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So I was just mucking around with orbital weapons (not really used them) and I think you could devestate a planet with them if this is per the rules.
1) Put an orbital weapon on the weapon mount say a super orbital particle canon.
2) Upgrade it to array (2 weapon mounts).
3) Park ship at long range (100,000 miles) so the planet is in your forward arc.
3) Shoot EVERY target on that side of the planet (every city, every town, every gas station on rural route 9) at -4 penalty.
You'll be doing (2d10 x 10) x 10 to every inanimate structure in a circle nearly a mile across. That's 20 - 200 damage to every person in the area and 200 - 2000 to buildings, cars, roads, infrastructure. Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates.
Am I missing something or would this actually work?
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Starship weapons were not inteded to interact with non-starship targets.
Orbital weapons introduced with starship operations are and as far as I can tell there is no rule aganist using the upgrade to an array option also in that release on them. The catch is because you've built the weapon to attack ground based targets its of less use against other starships (-4 vs medium or smaller and -2 vs large to gargantuan) . . .
An orbital weapon is cumbersome yet powerful, designed to devastate immense targets or bombard planetary surfaces. During starship combat, attacks using an orbital weapon take a –4 penalty to the gunnery check if the target is a Medium or smaller vessel, or a –2 penalty if it’s a Large, Huge, or Gargantuan vessel.
A gunner can also fire an orbital weapon at a large, stationary target, such as a settlement or battlefield. The effects follow the guidelines below. These guidelines are somewhat flexible so as to limit the degree to which a PC’s starship might obliterate a key site or to allow an NPC starship’s strike to deal the necessary structural damage without outright annihilating the PCs.
Orbital attacks have an immense range: orbital weapons with short range can strike large targets from low orbit (approximately 1,000 miles for a Golarion-sized planet), medium range orbital weapons are effective from high orbit (approximately 20,000 miles), and long-range orbital weapons can strike from extraordinary ranges of 100,000 miles or more. When an orbital weapon strikes an area, it damages everything in a 100-foot radius for a light weapon, 500-foot radius for a heavy weapon, 2,500 foot radius for a capital weapon, or a mile radius or larger for a spinal-mount weapon. Orbital weapons rarely fire faster than once every 10 minutes during bombardments, and spinal-mount weapons can rarely fire more than once per hour.
Orbital weapons deal 10 × their listed damage to inanimate objects in the affected area, damaging or outright destroying many structures. Against vehicles, living creatures, and other smaller targets in the affected area, an orbital weapon’s damage, effects, and other statistics are best approximated using the trap creation guidelines for a trap with a CR equal to the value listed with the weapon’s orbital special property.
Orbital weapons require additional features to function properly on most ships. Any starship modified by the colony ship framework or space station framework is sufficiently fortified to mount orbital weapons without needing such extra features, reducing an orbital weapon’s BP cost by one-third.
I used capital weapons for my example because you only get 1 spinal mount and thus can't make it an array. So you can have a spinal mount that devestates a mile or more of a single target or a captial/heavy/light orbital weapon that fires as an array at multiple stationary settlements or targets like a battlefield in one shot. Again as per the rules every target in your arc.
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Starship weapons were not inteded to interact with non-starship targets.No, he's right. The orbital weapons specifically have a rule to interact with people. So, yeah, anything with 2 light mounts can have a light orbital particle cannon array that... makes an attack roll against everything in the arc (at some non-trivial penalties) out to 100,000 miles. It is explicitly capable of targeting planetary settlements and battlefields. The blast radius would only be 100 feet for the light version, but it's also a line weapon (not sure how that works with planets, do you shoot through?). Buildings take 2d10x10 and people get hit with a CR 2 trap damage effect.
I assume it doesn't stop at ground level and hits sewers, under ground cables and the like though you could if you aren't being conservative like I was take line to mean it hits everything on the planet even the side away from you per shot.
We don't know what kind of planetary defenses planets have, but some starship quickly moving to respond is pretty much a given.
Voyager travels at 38,000 miles per hour and took 9.5 years to get from earth to pluto.
You can get fromo absolom station to arcaturn in 6 days at the most.
Assuming a similarly sized solar system, and the slowst translation, it's 578 times faster or 21,964,000 miles per hour
or 16 seconds to go 100,000 miles with the biggest ship the planet has and says HELLO with something from the "this is going to hurt" pile.
Thats assuming there isn't something in orbit even closer.
Thats BEFORE you realize you live in a magic tech world, and the planets spiritual leader probably wakes up every morning and casts a few auguries and knows that destruction will rain down on the planet from the pegasus system, and the planets cannons are already pointing in your general direction...
Its 238,900 miles from the earth to the moon
Am I missing something or would this actually work?
Within the rules or withing the setting?
Within the rules the GM can probably fudge hex sizes to limit such shenanigans. Especially if you fudge hex sizes then say array weapons only strike each hex once. One mile radii of devestation a hundred+ miles apart is a lot less impressive than every single inch of a whole hemisphere.
In the setting, this is probably a danger, and personally I'd make sure my 'house' was on a space station ship capable of fleeing to the drift when threatened by a floating ortillery ship. At least compared to a sitting duck on a planet.
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So it seems this is a yes per the rules it works but we don't like it and will houserule ways against it.
You can launch a surprise attack for orett high damage with this then run when anyone moves to respond and thats assuming your hitting a planet that can fight back and isn't (a) like our world less advanced or (b) had its defencss already defeateded
It doesnt care about hexes and saying the planets a single target goes against gow orbitals are meant to work.
Im not missing that bit about smaller object being best aproximated by trap rules I'm just more interested in the damage to inanimate infrastructure on a global scale aspect. Especially since traps are very subjective are you doing damage or an effect, is it one of those traps that don't allow a save (I wouldn't) and if so then how do you deal with delay before it triggers, how do you handle the bit in traps about perception and disarming them, etc, etc. Its a mass and not a good way to handle orbital weapons on smaller beings.
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@Hanomir
This is why my question about the rules assume you only hit the side of the planet facing you.
There's also the issues with how orbital weapons are meant to handle smaller targets I pointed out.
Still this was just to see if there was sone rule I'd missed which would precent array + Orbital = planetary bombardment and so far I've seen none.
I agree fully orbital alone is a mess much less combined with array but raw it works.
So it seems this is a yes per the rules it works but we don't like it and will houserule ways against it.
Not house rule. Prepare and fill in the blanks.
Your character with the orbital weapon isn't the only change between our universe and starfinders. If some characters can reasonably do X the rules of the universe allow people to react in Y ways that will stop/mitigate the thing you're trying to do.
You can launch a surprise attack for orett high damage with this then run when anyone moves to respond and thats assuming your hitting a planet that can fight back and isn't (a) like our world less advanced or (b) had its defencss already defeateded
You can TRY to run. But it takes a full minute to fire up your drift engines (at least 10 rounds) but only 3 rounds to get to you. There's nothing that says they have to send a CR appropriate ship at you. Or even A cr inappropriate ship. 6 level 18 cruisers scrambling are going to put a crimp in your style.
Also remember murphies rules of combat. If the enemy is in range, so are you. We don't know What planetary defenses are, but there's absolutely zero reason you can't have 10 orbital cannons in every firing arc on the planet. A ship knows when you're powered up and locked onto them. There's no reason that cities don't have the same warning and won't blow you out of the sky on round 1.
Even IF you manage to get away 1d6 days your ship is going to be plastered all over the 3 systems with "war criminal, 100,000 credit reward". NO ONE likes someone flying around crazy enough to bombard cities out of nowhere. Anyone in the pact worlds, the vesk, and even azlanti would happily turn you over for pulling that.
So a reasonable application of the rules is all it takes to make this a very, very, very bad idea. Can you fire once. yes. Can you "Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates." absolutely not. And its not house rules or home brew or anything else that stops you from doing it. Its the fact that you're not the only one that gets to change things from reality. The entire universe is allowed to adapt and plan for that sort of thing.
Again, you're just deciding that things not being specified means that they're broken and then concluding the entire system/world is broken. Thats not a fair method of criticism.
What I find interesting is that a shuttle with a turret can mount two light arrays of orbital weapons.
Pop out of the Drift anywhere within half a light-second of a planet, fire two shots, pop back into the drift (didn't have to turn on engines) and fly off. Sure its only ~110 damage to strucrures and ~14 damage (save half) everything else. Twice. Although probably not in the same spot.
Still, that was just a shuttle that randomly popped out of the drift and shot at every settlement on a hemisphere of a planet... plus everything in orbit on that side of the planet.
I don't have time now. What's the trig to get how far away from Earth for it to fill a 45 degree angle of your field of view?
Array weapons take two weapon slots, the shuttle can only mount one array.
I still have serious doubts about array weapons being able to cover an entire hemisphere.
As a GM in the moment I'd probably rule a vastly increased area of damage, but it would never be a whole hemisphere of a planet.
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So it seems this is a yes per the rules it works but we don't like it and will houserule ways against it.Not house rule. Prepare and fill in the blanks.
Your character with the orbital weapon isn't the only change between our universe and starfinders. If some characters can reasonably do X the rules of the universe allow people to react in Y ways that will stop/mitigate the thing you're trying to do.
You can launch a surprise attack for orett high damage with this then run when anyone moves to respond and thats assuming your hitting a planet that can fight back and isn't (a) like our world less advanced or (b) had its defencss already defeatededYou can TRY to run. But it takes a full minute to fire up your drift engines (at least 10 rounds) but only 3 rounds to get to you. There's nothing that says they have to send a CR appropriate ship at you. Or even A cr inappropriate ship. 6 level 18 cruisers scrambling are going to put a crimp in your style.
Also remember murphies rules of combat. If the enemy is in range, so are you. We don't know What planetary defenses are, but there's absolutely zero reason you can't have 10 orbital cannons in every firing arc on the planet. A ship knows when you're powered up and locked onto them. There's no reason that cities don't have the same warning and won't blow you out of the sky on round 1.
Even IF you manage to get away 1d6 days your ship is going to be plastered all over the 3 systems with "war criminal, 100,000 credit reward". NO ONE likes someone flying around crazy enough to bombard cities out of nowhere. Anyone in the pact worlds, the vesk, and even azlanti would happily turn you over for pulling that.
So a reasonable application of the rules is all it takes to make this a very, very, very bad idea. Can you fire once. yes. Can you "Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates." absolutely not. And its not house rules or home brew or anything else...
I'm not saying you can't do it, in fact I would assume most starfaring civilizations have some form of defence against this starting with warcrime/banning (as we do with certain things today) and moving onto actual defences. I'm just saying that's not an argument against RAW that's a GM response to RAW. If you see the difference?
What I find interesting is that a shuttle with a turret can mount two light arrays of orbital weapons.
Pop out of the Drift anywhere within half a light-second of a planet, fire two shots, pop back into the drift (didn't have to turn on engines) and fly off. Sure its only ~110 damage to strucrures and ~14 damage (save half) everything else. Twice. Although probably not in the same spot.
Still, that was just a shuttle that randomly popped out of the drift and shot at every settlement on a hemisphere of a planet... plus everything in orbit on that side of the planet.
I don't have time now. What's the trig to get how far away from Earth for it to fill a 45 degree angle of your field of view?
Array weapons take two weapon slots, the shuttle can only mount one array.
I still have serious doubts about array weapons being able to cover an entire hemisphere.
As a GM in the moment I'd probably rule a vastly increased area of damage, but it would never be a whole hemisphere of a planet.
As I said that's not RAW and it was RAW I was after with this thread.
An array weapon fires at all targets within a single firing arc. The gunner attempts a single gunnery check against each target in the firing arc, starting with those closest to her starship. Each gunnery check takes a –4 penalty, which stacks with other penalties. Roll damage only once for all targets. Critical damage is determined by each target’s Critical Threshold. The gunner can’t avoid shooting at allies in the firing arc, nor can she shoot any target more than once. An array weapon uses two weapon mounts.
The only rules for array's are . . .
1) All targets in an arc.
2) Will hit ALL targets including allies.
3) Can shoot any given target once per shot.
4) Uses two weapon mounts.
So Raw combined with orbital weapons is you shoot that light array orbital weapon and you hit every planetary target in your arc i.e. every city.
Now you may well want to house rule differently or work out some inworld protection against this sort of behaviour e.g. its a warcrime to the point its the one thing that will get Vesk, Atzlanti Empire and Pact Wolrds working together to hunt you down and kill you. But that's not what I'm after. I just want to know if there is an actual official rule that would prevent combining orbital and array then shooting every settlement on a planet?
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I just want to know if there is an actual official rule that would prevent combining orbital and array then shooting every settlement on a planet?
If the planet doesn't have any space defenses, you can bombard it from orbit with a slide rule and a level 1 cargo freighter pushing asteroids into the planets gravity field.
If the planet has planetary defenses, you show up, lock onto the planet, you and the planet exchange one round of fire. If you survive, ships show up in 0-3 rounds.
So this part "Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates." is either undoable with this weapon or is doable with any weapon or no weapon.
As I said that's not RAW and it was RAW I was after with this thread.
So Raw combined with orbital weapons is you shoot that light array orbital weapon and you hit every planetary target in your arc i.e. every city.
RAW is very much GM's discretion, not entire hemisphere.
About the only defined target in starship combat is another starship (or space station/spaceship creature, etc)
So, as a GM, when a player wishes to destroy the surface of a planet and presents their crazy array orbital weapons, the GM gets to decide what 'target' means.
Each target may mean any of the following, subject to GM's discretion:
Each planet
Each ship
Each hex
Each blade of grass
Each creature
Each city
Each building
My personal ruling would be: If you add array to an orbital weapon, the base radius of destruction (250 ft, 500ft, 1 mile, etc.) is one hex, an array weapon also hits all hexes adjacent to that hex. Essentially all it would do is double the radius of destruction.
My personal ruling would be: If you add array to an orbital weapon, the base radius of destruction (250 ft, 500ft, 1 mile, etc.) is one hex, an array weapon also hits all hexes adjacent to that hex. Essentially all it would do is double the radius of destruction.That seems like a reasonable benefit for the trait combination, although hitting a whole "megahex" (to dredge up some old school wargame terminology) would be more like three times the radius. Double is probably sufficient. Array (as a starship combat trait) is probably not expected to be shooting hundreds of targets at once, and in practice it rarely gets to shoot (rather badly, with teat -4 to hit) at more than half a dozen enemies. An awful lot of starship encounters are one-on-one battles from what I've seen, at which point the trait is nothing but a penalty.
Note that even a 3-mile radius (for a spinal mount hitting a full "megahex") is fairly tiny if you're trying to scrub a whole planet clean. To give a real world example you'd have to shoot Manhatten at least two-three times to wreck the whole borough, even allowing for the massive secondary damage the orbital bombing of a dense urban area would produce. Starfinder's rules for orbital strikes are really, really tame, although they'll certainly do the job for small outposts and isolated colony worlds.
Still not a good argument for Array hitting the whole hemisphere though. :)
To be fair, I see orbital weapons as artillery+ weapons that are called on for tactical support, not mass destruction.
Mass destruction is accomplished by smashing the defense fleet then dropping an asteroid on a planet. Of course that means it's more suitable for plot than mechanics, but that's a design feature, not a bug.
Array weapons take two weapon slots, the shuttle can only mount one array.Did something change? I recall shuttles having turrets with two weapons. Thus from a 2 mount turret and a 2 mount arc you get the 2 arrays.
No? An array takes two mounts. A shuttle can only have two mounts in the turret.
Unless you're talking about having an array in the turret and one in a separate arc and I misunderstood?
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So it seems this is a yes per the rules it works but we don't like it and will houserule ways against it.Not house rule. Prepare and fill in the blanks.
Your character with the orbital weapon isn't the only change between our universe and starfinders. If some characters can reasonably do X the rules of the universe allow people to react in Y ways that will stop/mitigate the thing you're trying to do.
You can launch a surprise attack for orett high damage with this then run when anyone moves to respond and thats assuming your hitting a planet that can fight back and isn't (a) like our world less advanced or (b) had its defencss already defeatededYou can TRY to run. But it takes a full minute to fire up your drift engines (at least 10 rounds) but only 3 rounds to get to you. There's nothing that says they have to send a CR appropriate ship at you. Or even A cr inappropriate ship. 6 level 18 cruisers scrambling are going to put a crimp in your style.
Also remember murphies rules of combat. If the enemy is in range, so are you. We don't know What planetary defenses are, but there's absolutely zero reason you can't have 10 orbital cannons in every firing arc on the planet. A ship knows when you're powered up and locked onto them. There's no reason that cities don't have the same warning and won't blow you out of the sky on round 1.
Even IF you manage to get away 1d6 days your ship is going to be plastered all over the 3 systems with "war criminal, 100,000 credit reward". NO ONE likes someone flying around crazy enough to bombard cities out of nowhere. Anyone in the pact worlds, the vesk, and even azlanti would happily turn you over for pulling that.
So a reasonable application of the rules is all it takes to make this a very, very, very bad idea. Can you fire once. yes. Can you "Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates." absolutely not. And its not house rules or home brew or anything else...
Again I'm not critisizing or saying the system is broken. I was ASKING if this combination per RAW is allowed or if there was a rule burie somewhere else I had missed which would prevent it.
I was asking because it presented a scary image. So far I have seen people desperately trying to dodge around that question and putting up OTHER responses "I'd house rule this" or "This is what could happen in response. THAT IS NOT RAW.
You saying a ship shows up in a few rounds is NOT RAW. RAW is ship shoots per these rules.
Anything outside that is GM response to a situation in game maybe they're shooting at a heavily defended world and get wiped out seconds later, maybe they cloak, maybe they have a massive fleet defending them, maybe they're shooting a primitive world like ours with no orbital defenses. That doesn't matter to the question I asked because those are not an argument against the rules those are in game response to a situation that per the rules is legal.
As I said that's not RAW and it was RAW I was after with this thread.So Raw combined with orbital weapons is you shoot that light array orbital weapon and you hit every planetary target in your arc i.e. every city.RAW is very much GM's discretion, not entire hemisphere.
About the only defined target in starship combat is another starship (or space station/spaceship creature, etc)
So, as a GM, when a player wishes to destroy the surface of a planet and presents their crazy array orbital weapons, the GM gets to decide what 'target' means.
Each target may mean any of the following, subject to GM's discretion:
Each planet
Each ship
Each hex
Each blade of grass
Each creature
Each city
Each buildingMy personal ruling would be: If you add array to an orbital weapon, the base radius of destruction (250 ft, 500ft, 1 mile, etc.) is one hex, an array weapon also hits all hexes adjacent to that hex. Essentially all it would do is double the radius of destruction.
Except as I posted above orbital is an exception that DOES specify what you can target with it "A gunner can also fire an orbital weapon at a large, stationary target, such as a settlement or battlefield.". Not a planet, not a ship, not a hex, not a blade of grass, not a creature, not a building. A weapon with the orbital property CAN target a large stationary target like a settlement or battlefield i.e. a city. An array hits every target in its arc. Therefore an orbital array hits every city in its arc. Anything else is you houseruling things.
I just want to know if there is an actual official rule that would prevent combining orbital and array then shooting every settlement on a planet?If the planet doesn't have any space defenses, you can bombard it from orbit with a slide rule and a level 1 cargo freighter pushing asteroids into the planets gravity field.
If the planet has planetary defenses, you show up, lock onto the planet, you and the planet exchange one round of fire. If you survive, ships show up in 0-3 rounds.
So this part "Then 10 minutes later you do it again and again and again as the planet slowly rotates." is either undoable with this weapon or is doable with any weapon or no weapon.
Quite true which is why I keep trying to not deal with things that are ingame responses outside this such as tractoring an asteroid onto a planet. I just wanted to see if there was a rule I'd missed or if the array/orbital combination was rules legal. So far as I can tell the answer is yes.
No? An array takes two mounts. A shuttle can only have two mounts in the turret.
Unless you're talking about having an array in the turret and one in a separate arc and I misunderstood?
Ah, I was unclear. Sorry about that. Yeah, I was thinking a turret mounted array and a hull mounted array both fired at once.
The thought process went something like:
0. Prep the guns to fire. Maybe turn on your shields.
1. Pop out of the drift half a light-second away from a planet.
2. Wait the 60 srconds to turn thrusters on & rotate your shooty arc to the planet.
3. Turn thrusters off and wait 60 seconds.
4. Shoot all the planet and everything in orbit with two arrays.
5. Pop back into the drift, turn thrusters on, leave.The planetary defenses have literally two minutes and however long it takes the arrays to fire to detect, identify, and stop a shuttle. Of course if you're willing to take only one shot you can skip steps 2 & 3, reducing the time to just one or two combat rounds.
That's any shuttle with a drift drive taking a shot at everything in orbit. The random explosions in every city, two, and village in that hemisphere are just gravy.
Yeah, probably shouldn't let array be added to orbital weapons.
I'm not so sure about that array was deliberately limited to ensure its not overwhelmingly powerful. To me its an interesting means of advanced species doing damage to defeated/primitive planet and there are means to counter it outside the mechanics. On top of which as pointed out above really the array/orbital bombardment unless your in a position to sit there is probably going to do less damage than dropping a large asteroid on a planet.
On a semi-related note if you send in a explorer or large ship you can actually mount 3 front arc weapons, 1 pod front arc weapon and 2 turret weapons for 3 orbital arrays per shot and they can be heavy weapons.
By your definition of RAW, A 5th level character with a corona laser rifle and a bag of holding can just laserbeam an entire planet to death.
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By your definition of RAW, A 5th level character with a corona laser rifle and a bag of holding can just laserbeam an entire planet to death.
What?
Also this is RAW not my interpretation it is what is written in the rules. I am talking about RAW in the books. You seem determined to keep trying to insert GM ingame responses in as a reason this wont work while ignoring my restated statement.
1) I WANT TO KNOW IF THIS IS VALID AS PER RAW
All your statements about here's an army to fight or the like is not in the rules. There is no rule "All planets have shields" or "All planets have massive fleets lurking to pounce on anyone who attacks them. That may be the case in your game, that may be a valid response to this situation but that is NOT THE POINT. This is the rules forum, this is to deal with rules and how they work. All your aguments are about things a GM might do in RESPONSE to the rules NOT a rule. Weapon damage is a rule, picking a weapon you like to use is a response to those weapons. In this case Orbital weapons and arrays have rules on their use that as far as I can tell make this a valid tactic. Like it or not those are the as written rules anything else is YOUR RESPONSE.
Unless there's a rule somewhere else I'm missing (hence this thread) or you can point to something else in this.
Array
Source Starfinder Core Rulebook pg. 304
An array weapon fires at all targets within a single firing arc. The gunner attempts a single gunnery check against each target in the firing arc, starting with those closest to her starship. Each gunnery check takes a –4 penalty, which stacks with other penalties. Roll damage only once for all targets. Critical damage is determined by each target’s Critical Threshold. The gunner can’t avoid shooting at allies in the firing arc, nor can she shoot any target more than once. An array weapon uses two weapon mounts.
Orbital
Source Starship Operations Manual pg. 15
An orbital weapon is cumbersome yet powerful, designed to devastate immense targets or bombard planetary surfaces. During starship combat, attacks using an orbital weapon take a –4 penalty to the gunnery check if the target is a Medium or smaller vessel, or a –2 penalty if it’s a Large, Huge, or Gargantuan vessel.
A gunner can also fire an orbital weapon at a large, stationary target, such as a settlement or battlefield. The effects follow the guidelines below. These guidelines are somewhat flexible so as to limit the degree to which a PC’s starship might obliterate a key site or to allow an NPC starship’s strike to deal the necessary structural damage without outright annihilating the PCs.
Orbital attacks have an immense range: orbital weapons with short range can strike large targets from low orbit (approximately 1,000 miles for a Golarion-sized planet), medium range orbital weapons are effective from high orbit (approximately 20,000 miles), and long-range orbital weapons can strike from extraordinary ranges of 100,000 miles or more. When an orbital weapon strikes an area, it damages everything in a 100-foot radius for a light weapon, 500-foot radius for a heavy weapon, 2,500- foot radius for a capital weapon, or a mile radius or larger for a spinal-mount weapon. Orbital weapons rarely fire faster than once every 10 minutes during bombardments, and spinal-mount weapons can rarely fire more than once per hour.
Orbital weapons deal 10 × their listed damage to inanimate objects in the affected area, damaging or outright destroying many structures. Against vehicles, living creatures, and other smaller targets in the affected area, an orbital weapon’s damage, effects, and other statistics are best approximated using the trap creation guidelines for a trap with a CR equal to the value listed with the weapon’s orbital special property.
Orbital weapons require additional features to function properly on most ships. Any starship modified by the colony ship framework or space station framework is sufficiently fortified to mount orbital weapons without needing such extra features, reducing an orbital weapon’s BP cost by one-third.
UPGRADING WEAPONS
Source Starship Operations Manual pg. 17
Starship weaponry can accommodate considerable modification, whether from corporate innovators or independent mechanics. A starship’s crew can incorporate one or more of the following upgrades to a weapon by multiplying the weapon’s BP cost by the listed value. Any restrictions on the types of weapons to which an upgrade can be applied are listed in the upgrade’s entry.
TABLE 1–2: WEAPON UPGRADE COSTS
SPECIAL PROPERTY, BP COST MULTIPLIER
Array, ×1
Automated, ×1.5
Deployed, ×2
Line, ×1.75
Mystical, ×1.25
Smart, ×1.5
Whether you like it or not THIS IS WHAT PAIZO PUBLISHED. So please don't engage in hyperbole implying I'm doing ridiculous things to try and pretend I'm making stuff up. Sorry if I'm getting snippy but I'm tired from working shifts and I want to keep this thread on the rules NOT hypothetical GM responses to those rules or my being personally insulted becuase you don't like those rules.
This is the rules forum, this is to deal with rules and how they work. All your aguments are about things a GM might do in RESPONSE to the rules NOT a rule. Weapon damage is a rule, picking a weapon you like to use is a response to those weapons. In this case Orbital weapons and arrays have rules on their use that as far as I can tell make this a valid tactic.
Is there a raw argument against someone with an azimuth laser rifle and a bag of holding being able to laser beam of doom an entire planet to death?
You cannot simply ignore the environment where you plan on using a tactic and then declare the tactic valid.
How long it takes a ship to move 100,000 miles is a rule (or is at least derivable from published stats)
That you locking on to the planet triggers a warning is the rule.
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....
That it takes a minute to spin up your drift engine to get away is a rule
For a starships to engage its Hyperspace engines to either enter or exit Hyperspace, it must remain stationary with its conventional thrusters turned off for 1 minute.
All of those ARE rules. They do not stop being rules just because they're in the way of your "clever" apocalypse.
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This is the rules forum, this is to deal with rules and how they work. All your aguments are about things a GM might do in RESPONSE to the rules NOT a rule. Weapon damage is a rule, picking a weapon you like to use is a response to those weapons. In this case Orbital weapons and arrays have rules on their use that as far as I can tell make this a valid tactic.Is there a raw argument against someone with an azimuth laser rifle and a bag of holding being able to laser beam of doom an entire planet to death?
You cannot simply ignore the environment where you plan on using a tactic and then declare the tactic valid.
How long it takes a ship to move 100,000 miles is a rule (or is at least derivable from published stats)
That you locking on to the planet triggers a warning is the rule.
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....
That it takes a minute to spin up your drift engine to get away is a rule
For a starships to engage its Hyperspace engines to either enter or exit Hyperspace, it must remain stationary with its conventional thrusters turned off for 1 minute.
All of those ARE rules. They do not stop being rules just because they're in the way of your "clever" apocalypse.
Again I'm not arguing that they AREN'T. I am arguing that they don't apply to my QUESTION. Since you keep ignoring what I restate and I'm tired I'm going full patronizing here.
1) This is the RULES forum.
2) I had a RULES question.
3) I am IGNORING your argument about planetary response because that is NOT RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION.
Follow me here there are 3 basic parts of most games. These are . . .
1) Rules defining how things work.
2) The setting in which things work.
3) Interpretation things not explcictly covered by rules or setting that the GM interprets and sets precedent on how they'll be handled in a game.
1) The rule is falling = X damage.
2) The setting is the American wild west.
3) The interpretation is whether the falling player can use their long coat as a parachute.
Here . . .
1) The rule is orbital and array operation.
2) The setting is starfinder.
3) The interpretation is how planets react to the possibility of attacks using the rules.
I am posting in the rules forum to ask if there is a RULE that would invalidate orbital array. YOU are arguing interpretation of how the setting will adapt to the possibilities created by said rule. You are NOT presenting any argument that the rule is invalid.
The Rule I queried is . . .
1) Array = attack all targets in its arc, Orbital = target a settlement. Orbital weapons can be upgraded to be arrays.
The query I made was . . .
1) Is this a correct reading of the rules or have I missed a rule elsewhere that would make this not work.
Your response was . . .
1) Yes in a world like this logic states that planets would use fleets to attack the person targetting them.
That as I keep saying is NOT A RULE. It is not invalidating a RULE. It is not chaging a RULE. It is and I will happily agree a valid repsonse on how the setting will change as a result of these new rules because they need to have a way of dealing with it. However it is not a response that has ANY validity in a rules forum because I am NOT reading the RULE wrong nor am I missing a RULE elsewhere that will invalidate what I have noticed. You are saying you don't like the rule and will change things to make it not as effective.
However that is something that belongs in advice "How do I deal with the problems of this rule" or houserules "This is how I change this rule because I don't like it." That is NOT A VALID ARGUMENT in the rules forum about whether a rule works. It is why I am repeatedly trying to get you to drop the environment because that is SETTING or INTERPRETAtION and not a rule.
As I have said over and over and over again in this thread I want to discuss the rules. I want to know if I have read them wrong or if I have missed one. I don't want to discusss whether it is a good rule or a bad rule only whether it is A rule. I don't want to discuss how you deal with the rule if you don't like it. I don't want to discuss how you think the setting would evolve and change as a result of these new rules. The reason is because this is not the forum for that kind of discussion it just confuses issues. If I am not sure about a rule and I post in the the rules forum I just want a clear confirmation of whether I am (a) right or (b) have missed something not a discussion on how they impact the game because then it can get confusing if someone is saying they don't work from a logic or a personal taste aspect or if there is in fact some hidden rule in another section that is WHY they don't work.
Now if you want to start a thread in advice "How players can deal with the problems of orbital arrays created by the starship operations manual" or general "Do you think these rules are a good idea or be changed" I am quite happy to discuss these outside factors but NOT HERE.
Ignoring your again hyperbolic attempt to derail the topic let me take your points in order.
P1) You cannot simply ignore the environment where you plan on using a tactic and then declare the tactic valid.
R1) I am not DECLARING A VALID TACTIC. I am ASKING IF A RULE IS CORRECT.
P2) How long it takes a ship to move 100,000 miles is a rule (or is at least derivable from published stats)
R2) Irrelevant since it assumes there is a ship able to move 100 thousand miles and respond. There may be, there may not be depending on the specfic scenario however this is NOT DISPROVING A RULE. This is A RESPONSE TO A RULE and AN ACTION in A SCENARIO. You can have many DIFFERENT scenarios. Thus I don't want to discuss a scenario only deal with is a rule correct yes/no, if no why. You are arguing "Yes but I don't like it so all battles occur near a planet with defenses."
P3) That you locking on to the planet triggers a warning is the rule.
R3) Again irrelevant because it is nothing to do with do orbital arrays work like this. It is however asssuming (a) The planet is advanced enough to have sensors, (B) has said defenses still intact and (c) has said defenses alert enough to respond instantly. This again may or may not be the case in any scenario however that depends on the scenario. However it DOESN'T CHANGE THE RULE. The rule is orbtial array, the scenario is a response to that rule and doesn't actually affect said rule in any way. It doesn't confirm it, it doesn't refute it, it just say's assuming that's correct here's what I'd do.
P4) 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....
R4) Again Irrelevant to the rule I was asking about. Starship detect and their arming weapons is obvious. Ok so how does that affect the rule about orbital array's. It doesn't it is again a response TO orbital arrays. It also assumes that the planet is (a) advanced enough to have starships, not always the case and (b) has said starships able to respond and not reduced to floating wreckage by the fleet now moving onto subduing the planet. Any of these 3 scenarios (primitive planet, planet moving to defend itself and planet defenseless before invading force) is equally valid because they are all hypothetical. Regardless of which one is the case it doesn't affect the rule.
P5) That it takes a minute to spin up your drift engine to get away is a rule
R5) Yes it is and again it is a rule that doesn't actually affect the rule about orbital arrays in any way and hence is an irrelevant point.
P6) For a starships to engage its Hyperspace engines to either enter or exit Hyperspace, it must remain stationary with its conventional thrusters turned off for 1 minute.
R6) That it is and yet at the same time it is again completely IRRELEVANT to whether or not orbital arrays are a valid rule reading. Whether you are sitting there stationary prior to entering drift, flying around the system or even busily mining your own ship to blow it up does not in ANY WAY affect orbital arrays.
P7) All of those ARE rules. They do not stop being rules just because they're in the way of your "clever" apocalypse.
R7) Yes they are all rules, they are also all rules that are utterly irrelevant to whether or not an orbital array can target all cities in a given arc.
The orbital weapon can target cities
The array can target all targets in a given arc
The orbital weapon can be upgraded to an array.
these also are all RULES. That you don't like them does not make them any less a RULE. That you can come up with responses in game to deal with them does not make them any less of a RULE. Now if I have read something wrong then that will make it NOT A RULE. Similarly if I have missed a rule elsewhere buried in the manual that too will make them NOT A RULE. However you are not arguing that I have READ THEM WRONG or that I HAVE MISSED THIS RULE. YOU. ARE. REPEATEDLY. ARGUING. "I don't like this, I will develop these tactics in my game to respond to this sceanrio therefore you are blowing up planets with a laser in a bag of holding and your rule is stupid."
THESE ARE PUBLISHED RULES BY PAIZO
I AM QUERYING IF I HAVE READ THEM RIGHT
YOU ARE ARGUING ABOUT OTHER ISSUES
YOU ARE ALSO BEING INSULTING BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE MY HAVING SPOTTED A POTENTIAL PROBLEM
Now since I have RAISED this issue there is a CHANCE a Paizo representative will notice this thread and go "Oh they're right we missed that." At which point we might get an errata e.g. orbital weapons can't be upgraded to arrays because they need to focus and concentrate their firepower. That would be a new RULE. that would modify the existing RULES. That would mean orbital arrays can not be a thing.
However again I am asking about the RULES as printed RAW, you have yet to give any argument in the RULES forum that the RULES are not as PRINTED. You have merely said you don't like them and then moved on to talking about the setting, about GM responses and to insulting me. Those 3 things are not relevant to a question about the rules.
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1) Rules defining how things work.
2) The setting in which things work.
3) Interpretation things not explcictly covered by rules or setting that the GM interprets and sets precedent on how they'll be handled in a game.
1 and 3 are not separate at all. 1 and 3 and 2 all interact.
This is the rules forum. Not the raw forum. Not the rules as twisted forum. Not the rules lawyering forum. Reasonable rules interpretation of raw is not only a valid part of the rules and rules discussions it is often a necessary part of the rules.
A reasonable rules interpretation is you're targeting the planet. It has 11nty billion Hull points and is unbothered by your puny laser.
I am IGNORING your argument about planetary response because that is NOT RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION.
It is entirely relevant to your argument. You are making an argument from results. (the result being an earth shattering kaboom) Those results are entirely different once you compute the results in the context the rules are meant to be used.
G BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE MY HAVING SPOTTED A POTENTIAL PROBLEM
The Ad homs about my motives (doing things because I don't like them) are not helping.
You want a rule changed because you've spotted a potential problem. The thing is the problem isn't nearly as big as you're making it out to be. That the solution to the problem is other rules and the setting and not the rules you're narrowly focused on is not relevant.
A solution to the problem exists.
Therefore your problem isn't nearly as big as you're making out.
There is less reason to change the rule.
You might have a better argument if this wasn't the 5th earth shattering "problem" with the rules you've found this week.
I'll try to find the quote but I think it's relevant here. There's a game called champions and its meant for building any system you want, especially superheroes. There's an entire catalog of characters and abilities, advantages and disadvantages for the heroes and their powers.
There's a sidebar that points out that even with a moderate 150 point build, its possible to have a character that can blow up 50 square blocks around them...sitting immobile in a hospital bed. (he's fine though because he's of course immune to his own power)
Yes, you CAN build that character. Why isn't that a problem? Why don't the rules get changed?
Because there's a DM in charge of things to try to keep the rules and the players sanish. Because any game that gives players things a la carte and says "here you go build away" IS going to result in thermonuclear Armageddon. HAS to rely on the players and DMs to reign things in at some point. It's not an unknown problem, its just that a workable solution is player restraint and DM oversight rather than trying to out rules lawyer 1,000 munchkin jackals TRYING to destroy the planet.
So far, looks good. If you're a space marine and know that there are Swarm on the planet. Sometimes the only option is to bomb them. Exterminatus.
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I'll try to find the quote but I think it's relevant here. There's a game called champions and its meant for building any system you want, especially superheroes. There's an entire catalog of characters and abilities, advantages and disadvantages for the heroes and their powers.
There's a sidebar that points out that even with a moderate 150 point build, its possible to have a character that can blow up 50 square blocks around them...sitting immobile in a hospital bed. (he's fine though because he's of course immune to his own power)
Yes, you CAN build that character. Why isn't that a problem? Why don't the rules get changed?
Because there's a DM in charge of things to try to keep the rules and the players sanish. Because any game that gives players things a la carte and says "here you go build away" IS going to result in thermonuclear Armageddon. HAS to rely on the players and DMs to reign things in at some point. It's not an unknown problem, its just that a workable solution is player restraint and DM oversight rather than trying to out rules lawyer 1,000 munchkin jackals TRYING to destroy the planet.
Fine you win i was having bad wrong fun and I'll stop trying to get a handle on the system good day.
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1) I WANT TO KNOW IF THIS IS VALID AS PER RAW
The RAW answer is kinda sorta.
Especially since right under that phrase 'the gunner can fire this weapon at a large stationary target like a city...' is the phrase 'these guidelines are somewhat flexible so as to limit the degree that a PC's starship might obliterate a key site...'
That right there is a giant red flag for GMs warning them that shenanigans are going on, they need to think on how to stop such things from happening.
Let's also not forget that ultranaughts can only have one spinal weapon, meaning you can't array spinal weapons. So, all you're doing is taking 2500ft radius chunks out of cities with your arrayed capital weapons. Most settlements in the US are much larger than a mile across.
So, in summary the RAW is: You can try to take big chunks out of every settlement on a planet. The GM is going to stop this from happening. In the same way a PF1 GM would stop a witch from making a simulacrum of a winter hag to make in infinite army of simulacra covens.
You might have a better argument if this wasn't the 5th earth shattering "problem" with the rules you've found this week.
To my reading, it doesn't sound like Senko is a munchkin. It sounds more like Senko is the GM for a munchkin player.
And yeah, I agree that the rules for Array upgrade and Orbital weapons don't interact in a very well defined manner. It leaves a big question on what exactly counts as a 'target' for the array.
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You might have a better argument if this wasn't the 5th earth shattering "problem" with the rules you've found this week.To my reading, it doesn't sound like Senko is a munchkin. It sounds more like Senko is the GM for a munchkin player.
And yeah, I agree that the rules for Array upgrade and Orbital weapons don't interact in a very well defined manner. It leaves a big question on what exactly counts as a 'target' for the array.
Yes and I like to nail down rules as much as possible before they come up. I still remember the game with an experiment in gestalt where he combined a variety of classes to get lvl 9 spells at lvl 14 or his flying carpet with glasssteel bubble dome, the flashlight (rock with light in a tube and folding end).
This is why I wanted to see where the two stood on interaction rules wise without verging into non rule related way's of dealing with it. Especially on a system that's just near enough to what I'm used to for me to make mistakes on the rules
To my reading, it doesn't sound like Senko is a munchkin. It sounds more like Senko is the GM for a munchkin player.
Not a munchkin. Just looking for depth in a puddle. Which hurts if you try to jump in.
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Note that even a 3-mile radius (for a spinal mount hitting a full "megahex") is fairly tiny if you're trying to scrub a whole planet clean. To give a real world example you'd have to shoot Manhatten at least two-three times to wreck the whole borough, even allowing for the massive secondary damage the orbital bombing of a dense urban area would produce. Starfinder's rules for orbital strikes are really, really tame, although they'll certainly do the job for small outposts and isolated colony worlds.
Still not a good argument for Array hitting the whole hemisphere though. :)
To be fair, nearly everything in Starfinder is shrunken down and rescaled for the setting. Manhattan has a population of around 1.6 million people, while Absalom Station has a population of 2.1 million while only being 5-miles in diameter. A 3-mile radius attack would easily cover it in its entirety. I guess you can argue that their both structured differently, but setting game mechanics aside, story wise, an orbital attack like that would probably cover Manhattan several times over. Not to mention that the game doesn't bother to have rules like shockwaves/airblasts, which would devastate much more than the primary radius of the attack. Hopefully I'm making sense to whomever is reading this.
TL;DR: Starfinder's mechanics and the real world don't exactly mix.
TL;DR: Starfinder's mechanics and the real world don't exactly mix.You're doing a really good job of convincing me to go play either GURPS (which does "mix" with the real world just fine while retaining the versatility to do just about any setting/genre) or Savage Worlds (which handwaves realism in favor of cinematics, is just as versatile and easier to play).
So, you want to sell me on sticking with Starfinder? I was willing to give it a chance while I waited for the SOM book to come out, much as I did with Star Frontiers and Knight Hawks decades ago. Now that I've seen it I'm starting to think its time to walk away. What's the appeal of it to you?
Setting, feel of actual play, streamlined 3.5 rules but with more built in customization.
Closely approximating reality with the rules has never been a thing I want from any system.
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TL;DR: Starfinder's mechanics and the real world don't exactly mix.You're doing a really good job of convincing me to go play either GURPS (which does "mix" with the real world just fine while retaining the versatility to do just about any setting/genre) or Savage Worlds (which handwaves realism in favor of cinematics, is just as versatile and easier to play).
So, you want to sell me on sticking with Starfinder? I was willing to give it a chance while I waited for the SOM book to come out, much as I did with Star Frontiers and Knight Hawks decades ago. Now that I've seen it I'm starting to think its time to walk away. What's the appeal of it to you?
Setting, feel of actual play, streamlined 3.5 rules but with more built in customization.
Closely approximating reality with the rules has never been a thing I want from any system.
Pretty much this. Any game that has rules for giant mechs fighting dragons or high powered adventures where PCs face off apocalyptic threats with relatively simple rules is a game for me, lol.
As far as realism goes, I'm not sure what problem you have with it, specifically, since you didn't go into it much. However, the amount of realism depends on what part of the game you're focusing on the most. This is of course going to vary from game to game, which is sort of the beauty of this system. It is kinda challenging to hold on to realism when the game is as high powered as this, which is something that has to be carefully done. There is a point in this game where "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" actually ends up flying out the window.
As far as scaling and comparisons go, as far as the real world is concerned, there's always ways of explaining it in a reasonable way.
Like a car can only go 50mph, but maybe that's just it's speed when engaged in combat, otherwise it goes much faster.
A Hovertank's main cannon only does 6d10 and has no chance to punch through a concrete wall. Well, it probably does, but that's just the listed damage when used against your PCs, maybe they aren't modeled as direct hits.
A Super Nuclear Silo only has a blast radius of 2,500 feet, but maybe that's just the radius of the blast that leaves a crater in the ground. Otherwise, the air blast demolishes way more than the listed radius. It's just merely handwaved because it's not concerning PCs or relevant threats.
Maybe my examples are a little weird, but it's just how I look at things, as far as this game is concerned.
Probably not the answer you're looking for, and there's nothing wrong with trying out other games. They all have their strong points, just like this game. It completely depends on what kind of game you want and the ruleset that closely matches it the most.
I too am dissatisfied by how scales of combat interact. My opinion is 'they shouldn't ever'. That's not what we're given in SOM, but it's a simple guideline that can be easy to enforce in most cases in actual play.
Yes and I like to nail down rules as much as possible before they come up. I still remember the game with an experiment in gestalt where he combined a variety of classes to get lvl 9 spells at lvl 14 or his flying carpet with glasssteel bubble dome, the flashlight (rock with light in a tube and folding end).
This is why I wanted to see where the two stood on interaction rules wise without verging into non rule related way's of dealing with it. Especially on a system that's just near enough to what I'm used to for me to make mistakes on the rules
Yeah, I am also not seeing anything in the rules directly that forbids the interaction. To prevent player abuse, I would use one of the logical reasoning ideas here.
The options I would use are one of:
1) Orbital and Array simply don't work together. Justify it as that the array attack doesn't work at orbital range.
2) Impose a maximum number of targets on the attack. Say, 20 targets max.
3) Partition the surface of the planet into hex grid area and only allow one target per grid section.
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It's not realism that's the problem or I wouldn't be talking about Savage Worlds. Honestly prefer systems like Star Wars (*any* Star Wars) to hypothetically-hard-scifi accounting like you see in some editions of Traveller and even some GURPS setting books, although there's a lot to be said for GURPS' approach to grounding everything in real-world values whenever possible. And I certainly don't expect realism in the game with techno-wizards fighting space goblins on a giant starcology that's replaced a missing planet. That wouldn't really fit the setting, after all.
What bugs me is the fact that the game does such a very poor job of handling what are obviously different "scales" of combat, ranging from personal to ground-based vehicular to small starships to capital ships (and maybe to doomsday super-ships/stations beyond that). The rules we do have are mostly handwaving the problem as CR-appropriate hazards, and they feel very much like tacked-on afterthoughts rather than something that was integrated into the design from the start. It's an enormous turnoff for me, and I hoped SOM would take a big step toward improving that.
That didn't happen in any meaningful way, and the introduction of Orbital weapons that are so very accessible to even small ships just emphasizes the problem. I'm baffled by the design choice involved there, frankly. They restricted "carrier" role ships to huge (for shuttles) and gargantuan (for fighters) but though planetary bombardment was fine for starting group to have access to?
And yeah, I know a GM can and should restrict that sort of thing, but it's not my only problem with SOM by a long shot. Boarding (at least the abstracted system) doesn't seem at all balanced even when you add that missing 10 to the BR formula, the squadron rules seem to emphasize how weak a single larger ship is against multiple attackers in what should theoretically be a level appropriate fight, and the armada system probably isn't going to satisfy many people with its level of abstraction...
You may be better off looking into third party products, I know I've seen a fair number of posts about people houseruling starship combat on reddit and the like. I'm also fairly sure I saw something in one third party product about spell towers that let mages channel spells onto starship scale effects. Basically they functioned as normaly but could affect starships e.g. overheat does its damage to starship shields/hp at ship combat ranges rather than PC combat ones. The majority of the book didn't interest me though so I can't recall the title.
Yes and I like to nail down rules as much as possible before they come up. I still remember the game with an experiment in gestalt where he combined a variety of classes to get lvl 9 spells at lvl 14 or his flying carpet with glasssteel bubble dome, the flashlight (rock with light in a tube and folding end).
This is why I wanted to see where the two stood on interaction rules wise without verging into non rule related way's of dealing with it. Especially on a system that's just near enough to what I'm used to for me to make mistakes on the rules
Yeah, I am also not seeing anything in the rules directly that forbids the interaction. To prevent player abuse, I would use one of the logical reasoning ideas here.
The options I would use are one of:
1) Orbital and Array simply don't work together. Justify it as that the array attack doesn't work at orbital range.
2) Impose a maximum number of targets on the attack. Say, 20 targets max.
3) Partition the surface of the planet into hex grid area and only allow one target per grid section.
Which is what I was after is there a rules reason I'm missing because frankly the rules in this system seem rather scattered across different sections of the books. Whether you like them, don't like them and how to handle them if you don't like them wasn't what I was after and why I (a) posted in the rules forum and (b) got annoyed with big norse wolf insisting on talking about how you could deal with them in your game from a setting perspective which wasn't the point of this thread.
Honestly if they come up in a game I'm running I'd house rule much higher damage/radius for orbital weapons but also restrict them to larger capital ships probably battleship and above and if array allowing them to be more spread out and cover a city (e.g. 1 orbital death knell does 2,500 radius x ship tier blast, one orbital death knell array covers all of New York). Maybe allow Spinal Mount Ultranaught weapons to emulate the death star and wipe out an entire planet while changing its recharge time to a charge time allowing a starwars style stop the doomsday ship before the timer runs out. However again that's not the point of this thread. I am a fan of the image of orbital bombardment Gould in Stargate and Marik in KOTOR both used the trope/visual image but it shouldn't be something you can just slap on a shuttle.
Maybe allow Spinal Mount Ultranaught weapons to emulate the death star and wipe out an entire planet
Actually, the first thing I thought of when I heard combining orbital weapons with array targeting was Lavos from Chrono Trigger. That was fired from the planet's surface, but the effect was similar.