Space combat when PCs are not operating the ship

[Dromdarr_Alark]

Hi all,

None of my players, except for one, wanted to make characters that could operate space ships, so I have given them NPCs that bus them from place to place in their freighters. The exception has a starfighter, so she can't really transport the rest of the group.

My question is how would you run space combat when the PCs are not in charge of their own ship and have no relevant skills?
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Jedi Skyler]

Personally, I might engineer a situation that is designed to HIGHLY ENCOURAGE them to start building up this set of skills.

I don't know the scope of the characters in question (meaning are any of them military, or do they belong to some sort of organization?) so I can't simply say, "Sorry, NPCs X,Y, and Z have just been recalled to their unit following a devastating Imperial attack that has left their home unit decimated" or something like that.

However, it is perfectly reasonable to have some sort of mishap befall the ship during said combat that will leave the players no choice but to strap into the turrets, or hop into the copilot's couch, or even take over communications or sensors because one or more of the NPCs just got seriously wounded (or worse), thus leaving gaps that MUST be filled in order for the characters to escape. That being said, I realize some will see that as being unfair to the players. I, however, think it's rather unfair to you, forcing you to NPC both sides of the table in a combat. And, given the nature of the SW universe, to say nothing of whatever the characters are and do, there WILL be space combat at some point. Better that the PCs can handle business when it comes a knockin'.

I'm thinking you might perhaps engineer what is described to your players as a supremely lucky shot, say, from a salvage ship the characters happened to unwittingly stumble across. Especially if it's an illegal salvage operation, they'll be armed and wary of anyone passing their way, and they'll have crew on board manning weapons that are kept hot in case they have to blast their way out of there in a hurry. The salvagers' shots can have been extremely well-placed, scoring a number of direct hits that cause explosions on some of the control boards perhaps, or buck the ship enough to cause injuries that prevent the NPCs from performing their duties, thus requiring the PCs to step in. I'd think you wouldn't be able to justifiably have these successful hits rendering ALL the NPCs incapacitated, as that would leave the ship in a state where they couldn't escape. However, if you knock out the copilot, perhaps a gunner, and maybe one or two of the techs on board, you can have members of the party fill these roles. Say, if you have a ship's engineer still conscious and active, you can have a PC or two sent to Engineering, where he can direct their efforts, perhaps even combining skill dice to achieve a successful result. The PC who takes over the copilot's station learns about piloting the ship, etc. Since you do have NPCs controlling the weapons on this ship, perhaps you can also have a good enough volley of return fire occur that fortunately damages the salvagers' vessel, and then you've created suspense and drama by making it a race to see whose ship is repaired enough to act first. This can keep the players focused on trying to get out of the situation, hopefully instead of griping because now their characters have to get their own hands dirty.

Also, once this particular part of the adventure is complete, and the characters have (hopefully) escaped, I would award some CPs and allow the players to add them at this point, stressing that they've only used ship-board skills, and so can only up those skills. You can also highly encourage them to do this, perhaps by making it impossible to acquire replacement personnel anytime soon and stressing how it's going to be a long time before they'll have the capability to do so. You might even have the ship's engines damaged enough that the trip takes longer than normal, requiring the PCs to spend an extended time working in these positions, which would then lend story support to their characters having raised these skills.

And, if the players decide to be stupid and say they're going to simply bank the CPs for later, when they can raise their preferred stats, I'd make it a long time before any more CPs were awarded. Either that, or throw them into some serious and frequent combat, such that they end up having to spend all those CPs to augment dice rolls. And then I'd STILL make it practically impossible to find personnel to add to the NPC crew. Any arguments against this should be met with the explanation of how unfair (and boring, even) it is to have the GM making all the bloody rolls. If you'd wanted to do that, you'd be playing the game by yourself, after all.

The only other option I'd probably consider if they resist these measures is to offer to allow each player to add another character, having each playing two characters at the same time. The new characters would then be REQUIRED to be strong in ship-board skill sets, and would likely only be active when the party is on board and in transit. While that would normally be more work for you, having to juggle that many characters, you're already doing it by running all the crew positions with NPCs, so I'd think it'd actually be less work for you. It would take half the responsibility off you, it would force your players to broaden their horizons, and might make them better roleplayers by making them run two different characters at once. I've personally been involved in a game where each player was running FIVE different characters at once; it was a grand undertaking for the GM, because he wanted to run a campaign that covered several different facets of an adventure at once. Part of the requirement for this game was that each player HAD to run at least one character that was part of the command crew for a capital ship that was part of a planetary militia force, a planet in a system the Empire was just in the process of invading as the campaign commenced. As it's a PbP game, posting did eventually die off as some serious RL concerns affected several of the players, but while it was active, it was quite an interesting game. I rather enjoyed it, and would love to see it start back up again.

That's my two cents; I hope I've at least given you what you consider to be some decent ideas to explore.

[lurker]

Well without knowing your group or your gaming style, you could treat it like a ‘military’ type campaign. I was on a team, we did all kinds of cool things, but knowing how to fly ourselves around in the helos, or the C-130s we jumped out of … nope. No pilot skills what so ever. We’d actually called them all over paid bus drivers … (until we were in a tight spot and needed a quick exfill on a hot LZ)

However, even with that, we all had a hand at learning how to help with the door gun and basic maintenance, and how to prep and load our gear & vehicles for a safe flight but rapid infil/exfil. I remember a Chinook flight were I got to keep pressure on a lose hydraulic hose while we headed back to the base. There is nothing like hearing “here you, you’ve had your fun now help a bit. Hold this, don’t let it slip & oh yeah, if it stops leaking let us know … (because then the hydraulic line would be empty…).


Soooo even if they don’t have a lot of skills focused on ships type stuff, there is things they could do when they are catching a ride with their ‘bus drivers’. The turret can malfunction and not work from the fire control station on the flight deck (time for the heavy weapon guy to step in) or a malfunction in the engine room effecting more than one system can mean the wrench turner needs extra hands to keep things from getting out of hand, and the list can go on and on …

Also, if they are relying on NPCs and a flight goes bad they can get mad at anyone (they are not flying the craft nor making the nave calc so they don’t know what the roll was one way or another) soooooo you can script it any way you see fit. Even play up the description so your group is annoyed at the flight crew and the flight crew at them … Keep the rivalry going between the zoomies and the mud eaters. Have fun with it! “What happened to a quick 6 hour jump … 2 days later and we are still in hyper space” “Boy coming out right next to the asteroid field was a great idea … could the flight have been any more bumpy!” or on the flight crew side “How can 5 guys make such a mess, can’t you clean your gear at least a little before you call for extraction” or “Do you all actually NEED 3 hover bikes, an armored vehicle and 2k lbs of batteries, food and water, I thought you all were ‘light’”
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"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

[DougRed4]

Both of these responses have been excellent so far, I've got to say!

I'm glad my players haven't gone this route. I've got a couple of PCs that are more 2-dimensional (rather than 3), in that they're fairly worthless in a space fight, but one of them already dropped his character (changing to a new PC). Other than that, most of my players have simply "jumped in" and took up needed positions when the fighting started. "Nobody else can do it, so 'so-and-so', you head down and man one of the guns!"

Dromdarr, my encouragement to you would be to encourage your players to start picking up those skills. A large part of Star Wars is the space combat, at least to many people (myself included). I don't think it would feel like the epic franchise we all love if you took that part out of it.

One beauty of this game is that you don't need to be a specialist to do most things. Other than a few advanced skills (like Medicine), you simply default to the base attribute. So get that player with a decent Mechanical on the ship's guns or have them figuring out how to work the ship's sensors!

If you do choose to continue with NPCs, another thing you can do (to avoid you simply playing solitaire while they watch) would be to "assign" each of your players an NPC. At least that way they have some investment in the fight, and can learn to start enjoying space combat.

But just like if I had a group of players who told me they didn't want to put anything into Blaster or Dodge, I'd encourage them to have at least a few who are competent with spacefaring skills, if they want to survive as a group!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[garhkal]

Like skylar says, there are those who feel hitting them where they have not got the skills, is unfair (like say in an adnd game if they took no thief, NOT removing traps that are around), but i say don't change the situation cause they decided to not focus on that aspect.
YES you might make it easier to get an almost TPK cause the pilot is out of the equation (or his skills are insufficient to stop the enemy hitting the ship and destroying it), but i feel that not hurting them in that manner is almost like fudging to not kill them period.

Now a way to hit them but not kill them in a situation like this, might be that their mission is time sensitive, and cause they were too long in a space combat (since the NPC is too busy piliting, no one was able to work the guns well enough to stop the enemy slowing you down, nor was anyone able to get the astrogation jump worked out quickly enough) that when they DO manage to get where they were going, they are too late. And cause of that, they lose out on possible rewards/get reprimands etc..

We had situations like this crop up at Gencon. Had 3 back to back games where space combat and (on the ground side) diplomacy was the name of the game, so the 2 new players who made up ground combat monkeys, were pretty much sitting around doing nothing, and said they hated it cause of that. BUT the very next game they stat in on, they shined real big (mostly ground combat).
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[Dromdarr_Alark]

I like all the advice. Thanks so much.

It seems like I should throw them into a situation where they need to use starship skills.

I'll try it out. It doesn't seem likely that they will have space combat in the near future, but we'll see. In the past, I have had the players play the NPCs that operate the ship during combat, but they didn't seem too invested in it.

We also have a new player joining. I'm going to try to help him realize that he wants to be a tramp freighter captain.

Once again, thanks for the advice.

Let me know if you have any more ideas.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Dromdarr_Alark]

I especially want to thank Jedi Skyler for taking time out of his day to write that thorough and well thought-out essay. It humbles me that you would put so much effort into helping.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[atgxtg]

[garhkal]

[Dromdarr_Alark]

[Mojomoe]

I've had situations like that in the past. I always just gave the PCs a ship. Usually on loan, some sort of mission for the Rebels, or a specific cargo/smuggling run, there the PCs were hired as a flight crew but the buyer already had a ship for them to fly.

And if the issue is that the PCs are incompetent (ie. no piloting skills, thus unlikely to BE hired as a flight crew), say the buyer was desperate, and needed some of their other skills instead, or else is willing to risk the ship because the job is so important.

There are definitely ways to get the PCs to fly and shoot. Most of the times I can remember the ship needing repairs, the guy doing it wasn't qualified - he was just the only one unoccupied, and often ended up screaming "what the hell am I doing??"

Good stuff. Often the best RPGing you'll get is to throw PCs into unexpected situations that DON'T call for the skills they have.

[Dromdarr_Alark]

I'm thinking about putting them in a situation where they have no way to get off a certain planet, but there's a guy in the cantina trying to get rid of his beat-up old freighter so he can pay off a debt. He'll offer to sell it to the party for real cheap - he might even offer to give them a few lessons.
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"I still wouldn't have a roll for it - but that's just how I roll."

[Jedi Skyler]

[garhkal]

[shootingwomprats]

I think that instead of punishing the players perhaps a look at the expectations of the game should be the issue.

If you are playing a ground commando style, then it doesn't really make sense that the characters have the support skills. Those are handled by support personnel with those skill sets.

It sounds to me like the players and the GM are at odds what kind of game they are wanting to run/play. If this is the case and you are looking for ways to get your players to move in another direction? Well honestly, that is going to be like herding cats.

I would suggest a sit down meeting with your group and explain that you envision the game in a certain way and that you feel it could more than it currently is, but that you need something from the players. You need them to expand their characters to include a certain range of skills.

Sell the idea that they are expanding their character concept. That the character is growing beyond their original concept and is becoming a full fledged character.

If that does not work, then I would suggest taking your current game to a logical conclusion. Start a new game and explain from the start how you envision skill usage, the game direction and so on. You may even go so far as to require that characters have certain skills at a set level.
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Don Diestler
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