Starship combat: Fun for PC pilot, boring for everyone else.
Starship combat: Fun for PC pilot, boring for everyone else.
What can everyone else be doing?
More than one pilot? What does a co-pilot do?
Gunner if you have combat skills?
Repairs if you're an engineer?
What else can get the other players rolling the dice so everyone has something fun to do?
I'm thinking of Millennium Falcon / Serenity type ships.
We had a lot of ship combat in my friend's sci-fi RPG he created... and while the pilot drove, we had the engineer keeping track of repairs and boosting the engines when necessary for the pilot, the gunners doing the fighting, the communications officer (or co-pilot) blocking enemy transmissions, the co-pilot taking care of the shields, the medical doctor taking care of injured crew, you name it.
ReplyDeleteslight tangent but there's this game called "Puzzle Pirates" where the captain plays a combat mini-game while the crew plays, repair, reload, bilgeing and sail-trimming (etc) mini-games... then if you managed to disable the other ship you could board and play all play a team "sword fighting" minigame.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how to make it fun but there is a lot of stuff the rest of the crew could roll on the star-ship, reloading, spot repairs and patching containment breaches, navigating the Jefferies tubes, loading torpedoes... also you can have a few gunner turrets etc... and it all ends up more fun if you do less dog-fighting and more boarding... or maybe everybody get's their own drone fighter.
Rogue Trader has a whole bunch of stuff for the crew to do during combat. You might look there for ideas.
ReplyDeleteI had a vague plan once to make up a list of roles people could perform on the ship, and force them to make a roll to do it. Someone had to fill every single role, doubling up if required. Then at the end you'd have a collective plus/minus based on how all the other jobs were done. Then that modifier is applied to the captain's piloting roll(s).
Example: you screw up on shields, it means the pilot has to work harder to dodge shots.
shields
ReplyDeletesensors
repairs
guns
computers (including jamming signal of enemies)
astrogation calculations (usually the copilot)
boosting engine performance
All ships functions are modelled by the ships computer as a representational holodeck simulation in the form of a fantasy role-playing game.
ReplyDeleteDifferent turrets or maybe smaller interceptors or defense drones that can be piloted either by remote or directly by a PC crew member.
ReplyDeleteSweet. I've got some ideas now. I think my main concern is that people don't have tactical options. I'm going to see if I can figure at least a couple of different actions for each "station" to choose from.
ReplyDeletePilot: Dodge or Intercept
ReplyDeleteEngineer: Repair or Boost Power
Sensors: Electronic Warfare or Electronic Defense
Gunner: Shoot stuff or Shoot stuff
For gunner you could have them try to target specific areas (shields, engines, hull)
ReplyDeletesensors could have an option to provide a bonus to gunner attack or damage.
Casey Garske don't forget shield ops.
ReplyDeleteshield ops: redistribute shield strength (front, left, right, back) or regain shield power.
ReplyDeleteThis is all for a two-page complete d20ish sci-fi rpg. I've got room for maybe a little over two 8pt columns in landscape. I'm going to cram as much in there as possible.
ReplyDeletemost of what I said above are things you can do in the d20 version of SW (Revised) and all of that came from the initial complaint that just being a pilot was boring and stupid.
ReplyDeleteWhen I play Star Wars I am ALWAYS a pilot and no one, even the GM, ever wants to do space combat. :(
ReplyDeleteMore fault them... I had a lot of fun being a Y-Wing pilot, myself. :)
ReplyDeleteadding things for everyone else to do makes space combat more enjoyable. (thus the discussion, obviously)
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see a Jedi used in space combat. Throw around asteroids or just shove star fighters around. I suppose that could be fudged with tractor/repulsor beams as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat about a hacker type? Break in to disable controls, shields, guns and so forth
Jason Beighel I've got psychics in this, and I'm thinking about their powers in space combat too. You'll be getting a rough draft soon.
ReplyDeleteYou might consider what our group did once. The main Ship had two docking clamps. Which allowed two modifed Z-95 Headhunters to dock for lightspeed jumps. This added larger space battles, as the two fighters defended the main ship, and extra drama as we had to re-dock before jumps, not get separated, rescue damaged a damaged fighter, etc . . .
ReplyDelete