I had a situation where bad guys on speeder bikes were firing at a grounded starship, trying to take out the gun turrent.

It occured to me that speeder bikes (by default) are armed with the Personal scale weapon, Light Repeating Blaster.

I know there's a rule that states 1 point of starship armor actually equals 10 points of soak for personal scale weapons (unless they have the Breach quality).

vice versa, 1 point of damage from a starship scale weapon equals 10 points of damage on the personal scale.

The problem I was confronted with is that the ship put their shields up. I'm wondering if the curve applies to shields as well. In other words, should the light repeating blasters have had to roll 10 black dice?

That probably seems silly, but yet, it sort of makes sense when you consider the movies and EU. You've never seen any personal weapon do squat against a starship with shields on.

At the time I just sort of fudged it, and made the weapon ineffective against their shields (without rolling), but I'd like to have an official ruling.

That's a question I never would have thought to ask unless it came up in one of my games and it hasn't.

Honestly, I think you did the right thing by just making the personal blasters ineffective. In my opinion.

Core Rulebook, page 224, the sidebar labeled "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale" :

"When dealing with a vessel's weapons, armor, and hull trauma threshold, every point is equal to ten points of the equivalent characteristic in the personal scale."

So it doesn't specify shields or (interestingly) strain.

It's probably fine to not scale up the shields. I mean, the armor x 10 and hull trauma threshold x 10 alone is enough to make the vast majority of personal weapons useless against even vehicles with an armor of 1 - They're going to have to inflict 20 damage in a single hit to do one point of damage to the vehicle.

I also agree that your ruling was correct. Narratively, because vehicle shields in Star Wars tend to block attacks from personal-scale weaponry. Mechanically, because anything that could genuinely harm the ship would have to either come from a powerful (and thus could breach the shield) weapon or incredibly lucky shot (in which case they "found a vulnerability" in the shield).

I would also suggest that, when faced with personal-scale weapons versus a vehicle-grade shield, players (or enemies!) need to get creative. For example, I might spend a Destiny point to declare "It looks like their repulsors are interfering with the shield. I start aiming for that weak spot!"

If shields weren't planetary scale, how would they work against planetary-scale weapons? Not very well, I'd reckon.

However, it's been shown that shields (at least the ones on droidekas) are susceptible to slow-moving attacks so it could be a neat story element to have the players figure out they can bypass the ship's shields if they move slowly enough with those thermal detonators. I would additionally allow for personal scale explosives to be highly effective against the ship if they are placed by hand into sensitive bits - but I haven't quite figured out how I'd adjudicate that part yet, I'd probably go with a 5x multiplier for damage instead of 10x for planetary scale.

Rebelion Era book seems to focus on starships maneuvers and other things too. Maybe there they will add some corrections or clarifications.

I really want that book

Until the moment the x5 scale vehicle and the "blaster gun" cannot damage starhip shields (RAW) can be enough.

PS: 300!! XD

planetary based shields are WAY different then starship shields. Movie examples would be The Gungans shield, Hoth, and the Shield around the moon of Endor. The Death star superlaser was a brute force method to circumvent planetary shields. The Torpedo sphere was another option

In the EotE game, shields act as deflectors. Not like in video games where they are additional source of hit points that can be regenerated. Thus you only get the setback die/dice that doesn't really scale

planetary based shields are WAY different then starship shields. Movie examples would be The Gungans shield, Hoth, and the Shield around the moon of Endor. The Death star superlaser was a brute force method to circumvent planetary shields. The Torpedo sphere was another option

In the EotE game, shields act as deflectors. Not like in video games where they are additional source of hit points that can be regenerated. Thus you only get the setback die/dice that doesn't really scale

One could argue that planetary shields are just bigger versions of personal scale shields and are susceptible to the same slow-moving attacks. How'd those AT-ATs get through to take out the shield generator, after all?

planetary based shields are WAY different then starship shields. Movie examples would be The Gungans shield, Hoth, and the Shield around the moon of Endor. The Death star superlaser was a brute force method to circumvent planetary shields. The Torpedo sphere was another option

In the EotE game, shields act as deflectors. Not like in video games where they are additional source of hit points that can be regenerated. Thus you only get the setback die/dice that doesn't really scale

One could argue that planetary shields are just bigger versions of personal scale shields and are susceptible to the same slow-moving attacks. How'd those AT-ATs get through to take out the shield generator, after all?

The shield didn't extend around the entirety of Hoth. Just enough of it to make direct orbital turbo laser bombardment impossible and necessitate sending troop transports around the shield and landing. Presumably the constant blizzard conditions and winds made it impractical to directly send TIE Bombers or other, lighter aircraft at Echo Base.

The shield didn't extend around the entirety of Hoth. Just enough of it to make direct orbital turbo laser bombardment impossible and necessitate sending troop transports around the shield and landing. Presumably the constant blizzard conditions and winds made it impractical to directly send TIE Bombers or other, lighter aircraft at Echo Base.

Yet, the Rebel snowspeeders were able to fly, with adaptation. One would assume Vader's fleet mechanics corps could outfit tie fighters similarly, since they managed a landing in the same conditions. Since we couldn't see the shield, it's hard to tell if it encased echo base entirely (as in it was a full dome) or a mere shield of sorts. I always assumed the former, and you've just proved my point for my own satisfaction.

Snowspeeders are land speeders modified (or designed) for cold-weather operations; they float on repulsors. They're not dedicated combat aircraft that use non-repulsor means of propulsion. And I seriously doubt a squadron or two of TIEs could be modified effectively in a couple hours to be effective in that climate. TIEs are light, nimble, agile...all bad things when you have a serious headwind. Bigger, slower ships that operate more on repulsors, like walker landing craft, would probably brave the weather easier just because they're bigger and not able to be blown around as easily due to their mass.

Since we couldn't see the shield, it's hard to tell if it encased echo base entirely (as in it was a full dome) or a mere shield of sorts. I always assumed the former, and you've just proved my point for my own satisfaction.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Theater_shield

Thanks for the shield info. I do realize TIEs are different from air speeders, but my point is that the Empire came really well-equipped for an arctic assault, except for aerial support? I have a hard time believing that!

I guess they didn't really need it in the end....

If we are talking about the Battle of Hoth, the reason Star Fighters were not used was that the Rebels needed them as escorts for the Transports, and the Imperials were not going to send out fighters, or possibly strand them when they went chasing the fleeing rebels. Secondly, if the Rebels DID use starfighters against the Imperial ground assault that would have escalated the battle and made it even more deadly since the Imperials would have sent TIEs against them to maintain Air superiority.

The Rebel Alliance used Imperial Arrogance many times against them. That is why the main strategy of the Rebel Alliance was "Space denial"

Sending the snow speeders just allowed the Imperials to remain more arrogant with just the AT-ATs

In my opinion there were no Ties, due to budget and technological restraints while making the films. I'm silly like that though.