Even though the gunners will get the largest part of this pool of XP the other crewmembers should have plenty of XP coming in from skills rolls to even this out.
Not so sure about this. The pilot might because he gets to roll combat pilot every round, but what about your techs? If the ship sustains no major damage then they don't have anything to repair. Likewise other characters without gunnery, tech or piloting skills (at least not high enough to be useful) like a social talker type, or a telepath?
I still think the best way is to gdo exp however you're going to and then split it evenly as a group. It stops the gun nuts from running away with it, e.g. an Armsman with a weapon on full automatic, choosing the fire option to select different targets (which they always do) does a *lot* of damage and a *lot of criticals, and gets a *lot* of kills, which is fair enough, that is his job. Even though he probably couldn't do his job without backup of other party members, those other party members just go and read a book for half an hour when the Armsman's initiative turn comes up, and gradually lose ground in levels as that pattern repeats itself. That also builds party resentment (vocalised or otherwise) and irritation that the Armsman's combat round takes as long as the rest of the party put together.
End result of that is people lagging behind either lose interest and stop playing, or make sure their next character is a gun-toting nut-job so they get their share of spotlight time as well.
That is why gunners would
only get XP for the crits they make. The actual Killl XP would be divided by the the group participating in the combat. Unless the gunner really pound the target with crits before he goes down and steals away all the Kill XP.
I am sorry if it was not clear enough that Kill XP would be the total of all the crewmembers manning a ship and divided among all the participants of the opposing ship. It will be very unlikely for a gunner to be able to drain all the Kill XP of a ship manned by several people. Been running some example combats to crunch the numbers and so far the gunners have not been the ones dominating the space combat xp. If you do want to reduce their xp rewards even further I would recomend awarding them the same xp as hitting a 0-level target when hitting a ship. I choose to use the average level of all the participants on the ship as the ships level.
But yes the RAW xp system does seem to give more xp from combat than from doing casual work. But never forget to beef up the normal skill rolls from increased danger of a combat situation. A mechanic trying fix up that Quantum Drive while other ships keep hitting theirs and his friends are running around screaming at each other should get a larger xp reward for his skill rolls in that situation. I often award players with XP from the Idea XP Pool for good roleplaying on top of good ideas.
I normally follow these guidelines adapted to the danger levels in the rules:
- Non-combat/stress situation = No Danger x1/2
- Combat/Stress Situation = Some Danger x1
- Will get damage on the result of a failed skill roll = Danger x2
- Will die on the result of a failed skill roll = Extreme Danger x3
Each normal skill roll for a guy in a combat situation would land between 0-500xp for each skill roll (average 50xp) which is around the same as the rewards received for crits.
To take an example we have a situation with a ship that has a 10th level Pilot, 10th level Gunner and finally the 9th Sensor/EW operator (average 10th level). During the fight the ship takes a B crit, the gunner inflicts a A crit followed by the B crit that finishes of the ship with a high crit roll. The Pilot makes a total of 4 Medium Skill Rolls/Some Danger for a total of 200 XP reward. The gunner lands a 53A and the finishing 65B (max possible result against the armor type) for a total of 208 XP (126 XP if is considered a 0-lvl oppponent). The Sensor/EW operator makes a total of 3 Medium/Some Danger Skill Rolls landing a total of 150 XP. The ship takes a 53B crit resulting in a total of 253 XP divided evenly among the people on the ship (84 XP). The opposing ship is manned by a 4th level Crew, 10th level Crew, 5th level Crew and 6th level Crew (average level of 6). The total Kill XP and using the average lvl of 10 of their own ship would be: 120+300+135+150-90 (includes the Int modifier)= 615 XP or 697 XP (if using the 0-lvl option). Divide this on all the players would result in 205 XP (232 XP).
The XP rewards would be as follows (0-lvl option in parenthesis):
- 10th level Pilot:489 XP (516 XP) (
- 10th level Gunner: 496 XP (441 XP)
- 9th level Sensor/EW Operator: 438 XP (465 XP)
- Idea XP distributed by GM: 712 XP (711 XP)
As you can see the difference is not that huge for the participating group. And the GM still have the Idea XP Pool to give out. Heck! Lets say we introduce another character. Not only would he steal a total of 72 XP (79 XP) by doing nothing than just being on the ship during combat. Lets say he runs around the ship roleplaying really well and give very good advice to the other characters and that way manage to claim all the Idea XP. He would be getting a reward of 784 XP (790XP) which is around 60% higher XP reward than anyone else would receive. So I would still claim that the best source of XP is clever ideas and good roleplaying. This is just how I now have decided to handle the situations and since it is very early in our campaign it can be modified in the future. But seem to work well for us!
