The existing compromise is dropships (Starfinder Adventure Path #24): air vehicles that deploy from larger starships, capable of brief spaceflight but not interplanetary (or interstellar) travel.
And the primary reason starships and PC combat don't mix is to keep the Starship intact outside of a tpk. The secondary is to keep the PCs from rolling over encounters safe behind their starship bulkhead total cover.
If it was a vehicle near the PCs level, it could be just as easily destroyed as a PC could be killed. If it was a pile of starship bulkheads and guns, it could make encounters too easy.
So, yeah, dropships
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What you also can do is simply give vehicle statistics to a starship when it's in atmosphere/landed. They should be statted as objects, as mentioned in the CRB.
For example, your tier 6 small starship can be statted as a level 10+ gargantuan vehicle (statted as a vehicle is presumably higher level). It's weaponry would function as hazards (traps) where you would use values from the chart provided in that section (tier = CR of trap?)
I don't have any of the page numbers, sorry. It's all in the CRB, though, and shouldn't be too difficult to find.
I think an alternative would be if the ship had a detachable cockpit that became like a rover or something for planetary travel. You have the main hull sit as a make shift Med station. A starship might not have the same manoeuvrability as a smaller response ship.
Stat the vehicle with a decent passenger cap with maybe a hybrid template for better over land travel and ensure the Space ship has a good Med lab and maybe a science station or passenger bay for extra beds.
Love all the idea, they are level 1, so they already have a ship, and I was giving them a tiny shuttle to serve as an ambulance...but now they want to do swat stuff with it.
I think the best middle will be the shuttle as a dropship, il will build it level 1.
The drawback with that, is they won’t be able to fight in space with the dropship, Starship would destroy them…but it is one ore the other, because mixing but rules and having to stats, one for space fight and one for planetary travel seems so odd lol, maybe I am wrong lol.
I too find it odd, but not everyone does.
But if they're doing a shuttle as a sort of swat deployment thing, maybe look into the squadron rules from starship operations manual. That way they could have a base ship (at this level, really just a hangar bay in space), a starship combat ship, and a dropship for planetary operations/support. But hang out on one or the other depending on what they're doing at the moment.
That's an option as well. In fact, our group has a Medium ship that the party tools around in, with a detachable Tiny fighter for the ace pilot to break off with during dogfights.