Hi, new GM here,

In the ship profiles, it says ship complement: and lists different crew options, like pilot, co-pilot, gunner, cargo handler, comms/sensor operator, engineer etc.

How strict should you be if your ship does not have the specific crew option, do you still allow the PC's to perform a relevant action?

Eg. my new players have a firespray, crew complement - pilot and 2 guards (which supposedly are in the guard station in lower aft section of ship according to book description). Can the 'guard' PC help with gunnery skill checks (even though there is no co-pilot or gunner option listed).

Or can they still jam even though there is no space written for co-pilot, comms/sensor operator? etc?

Sure, obviously you need a gun for them to shoot, but they certainly could be performing other checks. There doesn't need to be an engineer slot for players to do damage control checks and such.

Here's a somewhat related question:

Do capital ships get to fire ALL their weapons when available? (ie multiple turbolaser batteries?) Thanks!

I'm pretty lenient about this. My players fly a Gthroc 720, and I work on the assumption that there are four seats in the cockpit.The pilot and copilot can do basically anything that has to do with operating the ship systems (piloting, astrogation, sensors, communications, etc.) but not make combat repairs unless they leave the cockpit. The two rearmost seats can do anything the pilot/copilot can do, except fly the ship. The group's mechanic is usually running around doing repairs and recovering system strain from the engineering station or something.

Here's a somewhat related question:

Do capital ships get to fire ALL their weapons when available? (ie multiple turbolaser batteries?) Thanks!

They sure do in the movies! They even show shots of the gun crews working the emplacements. I don't imagine there's one 'gunner' on the bridge with a joystick

And this is why tussling with capital ships should rightfully be a terrifying proposition for a small ship. Although my players recently had an actual conversation about the chances of taking on a Marauder Corvette in a Lambda shuttle. I basically said "I won't stop you trying, but realistically it's suicide. If you want to let the dice fall where they may...?"

They ran.

Here's a somewhat related question:

Do capital ships get to fire ALL their weapons when available? (ie multiple turbolaser batteries?) Thanks!

Yes!

But there's a few ways to handle that:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/StarWarsRPG/age-of-rebellion/beta/Week%205_Low%20Res.pdf

I suspect this will come down once the finalized book ships, but until then, check out pg. 5.

I'm pretty lenient about this. My players fly a Gthroc 720, and I work on the assumption that there are four seats in the cockpit.The pilot and copilot can do basically anything that has to do with operating the ship systems (piloting, astrogation, sensors, communications, etc.) but not make combat repairs unless they leave the cockpit. The two rearmost seats can do anything the pilot/copilot can do, except fly the ship. The group's mechanic is usually running around doing repairs and recovering system strain from the engineering station or something.

I figure about the same for my group's YG-4210. The pilot and co-pilot can fly or work systems, and the third and fourth seat can work systems as well. Gunner has to be in the turret to shoot, engineer has to be in the engineering space to make repairs. They've got a rather finicky shield generator, so that last one's pretty important.

One slight variation is that the engineer can bypass the cockpit feeds and directly access the long-range sensors and comms, given their location. However, the engineering spaces don't have any control equipment for those, so he'd have to read the displays on his datapad!

Eg. my new players have a firespray, crew complement - pilot and 2 guards (which supposedly are in the guard station in lower aft section of ship according to book description). Can the 'guard' PC help with gunnery skill checks (even though there is no co-pilot or gunner option listed).

I think of gunnery more like the PC Game Rebel Assault than Tie Fighter.

If you recall Darth Vader shooting in his tie fighter, the cannons are not fixed. He doesn't have to move the whole ship in order to fire his guns in a different direction. This leads me to believe that if someone was sitting next to Vader and had his own console, that person could also fire the ship while Darth Vader was concentrating on piloting.

If you look at the Millenium Falcon in X-wing Series, there's an option to link the laser cannons forward. Whoever's in the cockpit and flying the Falcon could probably shoot those turrets in the same fashion that Darth Vader does... but the Falcon's cockpit wasn't exactly designed for shooting the turrets; and it's obviously more favorable to shoot them in the gunner seat. I'd rule you could fire from any of the four seats in the cockpit with a setback die, or fire from the gunner seat with no setback.

Going off this, it looks like the two guards are sitting right next to the pilot. The copilot's (Boba Fett) view is slightly better because his console is right in front of him, but the empty seat's console is to the side. I'd say the empty seat gets a setback, but can fire the turrets.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe a ship's complement strictly refers to the amount of stations a ship has to operate as well. If there's no copilot in the complement, you can't copilot. But that's probably going to make space battles suck more... so I'll side with fun and just let people do things within reason.

Some of the other actions like say damage control, manual repairs, and fire discipline don't necessarily require a station. For fire discipline, someone just needs to get over the ship's internal comms to coordinate gunnery shots. Manual repairs means tromping about the ship and nailing down stuff that's come loose. It all depends on what type of action that the character wants to perform. Things like Gunnery or Piloting, obviously need to be done from a specific console, but many other actions don't have to be.