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Starship Operations Manual - Discussions
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<blockquote data-quote="Porridge" data-source="post: 8052655" data-attributes="member: 7020143"><p>I haven't had the opportunity to actually play with the options in the Starship Operations Manual (SOM) yet. But I think the main things that have made starship combat less fun for us are:</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It seems like only one or two players (pilot and gunner) get to do interesting things.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Well-built custom ships are vastly better than the pre-made ships opposing them, making most published starship combat encounters trivial.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There doesn't seem to be much strategic depth, because there aren't that many different strategies available for players to pursue.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There doesn't seem to be a lot of variety with respect to how combats feel.</li> </ol><p>And SOM adds a number of options that seem to do a reasonable job of addressing each of these issues.</p><p></p><p>1. Regarding only the pilot and gunner getting to do interesting things: SOM introduces new squadron rules, which allow each PC to pilot their own ship (or pairs of PCs to pilot ships, or whatever). If you use this option then every player will get to do the interesting things with their ship, because every player will be the pilot and gunner of their ship. </p><p></p><p>2. Regarding combat being boring because custom ships are overpowered: SOM includes (sorely needed) optional Budget Design rules, which go a long way toward making custom ships more balanced. Using those rules, you can't just pour all your BP into top notch shields (no more than 10% of the ship's BP on shields), or just mount you big super-gun on a turret and ignore facing entirely (no more than 15% of your ship's BP on adding turrets, turret mounts, and turret weapons; though you can spend up to 35% of your ship's BP on weapons). This makes starship combat much more balanced and challenging.</p><p></p><p>3. Regarding the lack of variety in strategic options: SOM adds a number of new weapons, expansions, and kinds of things you can do, which lend themselves to a wider variety of strategies you can build your ship for, or employ in a given combat.</p><p></p><p>For example, you can add some sweet buster weapons (very high damage to shields, half damage to hull), and some attachment weapons which allow you up to send boarding parties onto ships once their shields are down, or some boarding pods (with boarding parties aboard) which you can fire at opposing ships whose shields are down.</p><p></p><p>You can add a hacking weapon and have your science officer hack their ship, turning all of their computer bonuses into minuses you can selectively deploy as you wish. You can deploy mines to scatter around the enemy to box them in. You can use teleporting weapons to teleport opposing ships into environmental hazards, or into suboptimal positions. You can use force ramming weapons to use you shields to bash them into submission.</p><p></p><p>You can add a VI/AI to your ship, to do valuable but repetitive actions which none of the players want to be stuck with.</p><p></p><p>You can add some TIM modules which allow characters with various feats to gain unique new actions they can use during starship combat, some of which are pretty sweet, or load up with mystical weapons, which allow you to use mysticism ranks and your wisdom modifier for gunnery, opening up the range of attractive options available to people in different roles.</p><p></p><p>And so on. Lots of ways to spice up starship combat.</p><p></p><p>4. Regarding combat strategies being the same every time: SOM introduces a number of kinds of environmental hazards and challenges, both in space (asteroids of various kinds, hull-eating bacteria, proton storms, star coronas, gravity fields, gamma ray bursts, nebulas, temporal rifts, wormholes, planar energy nebulas, etc) and in the atmosphere (atmospheric friction, electric storms, ice storms, obfuscating atmospheres, toxic atmospheres, windstorms).</p><p></p><p>It introduces rules for constructing space creatures (for very different kinds of challenges).</p><p>And it includes a discussion of various alternate win conditions (win a race, capture the other ship, getting some key cargo from an opposing ship, either by social means, by boarding them, or by some other means; track a ship to their destination, protecting a key ship from damage, escape to avoid destruction from an armada, drop off some cargo to a certain location and then getting out of there before you get caught, etc). </p><p></p><p>A liberal mix of these rules should make starship combat encounters feel very different from one another.</p><p></p><p>So on the whole, I'm pretty optimistic that starship combat will play a lot better now.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Porridge, post: 8052655, member: 7020143"] I haven't had the opportunity to actually play with the options in the Starship Operations Manual (SOM) yet. But I think the main things that have made starship combat less fun for us are: [LIST=1] [*]It seems like only one or two players (pilot and gunner) get to do interesting things. [*]Well-built custom ships are vastly better than the pre-made ships opposing them, making most published starship combat encounters trivial. [*]There doesn't seem to be much strategic depth, because there aren't that many different strategies available for players to pursue. [*]There doesn't seem to be a lot of variety with respect to how combats feel. [/LIST] And SOM adds a number of options that seem to do a reasonable job of addressing each of these issues. 1. Regarding only the pilot and gunner getting to do interesting things: SOM introduces new squadron rules, which allow each PC to pilot their own ship (or pairs of PCs to pilot ships, or whatever). If you use this option then every player will get to do the interesting things with their ship, because every player will be the pilot and gunner of their ship. 2. Regarding combat being boring because custom ships are overpowered: SOM includes (sorely needed) optional Budget Design rules, which go a long way toward making custom ships more balanced. Using those rules, you can't just pour all your BP into top notch shields (no more than 10% of the ship's BP on shields), or just mount you big super-gun on a turret and ignore facing entirely (no more than 15% of your ship's BP on adding turrets, turret mounts, and turret weapons; though you can spend up to 35% of your ship's BP on weapons). This makes starship combat much more balanced and challenging. 3. Regarding the lack of variety in strategic options: SOM adds a number of new weapons, expansions, and kinds of things you can do, which lend themselves to a wider variety of strategies you can build your ship for, or employ in a given combat. For example, you can add some sweet buster weapons (very high damage to shields, half damage to hull), and some attachment weapons which allow you up to send boarding parties onto ships once their shields are down, or some boarding pods (with boarding parties aboard) which you can fire at opposing ships whose shields are down. You can add a hacking weapon and have your science officer hack their ship, turning all of their computer bonuses into minuses you can selectively deploy as you wish. You can deploy mines to scatter around the enemy to box them in. You can use teleporting weapons to teleport opposing ships into environmental hazards, or into suboptimal positions. You can use force ramming weapons to use you shields to bash them into submission. You can add a VI/AI to your ship, to do valuable but repetitive actions which none of the players want to be stuck with. You can add some TIM modules which allow characters with various feats to gain unique new actions they can use during starship combat, some of which are pretty sweet, or load up with mystical weapons, which allow you to use mysticism ranks and your wisdom modifier for gunnery, opening up the range of attractive options available to people in different roles. And so on. Lots of ways to spice up starship combat. 4. Regarding combat strategies being the same every time: SOM introduces a number of kinds of environmental hazards and challenges, both in space (asteroids of various kinds, hull-eating bacteria, proton storms, star coronas, gravity fields, gamma ray bursts, nebulas, temporal rifts, wormholes, planar energy nebulas, etc) and in the atmosphere (atmospheric friction, electric storms, ice storms, obfuscating atmospheres, toxic atmospheres, windstorms). It introduces rules for constructing space creatures (for very different kinds of challenges). And it includes a discussion of various alternate win conditions (win a race, capture the other ship, getting some key cargo from an opposing ship, either by social means, by boarding them, or by some other means; track a ship to their destination, protecting a key ship from damage, escape to avoid destruction from an armada, drop off some cargo to a certain location and then getting out of there before you get caught, etc). A liberal mix of these rules should make starship combat encounters feel very different from one another. So on the whole, I'm pretty optimistic that starship combat will play a lot better now. [/QUOTE]
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