, only to have the combat end in turn two.
As BNW mentioned there have been better, more interesting skill-based setpieces that incorporated starships before.
As a GM and player, I would love if I was allowed to just skip them, right now that minigame is affecting how I build characters and a major reason why I do not offer as much Starfinder as I used to.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Starship combat exists and likely is not leaving. Please deal with it like adults so that we all don't have to suffer through every time it comes up.
You absolutely could have framed that request differently, asking others to be prepared is constructive, belittling players that do not want to interact with a subsystem is not.
That said, it is pretty trivial to provide players options and DCs via a handout.
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Starship combat can often be a drag because a lot of them feel 'tacked on' to a scenario and feel like a minigame, whereas I think that there would be a market for the odd scenario where it was the main feature.
I find the most tedious part is there is only ONE Starfinder ship, and usually just ONE enemy, and having two ships dancing around on an enormous map is not quite the visual spectacle we would hope. I managed to buy a bunch of black marble pebbles from the local homewares store and they looked awesome as asteroids, so a little window dressing went a long way.
It played well in one of the Multis where it was set in a 'pitched battle' and each round there was a chance of crossover from another fight, but that was all just rolls and theatre of the mind.
Summary - It can look a bit boring and lacks a bit of pizzazz. It also seems a bit repetitive to always be one on one dogfights.
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Handing out Starship role sheets to the players tends to help as well - I have them laminated up (along with the Ships) so can just ask who is doing what role and hand them the sheet. This tends to work well as staring at people expectantly whilst holding a sheet prompts them to resolution - but you do end up with Goose, Maverick, and Iceman all wanting to be the Pilot as they saw the Starship tag and all brought their Ace Pilots for the day to do the shiny thing.
Personally I would like to see a game or two where the party could take a command/support ship AND a few individual fighter craft. Like the above, it would look WAY cooler and let all these pilots have their fun. Science and Engineering could be in the ship behind running proper electronic warfare support etc.
Summary - Have sheets handy so people aren't lost and fishing around for DCs and options. Also, the system needs some fresh ideas and not just 1 V 1 (as also mentioned above)
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Starship selection is usually pretty easy, you have two ships to choose from most of the time, and (with a few exceptions) mostly people just take the Drake and be done with it - the Pegasus has some things in its favour and we could theorycraft it all day and argue cases until we were blue in the face, but at the table on game day people tend to just pick the old 'Sir Francis'.
Summary - Have the sheets handy, put them on the table "Would you like A or B"?
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Boon selection (in general) can be super tedious and having to stop games whilst the boon selection takes place has always been a low point of SFS for me. I tend to run the line 'I am stepping over to the shop there for a coffee/drink, when I get back we are rolling forward - you have about 5 minutes'. When I get back people are always good to go.
Summary - If people take too long, give them a timeframe and stick to it. They will get the hint that this aspect of the game is not a free for all time waste. Time manage the team.
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The biggest problem with starship combat is lack of agency for half the party, and minimal agency for the other half. I've also never seen a party come even close to losing a ship combat fight.
Scenario writers could do more interesting things with it. Maybe the ship was sabotaged and the engineer needs to go do something. There is a magical anomaly nearby and the mystic/science officer needs to do something to counteract it.
And above all, include more terrain objects that do fun and interesting things! Nobody needs to do yet another, featureless void combat with a drone carrier or wave of mooks that just take time to deal with.
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I have seen games in SFS where the party lost a ship combat. Multiple times.
This is usually due to bad strategy calls or unlucky dice rolls. Alot of time it is due to unlucky dice rolls.
I have also seen games where the whole party enjoys playing starship combat. This all depends on the group you play with.
The fun thing about SFS is that there are scenario tags that include: this adventure will have starship combat.
This lets you know if this is the kind of adventure you want to play or not.
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To improve your starship combat again, you're going to need handouts to help PCs understand the roles they're going to assume and the options they have. Cheat sheets help alot and save time.
Music helps. Anything from Robotech, Top Gun, etc.
Don't forget to roleplay. Most people tend to forget roleplaying when you can smell stardust and your engines are on fire.
Shout Khan. Alot.
Venture-Captain, Texas—Austin
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I suppose this is a good of a time as any for me to post my starship combat rant.
I do want to start with the fact that I do enjoy it as it is today. It is fun to fly, shoot, lock-on etc for me. As long as everyone has an idea of what they are doing, it goes smoothly. However....
First on the GM side of things, frankly it is insane. After making the great decision to make NPC's use their own separate track for stats/abilities, they decide to have NPC starships work exactly like PC starships. That means in addition to my normal GM duties, I am playing 5 things, each of which is expected to be handled by 1 person on the players side. If there was one thing I could realistically ask for to change, its simplified NPC starships that don't require rolls. Just include the +2 to one of the gunners from the captain, just let me say weapons are always boosted etc. Play with the math so its evens out and let me just roll for shooting the guns, which from the players perspective is the only roll that is interesting.
As for the player side of things, I had really wished they had not taken the approach of making this a d20 skill challenge, but instead approached starship combat like a cooperative board game. Let players make meaningful decisions and make it more about resource management then rolling d20's. I think a Space Alert/Pandemic:Rapid Response/FTL approach would have been a better approach. Right now, only pilots really get to do anything besides roll a d20. Engineer kinda get to choose between holding the ship together or boosting it, but magic/science officers are pretty much there to just hit a button over and over again. I literally have not seen a captain in SFS in months, so long that I don't remember the last time. As BNW mentined, at a point it becomes "I don't have to make any decisions or rolls, so I guess I sit here giving a +2 to our best gun". There are just roles that just aren't fun because the player isn't doing anything
Again, for what we have, I really do enjoy it. I just know it could be so much more...
For what we have, I agree that good handouts are a necessary component of starship combat. It goes smoothly and quickly if everyone at the table understands it. I have finished tier 3-6 starship encounters in ~30 minutes on numerous occasions, and higher tier ones in similar time frames. That always happened when everyone knew their rolls and how they fit together, and focused on making sure the guns hit.
However, if 1 or 2 have to constantly look up DC's and don't know what or when to roll, it quickly becomes a sloooog.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The fun thing about SFS is that there are scenario tags that include: this adventure will have starship combat.
This lets you know if this is the kind of adventure you want to play or not.
On the surface, yes. But if you actually look at which scenarios have those tags, it's a different story.
Don't enjoy starship combat? Then you're going to miss out on most of the metaplot, and all of the multitable specials.
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Agency: the ability to make meaningful effective decisions
Impact: the ability to affect the combat
Preferably people have both, but at least one is almost required for most people to enjoy a game.
The pilot is the only one with agency and impact. The pilot wants to balance pointing the ships big weapon at the other ship, being in a position to hit the same shield as they hit last time, and having your own weak shields facing away from the other ship. While you frequently CAN do all that and evade, sometimes you need one of the other maneuvers.
If the other ship is re-balancing the shields, it greatly detracts from the pilots impact. As ship weapons greatly outpace recharging and shield totals, the pilots impact gets reduced.
The gunner has a lot of the impact (almost all of it at higher levels). Even the most repetitive character imaginable (a sharp shooting ranged character) is going to at least be impacting the fight. If not, they deliberately chose something else and probably enjoy that something else.
The engineer has nearly no agency. While there are technically* a plethora of choices, overpowering the weapons mathematically doesn't do much of anything. So its regen the shields, regen the shields, regen the shields, fix something that breaks.
The science officer scans. Until 6th level that's it, bail on that position once you scan. After 6th its scan lock on lock on lock on. You'll matter once every 10 rolls. So thats...every 3? starship fights?
At lower levels the captain has the same problem, but the lower DCs mean even the ROLL doesn't matter. You automatically succeed at.. having a little bit of impact on the fight. The ability to have another crew member act twice doesn't seem to actually do anything you couldn't do hopping into that roll yourself and doing it at a lower DC.
The first mate actions DCs are so high I don't think they're worth it compared to the opportunity costs of just firing a second gun yourself.
As the DM I'm keeping track of a vehicle spinning with 5 different hit point pools, a damage increment, 5 skill checks 2 attacks ... My brain is full. There's no extra bandwith for the bluff check.
The rules are all over the place. The generalities and order of starship combat are in one spot, the description is in another, some of the DCs are on the errata, some of the dcs are right in the book, you need the starship stats open, and you need to reference the weapons table to find the ranges. I absolutely hate having to pile information from all over the place.
That is starship combat running at its BEST.
Society play exacerbates a few problems. People CAN"T just learn the DCs of one role and how to to it well because they have to geek suduko into multiple roles. That can take more time than the starship combat itself.
In that suduko you occasionally get "well i can't do anything else I'll gun..." which makes me wince because gunner is arguably the most important position to do well.
The starship combat turn order has just enough fluidity to cause it trouble. Playing with strangers who don't know each others SOP the pilot and science officer and captain can get mixed up on who's supposed to be going when. The gunners can get tripped up on whos firing which gun (especially if there was a flyby)
And different groups have different SOPs. In some groups the captain commands as a captain should, in some groups people don't backseat drive and let the pilot do their job.
and walking someone through starship combats complexity without depth takes up the bandwidth you'd like to use to sci fying it up.
*couldn't resist
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I actually enjoy starship combat, but not in 100% of my experiences. Starfinder isn't the best starship combat system, but it can be enjoyable. Here are the particular things that made combat less fun. And for all these items "less fun" = "slow". When turns are clicking along rapidly, even a 12-round fight can be fun.
1) In the beginning when everyone was learning the rules and we were constantly looking up stuff.
2) Low-tier games where with NPC captains evading and engineers recharging we are VERY slowly wearing them down and not taking any/much damage. It's a foregone conclusion but it can be dozens of rounds to get to the actual "end."
rounds = (HP + single quadrant SP) / ((best arc average damage)*(1 - (AC - Attack bonus)/20)) - (PCU*0.05))
The average damage is fixed by ship and the attack bonus is character-dependent. So scenario writers only have AC (don't evade) or PCU (don't recharge) to play with in that formula.
3) Pilots calculating their moves out multiple times to get to the optimum point. Backing up and starting over again and again to find the best final position and facing.
4) GMs optimizing NPC tactics. Especially if there is "terrain" (asteroids) they can hide behind to recharge shields and repair.
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you should be in the captain's chair
This! I quickly lose interest in starship combat when the chosen captain is constantly looking around the table with a blank stare while the engineer or science officer is telling everyone what to do. When I agree to be a crew member that isn’t the captain, I expect the captain to tell me what to do even if that isn’t the most optimized activity. If you don’t like that arrangement, then be the captain yourself. There is a big difference between giving general tactical advise to the captain and simply telling everyone exactly what to do.
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When I agree to be a crew member that isn’t the captain, I expect the captain to tell me what to do even if that isn’t the most optimized activity.
I don't think thats a wrong way to play but I don't think its the right way to play either. Different groups and people have different expectations about that. One group may be confused by the captain playing being silent another may wonder about the backseat driving.
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Venture-Agent, Texas—Houston
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The rules are all over the place. The generalities and order of starship combat are in one spot, the description is in another, some of the DCs are on the errata, some of the dcs are right in the book, you need the starship stats open, and you need to reference the weapons table to find the ranges. I absolutely hate having to pile information from all over the place.
It really helps to have a custom starship sheet with weapon ranges and properties listed next to the weapon. And those fancy computerized ones that calculate DCs for you are almost essential (if they're up to date with FAQ).
Try this one, it's browser-based and has the SFS ships available to quick-load.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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I adore starship combat, and as a GM I have fun with it and work on making sure my players have fun too. I have more to say on this topic, but the GenCon special is starting in less than 2 hours.
If you want a preview, look at Wayfinder 19 for the article that I wrote on making the most of starship combat.
Hmm
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Contributor
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I've had captains go "well i encourage the gunner on a 1 so... Heres your plus 2 I'm getting coffee"
For things like this, I try to introduce more things for those players to do, so they feel that they have more agency and aren't just a floating number. For instance, at my tables I recommend that captains (or chief mates/engineers/science officers with "almost can't fail" bonuses) take charge of the "+2 to any two checks per round" computer bonuses and distribute them each round. I've found this helps keep players engaged and mindful of what's going on at the table.
I also have handouts (acquired from another GM but then altered) that purposefully don't have all of the information at a single player's fingertips (except the captain's sheet, and I also always keep a "ship sheet" handy in case the players prefer to just have everything there) which forces them to ask questions of each other in the first few rounds (e.g. "How good are our sensors? What's the range on that weapon again?" etc.).
Another trick to get players to warm up to starship combat (and personally one of my favorite things to do for Starfinder games in general) is to find neat background music to play that fits the "feel" of each ship combat, dependent on the enemy ship, tactics, hazard, and so on. Dodging and weaving through an asteroid field with high-tempo music playing, or slugging toe-to-toe versus a jinsul command ship with a drum-heavy track can really enhance the atmosphere around a table! With the move to online gaming, 3D terrain and neat ship minis have to stay on the shelf, so bringing something that can be used in virtual space (soundtracks even work in PbPs, although they become 100% voluntary for players to click on links you post) is a great way to bring something above-and-beyond.
Needless to say, I'm one of the GMs who enjoys starship combat, and I'm always happy to help players and GMs pick it up and enjoy it better. I agree that sometimes it can take a large chunk of time during game, and when encounters aren't balanced properly you have to cut corners to make sure the rest of the adventure doesn't suffer for it. But on the whole, I find those situations to be in the minority through the first three years of SFS.
As with any thing subjective, everybody is allowed to like/dislike as they wish. There's no "right" answer to how starship combat will fit into our adventures. As players and GMs, we just have to find the parts about sci-fi spaceship battles that the people at our tables enjoy from video games/books/tv/movies/etc. and try to emulate some part of that.
PS - I'm always happy to share my game soundtrack lists and such with anybody who's interested! Scenarios I've made soundtracks for are in my Paizo Profile! The crew ship-sheets I use are also there.
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I recommend that captains (or chief mates/engineers/science officers with "almost can't fail" bonuses) take charge of the "+2 to any two checks per round" computer bonuses and distribute them each round. I've found this helps keep players engaged and mindful of what's going on at the table.
I've found it either leads to people being annoyed at the book keeping, forgetting the bonuses, or just sticking the bonuses in place. Doubly so online where people want to automate the macro to crank out the right math as fast as possible.
Having the captain tell the pilot what to do doesn't actually create agency, it just takes it from the pilot to give to the captain.
Music, aside from being another thing to keep track of, creates a lot of problems as well. It can get in the way of players hearing each other or the dm.
I'm not trying to be negative (it just comes naturally) just pointing out why those suggestions wouldn't/haven't worked for everyone.
Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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My experience with starship combat is that starship dice is cursed and PC gunners rull 5 or less and I want dem rerolls :p More quantum weapons!
But seriously, in home campaigns starship combat has been fine... Except when we designed ship with one super big linked turret gun, super high shields and no computers. We had so high shields that no starship in against the aeon throne damaged us, we destroyed enemy ships in one or two rounds, but combat took long because we never hit anything. I definitely agree that Starship Operation Manual's starship budget optional rule should be in core book and not optional.. It got boring because it was obvious the enemy would never win, our positioning never mattered due to turret and we just needed to actually hit them couple times until we won :'D (which took forever due to bad luck)
On SFS? I think it was worked best against the drones actually. The drones don't have computer science officer or engineer to fix or balance shields, they don't have lot of hp so when they are hit you do something significant and they come in pair at minimum.
Like starship combat against two(or more) weaker ships works much better than one on one starship duel because the weaker ships make you think about maneuvering your ship's more, they make the weapon arcs more important and every time you hit them you feel like you deal major damage instead of just barely scratching them. Meanwhile one on one starship combats have been really... Well tanky and able to heal all that shield damage you did because you keep rolling below 5 on dice :p It does definitely feel like either npcs shouldn't heal shields or it should be harder or there should be cooldown.