SWSE: Is Starships of Galaxy worth it?

[antisocrates]

Never thought I'd get it, but my players have expressed interest in starship combat. In addition, they're running out of uses for their money. With the game structured as is, there's nowhere really worthwhile for the PCs to spend their money. I tried to get them interested in creating criminal/freedom fighting organization against the Empire, but they aren't interested. They like being lone wolves and don't want the hassle of managing organizations. One place where the pcs might put some money in is in starships. One of the pcs recently died and he is wondering whether he should go the ace pilot/officer route and command a frigate or a battleship. (They actually have enough money to buy a star destroyer!)

So, is the book worth my hard earned cash? I've heard mixed stuff, like how starship custom building and fighter vs. capital ship combats are broken. If the stuff in there is broken, then I'd rather houserule and go from there, instead of buying the book. After all, I do have both KotR and UF, which gives me plenty of big and small ships for the pcs to select from.

[TJBailey]

It depends really.

If you love having different stats for a load of ships or not. If you are not interested in starships then all light freighters are the same stat wise, they just have a different description. However if you like having ship x being different from ship y then it's worth getting .

I'm a starship nerd. Have been since I begged for the Kenner Falcon for xmas as a kid. X-Wing and especially TIE Fighter videogames are among my favourite games of all time. So for me, having the stats represent what was modeled in the games are important to me. An X-Wing is tougher than an A wing, but not as fast and maneuverable. A YT-1300 is a different ship than a Ghotroc 720. An Imperial Star Destroyer comes in two main variants and is faster than a Victory Class from the end of the clone wars etc. I loved the old Starfighters boxset for WEG 1st edition Star Wars. Sadly it wasnt mine, but a friends so I had to give it back (With all his WEG books. I have a lot, but he had several I didnt)

For the rules bits. You have new talents, and exsisting talents get an overhaul for working in ship to ship combat. The main boost is Starship Maneuvers, works the same as force powers. At the end of the day, Starfighter comabt is a dogfight, that works the same as a grapple. The maneuvers vary this up and makes it a bit more exciting. It does help to speed up space combat. Large ships have a tactical fire option so you don't have to roll for each Turbo laser battery on an ISD, just choose tactical fire, which covers the adjacent squares in laser blasts (Think anti-air flak guns firing en mass)

The custom ships rules are very bare. Unlike in the first Starships of the galaxy you only get some base stats that you can mess around with. The ships in the book werent really made using them. As a quick system for a GM to cobble together a ship it's fine. If your players want to build their own uber ship ala Ebon Hawk or the Millenium Falcon, it's going to need the GM to offer a guiding hand and approval.

[ResplendentScorpion]

Yes. If nothing else, then for the cool pictures and fluff.
Plus, some minor but very cool stuff for tech or pilot characters.

[aservan]

I like it. The starship design rules are simple (overly simple for the engineer in me) and let you have some fun with building your own ship. I like the maneuver rules so that not just jedi can have cool powers.

[mws]

It's a good book an a worthwhile investment, but you may want to try out starship combat a few times before taking the plunge. In my experience it's been a challenge to make starship combat interesting for everyone at the table.

This is partly because it takes practice to create really dynamic combats, and also because the infrequency of starship combat makes PCs reluctant to invest in feats and talents that support it. That means most players tend to have significant penalties to hit and the other non-pilot and non-gunner roles are hard to keep interesting.

My group has finally got it working right, with a nice balance of equipment and characters that keeps it interesting, but I personally found it challenging to get starship combat integrated into my campaign.

Merrick

[tobygrandjean]

I'd say get it. If you don't like making 'whoosh!' sounds while swinging around a X-Wing model there is no hope for you....
On another note though, you might want to look at Scum and Villainy. There is a lot more about various kinds of criminal ops within the SW universe as well as equipment customization rules, expanded jury rigging, etc, etc.

And finally, you might want to consider going lighter on the rewards as well as hitting the players harder because of their bigger profile. One, the players (as in The Hutts, The Black Hand, etc) got as powerful as they did by due diligence. It seems that they might try to 'deal with' the PCs so as to remove a rogue element from their plans. Two, what are you going to do once they have their own personalized Death Stars with spinning rims?

[DanMcS]

You know what would make them hate the Empire? Having it heavily tax their money. Two problems (the players have so much money they don't know what to do with it, and they don't hate the Empire) solved.

Plus, I like the idea of the Empire being opposed by the Star Wars equivalent of income tax deniers.

[Epoch]

(They actually have enough money to buy a star destroyer!)

...really? As far as I know, there is no canonical price for a Star Destroyer, but it seems like a very conservative estimate would put it at hundreds of millions of credits, and tens of billions of credits wouldn't be at all unreasonable.

Are we talking about that much money, or is your idea of the price for a Star Destroyer orders of magnitude less? SotG won't provide you with a money sink for hundreds of millions of credits.

[TJBailey]

...really? As far as I know, there is no canonical price for a Star Destroyer, but it seems like a very conservative estimate would put it at hundreds of millions of credits, and tens of billions of credits wouldn't be at all unreasonable.

Are we talking about that much money, or is your idea of the price for a Star Destroyer orders of magnitude less? SotG won't provide you with a money sink for hundreds of millions of credits.

You're forgetting the worse parts.

Wages, insurance, consumables.

An ISD has what 30K Stormtroopers onboard. A full flight wing of TIE fighters. Numerous shuttles (Both Lambda and Assault).

So with numerous ISD's, Super Star Destroyers, 2 Death Stars. What the hell was the tax levels? Yoda wasnt in exile because he was beaten by Palpatine. He was a Tax Exile! ;)

Regards

Trevor

[antisocrates]

...really? As far as I know, there is no canonical price for a Star Destroyer, but it seems like a very conservative estimate would put it at hundreds of millions of credits, and tens of billions of credits wouldn't be at all unreasonable.

Are we talking about that much money, or is your idea of the price for a Star Destroyer orders of magnitude less? SotG won't provide you with a money sink for hundreds of millions of credits.


Hahaha. Not really. It was more of a hyperbole, and an injoke. The party gained most of its wealth today by hijacking a SD and selling it to the Alliance. The actual stealing part was relatively simple. The real deal began when they tried to sell the damn thing. I had a lot of fun making them jump all the hoops, but I think the players got so sick of jumping that I don't think they'll try a hijink like this any time soon. Running from sith flunkies, bounty hunters, and a small imperial task force dedicated to hunting them down was too much even for them, though in all fairness, I don't think I overdid it. They after all stole an imperial star destroyer!

Of the top of my head, I think they have somewhere along about 20 mil creds, 12 of which came from hawking the SD.

Of note, the players are extremely powerful. They started at 13th level, powerful enough to survive Order 66, hide, and then emerge as signficant wild cards, too powerful to be easily crushed by whatever flunkies Vader and the Emperor could send their way. Nowadays, they're at 17th level, consisting of 4 PCs: a Rurouni Kenshin clone, espinage Jedi (Force Cloak Mastery and Force Haze kick much butt), Force witch (Force Blast + Sickening Blast junkie), and one dead char who may opt for something starship related.

[antisocrates]

Thanks for your replies.

Here are some rejoinders.

1. Does the book improve gameplay vis a vis starship combat, or clog it? I've always handwaved starship combat, never ran it. I just don't want to learn a new system or something that takes a while to get used to.

2. Mechanically, the book seems barebone, as far as customization goes. Can the PCs who have millions of creds trick out something suitable and burn through their cash? More importantly, how much of book keeping headache will this be to me. I don't care if work for them, but I don't wanna do work myself. How about supervision? When I played Shadowrun, I noticed that the gms had to pay close attention and participate when the players began using the Rigger handbook.

3. Some more input on its merits and demerits would be appreciated.

4. What are your thoughts as far as Scum and Villainy's mechanics are concerned?

5. Anything I should be aware of when running starship combats? Any broken bits?

6. As noted upthread, the party started at fairly powerful level, and are now part of the movers of the universe. They're not part of the Alliance, but they are against the Empire, in their own way. It was what saved them from Order 66 (didn't trust the clones, the dead char had tricked out droid battalion of his own, et al), and today they think the Alliance is a joke and don't want any part of it. As such, they aren't part of the regular Imperial economy and don't pay any taxes and such. Going for their assets is nothing new to them.

[Epoch]

2. Mechanically, the book seems barebone, as far as customization goes. Can the PCs who have millions of creds trick out something suitable and burn through their cash?

Yes. 20 million credits is pretty near the upper limit of the amount of cash that you can reasonably sink for a PC group that doesn't want to have hundreds of retainers, but they'll be able to sink a pretty big chunk of that into a really tricked out ship.

They'll end up with a really tricked out ship, mind, but not something that could go toe-to-toe with an ISD or anything.

[PaladinCA]

Starships of the Galaxy is worth it. It is probably my second favorite sourcebook so far.

[Skywalker]

1. Does the book improve gameplay vis a vis starship combat, or clog it? I've always handwaved starship combat, never ran it. I just don't want to learn a new system or something that takes a while to get used to.

Improve.

The Starship Manuevres make starship combat exciting like Force Powers do personal combat.

The Tactical Fire rules allow you to use capital ships simply in starship combat to replicate the kinds of scenes seen in the movie.

2. Mechanically, the book seems barebone, as far as customization goes. Can the PCs who have millions of creds trick out something suitable and burn through their cash? More importantly, how much of book keeping headache will this be to me. I don't care if work for them, but I don't wanna do work myself. How about supervision? When I played Shadowrun, I noticed that the gms had to pay close attention and participate when the players began using the Rigger handbook.

Customisation is simple and easy for the most part. I have used it unsupervised with my players and have no issues yet.

3. Some more input on its merits and demerits would be appreciated.

Starship Maneuvres and Tactical Fire are great additions to starship combat, even before you get to customisation and the starship catalog (which interest me less).

4. What are your thoughts as far as Scum and Villainy's mechanics are concerned?

Scum and Villainy's customisation system is almost identical to Starships of teh galaxy.

5. Anything I should be aware of when running starship combats? Any broken bits?

1. Starship of the Galaxy adds Combat Thrusters to deal with the fact that some space transports would otherwise suck at space combat using the standard rules.

2. Remember to apply the same criteria to spaceship combat as personal combat. If you find terrain and optional objectives make personal combat Zing, then do the same for starship combat (Tactical Fire basically adds terrain for starship combat). In that regard, don't be afraid to get PCs into their own fighters. In Saga, everyone gets better at piloting with level, so you now longer need to have some sitting on the sidelines. By getting everyone involved, they will all enjoy themselves more.

3. Starship combat can be quite deadly if all PCs are aboard one vessel. Vehicular Combat is your friend.

4. Starship combat is spatially abstract. If you try and view it all spatially you may struggle. There are no rules for momentum or turning. Dogfighting is essentially a grapple. If you embrace the abstract nature, the rules work very well. I have a lot of success with complex starship challenges to mirror the speeder chases through Coruscant or other movie scenes, but this is best done by understanding how the system works.

[The Fallen]

You're forgetting the worse parts.

Wages, insurance, consumables.



Trevor

Insurance? In the Star Wars galaxy? Preposterous!


Unless the insurance companies are the ones removing all those railways in order to avoid paying when someone falls.


"That ramp over there lacked the appropiate safety measures, so no insurance money for you" :p

[TJBailey]

I just went over to Wookiepedia and on the entry for Imperial Star Destroyer is a price. 3.88 billion credits.

If that price was from when ANH was made then you'd have to adjust for inflation to get an idea in todays money what that would be. Seems like a good enough figure to use however.

Regards

Trevor

[antisocrates]

I haven't bought Starships yet, but I've been reading the starship rules and it's got me confused silly. How do I calculate starship stats? Use the default stats or the pilots'? I ask this because my players are powerful, 17th level, and they'd rule, even without a single level of ace pilot. Another thing is if we use our stats, what are some of the factors that go into? What about speed? It seems silly that a surged Jedi can be fast enough to run or catch up to an x-wing.

[Clayton Wick]

Since this seems to be a good thread for asking starship questions... how are you supposed to gauge the CR of a starship combat? Do you use the ship, the pilots, or some sort of mixture? Is the XP award based on the ship destroyed, even though that gives a hugely disproportionate amount of XP to a low level player who's shooting down TIE fighters? I've asked on these forums twice before and no one seemed to know the answer.

[TJBailey]

I haven't bought Starships yet, but I've been reading the starship rules and it's got me confused silly. How do I calculate starship stats? Use the default stats or the pilots'? I ask this because my players are powerful, 17th level, and they'd rule, even without a single level of ace pilot. Another thing is if we use our stats, what are some of the factors that go into? What about speed? It seems silly that a surged Jedi can be fast enough to run or catch up to an x-wing.

If you take a look at page 174 of the core book, at the top in a boxout is a note on crew quality. Basically the ships have been calculated with the crew already in them.

A TIE Fighter has a skilled crew. This adds 1 to the CL. It gets a +2 to attack bonus and +6 to skill checks. This has been precalculated into the ships stats.

A ship with an Astromech droid, gets a seperate modifier denoted with an asterisk. These are the droids stats and you get to use them or the crew's if the crews are better.

Here's another example. A YT 1300 is listed as having a normal crew. The only bonus they add to a ship is +5 to skill checks. So subtract 5 from all the skill check modifiers for the ships base stats.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Trevor

[TJBailey]

Since this seems to be a good thread for asking starship questions... how are you supposed to gauge the CR of a starship combat? Do you use the ship, the pilots, or some sort of mixture? Is the XP award based on the ship destroyed, even though that gives a hugely disproportionate amount of XP to a low level player who's shooting down TIE fighters? I've asked on these forums twice before and no one seemed to know the answer.

Page 35 of Starships of the galaxy has the basic answer.

Take the CL of the ship (without the crew rating if the PC's have replaced the crew) divide by 2. Subtract that from the CR of the opposing ship's to work out the CL.

Also take into account the opposing ships crew. Again see page 174 of Core rule book.

So if the heroes are in a Blockade Runner with a CL of 16 (Crew level would be kept in this case as it's a capital ship) then they have to shoot down a lot of TIEs to get an xp bonus. If they are in a YT1300 CL6, then a couple of TIEs would be the right challenge.

If Darth Vader (CL19) is flying his fighter (TIE Advanced. Normally CL9 with crew. CL7 without). you're looking at a CL of 26. So against that Blockade Runner it would work out as (16/2 = 8. 26-8=18) CL18.

Personally I tend to wing things as a GM, all this CL stuff is a little confusing. I didnt need it for D6 star wars and it worked out ok fine. Ofcourse XP is quite different between the two systems. Plus I'm just coming to grips with SWSE myself.

Hope that helps you.

regards

Trevor

[Clayton Wick]

*snipped*

Hope that helps you.

It does, very much. Thanks!

[TJBailey]

It does, very much. Thanks!

Here is a website that has a couple of things you may find useful www.gneech.com

Trevor