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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LucasC" data-source="post: 6303653" data-attributes="member: 6762606">The game consisted of a gunfight and a starship battle. Unlike prior starship encounters, this one featured large ships and the PCs were not intended to simply survive but rather stay and fight. General Feedback & Questions<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The increased defenses were well received and the small boost seemed to make a noticeable but not overly powerful impact</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The limitation on Deadly Strike had a definite (and IMO positive) impact - damage totals were down significantly and monsters were taking about 2 hits on average to kill (vs. just one)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One additional note on this - one of the players asked if he could swap it out for an alternative choice given the limitation. Two of them kept it as their combat trick. That's also a good sign I think.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is the Disarm trick meant to do damage as well as disarming the target?</li> </ul>Heroic Tier Yesterday's encounters included three heroic-tier monsters. My players expressed concerns that the results from these monsters felt pretty swingy. One hit in particular stood out where the attacker did 47 damage with a single shot on 4d8 (due to 2 or 3 exploders). The inclusion of these combatants definitely added a level of danger to the encounter. Initial feedback from the players on this was generally negative. They feel like the tiers plus the skill rank limitations have changed the game from a skills-based game to a level-based game and they preferred the prior. There was grumbling at the reduced chance to explode upon increasing from Starter tier to Heroic tier. At the conclusion of the night all the PCs received enough XP to advance to Heroic Tier so beginning w/next week's feedback we will have more specific experiences w/Heroic tier. Starship CombatThe starship encounter lined up a single battleship against about a dozen frigates. As this was our first large-ship battle I wasn't sure how things would go. The battleship needed more help than I thought it would. The PCs were in the battleship. Deviations from RAW<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I allowed each PC two actions as they get during personal combat.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I'm not certain if you mean for any of the personal combat options to be available in ship-to-ship combat but we allowed a tradeoff of attack dice to damage at a 2-for-1 ratio. Without this tradeoff the frigates would have been unable to harm the battleship without exploding. </li> </ul>General Feedback<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A couple of players indicated they found the combat somewhat dull. In personal combat there are many things to consider such as positioning, cover, crossfire, movement, etc. while in ship combat it seems much more like a slugfest - these big ships get into position and then shoot at one another w/some movement to get at different firing arcs but not much more.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shield Deterioration has a huge impact on the fight. The battleship began with 18 SOAK from shields and enjoyed a high level of protection from the attacking frigates. Nevertheless, with so many attackers each firing at it multiple times, the shields were penetrated repeatedly. Each shot that got through then went against a SOAK 7 from armor. While it took a lot of hits, by the end of the first round the shields were down to about 8 and by the end of round 2 they were gone entirely. As the shield degraded the damage to the ship ratcheted upwards and by round 3 the ship would have been destroyed (but the battle ended early).<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That's just an observation of how the encounter played out relative to shields btw, not a comment on whether it was good or bad - the fight was woefully one-sided favoring the frigates.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In large ships with sizable shields taking significant damage, restoring 1 point of shield SOAK with an action can quickly consume all available PC actions (if they chose to do it at all) -<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Although my PCs didn't opt to restore shields, recognizing they couldn't possibly keep up, I would probably allow them to make a check and restore 1 point for each DC they hit (so 1 @ DC 16 as written, then 2 @ DC 21, 3 @ 25, etc.)</li> </ul></li> </ul>Starship Design Feedback<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I had a much harder time getting my LUXURY high enough to not have a penalty with the larger ship - that's good as all the smaller ships the LUXURY rating was a freebie.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Of note, as Escape Pods don't take up space and add 1/2 LUX per I could actually add enough escape pods to pump my LUXURY all the way to 200% or more. You may want to limit the LUX bonus from escape pods to the crew size (each one is good for 2 crew members so really, after all crew members have a spot on an escape pod they probably shouldn't add more LUXURY).</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I could easily have built my battleship to be invincible by giving it more shields. I think the CPU will eventually limit this but anyhow, that's probably worth noting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The table on page 10 of the latest ship-building guide should go further than ship-size 12</li> </ul></blockquote>

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