Modding Starship Combat

Hi guys,
I GM'ed my first ever RPG session the other day, using the CODA system, and I had the odd concern about Starship combat.
The players had a ship with Shield protection of 16. They were attacked by an enemy ship. The enemy vessel's tactical officer had a +2 bonus to tactical rolls, and used the 'Lock-On' move to gain a further +3 bonus, but that still effectively left the enemy needing to roll 11 on 2D6 to hit, leaving the players often in NO real danger.

Another thing was that the players shield threshold was 3, and when the enemy did hit, they were hitting for 5 damage, meaning that they were only getting two points of damage per hit.

The result being that the combat went on forever, and the players barely got a sense of being in any real danger.

I could just put them up against more ships (with more advanced tactical officers for a greater bonus) in future, that way if one enemy ship misses there are x more enemies to have a chance of hitting, but I'm also trying to think of little tweeks I can make to the current system.

This seems the place to ask if anyone else has tweeked the Starship combat system at all, or if anyone can offer any advice?

Thanks to anyone who answers, a rookie GM appreciates it!

Well my first thought after reading this is that it doesn't sound as if your enemy tactical officer is getting the benefit of all of his mods.

A skill rank of +2 means that either all of the bonuses are not applied, or that the NPC has little to no rank at all.

Example: A character with a skill rank of +2 in Sys Ops also gets their Intellect mod and if they specialize in the action that they are performing, they would get an additional +2. So, assume the NPC has a modest intellect of 9, which gives a +1 and they have the specialty for tactical, an additional +2.

Net result is: +1 (mod) +2 (skill rank) +2 (specialty) = +5

Next add in your maneuver bonus of +3, and the NPC has a 2d6+8 dice roll to try and hit a TN 16 ship. A far cry easier than what you have above.

So check that first.

Next, even though the ship has 16 protection, it still only has 10 on its shield track, so every hit that is a success will do 2 points of damage plus reduce shields. When the shield track is at 0, that damage is straight to structure and every 5 points of damage causes a critical hit, which reduces system capabilities.

Bottom line is, this battle should not take too long at all.

One option I did in order to give the "Movie feel" to the combat was replace each point that got through the shields with 1D6 damage. Do that and you will cripple ships faster than you can say Wrath of Khan.

Hi, apologies for the long reply time, thanks a lot Tomcat, I've gone over the Narrators Guide, and I certainly do need to look over levelling up enemy bridge officers. Thanks again.