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Full Power To The Plasma Cannons: Demoing Starfinder Combat At The UK Games Expo
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<blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 7717640" data-attributes="member: 1"><p>A lot of starship combat systems have a lot of stuff in common, going back to the 1980s. The FASA Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator, for example, had the engineer allocating power at the start of each turn. It's a mechanic very typical of the genre, which is heavily influenced by Captain Kirk yelling "divert power to the forward shields!" I'm quite a fan of starship combat games - I'd say that when I was a kid D&D and starship combat were my two gaming loves and, if I'm completely honest, think starship combat had the edge most of the time for me. Love that stuff.</p><p></p><p>When I played, the GM said it was a stripped down version - no science officer or captain. We had a pilot, gunner, and engineer. Engineering phase, movement phase, firing phase. </p><p></p><p>What Jason Bulmahn has done here is come up with a fairly fast-moving, easy to understand expression of starship combat. From what I saw, he hasn't done anything I haven't seen before, but his take on it seems solid and fast, at least in my 40-minute demo. At no point did the game bog down, and the whole fight, which took about 5 rounds, took about 40 mins - mainly the GM explaining he new rules to us as we went along. I think you could whip through the same thing in 10 mins once you know what you're doing, which is a good thing in my book. </p><p></p><p>Initiative - ships move in reverse initiative order then act in forward initiative order. You may have seen the mechanic before (other tactical games use it; and even Call of Cthulhu uses it!), but it's a solid mechanic which is used for a reason. If it's not broke...</p><p></p><p>Movement - I don't know if there are rules for Newtonian movement, but in the version we played you move a number of hexes up to your ship's speed, and can turn after every X hexes where X is your maneuver rating. I wouldn't be surprised to see a slightly more complex version as an optional rule in the book, but I was enjoying by myself too much and didn't think to ask.</p><p></p><p>It allowed for various maneuvers in the form of abilities (which IIRC were called stunts, but I may be wrong). Very easy to use. The two goblin ships were weak but really fast and had no turning limitations. As the pilot I could flip and burn to turn the ship 180, reverse the engines (which I used repeatedly to stay between the goblins and let the gunner fire port and starboard weapons at both), and something else I don't recall.</p><p></p><p>I enjoyed it. I would say that the kid playing the engineer seemed to have less to do, as each turn all he was doing was choosing a system to boost while the pilot and the gunner did more stuff. We had three guns, one gunner (though the gunner had an ability which let him fire two guns at a penalty). The GM said the engineer would have had more options if our ship got damaged, which it didn't.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Morrus, post: 7717640, member: 1"] A lot of starship combat systems have a lot of stuff in common, going back to the 1980s. The FASA Star Trek Tactical Combat Simulator, for example, had the engineer allocating power at the start of each turn. It's a mechanic very typical of the genre, which is heavily influenced by Captain Kirk yelling "divert power to the forward shields!" I'm quite a fan of starship combat games - I'd say that when I was a kid D&D and starship combat were my two gaming loves and, if I'm completely honest, think starship combat had the edge most of the time for me. Love that stuff. When I played, the GM said it was a stripped down version - no science officer or captain. We had a pilot, gunner, and engineer. Engineering phase, movement phase, firing phase. What Jason Bulmahn has done here is come up with a fairly fast-moving, easy to understand expression of starship combat. From what I saw, he hasn't done anything I haven't seen before, but his take on it seems solid and fast, at least in my 40-minute demo. At no point did the game bog down, and the whole fight, which took about 5 rounds, took about 40 mins - mainly the GM explaining he new rules to us as we went along. I think you could whip through the same thing in 10 mins once you know what you're doing, which is a good thing in my book. Initiative - ships move in reverse initiative order then act in forward initiative order. You may have seen the mechanic before (other tactical games use it; and even Call of Cthulhu uses it!), but it's a solid mechanic which is used for a reason. If it's not broke... Movement - I don't know if there are rules for Newtonian movement, but in the version we played you move a number of hexes up to your ship's speed, and can turn after every X hexes where X is your maneuver rating. I wouldn't be surprised to see a slightly more complex version as an optional rule in the book, but I was enjoying by myself too much and didn't think to ask. It allowed for various maneuvers in the form of abilities (which IIRC were called stunts, but I may be wrong). Very easy to use. The two goblin ships were weak but really fast and had no turning limitations. As the pilot I could flip and burn to turn the ship 180, reverse the engines (which I used repeatedly to stay between the goblins and let the gunner fire port and starboard weapons at both), and something else I don't recall. I enjoyed it. I would say that the kid playing the engineer seemed to have less to do, as each turn all he was doing was choosing a system to boost while the pilot and the gunner did more stuff. We had three guns, one gunner (though the gunner had an ability which let him fire two guns at a penalty). The GM said the engineer would have had more options if our ship got damaged, which it didn't. [/QUOTE]
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Full Power To The Plasma Cannons: Demoing Starfinder Combat At The UK Games Expo
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