Starship Combat Confusion- Combat Actions

[Stilleon]

Hi everyone:

I had posted a question about starship combat earlier and you all helped a lot. But I tried running a mock combat last night with a friend and have several questions in regards to the actions in basic combat (starts on T20 page 159):

1. Looking at the Pilot Actions, most are Full actions. Only Adjust Range is a move action. The assumption here is that a pilot can only do one Full Action per round, right?

2. According to the rules on page 162 each ship MUST make a T/Astrogator check each round. First, not all ships have atrogators, like a System Defense Boat without Jump drives. I guess the computer would handle this check, or the pilot. In this case I guess the pilot can only do the Astrogation check (a standard action) and Adjust Range (a move action) because eveything else is a full action. If he wanted to use any other action the computer would have to make the check if no one else could do the T/Astrogation check?

3. If the pilot succeeds at Adjust Range and the Astrogator succeds in the range check, I assume the ship can adjust two move increments (which will automatically break pursuit without a break pursuit roll plus give distance between the ships).

4. A commander has two actions, Command and Tactics. Why would any commander ever use Tactics? The bonus for tactics is 1/2 his ranks in his Leader skill added to every attack, save and skill checks, while Tactics adds his Wis or Int mod to only attacks and defense only. By raising his Leader skill to enough ranks he will always exceed the bonus to tactics, and for more uses (for instance, I have a +3 mod for Int but I take 12 ranks in Leadership... that's a +4). In addition Command is a standard action while Tactics is a Full Round action, so with Command the captain can also do something else, like the T/Astrogate check.

5. Basically, a ship with a small crew is at a big disadvantage in this system.

Thanks for the comments in advance.

 

[Spyder_GS]

Hi Stilleon,
Let me see if I can give you my take on this. Once again, you have to use what fits for your game and my response here gives info from my campaign.

1. My initial response was to allow multiple actions per round for a pilot. I used multiples of 10 for the skill total to determine this. So at a total Pilot skill of 10 the pilot would receive an extra action. At 20 the pilot would receive two extra actions. Eventually, we (input from players) decided that this was allowing too many actions per turn. So the pilot has to have assistance to perform more than one. A co-pilot if you will.

2. Some actions are automatic IMTU an astrogation check is one of those things. The nav computer is going to keep track of where you are at and where you want to go and alarm if there is an issue. If you are in combat, you'll have some things turned off. I allow the astrogation check to default to the pilot roll in combat unless there is a specific need for it. In that case, the pilot needs help.

3. Unless the initial engagement was head-on, I generally do not permit a 2 increment gap in one round.

4. This is true. We (my players and I) look at it in a couple of ways. Tactics is for the small unit commander that has no spare skill points to dump into Leadership because he is on the front lines with his troops and needs all those points to make himself more capable and survivable, while Command is for larger units (battalions and up) and is used by career officers that do have the skill points to dump into leadership. OR: Tactics is for groundpounders and Command is for the guys in the big ships or fleet commanders. To that end we placed a level 12 requirment on Command.

5. Generally not. Keeping in mind that the players are usually going to have better developed skills than most personnel they are going up against they SHOULD be able to outperform and outthink thier opponents. If it's a matter of NPCs against NPCs, then yes, you are probably correct.

Hope this helps!

 

[woodle]

With all the following answers i havent referenced them to the book this is just how we play it.

1/ i only let pilots do one thing.( D20 doenst have 20min rounds so its not exactly the same)

2/ If you get onto a starship and cant read a starmap you shouldnt be on it. ( short of crew get a robot)

3/ we play basic rules not advanced. You can only pursue at medium or shorter. Its Astronav or Pilot check not both.

4/ We add ship tactics if you have it plus any leader bonus where appropriate provided the leader spends the round using Leadership.(ship tactics applys all the time where appropriate)

5/ Yes. On large crewed ships i get excess crew to assist in tasks eg: sensor checks- 1 sensor operators with many people helping look for that silent stationery ship. Remember theres a rule about people in engineering, think its 1 per 35 ton. This means crewing levels can change depending on what the ships using eg: Ship stopped-not using man. drive-less crew needed in engineering.

hope this helps.

 

[Flynn]

Ummmm.... what if the pilot is doing more than just being the pilot? For example, what if he's also the gunner?

Something to think about,
Flynn

 

[someoneelsehasmyname]

Shouldn't be a problem if the weapons are fixed(as long as they are forward mounted, had a player try and pull a fast one there) It would be a matter of aiming the nose of the ship at the target(much like fighter pilots do now). A pilot trying to fire turrents would have some problums, (nothing worse thin frying your wingman) inless they could be locked in a forward facing posision and could be remote fired.