Starfighters as PC ships?

[Rerun941]

[garhkal]

Well, the old owner could have tried to make upgrades but got stopped mid grade so the penalties from any upgrade are felt (like upping the hull drops maneuvering) but the bonuses are not.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[ifurin]

[Lostboy]

I like using ships that come with unexpected things thrown in that are nither good nor bad but can be either. For example i once had a ship that included a "Training droid" that would help the characters learn several skills and then upgrade itself so that it would keep pace and force the characters to keep improving. No one realised that the droid programing would cause it to ultimately kill it's owners when they inevitably failed to match it in combat. The was no intent to cause harm just a droid doing what it was programmed to do.

[ggmoridin]

[garhkal]

Done that with a combat droid once... had it where if its head got taken off, then it would initiate a 3 round count down to its detonation of the power core. Would only do 8d, but that was out to 10 m, then 7d to 16, 6d to 22, and dropping another d every 6m there out.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Lostboy]

Ouch!

[garhkal]

THing was, the group had intell the baddies had trapped the droid, but failed to dig into it further and forgot about that when they went to battle it... 3 died, 2 went to incap and 2 got wounded.....
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Lostboy]

When you have been warned you have no one to blame but themselves. Those really are the best kinds of PC death, mostly because they make you feel so deliciously evil.

[enderandrew]

My greatest concern isn't balance, but rather making sure that each player has a role and a niche. Make sure the game is enjoyable. And by that I don't mean hand the galaxy to the players on a platter, but do make sure they can all contribute in space scenes. If that means giving a starfighter in addition to a freighter, then by all means do so.

My really long running Star Wars group I had for years had a setup like this, where they had a medium freighter and Z-95. The Z-95 wasn't actively used by modern militaries anymore. It was basically defense against pirates and the like. Flying into Coruscant, the Z-95 wasn't seen as a threat to orbiting platforms.

I'm not a fan of D&D mechanics, but the one thing that game gets right is via a class system, players are encouraged to fit within niche roles, giving everyone a job to do. The problem with one freighter is that the player characters often have nothing to do while one PC flies the freighter. Try to get everyone involved.

Otherwise you end up with a Shadowrun scenario, where you spend 30 minutes just dealing with the Decker PC, then 30 minutes just dealing with the Rigger PC, etc.
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Nihilism makes me smile.

[garhkal]

Not really. Depending on the freighter others have the capacity to contribute.

1 can do copiloting where he mans the coms and sensors,
1 can man the shield station
1 can man each gun (and many groups i have played with have 2-3 guns on their freighters)
1 (or more) can stay in engineering to help fix anything that breaks.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[enderandrew]

Except the person manning coms and sensors likely won't have anything to do in a standard battle.

While I enjoyed the ability to change shield levels in games like X-Wing vs TIE, the shield operator also likely won't have to do anything in battle. At best, they make one small change, and not every battle.

The gunners will keep busy, assuming your freighter has multiple guns.

I'm not familiar with any major repair from the Tramp Freighter book that the engineer can perform in a 5 second combat round.

As for the occasional minor roll that you may want to make on sensors or shields, my players usually relied on droids.

In your standard freighter combat, you keep a pilot, and a gunner or two busy. Thusly, for a five-man party, the addition of a snub fighter has a greater chance of keeping everyone involved.
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Nihilism makes me smile.

[jmanski]

Actually the shield operator will be very busy as it takes an action to angle the deflectors to a particular arc. Start splitting arcs and MAP builds up....
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Blasted rules. Why can't they just be perfect?

[enderandrew]

If someone is behind you, can't catch up, and is only firing at you from one direction, then it makes sense to change shield levels.

If fighters are circling around you, then it isn't wise to lower levels in any particular area to boost them in another.

In the rare scenario that you are changing shield levels, a droid can handle that.
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Nihilism makes me smile.

[masque]