Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarkB" data-source="post: 5332756" data-attributes="member: 40176">Running ships in combat is tricky, and varies in effectiveness depending upon both system and party build.One of the major pitfalls is that ships run to a strict chain of command, whereas adventuring parties run through a form of flexible, inconstant consensus. It's possible to run a small ship without an official captain, but even then, whoever's at the helm or in the pilot seat is going to call most of the shots tactically.Another problem is giving everyone things to do - especially, interesting things to do. On a starship, there tend to be limited numbers of posts to man, and some offer far more interesting tasks than others. In Star Wars Saga Edition, for instance, it ranks pretty much from pilot and gunner at the top, to engineer and co-pilot at the bottom, with the latter having little to do each round except make assist rolls to make the former look good.There's also the question of division of skills. Unless the party spend all their time fighting naval battles, they're not all going to be specialised in shipboard activities. Some systems penalise that lack of specialisation more heavily than others, with characters built mostly for non-shipboard activities having to more-or-less just sit out the fight.Finally, there's a distinct all-or-nothing aspect to shipboard combat, especially with spaceships. If all goes well, it's fine - but if things go bad, it may only take one fatal hit on the ship to take out the whole party.If you're using a generalist system rather than one that specialises in shipboard combat above all else, I'd recommend either making it the focus of your game and having players build their characters around it, or else making it very rare and designing each of those rare encounters to offer opportunities for all players to use their characters' talents.</blockquote>

Verification