What are all the "breaks" of Starfinder?

[Morphic tide]

Basically, where are all the parts of the mechanics that fall apart at some point in level progression, and specifically how do they fall apart? Whether it's the issue of max level weapons costing almost a third of your level 20 WBL (no, seriously, I checked), the fact that some of the important skill DCs rise faster than your bonus can possibly go up, or something I don't know (maybe spellcasting is useful only for utility because it's so painfully behind the technological damage output?), I'd like to see a somewhat compiled list of where things Don't Work. Either relentlessly overpowered, nonsensically underpowered for cost, or just bad in comparison to other options available at the same time/for similar costs.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A high-capacity battery (40 charges) costs 330 credits.
A pulsecaster rifle (shock longarm) costs 100 credits, and comes with a 40 charge battery.
Buy the pulsecaster rifle, take the battery out, throw the rifle away.

[Telok]

The pazio starfinder forums are pretty good for this. There's a couple threads in general roleplaying here too. I've commented in both of them.

Issues... From memory:
1) There are no good rules governing starship/character interactions.
2) Starship combat is a good board game, but it has issues with players trying to do non-board game actions.
3) A passenger car is about as tough as two wooden doors.
4) A starship airlock door takes a number (I don't exactly recall, more than 5) of anti-aircraft missiles to breach.
4) Use the errata DCs. X + level*2 as a DC outstrips the PCs ability to keep up.
5) NPCs aren't built with PC rules, so if you fight an NPC that was built with the PC rules (the APs go back and forth a bit) they're laughably easy to kill. It also means you can't have people switching sides in any fights.
6) WBL isn't emphasized, but it's really important due to the way the weapons, armor, attack, and damage all scale.
7) First level characters aren't allowed to buy quad-copters no matter how much money they have.
8) For skill checks full ranks + 5ish is equal to a competent character. Just full ranks will fall behind no matter what, even with the errata DCs. It takes a fully invested character with one of the class bonuses to a skill to actually get better at the skill as they level up.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

A high-capacity battery (40 charges) costs 330 credits.
A pulsecaster rifle (shock longarm) costs 100 credits, and comes with a 40 charge battery.
Buy the pulsecaster rifle, take the battery out, throw the rifle away.

The way batteries work, they transfer charges as soon as they are slotted. In your example, there is no battery to take out.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The way batteries work, they transfer charges as soon as they are slotted. In your example, there is no battery to take out.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I've taken another look on page 168 regarding charges, it says a weapon can have the battery swapped out in order to replace a depleted battery with a fully charged one. Batteries can be recharged indefinitely. So the pulsecaster rifle does definitely have a 40-charge battery that can be removed, recharged, and used in a different weapon.

[molten_dragon]

A high-capacity battery (40 charges) costs 330 credits.
A pulsecaster rifle (shock longarm) costs 100 credits, and comes with a 40 charge battery.
Buy the pulsecaster rifle, take the battery out, throw the rifle away.

Fairly realistic, you can do the same thing with printers to get ink cartridges cheap.

[molten_dragon]

The pazio starfinder forums are pretty good for this. There's a couple threads in general roleplaying here too. I've commented in both of them.

Issues... From memory:
1) There are no good rules governing starship/character interactions.
2) Starship combat is a good board game, but it has issues with players trying to do non-board game actions.
3) A passenger car is about as tough as two wooden doors.
4) A starship airlock door takes a number (I don't exactly recall, more than 5) of anti-aircraft missiles to breach.
4) Use the errata DCs. X + level*2 as a DC outstrips the PCs ability to keep up.
5) NPCs aren't built with PC rules, so if you fight an NPC that was built with the PC rules (the APs go back and forth a bit) they're laughably easy to kill. It also means you can't have people switching sides in any fights.
6) WBL isn't emphasized, but it's really important due to the way the weapons, armor, attack, and damage all scale.
7) First level characters aren't allowed to buy quad-copters no matter how much money they have.
8) For skill checks full ranks + 5ish is equal to a competent character. Just full ranks will fall behind no matter what, even with the errata DCs. It takes a fully invested character with one of the class bonuses to a skill to actually get better at the skill as they level up.

I'll add a couple of my own to this.

9) Starship combat DCs make no sense in general. As your ship gets better, it gets harder to do things with it.
10) So far at least the selling for 10% rule is not allowing the PCs to keep up with WBL. It's also creating a much wider gap between the haves (i.e. PCs that can use stuff they find) and the have nots (i.e. PCs that can't).
11) There are no rules for selling/salvaging captured or destroyed starships.

[Telok]

Oh, more stuff.
Radiation is either a non-issue (your armor negates it) or almost certain death if you can't escape fast (poisin rules).

Apparently elementals now need to eat, breathe, and sleep. Plus water elementals are neither aquatic nor amphibious. So they drown.

Automatic weapons, pistols, and grenades are really weak. Except for smoke grenades, which rock. Backpacks full low level grenades with remote detonators are cheaper and better than high level grenades.

I didn't check up on it but someone on the pazio forums was talking about light fixtures being hardness 3 and having 10 hp. Which means a 3rd level character can shoot one out with the "heavy weapon" artillery laser if and only if they have the appropriate weapon specialization and they roll maximum damage.

[Blue Wizard]

Recalled from one of our group's rants: There is no circumstance under which it is useful to have the medic skill. The base DC is 30, and that only gets you 1 more point of healing per night. And a totally unskilled user of a medpatch has a better chance of stabilizing a dying character than a skilled medic.

[Telok]

Actually a real break point is 7th to 9th level.

The WBL and "economy" assume a 35% to 40% of the total spent on armor, a like amount spent on the weapon, leaving 30% to 20% left for everything else. Since the published adventures result in a little over 50% WBL for a party of five PCs a GM who blindly follows the AP imposes a significant handicap on the players. It starts showing up as early as level 5 and I expect it to hit critical mass at level 7. Essentially an equal CR critter at level 5 has +13ish to hit and does about 1d8+8 damage. The difference between a character keeping up on AC vs. keeping up a weapon is AC 21 vs. AC 17, and damage of 1d8+5 vs. 2d10+8 (using an advanced melee weapon) or 2d6+5 (using a rifle type weapon). The weapon guy goes down and starts dying literally every fight while everyone else usually is out of stamina and down some hit points.

Likewise skill DCs calculate at 15+ (1.5 * level) and levels 7 to 9 are where full ranks and a decent stat noticably stop being useful. After 9th a character needs ranks + full stat + class skill + (class bonus or skill focus) to be relevant. That's not being good at the skill, it's just being more than a last ditch effort.

[Malimar]

I didn't check up on it but someone on the pazio forums was talking about light fixtures being hardness 3 and having 10 hp. Which means a 3rd level character can shoot one out with the "heavy weapon" artillery laser if and only if they have the appropriate weapon specialization and they roll maximum damage.
There's a "how many Starfinder characters does it take to change a lightbulb" joke in here somewhere.

[grarrrg]

there's a "how many starfinder characters does it take to change a lightbulb" joke in here somewhere.

I am sorry citizen, but that knowledge is above your security clearance.
Have a nice daycycle.