Ken Burnside said something in the Starfinder Facebook group about the pilot in starship combat has the only interesting choices to make. He said there is something of the same problem in car chases.

So I wondered what starship combat would look like if everyone got interesting choices. Like science officer sends the enemies missiles back at them or into another enemy ship interesting.

Science officer releases strobing flares and chaff to confuse the enemy, sensor ghosts to fool their targeting.

Captain tells his copilot to jam the Imperial Ion Fighter’s transmissions.

Gunner ignites pockets of gas in a nebula.

Gunner drops mines as the ship flies by the enemy making the enemy stay put or turn to miss it, but can’t pursue them without risking taking damage.

Pilot draws enemy into a narrow chasm and the gunner collapses it on the enemy.

Pilot flies too close to obstacles in an attempt to get the enemy to crash into cliffs, maybe science blinds them into crashing.

Engineer/Mechanic makes vehicles go faster, not just ships? Guns boomier not just overcharge and divert.

As a lot of the Star Wars D20 starship combat actions were just starship versions of the different attacks from D&D, why can’t we have Space Get Em from the Science Officer?

Why doesn’t the Captain get a clever Gambit that puts the enemy at some disadvantage? Make up look like we’re hurt, lower shields, moving slow, leaking and then we pounce. Apparently we did get something like this one in the Character Operations Manual only you fake a core meltdown.

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Paul

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