Building And Running Encounters
Source Tech Core pg. 208
When calculating a tactical starship encounter’s experience budget, use the same rules you would for creating encounters with creatures, treating starships as creatures for the purposes of calculating experience. If an encounter includes hazards or non-starship enemies, include them in the total experience point budget as well. Remember that having multiple kinds of threats coming at the PCs from every angle makes an encounter more complex, so a low tactical starship encounter that places a boarding party or hazard on the player starship map while the crew battles hazards and starships on the sensor map might be more difficult and expend more crew resources than a harder encounter that only places hazards and enemies on the sensor map.
Adjusting For Smaller Crews
Source Tech Core pg. 209
A crew of three or fewer PCs might struggle with efficiency and firepower when helming a player starship. When preparing and running games for a small crew, treat your experience budget for tactical starship encounters as being 20 lower for moderate or harder encounters and 10 lower for low-or trivial-threat encounters to account for the crew's limited ability to helm battle stations. Alternatively, you can use the concierge upgrade variant rule found on the sidebar.
Enemy Starships
Source Tech Core pg. 209
The starships in this section are far from the only foes a crew might encounter in space. If you want to introduce variety to a campaign’s tactical starship combat encounters or challenge players with different enemies, you can use these starships’ statistics as a starting point, then reflavor a faction’s common actions and features list, designing a starship that can fit in another faction.
Starship Hazards
Source Tech Core pg. 209
Another way to make tactical starship combat more interesting is by secretly placing starship hazards in zones on the sensor map. Some hazards appear on the player starship map and directly threaten crew members with creatures or dangerous effects. Many of these hazards are the natural wonders and horrors of deep space; they might be just as dangerous to enemy starships or can be exploited by a player starship for a risky benefit. You should add all creatures and hazards to the encounter’s experience budget, just as you would in any other combat encounter.
Ending Combat
Source Tech Core pg. 209
A tactical starship combat encounter ends when either the player crew or their enemies achieve their objective.
Enemy Objectives
Source Tech Core pg. 209
An enemy crew might have objectives other than simply annihilating the PCs. They might plan to board the starship once it’s wrecked and steal loot or take prisoners—or worse, devour the crew or convert survivors to their side. If starship combat ends because a player starship is wrecked and enemies begin boarding, or vice versa, the GM should switch the scene to a regular combat encounter.
Player Objectives
Source Tech Core pg. 209
A player starship crew might have objectives beyond the destruction of their enemies as well. If the player starship crew’s objective is to defeat an enemy, travel through a hostile zone, or take some other action resulting in a direct confrontation with a starship or hazard, tactical starship combat is likely to end only when the crew defeats the enemy or their starship gets wrecked. If the crew’s objectives change during combat, the GM should shift the scene to match their new goals. For example, if the crew decides to flee from an ambush after taking heavy damage and try to hide among a wandering oma pod, the GM might decide to switch to a cinematic starship scene to simulate the chase or end the encounter by briefly narrating the result of the players’ choices, then move on.