what is everyone's experience with starfighter battles? does it get hard if you have more than 6 pilots on each side? do you involve capital ships? do you employ alot of narration?

Follow up question for anyone who's done it... Are starfighters as fragile as they seem?

Because we look over the numbers, and have thus far avoided PCs getting into these kind of fights because it seems the case.

Remember that a ship isn't necessarily destroyed when the hull threshold is exceeded.

When age of rebellion comes out, I'm starting a campaign on the imperial side, with the players being a wing of TIE fighter pilots.

If you are in a fragile fighter, make sure you make use of gain the advantage along with every ability or option you can.

does it get hard if you have more than 6 pilots on each side?

EVERY combat is a pain if you have 6 distinct combatants on each side.

Remember that a ship isn't necessarily destroyed when the hull threshold is exceeded.

Of course. But while that is true, it does not stop you from being a useless brick tumbling through space as soon as your ship's HT or SST is exceeded.

I've run a few starfighter encounters. The PCs had better than average ships each equipped with Proton torpedoes. 2 PC fighters (one was a Y-Wing with PC pilot and added gunner position for a second PC), versus 6 TIE fighters in 3 groups of 2 introduced as the plot required. The PCs smoked them. Thanks impart to the torpedoes, or as I am now calling them, the "Equalizers".

Granted I made the Pilots as minions so they weren't taking their full compliment of actions. Now the same 2 fighters versus 4 rival pilots in TIE-LN smoked the PCs.

But oddly enough, 4 of my PCs took out 7 Rival NPCs all 11 of which were in Snow speeders from AoR beta book.

So don't be too afraid, You may find that the fights might not be as deadly to the PCs as you think. As with learning how to balance ground encounters, start easy and work your way to more difficult encounters. If you want to make things easier on one side or another, add or remove ordinances from enemy ships.

And don't forget about the ejection seats and rescue shuttles if a fighter goes down.

The problem with an "EotE" style campaign it makes if difficult to have star fighter battles when a few good shots will make your snubfighter a hunk of junk. THen the cost of replacing it is more then most smugglers will get for a simple drop point shipment job.

Unless you are part of the Empire, or Rebellion then the cost of fighter replacement or repair might be mitigated.

Getting needed parts or replacement craft would make a good focus for an adventure IMO.

In a comparison between on-foot and starfighter combat, the staying power of stsrfighters is WAY lower. Every character I've seen has a WT of 12 or more while few fighters have a HTT above 10. Soak and Armor are about the same (average of 3 or so, but combat characters can get much higher and fighters just don't).

Remember that a ship isn't necessarily destroyed when the hull threshold is exceeded.

Of course. But while that is true, it does not stop you from being a useless brick tumbling through space as soon as your ship's HT or SST is exceeded.

Was Arvel Crynyd a useless brick? The crew of the Executor would beg to differ

In a comparison between on-foot and starfighter combat, the staying power of stsrfighters is WAY lower. Every character I've seen has a WT of 12 or more while few fighters have a HTT above 10. Soak and Armor are about the same (average of 3 or so, but combat characters can get much higher and fighters just don't).

This.

One of the tricks to larger scale space combat is careful staging on the GMs side. Fighters don't have much staying power, so doing " Oh noes, here come a dozen enemy fighters against your four roll vigilance!" Is setting the players up for failure.

Instead you have to do stuff like: "OK, roll leadership (roll roll, 2success, 1 adv).... You coordinate you and the others and are able to isolate and split a flight group of enemy fighters, so you're up against 2 minion groups of 2. If all goes well green squadron can handle the rest. The hairball is pretty intense though, so piloting, gunnery, and similar checks will suffer 1 terrain setback to represt all the laser fire and maneuvering spacecraft."

The players can then focus on a more reasonable fight while the rest of the squadron deals with the unwashed masses. Use the players as the reference. When the fights over if the playerers owned it, so did the rest of the squadron. If the players got beat up, so did everyone else.

Another thing to consider is in the setting Edge of the Empire, the heroes are generally not a paramilitary organization. Running should be one of the first things a group should consider.

Age of Rebellion, however, is the game line that seems to be publishing mass combat rules.

I'm not telling you how to run your games, but you should realize that the focus of this game line is not on starfighter combat, and there may be options availiable in age of rebellion that increase the durability of starfighters.

Also, depending on the starfighter, you may have an astromech which can do a whole lot for your options.

If one puts their arm in a dragons mouth, one should not be surprised when the dragon bites it off.

Remember that a ship isn't necessarily destroyed when the hull threshold is exceeded.

Of course. But while that is true, it does not stop you from being a useless brick tumbling through space as soon as your ship's HT or SST is exceeded.

Was Arvel Crynyd a useless brick? The crew of the Executor would beg to differ

I am missing how that reference applies to a PC who is in a crippled starfighter. Are you saying the PC has the option to sacrifice himself by slamming into another ship? Wow, what a great "option" left on the table for him...

I've been running an ad hoc starfighter campaign for some friends, mostly using the starfighters out of the Age of Rebellion Beta.

Starfighter combat can be very dangerous, particularly as the only real defensive option most pilots will have is Evasive Maneuvers, which may not be that much of a hurdle for suitably skilled pilots. In a lot of cases, being able to trigger the Linked quality means the shooter has a very good chance of disabling/crippling the opposing ship, and most exchanges tend not to go past three rounds, though I've seen sufficiently capable pilots (Agility 3, Gunnery 2 or more) blow through an enemy TIE in a single volley. Had one instance where a PC in an X-Wing ripped through a TIE minion group (3 fighters) thanks to a couple Triumph and a few Advantages on the roll, resulting in the minion group taking four hits at 8 damage each as well as a critical hit. On the flip side, I've had an Imperial Ace Pilot in a TIE Interceptor chew right through a PC's Z-95 Headhunter thanks to the Linked quality and a lot of Advantages to go with the single success rolled.

There's also a lot of options for pilots to use, though I've found that I tend not to use them as the GM with the occasional exception of Evasive Maneuvers if the bad guys are already within firing range or have sufficient speed.

It can be trying for a GM to run a multiple starfighter combat, though I strongly suggest the usage of minion groups to help cut down on the number of enemy units to keep track of during the encounter. One, it makes the bad guys a challenge without throwing hordes of ships at the PCs, and it makes the PCs feel awesome when they're able to blow two or more enemy fighters away in a single volley.

the problem I have had is that all fighters are the same. A-Wings and TIE fighters have a high handling but are just as easy to hit as a TIE bomber or Y-Wings. while shields/defense has not made much difference in battles even with 4 black dice.

had a TIE interceptor vs. a Y-1300 almost took out the PCs in 2 hits. first hit was 1 success with 2 advantage (8 out of 22HT) the second was 1 success with 4 advantage (now 20 out of 22) and the Y-1300 had upgraded shields and the 3 and 4 setback dice did not help at all.

over all wish handling and shields/defense did more.

EDIT: yes we are using Evasive and Gain the advantage

The pilot specialty gives many more defensive options and ship based abilities to the pilot.

Handling is useful when flying through an asteroid field (or ionizing gas cloud, infrastructure to a space station). Space, while empty, should not be empty in star wars. If your gm is just using empty space all the time, they are doing it wrong.

Imagine a dogfight through a crowded cityscape or having to dodge the debris left from where the rebel cruiser, in dying defiance, rammed the star destroyer.

Put obstacles in the player and enemies' path so they have to concentrate on more than just aiming and shooting. Han saw the asteroid field as a tactical advantage, even though a collision could have destroyed the Millennium Falcon.

Players should also not be afraid to spend a triumph to say there is a comet in system that they want to fly towards because the tail will diffuse laser blasts or some other type of thing.

If you make use of slicing, as a fighter pilot (or enemy) you do that rather than just attack with your linked weapons.

Think outside the box- and players, don't be afraid to alter details with a triumph, and GM's - don't say no to this.

@ccarlson101: that was said mostly in jest. However, from a certain point of view, and what I said above, Arvel Crynyd's kamikaze run could be an option. Is it one that every pilot should do? No, but if a player came uo with that idea in a campaign the gm may want to go with it. If Arvel was a player, he could have spent a destiny point in a creative way to say, even though his ship was disabled, as a dying act he was able to aim at the bridge of the Executor. It is similar to, in my view, some of the examples I listed above.

The pilot specialty gives many more defensive options and ship based abilities to the pilot.

See, I don't think it gives THAT much except at high investment levels. And at that point, unless you're playing a game that focuses on space fights and the like, your Talents are going to be much less applicable to regular gameplay, which very well may make the character feel like he is less effective (and in some cases may be).