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I sort of feel like it needs better starship combat rules. The cinematic starship combat rules are good and I will use them but actually starship combat is needed. I know tech is coming out sometime....but has there been discussion around a play test? I mean this seems super important to play test, almost as much or more then then the 2 classes in the book. Since the last stream announce the new gencon (not Tech Core) release I just have not heard anything....
There appears to little to no communication on this....
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Someone posted that an SF2e developer posted to Discord a few weeks ago that there will be no public starship playtest. Despite belonging to 10 Discord servers for Starfinder or Paizo, I could not find that post to verify it, probably because I can't find anything useful on Discord that's more than a few hours old.
After seeing what you can do with cinematic starship scenes (CSS), I don't think there's much left to playtest. The only thing tactically missing from CSS is rules for moving the ship on the map. CSS encounters are balanced using creatures building ruels so not much to test with the math. For crew actions, we just need more of them. That just leaves shipbuilding rules, which is one of the things SF1e did well. The big complaint about SF1e starship combat was making it fun for the whole crew, and that it felt like a separate game. Everything we have seen so far, CSS and the battle for Nova Rush adventure suggest staships ruls are being built around existing rules and subsystems. Personally, I feel that Nova Rush was more fun than any SF1e combat I played in.
If you liked SF1e ship rules, they are almost competely compatable with SF2e since they are almost a completely separate game. The only adjustment needed is changing some skill names.
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I know I'm really disappointed that Tech Core hasn't had a release date yet, it's a sci-fi game, we need more tech first and foremost,
I like the delay, it's easy to explain in character as a supply chain issue as a result of the Drift Crisis, also in a science fantasy setting, not having all your tech options at the start of the game simulates advancement of tech over magic as we get new books. But my overly optimistic view would be easier to maintain if we at least had a release date.
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That just leaves shipbuilding rules, which is one of the things SF1e did well.
Really? Either they substantially changed at some point or I vehemently disagree with you.
I ran the first Starfinder AP and the shipbuilding rules (together with the ship combat rules) was the main reason we stopped playing starfinder after that AP.
My players discovered a "I win" button in the ship building rules. Always maximize your shields and
1) Ship combats will be slow and boring
2) But at the end your victory is all but guaranteed againstn any of the antagonist ships the AP threw at you
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That just leaves shipbuilding rules, which is one of the things SF1e did well.
Really? Either they substantially changed at some point or I vehemently disagree with you.
Did you run Dead Suns when it first came out? If so, you're missing over 150 pages of rules and options that came out in other books.
First improvement was the Character Operation Manual, which added crew actions and roles for classes that didn't have much to do in ship combat. It's only around 4 pages for ship related ruels, but it's a critical 4 pages for some classes.
The Starship Operation Manual is an entire book just on starships. Starship combat wasn't in a good place until this book came out.
I ran the first Starfinder AP and the shipbuilding rules (together with the ship combat rules) was the main reason we stopped playing starfinder after that AP.
So now you know why Staship Combat is not in the first books out for SF2e. Maybe it's because I play in Starfinder Society, but I've never thought of Starfinder as a Starship combat-focused game, despite having been in Starfinder starship combats. Most of the fun I have had in starship combat comes from roleplaying and not the combat itself.
Paizo also learned to make encounters more balanced and interesting, and also reduced how often starship combat came up, but despite the fact that I don't think Starfinder's strong point has ever been Starfinder's strong point.
Battle For Nova Rush to me is the best way to run starship combat in Starfinder; it works really well for a TTRPG for tactical starship combat. I play X-Wing. The Nova Rush ship is also a huge improvement over SF1e player ships; it's big enough to be a true base ship, by which I mean it's got room to carry mechs, tiny starfighters, and other vehicles. It's also big enough to run an entire game session inside of the ship, including combat.
My players discovered a "I win" button in the ship building rules. Always maximize your shields and
1) Ship combats will be slow and boring
2) But at the end your victory is all but guaranteed againstn any of the antagonist ships the AP threw at you
If the "win button" is what made the game boring, don't push it. Unfortunatly someone had to paint the win button red and make it oversized. The shield issues are well known, and it's not just the player's shields slowing the game down. Not letting shields regenerate can help to speed up combat. But when I refer to ship building ruels I mean how you pick each type of ship system from a list, how shields work in combat, I consider part of game balance. The starship rules we have so far in SF2e are using creature building rules for balance, is why I'm not concerned about needing to playtest. If it comes down to using creature building rules for balance, it's not like Paizo does playtest for creatures in an established edition.
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Did you run Dead Suns when it first came out?
Yup. I'm (very sincerely) glad that they improved the systems later. The original system really was pretty bad.
But I'm an example of why you have to get the rules at least reasonably decent the first time. Hope they succeed at it this time.
The odds of them succeeding seem much, much higher to me if they playtest the new rules.
Battle For Nova Rush to me is the best way to run starship combat in Starfinder;
Totally agree with this. It was a blast to play and run
Does Battle for Nova Rush use the gm core rules or something else? I found the gm core rules examples pretty agency-less and repetitive.
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Does Battle for Nova Rush use the gm core rules or something else? I found the gm core rules examples pretty agency-less and repetitive.
Battle for Nova Rush came out at Free RPG Day right before SF2e was launched. So it doesn't use the exact cinematic starship scenes, but you can see the influence, even though it doesn't use the CSS stat block. Instead of Star Wars, you're on the Millennium Falcon fighting off a group of TIE fighters, think of it as Star Trek, and you're the crew in a bigger ship while the ship is getting attacked.
The way I see cinematic starship scenes is that they are a framework for a starship encounter. To that, you can also add things going on in the ship, hazards, combat, anything you could do in a normal 3-action encounter mode, and on top of that, add tactical rules for the pilot, which is the part we are missing now.
The current CSS in the GM Core are set up as simple examples that should last as long as a normal combat or a complex hazard to chase. While The Battle for Nova Rush expands that to take up an entire session.
The other nice thing about CSS is that it is defined per encounter, which means new rules for ship combat can be created and used on a per-encounter basis. An example is having a new NPC on board could give you new crew actions.
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Did you run Dead Suns when it first came out?Yup. I'm (very sincerely) glad that they improved the systems later. The original system really was pretty bad.
But I'm an example of why you have to get the rules at least reasonably decent the first time. Hope they succeed at it this time.
Something I really like about the one-session-long Starfinder Society scenarios is that if your character doesn't play like you thought it would, you can just make a new one for the next game. If you don't like ship combat or a certain theme, you can just skip those scenarios, and if you play a scenario you end up not liking, it's only one session.
Even if you prefer to play long APs, at the start of a new edition or game system, running some short scenarios to work out the bugs before making such a big time commitment to an AP might help.
The odds of them succeeding seem much, much higher to me if they playtest the new rules.
I'd like it if there were a play test too, I even started playing Armada and X-wing to get ideas for feedback during the starship playtest. But my conclusion was X-wing isn't good at being a TTRPG, and Starfinder is never going to outdo X-wing for tactical combat. There were some useful lessons learned, like focusing on a ship scale most useful to what your main goal is. For Starfindre I think that means focusing on Hero-Ship sized ships, and giant capital ships should be treated as moving cities and in battle played like a siege. For a hero ship to fight a capital ship, the map could even be the capital ship, and the PCs have to damage certain targets on the map.
There was lots of talk about ship combat during the fieldtest, before the main SF2e playtest, so Paizo got a lot of feedback despite not actually having a starship playtest. Unfortunatlly that section of the forums was removed after the playtest was over.
Battle For Nova Rush to me is the best way to run starship combat in Starfinder;
Totally agree with this. It was a blast to play and run
One reason I like The Battle for Nova Rush so much is that instead of the ship encounter being something happend on the way to someplace, the ship battle was the whole adventure.
Battle for Nova Rush came out at Free RPG Day right before SF2e was launched. So it doesn't use the exact cinematic starship scenes, but you can see the influence, even though it doesn't use the CSS stat block. Instead of Star Wars, you're on the Millennium Falcon fighting off a group of TIE fighters, think of it as Star Trek, and you're the crew in a bigger ship while the ship is getting attacked.
Fair enough.
The current CSS in the GM Core are set up as simple examples that should last as long as a normal combat or a complex hazard to chase. While The Battle for Nova Rush expands that to take up an entire session.
The other nice thing about CSS is that it is defined per encounter, which means new rules for ship combat can be created and used on a per-encounter basis. An example is having a new NPC on board could give you new crew actions.
My issue is the CSS in GM Core would be whole scenes that my group would find it very repetitive and unengaging, since you don't really have any agency or decisions in those. So if that's design philosophy was expanded to a whole session I think my players would stay away from SF2e in the same way the PF2e playtest caused them to be apprehensive of PF2e for a good while.
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My issue is the CSS in GM Core would be whole scenes that my group would find it very repetitive and unengaging, since you don't really have any agency or decisions in those. So if that's design philosophy was expanded to a whole session I think my players would stay away from SF2e in the same way the PF2e playtest caused them to be apprehensive of PF2e for a good while.
To turn a CSS into an entire session, you need to read Battle for Nova Rush as an example. The link to the free PDF is at the bottom of the description
Free RPG Day Starfinder Adventure: Battle for Nova Rush.I'm too tired to try to dig it up now, but someone on the forums took the time to convert all of Battle for Nova Rush into a single CSS stat block, which ended up being as long as the actual adventure if I remember correctly. Although I think it was interesting and useful to see it laid out that way. I think the best way is a combination of CSS for stuff going on outside of the ship or things that trigger over time as the bigger battle goes on, and the rest laid out as a normal adventure.
I have more thoughts on this, but I'm about to fall asleep.
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you need to read Battle for Nova Rush as an example. The link to the free PDF is at the bottom of the description
And the link for it is really, really hard to notice.
Fortunately, it is just a standard url. So: Battle for Nova Rush.
Guilt of the grave world also has some good examples of how use the cinematic starship combat stuff. It overall seems pretty fun and engaging enough. I do want the tactical combat rules because I like some crunch but there are a lot of space type things where the cinematic mode probably makes more sense so I suspect even once the tactical rules are out people wind up doing hybrid.
Having given it a read now I cannot grasp why people would see this adventure as relevant when the only actual connection to Starship combat is the last rolls to see if you escape.
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When you play the scenario, you FEEL like you're on a starship in the middle of combat. You're frantically doing things to affect that combat
It might not be you cup of tea but if the opportunity presents itself I'd try and play in it. You might be pleasantly surprised by how much fun it is and how much it feels like you're in a Star Wars or Star Trek battle
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We just got some insight into Starships in Tech Core. Lots of interesting news in the video, but skip to 1:22 for starships.
STF CONline 2026 - Starfinder 2e Developer Panel .
It sounds like early inspiration for the new starship rules was influenced by the game Faster Than Light. I haven't played FTL, but it seems well-liked.
Why FTL Is So Awesome
When you play the scenario, you FEEL like you're on a starship in the middle of combat. You're frantically doing things to affect that combat
See, I'm with Milo. My group felt the opposite of what you are saying, at least mechanically speaking. Everyone had the same repetitive check/s and it was entirely up to us to be engaging beyond, "Okay roll...it was a success/failure so here's the effect...next roll please." Especially with how DCs are designed, no one felt able to leave the lane clearly designed for them.
It feels like a QTE in a video game that goes on for longer than enjoyable.
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When you play the scenario, you FEEL like you're on a starship in the middle of combat. You're frantically doing things to affect that combatSee, I'm with Milo. My group felt the opposite of what you are saying, at least mechanically speaking. Everyone had the same repetitive check/s and it was entirely up to us to be engaging beyond, "Okay roll...it was a success/failure so here's the effect...next roll please." Especially with how DCs are designed, no one felt able to leave the lane clearly designed for them.
It feels like a QTE in a video game that goes on for longer than enjoyable.
Are you talking about playing specifically Battle for Nova Rush? IF you are, then all I can say is different strokes for different folks.
When you play the scenario, you FEEL like you're on a starship in the middle of combat. You're frantically doing things to affect that combat
The only elements of the adventure that are "doing things to affect that combat" seems to be
It might not be you cup of tea but if the opportunity presents itself I'd try and play in it. You might be pleasantly surprised by how much fun it is and how much it feels like you're in a Star Wars or Star Trek battle
I think if I tried to sell my players on a Starship fight adventure, but I'm the end included only one minute of interacting with anything outside of your own ship they'd feel disappointed by the end of it. They might still enjoy their time because starfinder is a fun game and we enjoy our fellows company, but the adventure itself will probably not be remembered as living up to the pitch.
Are you talking about playing specifically Battle for Nova Rush? IF you are, then all I can say is different strokes for different folks.When you play the scenario, you FEEL like you're on a starship in the middle of combat. You're frantically doing things to affect that combatSee, I'm with Milo. My group felt the opposite of what you are saying, at least mechanically speaking. Everyone had the same repetitive check/s and it was entirely up to us to be engaging beyond, "Okay roll...it was a success/failure so here's the effect...next roll please." Especially with how DCs are designed, no one felt able to leave the lane clearly designed for them.
It feels like a QTE in a video game that goes on for longer than enjoyable.
It's more like: different results from different GMs.
It very much depends on how often and how well the GM sells the description of surrounding events while the party is doing the first 7/8ths of the adventure.
Because yes, I will agree that mechanically the majority of the adventure has nothing to do with starship combat.
But that is also why the subsystem is called Cinematic Starship Scenes. The subsystem's mechanics alone aren't going to sell it for you.
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Are you talking about playing specifically Battle for Nova Rush? IF you are, then all I can say is different strokes for different folks.
Yes. Within relation to this topic, which is specifically "starship combat," and loosely how the SF2E "subsystems" kinda work. I'm not commenting on how fun the dungeon crawl is (which could quite frankly be a castle under siege with no difference other than flavor).
I'm a firm believer that people should enjoy what they enjoy and I'm genuinely happy you enjoy the game and adventure. WoTC needs more healthy competition. I'm also a firm believer that liking something doesn't make it good. *shrug*
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I think if I tried to sell my players on a Starship fight adventure, but I'm the end included only one minute of interacting with anything outside of your own ship they'd feel disappointed by the end of it. They might still enjoy their time because starfinder is a fun game and we enjoy our fellows company, but the adventure itself will probably not be remembered as living up to the pitch.
Not sure how you play, but in general, I think there's a huge difference in opinions online based on how someone plays the game.
I play in organized play, I often don't even know who the players are 5 minutes before the game starts, so I'm not even thinking about having to sell anyone on the adventure. As a player, when I sign up, the only thing I'm checking is the level of the scenario and if I have played it before. Sometimes I don't even do that and just play a pregen if none of the characters I brought are the right level. I also play lots of replays as both player and GM. That's very different from having a home game and knowing what your player like or not.
Battle for Nova Rush is just one session long. If you wanted to try running Battle for Nova Rush, you could Just tell your players that they start as prisoners on a ship and have to get out. I played only knowing that, and came out thinking this is a great way to run starship encounters. When I read it after the game, I was shocked that it was only 5 pages long of game text. If it's not something that fits your group that's fine too.
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[Yes. Within relation to this topic, which is specifically "starship combat," and loosely how the SF2E "subsystems" kinda work. I'm not commenting on how fun the dungeon crawl is (which could quite frankly be a castle under siege with no difference other than flavor).
A good example of a sci-fi castle siege in a movie is the Battle of Yarvin. Earlier in the movie, rescuing Princess Leia and escaping the Death Star is a good sci-fi dungeon crawl.
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I'm not commenting on how fun the dungeon crawl is (which could quite frankly be a castle under siege with no difference other than flavor).
I completely agree with you. I think the main difference between us is how much value we place on the flavour.
To me, flavour matters a lot. After all, Star Trek was "just" Wagon Train in space. Magnificent Seven is just Seven Samurai. Etc.
people should enjoy what they enjoy
Absolutely.
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Not sure how you play, but in general, I think there's a huge difference in opinions online based on how someone plays the game.
As context, my groups are both home groups who play lots of different games so generally will provide a description of the pitch for an adventure we'll be playing if we are going to play something.
Battle for Nova Rush is just one session long. If you wanted to try running Battle for Nova Rush, you could Just tell your players that they start as prisoners on a ship and have to get out. I played only knowing that, and came out thinking this is a great way to run starship encounters. When I read it after the game, I was shocked that it was only 5 pages long of game text. If it's not something that fits your group that's fine too.
For me it's a matter of "this isn't a 'starship combat encounter', it's 'encounters that happen on a starship'". It can be entertaining, but feels like I'd be setting false expectations to claim it's about a thing that isn't (in my eyes at least) a major part of the adventure.
If you tell people that an adventure is a great way to run heists, but the adventure is actually just the various complications that happened prior to the heist and some of the heist prep, while the heist itself is just a single abstracted roll... that isn't going to be seen an heist adventure to me and struggle to see how it'd work as a foundation for future heist adventures.
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To me,
1. The Battle for Nova Rush was funer then SF1e starship combat.
2. It felt like being on a ship while the ship was being attacked, largely due to a sense of urgency to get things done because the ship was getting attacked.
3. It felt different from just exploring and having encounters on a starship that was not being attacked.
4. It felt like the ship wasn't just there to get you to the adventure location.
5. It felt like the ships that attack the ship you are on were not just a random encounter on your way from point A to point B.
Call it what you like. I feel it's a good example of whatever that is.
I completely agree with you. I think the main difference between us is how much value we place on the flavour.
To me, flavour matters a lot. After all, Star Trek was "just" Wagon Train in space. Magnificent Seven is just Seven Samurai. Etc.
Whoa now, that's quite the negative assumption. I'm ALL about flavor. For me, it actually needs to be more than just flavor and set dressing. A cookie that tastes like cake is good, but some of us just want a good old ding dang slice of cake.
This thread is "man, I wish there was more fighting starships like Rogue Squadron," with you and Driftbourne saying, "What do you mean?! It absolutely feels just like you're in KoTOR!" Again, is it a bad one-shot? No. But it is very clearly a bad example of and absolutely NOT the "[actual] starship combat", many of us want and honestly expected.
If you tell people that an adventure is a great way to run heists, but the adventure is actually just the various complications that happened prior to the heist and some of the heist prep, while the heist itself is just a single abstracted roll... that isn't going to be seen an heist adventure to me and struggle to see how it'd work as a foundation for future heist adventures.
100% this. The conclusion was the worst part of Nova Rush even looking at it from a purely "I just want a dungeon crawl," lens. It's essentially a barely weighted coinflip between "You win!" and "You win! But, with a downside," that really isn't affected by the adventure choices prior.
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Whoa now, that's quite the negative assumption.
I didn't mean it as any kind of insult and if it came across as such I sincerely apologize.
absolutely NOT the "[actual] starship combat", many of us want and honestly expected.
And it is pretty much EXACTLY the starship combat system that I want. Starship combat feel and flavour but without some system to force me to actually play it.
So, hopefully Paizo will come out with a crunchy system that you'll like that I can almost totally ignore. That way we'll BOTH be happy :-)
Note - All my comments are based on the Starfinder 1e system, of course. While I am extremely sceptical that Paizo will come out with a detailed combat system that I'll like I'll try to look at whatever system they develop with an open mind and I hope that I'm wrong and its wonderful fun.
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This thread is "man, I wish there was more fighting starships like Rogue Squadron," with you and Driftbourne saying, "What do you mean?! It absolutely feels just like you're in KoTOR!" Again, is it a bad one-shot? No. But it is very clearly a bad example of and absolutely NOT the "[actual] starship combat", many of us want and honestly expected.
I haven't played Rogue Squadron, or KoTOR, but I used to play the old X-wing computer game, and currently play the Armada and X-wing miniature games.
I don't see Rogue Squadron as a starship combat game, from the players pespective its a starfighter game. You might go up against starships, but you're just one person controlling one starfighter. Sounds like you can give commands to NPCs in Rogue Squadron, but a typical Starfinder game is not just one player with several NPCs. To have starfighter combat in Starfinder, you need the whole party to have their own starfighters. I don't recall ever seeing that in a published Starfinder adventure. There are rules for squadron combat in SF1e, but I've never seen them used. To do squadren combat right in Starfinder, you need an AP like Mechageddon! for starfighters, but that's not something you do at release.
So if you're not in a starfigher, you're in a starship with a crew doing crew things during a battle or mission. If that's like KoTOR, I'm all for it. So I've never had the expectation in SF1e or SF2e that starship combat should be like a Rogue Squadron, or X-wing. Both Battle for Nova Rush and CSS let you do crew things in a starship. They don't replace tactical combat, but I think they do a good job of filling in until we get full tactical starship combat.
You could use CSS to recreate the Death Star Trench run. Luke didn't design his X-wing, so you don't need player-facing ship-building rules. You don't need maneuvering rules; they're flying in a trench. You don't need a long list of character options; Luke takes evasive maneuvers, decides to use the targeting computer or not, and fires a torpedo. Vader and the 2 TIE/ln are a hazards; the longer you take to get to the target, you start losing wingmen, you lose your shields, and R2-D2 gets hit. If you can do one of the most iconic cinematic starfighter scenes in movie history with a CSS, it's good enough for me.
100% this. The conclusion was the worst part of Nova Rush even looking at it from a purely "I just want a dungeon crawl," lens. It's essentially a barely weighted coinflip between "You win!" and "You win! But, with a downside," that really isn't affected by the adventure choices prior.
If by coin flip you mean
At least one PC must use Piloting.
One PCs fire ship weapons, or two PCs if you repaired the missiles.
+1 circumstance bonus if you got NPCs to help you along the way.
Reduce the DCs by 1 if the PCs repaired the reactor.
That happens immediately after fighting pirates to retake the bridge, and the ships attacking you cause control panels around the bridge to explode, causing damage to the PCs near them.
I see the "you win" part as defeating the pirates on the bridge, the ending rolls are just tell the GM how to describe your getaway, and sum up the prior actions you took earlier that helped you out in doing so.
We're playing the same game, just with different expectations and points of view; neither is wrong.
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If you tell people that an adventure is a great way to run heists, but the adventure is actually just the various complications that happened prior to the heist and some of the heist prep, while the heist itself is just a single abstracted roll... that isn't going to be seen an heist adventure to me and struggle to see how it'd work as a foundation for future heist adventures.
I think Battle for Nova Rush is a great example of how to run a starship encounter, but I don't think it's the only way. Also, when I say example, I don't mean copy and paste it, I mean twist and mangle it into whatever you like. The same goes for CSS.
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It's essentially a barely weighted coinflip between "You win!" and "You win! But, with a downside," that really isn't affected by the adventure choices prior.
I'm basing the following statement ONLY on the first AP in Starfinder 1e and the first 3/4 year or so of SFS scenarios. Things may have changed later.
But that is pretty much EXACTLY my reaction to the detailed Starfinder 1e rules.
For obvious reasons (TPKs suck) Paizo wasn't willing to make space combat actually deadly. Instead, you spent an hour or 2 of table time (table time that was boring as heck to me) and the end result was something pretty minor like getting a +2 initiative modifier on the next encounter or having 1 mook added or subtracted from the next encounter or the like.
While SOMETIMES you can manage to construct a space combat where losing doesn't logically mean TPK its pretty difficult and the fact that ALL combats were like that meant that it rapidly became impossible for me to suspend my disbelief over them. I don't remember the details but I remember thinking that many of them were REALLY stretching things to allow a defeat to be survived. I have no clue if this was deliberate or not but in the AP this was largely solved by making the PCs ship massively better than the enemies so there was no real risk of losing.
So, in my experience the detailed space combats were both boring and nearly pointless. While better rules may well address the first problem I don't see how they'll address the second.
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For obvious reasons (TPKs suck) Paizo wasn't willing to make space combat actually deadly.
That^^^ Plus half the time in SFS scenarios, the starship combat was the first encounter on the way to the main adventure, so a TPK would end the game at the start.
Side note: The longest SF1e starship combat I was in lasted almost 6 weeks in a play-by-post. The only thing that kept it interesting was taunting the enemy ship's captain. One of the players came up with the famous line "Eat my shed fur!" At the start of the next scenario, my character gave everyone on the crew a t-shirt with their best taunt from that battle on it.
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I feel like cinematic is the closest it's been, but has suffered from not giving players enough agency in the examples for me to want to use the system over just replacing the whole encounter with one or two skill rolls and just not having a system for starship combat in my games.
I really hope that whatever system they come to gives reasons to be doing different things each turn and have actual decisions get made.
Yeah...50-60% chance of A instead of B is exactly what a "barely weighted coin flip" is by definition...
*snip*
We're playing the same game, just with different expectations and points of view; neither is wrong.
I...ugh...You both seem to be completely ignoring what I'm actually saying. The topic is about tactical starship rules. Nova Rush is NOT that. Cinematic rules are NOT that.
End of line. Full stop. That's literally all there is to it.
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I feel like cinematic is the closest it's been, but has suffered from not giving players enough agency in the examples for me to want to use the system over just replacing the whole encounter with one or two skill rolls and just not having a system for starship combat in my games.
I really hope that whatever system they come to gives reasons to be doing different things each turn and have actual decisions get made.
Yeah.
I ran the Corpse Fleet encounter and almost immediately my players asked to do tasks not listed like targeting engines, taunting crew, hacking systems, etc.
I also don't get the hate on SF1e's Starship Combat, especially reading what came out after I quit running it. We're GMs really going, "oh you all explode now, game over." instead of disabling, surrendering, abandoning ship, etc? I think only once did I ever had a starship combat end in "TPK" and that was because it was a Halo: Reach style "survive until you can't" style finale mission to set up our next campaign.
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I also don't get the hate on SF1e's Starship Combat, especially reading what came out after I quit running it. We're GMs really going, "oh you all explode now, game over." instead of disabling, surrendering, abandoning ship, etc? I think only once did I ever had a starship combat end in "TPK" and that was because it was a Halo: Reach style "survive until you can't" style finale mission to set up our next campaign.
As someone who ran it to the end, I will list some reasons that can rub ppl the wrong way:
* Character Tax: To be useful in starship combat, your party needed to be able to fill specific roles (like pilot), which in return created a strange sense of obligation for any dex character becoming the pilot as its role is strategical pivotal.
(I homeruled that in Starship Combat, you can replace the usual skill ability with your key ability instead, which opened more options in party lineup without feeling bad)
* No Character Synergy: It doesn't matter in the vanilla version what exactly your character is, it comes down to skill checks. TIMs (training interface module) tried to make character choices matter more, but they are kinda artificial and not that useful due to restrictions and such. In a sense, starship combat lacked classes and only some archetypes and classes gave bonuses to them. This should have been part of Starfinder's DNA back then to make starship combat feel more essential than tagged on.
* Easy Exploits: The bulding rules were subpar in balance. It was easy to make your starship much stronger than its tier suggested, which is why there are optional rules that forces a more balanced approach to building (which I also used at some point).
* Gunners' Pace: If we go by most scenarios of the Adventure Paths, it was a fight until being destroyed. Which means, game-wise the gunner is the only role that progresses the fight, as it's mostly about HP. This is why Victory Points in CSS are actually a nice addition.
* Lack of Consequence: It's good that usually a los in the AP-fights ended up with being boarded, but usually the consequences are barely noticeable, either by a lack of urgency or that winning didn't really prepared the party better for the upcoming.
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* No Character Synergy: It doesn't matter in the vanilla version what exactly your character is, it comes down to skill checks.
For the most part agree with all you said, just wanted to add some comments to this one.
I always felt that Character Synergy and even lack of player awareness of the starship Ruel came from; that's it's not part of character creation and wasn't on the character sheet, unless you had the character portfolio. It also didn't help that Starship combat used a completely different action economy.
Especially in organized play, where the players never got to build their ship, I had always wanted a crew station modification rule, where each player could at least have some input on their crew station.
To help things run more smoothly, I used the Starship Rules Reference Cards and, at the start of combat, gave each player the cards for their crew role.
* Easy Exploits: The bulding rules were subpar in balance. It was easy to make your starship much stronger than its tier suggested,
That's one thing I like about CSS being by the encounter; if the balance is off, it's like fixing an encounter without having to update the rules. How or if that applies to the full starship rules, we'll have to see.
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I feel like Starfinder (2E) wouldn't be complete as a game if there were no starship combats in it, but I didn't like the original 1E version. I haven't played the latter variants so can't really speak to those.
But I think the biggest issues that need to be fundamentally addressed before you can start building any kind of rules are:
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* What happens if the players lose a starship combat? Is it TPK? Or adventure failure?
If we compare this a bit to other minigames, like Infiltration or Chases, when you're designing one of those scenes, you also need to think about it. If the players fail the chase, what happens? Can they go on with the adventure? Do they get caught and eaten by the Illumantula? If an infiltration fails, does the alarm go off, base goes on lockdown, and everyone is basically dead?
You could legitimately say that yes, the stakes are that high. Combat has high stakes; an (unrealistically) large amount of combats are just plain to the death. But the players are also massively in the advantage. Any Moderate fight the players are expected to consistently win without casualties, and even Severe fights are expected to be won most of the time (but sometimes with casualties). Extreme fights are more likely to have casualties but are mostly reserved for adventure-ending confrontations so you're not losing out on half of an AP book if you fail them.
But if the stakes are going to be that high, that has some consequences for how you can use them.
1) PCs should be in massive advantage most of the time, just like in regular combat. (If you think about it, most dungeons would also stall if you can't get past the Moderate encounter somewhere halfway through.)
2) Every class should offer something built-in to make you useful in starship combat. In SF1 there were plenty of ways to build a character that was useful in regular adventures but couldn't do anything useful in starship combat. A class-based character creation system should give PCs strong support to prevent that bad situation.
3) If the danger for a particular starship combat is low (mid-adventure, can't afford to have it derail the rest of it), then for it to be worth playing out, the mechanics themselves need to be fun.
4) If you're going to use a starship combat as the last encounter of an adventure then you can have higher danger level/stakes. But it still has to be fun and it becomes even more important that everyone has something valuable to do, because the climax fight of an adventure should really involve all the players.
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* If space combat is going to be its own miniature-based game, does everyone get a miniature of their own?
I think this is important because one of the frustrations in SF1 was that only the person (pilot) moving the ship got to really make a lot of choices. As a gunner you're just rolling dice and hoping to roll high, but you're not making many interesting choices.
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* How long is a space combat supposed to take?
If a minigame is fast and furious, you can actually get away with the rules design being a lot less sophisticated. Chase rules for example I find to be a lot more fun if you run them fast (10-20 minutes) than when people take their time and do painstaking worker placement optimization.
I think for space combat I could just run it similar to a chase minigame and that'd be fine. I could also run a space combat as being basically an entire Star Trek episode where every other scene you actually see some ships moving on camera, but a lot more of it is a scene in engineering with some clambering to fix a broken part, a social challenge to taunt the enemy or pry some information out of them, a boarding action when some of them beam aboard etc. It's technically a space combat but it's really more a framework story and the amount of time that's directly space combat isn't that much, and it's spread out wide.
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TL;DR - I think space combat design needs to start out by thinking a lot about what wining and losing means for the adventure. Provide build advice for GMs on how to use low and high stakes space combat. Especially for how to make LOW stakes space combat work because that's what you need the most of.
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I quite liked the cinematic combat stuff having played with it a few times. Personally, I'm not sure we need tactical combat, coming from someone who loved the tactical combat in SF1. I think what we need is the ability to get more crew actions and to customise our ships. Specifically, swapping weapons and choosing bay options. AC, shields, HP etc can all be covered by the building rules as in the cinemtaic combat stuff.
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But if the stakes are going to be that high, that has some consequences for how you can use them.
5) There needs to be (in general) some way for the PCs to be able to just run away from a fight once they realize they're losing.
In normal combat encounters most of the time (not all, admittedly) it is possible to realize that you're losing and its time to retreat, regroup, and come up with a better plan. In fact, those make some of the best encounters IMO.
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But if the stakes are going to be that high, that has some consequences for how you can use them.5) There needs to be (in general) some way for the PCs to be able to just run away from a fight once they realize they're losing.
In normal combat encounters most of the time (not all, admittedly) it is possible to realize that you're losing and its time to retreat, regroup, and come up with a better plan. In fact, those make some of the best encounters IMO.
That's one problem with Drift travel is activating a Drift drive requires the starship to be stationary with conventional thrusters off for 1 minute to "spin up" the engine. So fleeing tends to turn into a chase. Which can force a GM to have the opponents fight to the death if their ships are slower than the PCs' ship. Letting opponents flee when they take x amount of damage is a great way to keep starship battles from dragging on.
I don't think Dtrif trave needs to be changed, but having options like diverting all power to the sublight thrusters to make a getaway could help. Another option the PCs could be told in their mission briefing not to pursue fleeing starships.
If the PCs are the ones who flee, doing so could have some impact later on in the adventure. But being able to flee depends on whether the PCs' ship is faster than the opponents, back to needing some way to make a quick escape.
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TL;DR - I think space combat design needs to start out by thinking a lot about what wining and losing means for the adventure. Provide build advice for GMs on how to use low and high stakes space combat. Especially for how to make LOW stakes space combat work because that's what you need the most of.
I think for low-stakes combat, the goal should be for the PCs' main mission to be completing some goal not related to combat, but they have to survive the combat long enough to complete the mission before fleeing. Having goals like that also gives the PCs who are not pilots or gunners something to do.
Also, being able to directly target the opponent's engines or weapons could help end battles without having to fight to the death. This also leads to opportunities to board ships.
I think Ascalaphus hada really good point about high stake encounter happening at the end of a scenario, where a TPK wouldn't end the game right at the start. I also think having a final battle with a ship you have encountered before, where one side or the other had fled the fight, helps lead up to a better boss fight. That's harder to do in a single scenario, but could be done as part of a meta plot or AP.
I think losing doesn't have to mean a TPK. You could be stranded on a shipwreck in space, or you might be able to crash land and be stranded on a planet. You could be taken prisoner or rescued by someone else. A lot of these options work better in longer adventures and more sandbox games. They could be harder to do in organized play. For organized play, being rescued could be a downtime activity or a boon you buy with ACP
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* If space combat is going to be its own miniature-based game, does everyone get a miniature of their own?
I think this is important because one of the frustrations in SF1 was that only the person (pilot) moving the ship got to really make a lot of choices. As a gunner you're just rolling dice and hoping to roll high, but you're not making many interesting choices.
I think it's very unlikely that everyone will be in their own starfighter, unless they do an AP like Mechageddon! for starfighters. For one to do that, everyone has to be good at plioting and that narrows down character choices a lot. Most species wouldn't enjoy 5d6 weeks of Drift travel in a single-seat starfighter, so you also need a base ship.
So that makes the question what kind of starship works best for long travel with a crew of 4 to 6, and what kind of combat works for that size of ship. So we're talking about flying RVs with guns or in Star Wars light freighters, basically something you can live in, which just happen to be small enough to fit on a flip mat, but big enough to fill up the map.
From the STF CONline 2026 - Starfinder 2e Developer Panel last week, it looks like the SF2e developer working on staship combat was inspired by a game called Faster Than Light. Which looks like it could work with the size of ships I described above. I haven't played FTL, but watching some videos on it, it's got great reviews, so maybe they're on to something.
Also pointing out the lear long Drift Crisis event, was particularly inspired by the need to chage how the Drift works, so travel could become more predictable for things like space piracy to make more sense in Starfinder. That, combined with how FTL plays, and I think we will see more boarding action in SF2e, which makes sense with the size of the ship that fits a crew of 4 to 6. That doesn't mean there will only be shipboarding combat.
The ship in Battle for Nova Rush is big enough to act as a small base ship and could hold a few starfighters or a single shuttle-sized ship. I think if the party has more than one pilot, having 1 or 2 smaller ships, you could launch, could add a lot to a starship battle.
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I quite liked the cinematic combat stuff having played with it a few times. Personally, I'm not sure we need tactical combat, coming from someone who loved the tactical combat in SF1. I think what we need is the ability to get more crew actions and to customise our ships. Specifically, swapping weapons and choosing bay options. AC, shields, HP etc can all be covered by the building rules as in the cinemtaic combat stuff.
I agree that more options would be good. I wonder if, when the full shipbuilding rules are out, if you could just plug in a ship with a full stat block into a CSS and just use the rest of the CSS to set the obstacles, non-ship threats, and victory conditions to make an encounter. I also wonder if a list of crew actions for the full starship combat rules could also be used in a CSS.
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I think for those who have only looked at but not played with CSS, or played a CSS as written, there are more weapons and crew options than it may look at first sight.
If you take all the CSS we have so far 3 from the GM Core and 4 from Guilt of the Grave Word, we have 8 types of ship weapons plus a gunner action. Two of the weapons also have variations for different levels.
For pilot actions, there are 6, but Tactical Withdrawal appears in 3 different CSS having from slight to completely different variations. I think this is important to point out because, unlike standard actions that have a single fixed definition, an action in CSS can have the same name but be made to do whatever the scenario needs.
Some of the other crew roles are lacking actions, but are also some of the crew roles that have things to do inside the ship during a battle, using non ship realted ruels.
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I hope the new system makes boarding/counter boarding more viable/common. That lets people use their actual normal abilities a lot more frequently. In SF1 boarding was mostly mop up efforts after a ship was already basically disabled.
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Regarding "does losing a space battle mean TPK" - a solution from SF1 forum days was making escape pods a standard part of any ship design. And they're not worth points, you can't remove the space pods to buy more guns or shields.
Also, escape pods are designed to be really hard to find with (enemy) sensors, but respond to the coded frequencies of allies. And they just put you in stasis or life support with virtual reality entertainment. So basically, losing a space battle might mean losing the ship, everyone going in an escape pod, and waiting a few days or weeks for rescue.
Waiting to be rescued could still fail you the current adventure, but it allows the occasional really dangerous fight.
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I also like the idea of making fleeing easier than catching, as a matter of rule design. If both you and the enemy are by default capable of escaping if it looks like you can't win anymore, then you have less battles to the death and more about achieving specific things.
An enemy might want to prevent you from landing on a planet and exploring it; you might have to drive off a patrol ship. Once you've "persuaded" them you're too tough to stop, they flee. Now you're on a clock to do your mission, because maybe they come back with reinforcement.s
Or you're trying to blow up some satellites and they're trying to make things rather hot for you. But if you blow up the satellites, they might decide it's not worth sticking around anymore.
An actual battle to the death would require both sides to have a reason not to flee when they're losing, which makes things more interesting.
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I feel like cinematic is the closest it's been, but has suffered from not giving players enough agency in the examples for me to want to use the system over just replacing the whole encounter with one or two skill rolls and just not having a system for starship combat in my games.
I really hope that whatever system they come to gives reasons to be doing different things each turn and have actual decisions get made.
Yeah.
I ran the Corpse Fleet encounter and almost immediately my players asked to do tasks not listed like targeting engines, taunting crew, hacking systems, etc.
By CSS, using creature building rules for balance and scaling, it opens up using a lot of other regular actions.
Ttaunting the other crew is just a matter of calling them over ship comms and using intimidation to demoralize.
For hacking, you can borrow the hacking action from another CSS; they're all listed in the Archive of Nethys Cinematic Starship Scenes
Hack Defenses [two-actions] (magic or science officer)
Attempt a DC 22 Arcana, Computers, Nature, Occultism, or Religion check to infiltrate sensor networks or nullify sensor patrol drones and turrets in your path.
Critical Success: Gain 2 Infiltration Points.
Success: Gain 1 Infiltration Point.
Critical Failure: Lose 1 Infiltration Point.
In the SF2e GM Core, there's a Hacking Subsystem.
To target the engines, let an Enovy use Get'Em at the engines. The PCs hit the engines, giving the opponent's ship the glitching condition. Ships in CSS's can get persistent damage like PCs can, why not conditions? Since CSS doesn't have movement rules, instead of the glitching condition, use Off Guard to simulate that a slower ship is easier to hit.
To make CSS more intresting plug in regular actions/rules whenever you can. Doing so lets your players use actions from their character sheet, giving them more choices directly related to their character.
I also don't get the hate on SF1e's Starship Combat, especially reading what came out after I quit running it. We're GMs really going, "oh you all explode now, game over." instead of disabling, surrendering, abandoning ship, etc? I think only once did I ever had a starship combat end in "TPK" and that was because it was a Halo: Reach style "survive until you can't" style finale mission to set up our next campaign.
I'm not one of the SF1e starship combat haters. I had fun with it, but I see more potential in CSS and adventures built like Nova Rush, add movment rules to either, and you have tactical combat. Until we get full starship rules, I think a more useful conversation would be how to get the most out of CSS and adventures like Nova Rush to make them more fun.
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Speaking of ways to make CSS more fun or easier to use, a new 3rd-party tool was just released.
Mobile View and Cinematic Starship Combat Builder added to Starfinder Encounters