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TLDR The pilot has all the choice. The gunner has all the effect. The system fills the DMs brain so making the bluff check to ham it up is full. This is a game, its supposed to be fun, and starship combat just isn't. It feels more like work or something we have to put up with to enjoy the stuff we want to do.
Starship combat has been problematic since it's inception. It's a lackluster system that was further hindered by worse organization. I would say it's the most divisive element in SFS, but I don't see too many people who actually like it all that much. It's almost universally panned, and we should see less of it in SFS, or at least some way to avoid it besides just not playing 25% of the adventures. If you can tag scenarios starship combat, perhaps the DM can tag their runs as no starship combat or something.
The only system I've seen more universally groan inducing is the chase scenes from PF1, and I think we would have had a mutiny if they were in 1/4 of the adventures.
What's wrong with the system
A good role playing game where you build your character gives you proximate agency, ultimate agency, and effect. Starship combat lets the party have half of this at best.
Ultimate agency When I run a skill monkey mystic through a scenario calling for a lot of skills and succeed, it feels like my build choices matter. When someone's combat manuever soflarion starts chucking people off cliffs, it feels like your build choices matter. For starship combat you are your bonus. Nothing else matters. You are a static number and a D20 roll.
Proximate Agency Proximate agency is the ability to make choices that matter now. A melee soldier can attack once, attack twice, move and set up the flank, take the aoo, loose their opportunity to attack etc. Casters get a large toolbox to pull from, and envoys, biohackers, and others get a menu of options to match to the situation at hand. In starship combat only the pilot has this. They have to balance the competing desires to be on the shield they've already hit, face the ships weak shields away from the opposition, while placing your ships strong guns towards their weak shields.
The science officer, engineer, first mate, and gunners lack any kind of real decision making. While many choices exist on paper, some of them are so sub optimal that they're not a real option, or simply reactive. Diverting the power to weapons adds almost nothing after 4th level, and because locking on to a specific system only effects one shot, statistically you'll blow a ship apart before you wreck their system anyway.
One stated goal for PF2 was depth without complexity. Starship combat is complexity without depth. As soon as you understand what the whole myraid of rules do your action breaks down into the same thing round after round.
The engineer restores shields, the science officer scans on round 1 then locks on if they can, the chief mate negates the targeting penalty, the gunner(s) shoot, the captain aids another on the biggest gun. (or commands on round 1)
Effect In regular combat most characters get to see their contribution to the fight, in terms of damage dealt, statuses imposed, or in keeping party members alive in clutch moments. In starship combat only the gunner and the pilot have any real effect.
Engineer: Starts off somewhat effective if boring at healing shields. As you level incoming damage greatly outpaces shield regeneration and this becomes less and less meaningful
Chief mate: aids the gunners
Magic officer: aid another the pilot
Captain: aid anothers the gunner. I've seen multiple captains just say "I can't fail the check to aid. I aid the biggest gun. Getting coffee.."
science officer aid anothers the gunner
Gunner has most of the effect. The pilot has a fair bit until the higher levels, when the ability to pound through a shield makes positioning far less relevant. The pilots effect can also largely be negated if the opponents ship regularly rebalances shields.
The Rules layout is horrifically spread out
Having the absurdly high DCs in the first publishing was problematic, but those things happen. But when the errata was put out the corrected DCs were listed... but without the uncorrected DC. So when looking for the DC you need to have both the rulebooks AND the errata out and try to find the rule on both lists.
The pilot has some fly options, and some stunt options. For some reason it was decided to separate them and put them in different parts of the book, rather than just having everything the pilot does be a stunt. So the pilot needs two different pages open.
The weapon ranges aren't listed with the stat blocks. So you need to look in the starship building rules to keep that chart open.
You're also going to need the critical threshold chart.
Sensors having range penalties isn't listed anywhere in the science officer, you'll have to look in the ship building rules to even know about that one.
The amount of shield that the engineers restore isn't listed, its 5% of the PCU. Not a hard calculation but just one more on the pile.
These are incredibly specific rules to remember or find. Mix that in with keeping track of one..or more, spinning ships with 5 health bars apiece and the DM is often out of RAM to ham it up or do anything else.
Society play exacerbates these problems. Because of the bag of mixed nuts, you can't know just one role. Players spend a fair bit of time sorting into who's going where and moving around, and I think that eats up the last bit of bandwith that could be used for a role playing patch over a very large hole.
Proposed solutions (and why they haven't or won't worked)
Just don't be bad at role play and you'll love it I have played a LOT of starfinder on both sides of the table and have never. I mean NEVER. Seen this happen. I don't think my sample size precludes some people enjoying it, but the idea that it is by and large enjoyable if you just get into it does not seem to be suported.
Just have the captain RP what the crew is doing, that makes them useful... That just passes agency mostly from the pilot to the captain. If its also not the pilots particular meta, you're going to really annoy their player.
Make something to keep track of SSC for you
Been trying. Nothing seems to work right when the time comes, especially for trying to codify the gunnery.
You're just terrible at starship combat I don't think there's a very high ceiling for ability in starship combat for this to be true. Since I haven't seen it, and no one can seem to describe what better at starship combat would look like, I'm calling horsefeathers on this one.
Just avoid it, that's why its #'d I think I may be at this point. But its really not where I want to be. I don't like missing out on running some fun scenarios for people in society that just happen to have one very unfun part.
Just suck it up I think I'm out of air pressure. The degree to which DMs have had to do this is too much for an activity I'm supposed to be enjoying. This is supposed to be fun, and it just isn't. As a player I usually wind up as the engineer and can sleep through that with ...literature in another window. As the DM I'm supposed to be having fun too and I'm really not.
What can be done to fix it?
At this point I don't think adding more ships or obstacles or asteroids to dodge around could help. Its partially that that's only fun compared to two deathspheres circling and firing at each other. Partially that after a few bad experiences with something the negativity from the previous encounters becomes part of the experience. Starship skill challenges tend to run a lot smoother and can provide the same role play. Less of it would certainty help. The squadron or even mech rules might be worth using if they're good and easy enough to lay out/use. But at this point the normal system just seems to put the group in a self reinforcing pit that there's no climbing out of.
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Completely with you on starship combat. I've played starship combat in other systems (like some of the Star Wars ones) and had a blast. But Starfinder's system is a completely separate and fairly bland mini board game that seems like it was developed in isolation from everything else.
My only disagreement is that I *like* the PF1 chase rules :)
Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Toledo
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Well written and well thought out summary. It actively reflects our local experience. I love Starfinder in spite of starship combat, not because of it. I do what I can to avoid scenarios with starship combat, simply because they provide a 30-60 minute deficit of fun. The other content is typically outstanding and oozing with laughs and fun all around the table.
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What would help is if all or most of the stations could do something to affect the enemy directly.
Like, magic officer opens a dimensional rift to an elemental plane to attack the enemy or create a hazard.
Or the science officer hacks the enemy's shields to move them to a different quadrant.
Or the chief mate launching themselves out of the torpedo tube so they can provide flanking against the enemy ship.
You know, tactics.
Venture-Agent, Texas—Houston
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Will agree with you that the rules are in too many different places. You definitely need some soft of cheat sheet to get everything on 1 or 2 pages.
I would dispute that targeting systems is useless, just because a malfunctioning or wrecked power core is just that bad for everyone on a ship.
One issue I do see with starship combat is that GMs tend to play it safe, using the evasive maneuvers stunt every turn. This leads to harder-to-hit AC and TL and generally drags out the combat. I find it much more fun if GMs play the enemy pilot a little reckless, and attempt stunts they're not sure to meet the DC on. This will occasionally give players big openings when the enemy ship ends up facing somewhere they don't want to, and wraps up the combat quicker.
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I guess I'll be in the minority (again)
In addition to that, I'll add that earlier this year I was really looking forward to playing my "Starship character" (a Mechanic who can Engineer, Science, Gunner, Pilot or even Captain), only to then have the GM ask the group if everyone wanted to simply skip it.
I made the mistake of saying I was looking forward to it, so we continued...
And for the entirety of the Combat the GM and players would constantly complain or make snide remarks that just made me want to leave the table, so I just said "I'm happy if you just want to call it here" and we continued with the rest of the game.
I guess my message is "be mindful of your audience". Majority opinions aren't universal.
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I haven't played much SF in a couple of years, but in the beginning I really liked starship combat. However I think I got lucky in my first two games that had it; very well prepared GMs, and players who added small touches of RP, but avoid driving by committee. Felt like each round(complete combat round, not player turn) was ~2 minutes. Even some HP/shield sponge fights went quickly. I felt like this is awesome, why do people complain about it.
Then I never got that experience again and I can 100% understand the complaints. However, I think the mentality that wants to complain about it non stop during the session, really needs to stop, and is just making things worse in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A well presented argument, outside of game time, like what BNW did, is great however, and maybe will help steer evolution in how OP uses/incorporates starship combat.
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I've ranted about ss combat before and I think most of it holds true. The thing that makes ss a slog the most is the people at the table being unprepared. As a player, know what you can do. As a GM be ready to make a lot of rolls. Something that I have found that should be added is (and I mean this bluntly) shut up if it is not your role/roll. Crowd-sourced decisions for every roll takes forever. You don't do it (or shouldn't) in regular combat, don't start now.
An extrapolation of my advice to GMs, pre-roll. The thing that is undoubtedly true about your NPC ship(s) is that if they are not destroyed, they will be rolling the same amount each round. So have those rolls, with the bonuses, already done. This will save an unfathomable amount of time. And, after pre-rolling, there will be some rolls that just won't succeed regardless, so that is one less thing you have to worry about.
If you don't like the idea of pre-rolling, either get over yourself, or stop complaining. There are things you can do. If you choose not to, it becomes all on you.
Players...get your together. The game and it's mechanics are tools that you use to create enjoyment for yourself and others. It is not an overly imbalanced system. Therefore I put the onus on the players to make it enjoyable. Yeah, the mechanics aren't overly exciting, but neither are the mechanics of regular combat either really. The wielder of the tools makes things, not the tools themselves.
For me, ss combat is a litmus test for good players/ GMs. Now, I am willing to accept that my views on this could be wrong. But, the only proof to that point would be if everyone at the table put effort into making it fun and then it still wasn't fun. Until that occasion happens, I will assume my theory is correct.
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With a consistent group, who've run about 10 starship combats over the course of 28 scenarios (home game, levels 1-8 so far), plus an Ace Pilot PC whose theme revolves entirely around starship combat... yeah, starship combat is a slog that usually ends in extended complaints from my players, particularly the captain and gunners whose contributions can, and sometimes have (at their request), been fully automated (by them just giving an instruction and someone rolling a d20 for them on their turn
while they zone out).
And dear lord, that fight against the King Xeros nearly killed my campaign altogether.
I mean, it's telling that 90% of the advice from GMs on how to make starship combat better is actually advice on how to end it faster.
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I have a, let's say, "challenging" relationship with starship combat, but, mostly I just needed to say:
Or the chief mate launching themselves out of the torpedo tube so they can provide flanking against the enemy ship.
YES. I would pay good money for whatever rules supplement includes this :D I mean, come on, tell me you can't think of however-many specific PCs who would totally do this, if given the chance.
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As others have said: the biggest problem with starship combat is people complaining about starship combat during starship combat. That's not to say I never get exhausted during a combat where neither side can score a hit for six turns running. But I do find it way, way more fun when people are playing their role instead of optimizing and complaining.
I'm not going to defend Starfinder starship combat as a good system. It's not. I don't agree with everything BNW said, but I agree with a lot and I do believe we are in agreement with the definition of the largest issue:
Character combat in Starfinder is fairly light and free-flowing. Starship combat is extremely technical and repetitive.
Character combat basically boils down to "move and attack." But there's hundreds of different ways to do it. Starship combat, on the other hand, requires a much more technical approach. You have a prescribed set of actions. There's nothing out-of-the-box to be done. And the math of combat means that unless you want combat to drag on forever, the best action is almost always "whatever I can do to increase the gunner's attack bonus."
-The gunners's BAB (or Piloting Ranks) is scaling at approximately the same rate as the enemy's Piloting Ranks
-The gunner's Dex is scaling at approximately the same rate as the enemy ship's armor and countermeasures. (for low/mid levels)
So without anything else you're looking at more or less a DC 10 check to hit an enemy ship. Since the only way to end the combat in your favor is to hit with those guns, everyone else on the crew is doing whatever they can to increase those chances.
So you end up with mostly two types of experiences. One where everyone scrambles around doing different things, and the rounds take 10 minutes or more. Another where every thing is formulaic, the PCs never change their actions, many don't even need to roll dice, and the PCs' turn takes less than a minute (not counting moving). Often combats start on the first and shift to the second.
Science Officer - "Lock on, can't fail, done."
Pilot - (moves)
Captain - "Encourage PC on big gun, can't fail, done."
Gunners - "Use the node, please not another 3."
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I think I finally put my finger on one reason why starship combat just doesn't feel right for Starfinder.
The basic structure used in Starfinder (speeds, facing, turn distance, regenerating shields, limited ammo weapons, critical damage, even build points) has been around for decades. It owes an awful lot to Star Fleet Battles which was published in, what, the early 80's?
But Star Fleet Battles and similar miniature wargames are in a completely different game space. They are designed to take 2-4 hours to fight a normal engagement. They are designed for (usually) two players, each of whom is making all the decisions about their ships. And, critically, they are competitive games.
If you pulled starship combat out of Starfinder and made it into its own PVP game, it might be a decent miniature wargame. Give each person a fixed amount of BP and some method of generating crew stats. Then try to kill each other's ships for a couple of hours.
Step back and take the thousand A.U. view and you realize that's essentially what we've got now. But the PCs have been shoehorned into the crew roles. So we're playing a game whose overall mechanics are the same as a miniatures war game, but where the opportunities for feeling like you were a major contributor or your clever strategy led to victory are largely limited to "I rolled a 20!" There's no heroics.
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I guess I'll be in the minority (again)
In addition to that, I'll add that earlier this year I was really looking forward to playing my "Starship character" (a Mechanic who can Engineer, Science, Gunner, Pilot or even Captain),
I Built my star shaman mystic that way. I think one of the few times i've had fun in starship combat was when we had a small crew and he was scurrying back and forth between stations. We didn't have an engineering snd science phase we just had a Ysoki phase. (Which would go back to my point about ultimate agency)
I can agree that asking other players to bite their tongue during the game is one thing. But not that it's verbotten to try to change the game you like for the better by lessening an element of something you like. Yes, the minority has rights but so does the majority. I think a reasonable approximation of how much ssc there should be would be
(how much people like it) X (how many people like it)
vs
(How much people hate it) x (how many people hate it)
I believe by that measure there is way. way. Too much starship combat.
Yes. For you that starship combat would have been enjoyable if the other party members had chomp.. ow.. bwit thwewi twongues. But I don't think that was the cause of them not liking it. That IS however a bit of a feedback loop that we're in right now.
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It's almost universally panned, and we should see less of it in SFS, or at least some way to avoid it besides just not playing 25% of the adventures.
It think this is suffering from small sample size. Plenty of people enjoy it. As emphasized by the fact that we have a whole story arch about starship combat that people wanted to play.
A certain amount of the critique comes down to "The GM can't take full advantage because they have too many things on their mind." But there is not a lot more the GM has to do than in most multi opponent combats, certainly less than multi opponent combats with casters and hazards.
Followed by "of the six options, only option X is optimal, so just do option X even if it is useless and be bored." A lot of the options are situationally specific. A good science officer can be the difference between sit and slug it out, or use tactics and take no damage, for example.
You're just terrible at starship combat I don't think there's a very high ceiling for ability in starship combat for this to be true. Since I haven't seen it, and no one can seem to describe what better at starship combat would look like, I'm calling horsefeathers on this one.
There is less a high ceiling, and more a degree of flexibility that is needed to make good, enjoyable starship combat. But you also need a table that *enjoys* starship combat. If you have a table full of people who have been primed to hate it, you are going to get a boring, repetitive slog, because they *aren't* going to adapt and adjust.
As such I couldn't even show you if I wanted to, because you would start out from a point of not enjoying it.
But your lack of enjoyment doesn't mean everyone else doesn't like it or that it is unequivocally unenjoyable.
Contributor
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I have fun with starship combat as a GM. Have there been a few that were slogs? Yeah, I hated the combat from 1-03. But with the right cheat sheets I can keep the combat moving and make all sorts of fun enemy dialogue.
If players are flexing into different roles and there's complexity, roleplay and challenge, it can be a blast.
Hmm
Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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I think starship combats have gotten better over time(though AP ones are in general better and not just because you can skip some of them with skill checks or being smart :p) and I've luckily avoided sessions where everyone just complains about them even if they don't seem very enthusiastic about it.
And definitely agreeing that it helps if players have learned the system, its same with how its slog to run vehicle segments in society when nobody knows how vehicles work :p
That said I don't think starship combat is perfect, I just don't think its irredeemably bad. And I'd like to think I'm not developing stockholm syndrome when I've actually started to enjoy some starship combats lately :p (I don't think its that, the 1-27 starship combat was pretty "why writers, why did you give them THAT ability"?) And I also do strongly believe that society ships incentive most boring kind of play ("big long range gun to turret")
Also I agree that starship combat tends to be more fun when ship is slow(as it makes movement stunts besides evasion more useful) and when crew is smaller but characters have more skills(because it incentives switching roles constantly on the need basis rather than sticking to one role spamming same ability constantly)
...Like it sounds incredibly weird in sense of how obvious it is, but starship combat feels designed for 4 players. Like yeah six players can fill more roles, but then they have less reason to switch which makes it worse.
(sidenote, are chase scenes very disliked? I actually though people liked them decently enough ^^;
Also one of reasons I like online gaming is making handing out rule hand outs easier x'D
Also disagreeing on chief mates just aiding gunners, lowering amount of hexes you need to move before turning is incredibly useful)
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Venture-Agent, Finland—Tampere
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early PF chase scenes had a problem of
"I'm a wizard, this first square requires climb or acrobatics. I"ve missed 3 checks, the objective is halfway accross the map, I'm stuck here, I am NEVER going to catch up, I'm getting coffee"
Ah. I take it they got better since I don't remember later season ones being that bad?
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Ah. I take it they got better since I don't remember later season ones being that bad?
Yes. They eventually switched to a format where the whole party would run together with everyone trying (higher DC) skill checks. Anyone succeeding moved the party, or the party moved and got dinged on the timer if people failed. It would also give you a chance to use your skills if you couldn't use someone elses, IE, the wizard gets stuck on the climb acro square one, the whole party moves to square 2 now he can uses knowledge arcana to high five the sphinx on his run through.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I've said things before on this subject, read HERE.
Basically, yeah, lack of options. Science officer and Engineer get to do homework, while the Pilot potentially has to do some planning, but most of the time results in sticking the nose of your ship up the other ship's butt and never leave. Gunner gets to do some pew pew, but again, not interesting other than seeing if your roll high damage numbers. There are a lot of potential options, but one or two are just so good that others rarely get used. Being able to double up on a role would help a lot, everyone running to the engines to boost the shields at the cost of not firing for one round already opens up a lot more space.
I have one real suggestion: either graft starship roles into classes completely, or add them onto the classes, like gestalt. In the first option, roles are more rigid, in the second option, there's more room for mix-and-match. Like someone said, make Engineers able to drain other ships's shields or mess up their maneuverability. Have the magic characters be able to rain down specific starship-only spells on the enemy, or have them funnel their energy through the spaceship to magnify their spells, casting Confusion on the other ship, patch up the ship with Junk Armor, and so on. Downside is that it means the NPCs can do the same to you, and people don't really like downside mechanics. Basically, make people be able to do more than use the same skill over and over. Starship combat has the depth of a puddle, whereas ground combat can be super interesting.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I had more opinions.
My main complaint is that mechanically, your character is completely divorced from starship combat. This is a role-playing game, where choices matter. In your build, in your personality, and so on. And now you get plucked out of that and you basically play an entirely different game where all of your choices don't matter anymore, only where you put your skill points. It's like you're playing Risk, where every battle is determined by a match of Chess. Inject personality into starship combat, please.
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inject personality into starship combat, please.
They did. It is called the SOM (Starship Operations Manual).
I think it would really benefit society ssc to just allow some of the guns and TIMs from the SOP as AcP purchasable options.
In example...
There are guns, that are fired by computers ranks + Int mod, that on hit can switch the nodes if the hit ship from + to -.
There is a TIM that lets your drone do minor crew actions or, for a resolve point, standard crew actions.
There is a TIM that allows you to use the amplified glitch feat to affect the enemy ship.
There is a TIM that, if you have the mitigate class feature, gives your ship a Damage Threshold.
...and much more...
These could be great boons for ssc.
As a side note, I'm surprised that anyone in a home game, that hasn't forsaken ssc, doesn't use the SOM.
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Agreed as usual BNW. 100% agree with your pain points. I was actually thinking of writing a very similar post to this last week on the Starfinder General Discussion board.
I don't think I've come across many people that complain about Starship Combat during the actual game. There's been a few (mostly at in-person convention tables, for some reason). When they do it does drag down the group's spirits. For the most part though, a lot of people (especially experienced players) just kinda disengage from the experience. Some go so far as to say "here are my next few rolls, I'm going to grab a snack/drink/do something else". Mostly though, its people on phones, side conversations, and so on. The usual signs that a game is boring.
------
I'm not sure cheat sheets and prerolling are the silver bullet to solve Starship Combat. Experienced players generally seem to know their options, and experienced GMs I've seen already seem to be doing a bit of casual fudgery (skipping enemy roles that aren't that important is one I've seen a few times), in order to keep the pace up. This makes combat go a bit quicker, but doesn't make it more fun.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The TIMs added in the Starship Operations Manual (starship add-on systems that let characters apply their feats and class abilities to Satrahip combat) are a great idea. The fact they’re deliberately designed so a ship can only use one or two at a time (due to their exponentially scaling cost) baffles me. Were I ever to run a SFS home game they would be a default part of every single ship.
It doesn’t solve all of Starship Combat’s problems (far from it), but it’s a huge start in making the specific characters and choices you’ve made to play the other 95% of the game feel like they are at all relevant to this other bit.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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And on the GM side: just write the ships differently to take out all the fiddle bits. NPCs aren’t built with the same rules as PCs, why are starships?
Example: why do I as a GM need to track the Trinidad giving the enemy ship +2 to 3 rolls each round? Just make two/three of the ship’s mods two higher. Why do living creatures even have ‘Shields’ to need to track each arc and possibly regen each round? I consider myself a GM who preps decently and can run a tight combat, but between needing to not only run sometimes up to 15 starship roles at a time across different combatants while at the same time keep explaining the starship rules to semi-engaged players and try to move them forwards, Starship fights are amongst the most exhausting things to GM outside of a Waking Rune or Salvation of the Sages end fight.
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I still enjoy GMing and playing in Starship combat, but only at the game table. I don't like it much in PbP/Online.
I find that I can keep the pace up and the enjoyment, but only because I arrive at the table having already done the prep work for everyone - laminated Starship role sheets and cheat sheets for combat etc.
As a player I also happily volunteer to run the phasing for the combat so that less familiar GMs can focus on fighting the fight rather than running it all.
It runs well because I have a bit of a passion for it, but I can also see how it could be a badwrongfun for a lot of people.
I always wondered if an Infinite Space like system would not be better for starship combat in Starfinder. I sure as hell want to adapt it for my take on Spelljammer.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I agree with BNW and pretty much avoid it when possible (if requested I can run a scenario with it and make it entertaining, I think the GM really has to at least try to make it fun, but as a player I avoid it).
Unfortunately, that has lead to me missing some important scenarios, and kinda damaging my interest in SFS. If to slog through something I personally do not enjoy to get the whole experience, I am not sure that the experience is worth having (for me).
Some sort of GM opt-out of having to do it (ideally in a way that can be communicated before the game so everyone is on the same page) might be a solution. So the players and GMs that want to use this minigame can come together and have a great time.
I like a lot of things about Starfinder and SFS, but losing 30-60 minutes doing something I do not enjoy is not really super attractive. And that is before you consider the issue of Starship boons and other ship frames (which takes up time when you start and makes it tricky for the GM to prepare ship stats and run a smooth game).
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That last point has especially impacted online play. Players bring these cool ship frames and ultimately can't use them because the Roll20 table only has the Drake and Pegasus set up.
It's ironic that bringing a different frame to an in-person game would be easier than getting it to work online. Although I guess PbP would actually be the easiest environment of them all.
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Wait...what?
Why should the GM be responsible for a player bringing an alternate ship frame?
That is 100% the responsibility of the player bringing the alternate frame. If a player is not prepared, they shouldn't get to use it.
If a player is not prepared with a character, they use a pregen or don't play. This is a group game. If they can't be bothered to be prepared they use pregen options, or they don't play.
This is one of the reasons GMs are likely frustrated. For some reason it seems widely accepted that the GM has complete responsibility for all of ss combat. Why are we getting rid of player responsibility? If a player came to the table over and over without having learn basic combat, you'd likely have a chat with them. Why is ss combat treated as different? It is the player's responsibility to learn how the game works.
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Is "lack of a pre-built character sheet for a boon ship" really that big of an impediment? Whoever has the boon snaps a quick pic (if you're playing online, I'm assuming you have access to a digital photo-taking device already) and throws it into Discord chat, or imgur, or whatever, and everyone can just /r XdY+Z from there? Especially in Starship Combat where, as noted above, most roles make the same roll every turn, it doesn't seem like this should be prohibitive?
Sure it's another speedbump to an encounter that can at times be cumbersome, but like...lack of a pre-built character sheet shouldn't be that hard to overcome, surely?
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Why should the GM be responsible for a player bringing an alternate ship frame?Because the majority of Roll20 players don't pay for a subscription, and can't create or edit their own ship sheets.
And I wouldn't even know where to begin for the other VTTs out there.
There is a ss tab on every SF roll20 character sheet.
There is a profile tab where you can input straight up text on every character sheet.
One can set up the info in paint and distribute it on the voice chat that everyone is using for the game.
There are soooo many options. The only reasons I can fathom as to why it wasn't ready in some way, all boil to laziness and a disrespect for the time of everyone else at the table. Whether intentional or unintentional, it is disrespectful for a non-new player to not be prepared for a game. And, people should be called out for such disrespect. It is not healthy to any community to accept blatant disrespect of others.
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Why should the GM be responsible for a player bringing an alternate ship frame?Because the majority of Roll20 players don't pay for a subscription, and can't create or edit their own ship sheets.
And I wouldn't even know where to begin for the other VTTs out there.
There is a ss tab on every SF roll20 character sheet.
There is a profile tab where you can input straight up text on every character sheet.
One can set up the info in paint and distribute it on the voice chat that everyone is using for the game.
There are soooo many options. The only reasons I can fathom as to why it wasn't ready in some way, all boil to laziness and a disrespect for the time of everyone else at the table. Whether intentional or unintentional, it is disrespectful for a non-new player to not be prepared for a game. And, people should be called out for such disrespect. It is not healthy to any community to accept blatant disrespect of others.
Not everyone uses the "SF Simple" sheet.
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Nor is everyone as comfortable as I (or apparently Dr. Cupi) at creating or editing such sheets.
Heck, I've encountered plenty of people who have trouble filling out a blank character sheet.
I disagree it is always "blatant", "lazy" or "disrespectful". I feel that those who are able, do, and those who aren't, can't.
As an aside, personally, for as much as I love macros, there's a method that some Roll20 GMs use to run Starship Combat that I haven't been able to figure out. I've had it explained to me probably half a dozen times that there's something I can do via their ship sheet that uses my PC's stats, and I'm always at a loss as to what to do, so I just roll using my Character Sheet, and I ask the GM to do whatever it is they need to do.
Those GMs have everything so fine-tuned that no player could ever show up to a game with their own ship sheet without asking the GM to do some work ahead of time.
And, again, that's just Roll20. If I was asked to make a character for another VTT, I wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to begin.
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I apologize. I was wrong about both sheets having a ss tab. Thank you Jared for calling me out on that.
As I said, there are more options than those I listed. Many of which involve typing up the necessary info on the alternate ss.
One could also take a picture and post it.
One could picture or word document a google thing and share it.
One could contact the GM ahead of time to figure out the best plan.
Any of the above could work to disseminate the necessary information to the table. Because, the information being readily available is all that matters to make it happen. You don't even need the correct picture. You don't need it to be fully automated. You just need all of the players to have the stats on the alternate ss.
So, no. With the myriad of options available to accomplish the simple task of disseminating information, I do not see any reason for not being prepared other than laziness.
Again, I believe that players have a responsibility to the rest of the table to be prepared. A player being prepared seems like a very reasonable expectation. Am I missing something? Is this an unreasonable expectation?
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I've enjoyed starship combat quite a bit. The first time I tried it the group I played with didn't know the rules very well and so it wasn't very fun, but we quickly figured out how to fly our starship more efficiently.
To be precise, I've only played SFS and adventure path starship combats and in those the ships are balanced more along the lines of the rules in the Starship Operations Manual.
Best advice I can give to those who struggle with starship combat is fly like Maverick in Top Gun. In other words, turn and burn and be aggressive. If you want to play the long game and stay at maximum range and try to plink away you'll be in for some really long starship combats. Starship combat is a lot more fun if it doesn't take 10 plus rounds.
Fire as many weapons as possible every round. Use multiple gunners and use the broadside action once you reach level six.
If you lose initiative stay aggressive and use the fly by stunt to take back the upper hand that you lost on the initiative roll.
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Best advice I can give to those who struggle with starship combat is fly like Maverick in Top Gun. In other words, turn and burn and be aggressive. ....
Fire as many weapons as possible every round. Use multiple gunners and use the broadside action once you reach level six.
If you lose initiative stay aggressive and use the fly by stunt to take back the upper hand that you lost on the initiative roll.
I mean, it's telling that 90% of the advice from GMs on how to make starship combat better is actually advice on how to end it faster.
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Venture-Agent, Texas—Houston
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I mean, it's telling that 90% of the advice from GMs on how to make starship combat better is actually advice on how to end it faster.
Yeah, nobody likes a long, stalemated combat. Factors I've seen contribute to these include:
* The DC for the evasive maneuvers stunt is too easy, it needs to be higher so it's not a free +2 AC/TL every turn.
* No tactics sections are given for enemy ships, so GMs too often play it safe with evasive maneuvers every turn, see above.
* The Pegasus frame at many tiers lacks high-damage weapons that can reliably penetrate enemy shields.
* Inexperienced captain players will often devote themselves to buffing pilots instead of gunners.
My comment on staying aggressive so that starship combat doesn't run over 10 rounds shouldn't be seen as a knock on the system. I think any type of combat in Starfinder gets tedious when it goes really long. The PC's have to stay aggressive in regular combat also. If both the players and the GM have their characters sit at the opposite ends of the map behind cover, prone, and shooting at each other that is the same as staying at max range in starship combat and just evading and taking potshots.
Drake is definitely the choice in SFS over the Pegasus. The Pegasus is too lightly armed.
Captains can use their buffing ability on the pilot if the pilot is going for a flyby, but it is usually better to use it on the gunners. They also shouldn't just stick to encouraging. If they have points in intimidate they should use demand also.
Everyone knowing what they can do in their role is really important too. There are actions that happen more often than others, but when the situation calls for something different you have to be able to identify the opportunity.
Played a starship combat where our ship was right on the tail of the enemy starship. We lost initiative so we just stayed on their tail, but we didn't put our ship directly behind the enemy and we were at close range. Well, the GM promptly executed a back off maneuver and when the gunnery turn came around we weren't on the enemy's tail, they were on ours.