Starship Frustration

[goodmanje]

Trying to do Starship combat manually in FG is horrible. Not fun at all....

[JohnQPublic]

Starship combat automation is coming. It's towards the top of the dev's list. That being said, I agree. I'm just skipping starship combat all together at this point. Instead I have the enemies board the character's ship and do traditional combat.

[damned]

The Dev doing the Starship stuff has been quite unwell which is delaying this component.

[goodmanje]

Yea, I’ve heard he had some health issues. I’m sure everything is being done that can be. I was just practicing doing it manually earlier and it just wasn’t happening. Way too cumbersome.

[Salz78]

Yeah, I have also abandoned starship combat for now. Look forward to doing it in the future.

[KillerRabbit]

What do you find annoying? I did it and it went ok.
Just keep track of things yourself just requires you to have the dcs and stuff by hand but thats not too hard?

[Blacklamb]

While I hate not having the automation, I can at least use the VTT to have a board the remote players can use. They also can do all the dice rolls and add the correct multiplayer. The ship sheet in FG is nice to have but does not work correctly at tier 4 or above (does not add more HPs and you can't edit). With all that it's no harder than playing without software.

I hope the developer on this project gets well soon or help can be found to complete the work as this is one promised feature I am really looking for.

[KillerRabbit]

Never tried tier 4+ so i can understand its frustrating at that point.
I do also wish the dev gets better soon but i also must underline that starfinder is a year old and everyone hete has paid a full price for the whole product. I don't want to be a ******* with this kind of statement but i do see this delayments happening a lot with online products and in the end its not ok to take money and don't deliver. First things first it would be nice to have at least an ETA.
Again, no disrispect, just my opinion.

[Samarex]

Never tried tier 4+ so i can understand its frustrating at that point.
I do also wish the dev gets better soon but i also must underline that starfinder is a year old and everyone hete has paid a full price for the whole product. I don't want to be a ******* with this kind of statement but i do see this delayments happening a lot with online products and in the end its not ok to take money and don't deliver. First things first it would be nice to have at least an ETA.
Again, no disrispect, just my opinion.

Granet, Starfinder is a year old but the FG version is only a little over 6 months, it was released in Feb 2018. We will get Starships into the system there has just been a delay that is out of are control.
But we do understand the frustration.

[Dyark]

Hi All
For upgrades I use this : https://jamesturneronline.net/starfinder-ship-builder/#input
very easy to use and I modify the PC ship with it.

At the same time I am developping an outside starship combat until FG is ready (just cannot wait anymore as ship combat takes between 1 to 2 hours for 1 combat)

[UltimateGM]

I apologize on reviving this thread but is there any update on starship combat or an eta on its release? Ive been out of the loop on this ever since the playtest and now that it is concluded I was hoping to start a Starfinder game. But the main reason I put it off last time is because the starship stuff wasn't currently integrated into the ruleset. By the way thanks for your work on the ruleset Samarex! Brought up starfinder a little while ago and really love how things have come along.

[ddavison]

We have done some continued updates on Starfinder but mostly outside the starship functionality -- which was already started earlier this year by one of our contracted devs. For various reasons, we don't have any of that work-in-progress code and we were hesitant to restart it from scratch since much of it was already built. Unless we receive them in the next few days, we've finally decided that we can't wait any more and we are moving forward with a new developer to work alongside Samarex. Unfortunately, it means starting that work over from scratch. We won't have a new ETA in the near future as we figure out what sort of release schedule and quality we can expect from our new dev.

[UltimateGM]

Thanks Doug for letting us know. Hopefully we will get that code otherwise we might have to turn someone else on the team into a robot :D

[KillerRabbit]

Better to do something all over, than to do nothing and to wait in vain.

Tnx for the update, looking forward to it

[Treviron Riaxx]

Thats fine, at least we know whats going on and why. Just means have to be patient is all.

[Topdecker]

I've already given up on Starfinder at least for the next 12 to 18 months. No rancor here, just ain't gonna invest a dime or any time into it until starship combat is baked in. At this point it will not matter if it shows up sooner - I've moved on and I won't need Starfinder until I finish with a campaign using another system.

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[UltimateGM]

I've started a 5th edition game myself so that will take a few months as well. There are several Starfinder books I would like to get as well like the armory and alien archive 2 but like you there is no sense in me buying it if I am not using it. On another note I know it will be good once the starship combat is released was just hoping I would come back and find out that it was already done, but I know development takes time so I will wait patiently seeing that that is all I really can do.

[MyGivinOpinion]

I would like to help with the construction of the Starship Combat. Although I have no formal history in programming outside of one year of College, I feel this is within my abilities. At least as an aide. I still need to learn the finer points of FG's Referencing but DiabloBob is assisting me in understand some of the finer points.

[v3rt1go]

Any news about this feature? I would also like to help if possible. I'm a senior software developer - i do mostly .Net but I could lend a hand or two if it would help speed things up.

[ddavison]

We started the process of bringing on a new developer for this in early Dec but then they ended up having a major health issue in January. If I was superstitious, I'd start thinking there was a cloud hanging over the starship functionality. That said, if anyone wants to load up on vitamins and spiritual blessings, feel free to send an email to [email protected] and let us know that you'd be interested in working with us on it.

[Octavious]

Holy cow ! that's crazy... 2 in a row now.. it must be the "Superman Curse" only in this instance the "SF Starship Curse"

[Mgrancey]

Sorry, don't have starfinder for FG, what is issue with rulesset? Automation for combat between ships?

[Octavious]

Sorry, don't have starfinder for FG, what is issue with rulesset? Automation for combat between ships?


Yes there is no automation for starship combat such as a combat tracker for ship combat.. You can do it manually and so on but time consuming if you don't have your DCs handy.

[Wazoodust]

Any updates on any progress on this? Just wondering sing SF is a bit klunlky without it

[Trenloe]

Any updates on any progress on this? Just wondering sing SF is a bit klunlky without it
See post #20.

[MyGivinOpinion]

I would be all over this but I seem to be missing something on how their coding works. It's something fundamental too. It's halting my extension coding too..

[Moon Wizard]

You should post your questions in the Workshop forum, if you think it will help you.

Regards,
JPG

[chumbly]

We started the process of bringing on a new developer for this in early Dec but then they ended up having a major health issue in January. If I was superstitious, I'd start thinking there was a cloud hanging over the starship functionality. That said, if anyone wants to load up on vitamins and spiritual blessings, feel free to send an email to [email protected] and let us know that you'd be interested in working with us on it.

Hmm I think this might do as a classified ad for the position :D

Wanted Code Developer for Starfinder Starships.. Must be able to get natural 20's on every survival role. All Health attributes must be MAXed out.Must be able to spit
in the eyes and laugh at in the faces of Grim Reaper and the Pestilence Horseman of the Apocalypse. Ability to program code and particularly Lua would be helpful but
FAR less necessary that the first set of qualifications.

[MadBeardMan]

Hmm I think this might do as a classified ad for the position :D

Wanted Code Developer for Starfinder Starships.. Must be able to get natural 20's on every survival role. All Health attributes must be MAXed out.Must be able to spit
in the eyes and laugh at in the faces of Grim Reaper and the Pestilence Horseman of the Apocalypse. Ability to program code and particularly Lua would be helpful but
FAR less necessary that the first set of qualifications.

Haha that first part is soooo needed, damn FG virus got me last year as well!

[goodmanje]

I've lost hope, doesn't seem to be a priority.

[Wazoodust]

I've lost hope, doesn't seem to be a priority.

Same here, went back to 5E.

[v3rt1go]

I'm not saying that I like the situation with the starshipsh, however giving up the whole ruleset alltogether just because there is no automation for starship combat seems a bit much imo :P
I've played several ship battles and it's doable, if anything feels simillar to playing on an actual mat with minis. I've found that it works best with moving the ships one hex at a time. As for figuring out firing arcs, you'll start to 'see' them as you play, or use the arrows to draw them when it's not clear.
The Starship sheet is good enough to keep track of modifiers and system damage. For the rest, good old pen and paper works just fine. There's definetely no reason to quit on Startfinder just because there's no automation in FG for ship combat.

[Davido1000]

Yes its a little bit over dramatic to quit the game entirely but i can understand the frustration considering 5e seems to be the favourite child at the moment. i haven't run starship combat yet and im secretly dreading it, does anyone have any good tips for running it?

[Trenloe]

Yes its a little bit over dramatic to quit the game entirely but i can understand the frustration considering 5e seems to be the favourite child at the moment.
To put this all in context - 5E is a fully developed system, has been for a number of years. From the recent patch notes, we see that there hasn't been a huge amount of purely 5E functionality introduced recently: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/patchnotes.html So 5E is not getting a disproportionate amount of FG full-time developer attention.

As Doug (ddavison - one of the owners of Smiteworks) mentioned a couple of months ago (post #20 in this thread), they've already had two developers assigned to this, but both have dropped out due to illness. It's not insignificant work, so Smiteworks don't want to take one of their limited full-time developers away from their current high priority tasks - one of which is trying to progress FG Unity to fruition. If anything, FG Unity is the favourite child at the moment, in terms of developer priority, even if we're not seeing the results of that effort at this point.

I understand the frustration but this needs a new developer, outside of the Smiteworks full-time devs, to replace two previous ones.

[Salz78]

Yeah, I agree. While I would like Starship functionality (and am equally bothered that's been delayed so long), I'm actually more concerned with the drop in Starfinder content in general. For example, Signal of Screams, which I've been wanting to run for a while, released back in November and still it hasn't been ported over. Not much to be done about it, but it is frustrating.

[Octavious]

Yes its a little bit over dramatic to quit the game entirely but i can understand the frustration considering 5e seems to be the favourite child at the moment. i haven't run starship combat yet and im secretly dreading it, does anyone have any good tips for running it?

I myself am pretty disappointed there is no ship combat tracker.. but the starship combat really isn't that bad I have run 2 SF games and typical Starship combat does not go much more than 1/2 hr. most of the time consuming stuff is the DC's involved. Get that all together beforehand and as a GM keep things moving and make sure your players know what they are supposed to do in the position they occupy..
As far as the DC's it can be a pain to calculate all of them beforehand.. (scan dcs. computer hack dc so on) but I have a program that calculates everything and builds the PC , PC style NPC and NPC ships with NPC crews abilities automatically calculated and all DC's in the ship sheet .. so I guess I have the edge on that.

[ddavison]

We have a few community folks who have volunteered to look into this around the start of the year but we haven't seen anything tangible for it yet.

I would very much like to see this release but you are correct in your assumption that it isn't a priority. It's important, but it isn't our main company focus for now and probably won't be for a while. We did spend a large sum of money on it last year with nothing to show for it... so it's been a disappointment for us as well. The rest of the ruleset and the content available is pretty well done though, IMO.

[stephan_]

i haven't run starship combat yet and im secretly dreading it, does anyone have any good tips for running it?

Make your own starship tokens with labeled arcs (F, S, A, P), as it can be difficult to tell which side is which if you aren't zoomed in (and sometimes even then). Have a cheat sheet (with the updated, errata'd) DCs handy (edit: also send a link to your players), e.g. this one (https://www.cheatography.com/bluesoda/cheat-sheets/starfinder-ship-combat/). Note down 5 % of the PCU in advance (restore shields). Call the combat once it's clear which side will win, don't drag it out till the last hull point (unless you or your players want to). If the ships are about equally good at maneuvering, it might also make sense to simply place the ship going second in an arc of its choosing without counting hexes (as they usually have enough movement/turns to get there anyway). You could also use a ship builder (e.g. this one) (https://jamesturneronline.net/starfinder-ship-builder/). Tell your players to decide on rudimentary starship roles in advance and let them read up on their starship role's possible actions (especially the pilot). The PC starship sheet works relatively well for at least tracking this side of the combat (e.g. percentile rolls, bonuses), the enemy ship you'll have to track manually (in a note or on a piece of paper).

[Shieldstromme]

As a 'quick-fix' I think what would REALLY help is being able to use the PC Ship template for NPC ships: This would make it a million times easier to keep track of damage etc.

[Octavious]

As a 'quick-fix' I think what would REALLY help is being able to use the PC Ship template for NPC ships: This would make it a million times easier to keep track of damage etc.

Theres really no reason you cant make a npc starship using the pc starship sheet.. That's what I have done and it works fine..

Edit: Theres really no reason you cant make a npc starship using the pc starship sheet.. That's what I have done and it works fine..

Edit : here is an example of a npc ship using pc ship sheet .. I built this tier 15 ship in about 10 minutes using starship design studio, Unlike other ship builders this exports it directly in a module to FG. Once the ship is built and saved just a flick of a radio button makes it a PC ship, or PC style NPC ship or NPC ship. I have included all 3 versions of one ship.. its very usefull if your players capture an npc ship to convert back to PC ship etc...

I included several security features which DC and computer dc can be accessed in the "Computer" (click on computer in systems for that) many other dc are in notes. For npc skills (PC style NPC ship) are accessed in systems, once again it calculates all these dc automatically ..

Anyway just a demo of how pc ship sheet can be used as a npc ship

[Topdecker]

This rule set is pretty much dead to me until the core is feature complete.

It has been, what, heading towards 16 months now since release? It has gone from having a time frame to having no time frame. Anyone remember the hype about this being a premium ruleset? Paid for Manning, got Manziel.

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[Octavious]

This rule set is pretty much dead to me until the core is feature complete.

It has been, what, heading towards 16 months now since release? It has gone from having a time frame to having no time frame. Anyone remember the hype about this being a premium ruleset? Paid for Manning, got Manziel.

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Yeah I remember all the hype.. we sure didn't get what we were promised and paid for .. now it seems we never will. I stopped GM that game and buying anything at all months ago ,, I saw the writing on the wall so to speak.. and I think lots of ppl did . One thing for sure.. I wont be buying any more FG rulesets or anything else with the promise of it being completed in the near future.. fool me once... Ill stick with D&D

[goodmanje]

Yea, but D&D sucks... :o

If the game has been a financial disappointment I can understand SW not jumping through their butts to speed a lot of time on it. I thought their would be a lot more interest in the game from players. It’s fantastic!
Very unfortunate.... but I’m going to keep playing it.

[esmdev]

I had a similar feeling some time ago with the Traveller ruleset related to starships.

Some time ago, however, I stepped back to assess my general Traveller games and found that I don't generally use battle maps and tactical combat for starships anyway, so I figured that can wait. Most games I run revolve around the PCs and their interactions with the world more than ships which are primarily about getting from place to place.

So the way I see it, so long as I can run adventures with PCs ships can be theater of the minded.

Because my gaming group of 30 years has spread across the planet, FG/Discord is really the only way we can game anymore. So a functional Traveller ruleset that lets players be players is all we really need.

So my question is, how much do you expect to use the starship rules of Starfinder vs. the amount of time players will be out in the world doing things away from ships and vehicles? My assessment for most Traveller games came out to less than 5% for actual ship to ship anything (that does not count things taking place on the ship which can be handled with a simple battlemap made from deckplans.).

Edited to fix really crazy spell check replacements

[Davido1000]

Its more the fact people paid for a product that is unfinished when people who pay the same price for say 5e get a finished one and now its been confirmed its not a high priority which makes me very disappointed.

[Topdecker]

I think that the lack of prioritization for Starfinder is going to have more to do with FGU releasing than anything else. Smite really won't be able to focus on anything when that process begins and I don't see them releasing FGU in any months other than March through August. They have to get the upgrade in place and stable before the Christmas sale season. Anyhow, if we've just entered one of those time frames and if this is the window, no individual product will get much focus for a good 4 to 8 months.

Anyhow, you can't fault them for being honest. Hopefully they'll give it some attention when they can.

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[ddavison]

While I can understand some disappointment in not having a starship sub-system built into the ruleset, I wanted to address a few things.

1. Starfinder is as complete as 5E or any other system we support. It features all the same functionality for building characters (which are more involved than 5E) and running adventures.
2. Automation is comparable
3. Data and content support is comparable
4. Starfinder starship combat is a new and complex new sub-system that represents only a part of the game. It's very similar to ship based adventure paths in Pathfinder or 5E. Those are still capable of being run despite not having an automated sub-system to run ship-to-ship combat or mass battles.
5. We include all the rules for Starship combat from the book. You just have to run it manually like you would if you didn't have a VTT. You still get access to the content in an easier to use format
6. No VTT (that I'm aware of) automates starship combat or even provides nearly the level of automation that we provide in SFRPG

A Little History and Current Status
We did actually commission and pay a large sum of money (way more than we have made on Starfinder sales) to create a ruleset and part of that was for Starship combat. We saw work-in-progress of a pretty functional prototype for ship building and tracking. None of the actual code was actually shared with us during development and all of that work was lost to us.

We have started working with several other community dev volunteers who wanted to take a stab at it but so far none of them have provided any sort of prototype for us to review. We recently moved the SFRPG ruleset into the core product so that more potential people could look at how the ruleset is built and work on building out an additional combat tracker. I know there are a few devs working on this. If any of these show promise then we will work with them to get it integrated and the devs compensated.

Additonal updates to SFRPG are not a top priority for our internal team, so we have to rely upon community devs & contractors for any additional work at this time -- or wait until our internal team are through the top priorities.

[esmdev]

Its more the fact people paid for a product that is unfinished when people who pay the same price for say 5e get a finished one and now its been confirmed its not a high priority which makes me very disappointed.

I totally feel you. There are a whole lot of rulesets that I wish were as automated and complete as 5E. In truth, there are a lot of things about 5E that I wish would be better and more automated. Still, other than the starship automation, seems to be a fairly playable ruleset by all accounts.

[UltimateGM]

I can see Dougs point. From a business owner and a realist why would you spend money to develop something again? From a business perspective though I would also have the person who was working on the starship functionality either give the code that he already has up or return the cash that was paid to him or her. If neither one of those things happened then I would file a lawsuit. The biggest problem with a lawsuit is that you may end up paying tons more money in the long run then the cash that was given as payment and if that was the case then you would be better off just paying someone again.

[Trenloe]

From a business perspective though I would also have the person who was working on the starship functionality either give the code that he already has up or return the cash that was paid to him or her. If neither one of those things happened then I would file a lawsuit.
Easier said than done, as FG developers are all over the world.

It's hard to just turn up at their house and threaten to criticise their curtains! ;-)

[goodmanje]

Thanks for the response Doug. Having the inner workings available for community developers to check out is good stuff. I supposed if the demand for a starship battle subsystem is high enough someone will eventually create it. Everything else in the ruleset is top notch. I hate that profits haven’t exceeded the expense...

[ddavison]

Well yeah, and there is a lot of background to this particular situation as well. The developer in question has been a tremendous collaborator with us over the years and a good friend. They have been paid very well for that collaboration, but then again that is probably a matter of opinion on which side of the equation you are on. Working on official 5E stuff tends to skew your perspective dramatically. While we are disappointed in the setback for this particular case, we want to just focus on moving forward.

[UltimateGM]

Easier said than done, as FG developers are all over the world.

It's hard to just turn up at their house and threaten to criticise their curtains! ;-)

Yea I suppose your right. I didn't consider that. ;)

[Blahness98]

If only I knew how to make reference manuals..

[Trenloe]

If only I knew how to make reference manuals..
There's a few posts about it on the forums and the basic layout info is in the Wiki. It's "just" data entry and formatting - no coding. Dive in!

[Toxie2725]

So more than a year later and it's still not integrated.

[stephan_]

Are you aware of Starfinder Ship Combat moving to main code (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?53280-Starfinder-Ship-Combat-moving-to-main-code)?

[Toxie2725]

I missed that, thanks.

[Argonautking]

2 years later, still can't roll NPC crews actions on starship statblocks, shields on NPC ships are a nightmare too, about 50% of what it should do is actually working.
I previously only used FG for 5e and it is very good for that system, but seemingly that system alone. There are a bunch of annoying problems and missing features just in the Core Ruleset, in comparison to 5e it is a mess.
Fantasy Grounds is expensive just for the licence, let alone all the modules you need on top, the least they could do is actually have full functionality for their supported systems.
To make things worse, Rob churns out coding packs at a premium on Drivethru that should be standard features of FG! I know the excuse I'll get along the lines of "He does that outside of work hours blah blah blah." Sure, sure he does!

I know, I know, bit of a rant, but it really annoys me to see devs talk about how things are in the works, or top priority, then realise their statement was made years ago and you are running into the same problems!

[Topdecker]

I know, I know, bit of a rant, but it really annoys me to see devs talk about how things are in the works, or top priority, then realise their statement was made years ago and you are running into the same problems!

Paizo has JUST released the Starship Operations Manual which was announced like in November. It probably hasn't done much to motivate a lot of work here since whatever they spoon out in vanilla will also have to work with the updated rules.


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[deer_buster]

Plus they do things like release revisions that break the world (e.g. Starship Build Point changes)

[Samarex]

[QUOTE=Argonautking;533045 I know the excuse I'll get along the lines of "He does that outside of work hours blah blah blah." Sure, sure he does!

[/QUOTE]

WOW Thanks.......

[ddavison]

Rob is not an employee of Smiteworks. He does conversions as a community dev and he contracts in a very limited way for Twitter.