...Okay. Bear in mind I'm working only from the beginner box here. Apologies for my ignorance.

Got the starter set, and most of the rules make nice, simple sense*. The one thing that doesn't follow easily is in the vehicle combat - specifically the example starfighters and shields.

A point of defence adds a setback die to incoming fire. Fine and dandy. However:

• According to the AoR mini-rulebook in the starter box defence used to represent shields. Which makes me curious as the interceptor has a point of defence. I know shielded interceptors did exist but they were far from common.
• Defence is written up as four 'boxes' - the X wing is "1 - - 1" and the interceptor "- - - 1". The statline template is structured this way, so it's clearly deliberate that there are four 'slots', even though the TIE l/n and shuttle have nothing in any of them.
• Do I just add them all up? (so the X-wing gets 2 setback dice against incoming fire). Seems a bit overwrought rather than just giving it a defence rating of '2'.
• I get the impression I'm missing something in the mini-rulebook from the proper core rules which makes sense of this (possibly shield arcs?).

* In an RPG? This is heresy! Where are the unneccessarily convoluted grappling rules?

• Defense is primarily representative of shields, but it can also just generally be anything that could make it harder for the ship's armor to be hit directly.

Thanks. So as far as I'm concerned (happy to stick with the simplified rules for a bit!) if the defender gets to choose where they're hit, then the interceptor is defence "1", and the x-wing is also defence "1", whilst the fighter and bomber (in shadowpoint) are defence "-". Fine.

Extra manouvres can wait for the moment*. If there's a decent 'play-through' example of a dogfight posted somewhere, that'd be good, though.

*I might in some suitable narrative "deflectors double front!" situation let the players go up to defence 2/-, but that's outside the scope of the beginner rules (would allow it if they were flying at a big ship, but obviously it makes them vulnerable to being shot at by enemy fighters at the same time).

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Thanks. So as far as I'm concerned (happy to stick with the simplified rules for a bit!) if the defender gets to choose where they're hit, then the interceptor is defence "1", and the x-wing is also defence "1", whilst the fighter and bomber (in shadowpoint) are defence "-". Fine.

Extra manouvres can wait for the moment*. If there's a decent 'play-through' example of a dogfight posted somewhere, that'd be good, though.

*I might in some suitable narrative "deflectors double front!" situation let the players go up to defence 2/-, but that's outside the scope of the beginner rules (would allow it if they were flying at a big ship, but obviously it makes them vulnerable to being shot at by enemy fighters at the same time).

While they use the full rules and the beginner rules, Episode 25 of the Order 66 podcast walks through Vehicular combat.

The rules stuff starts around 35:45 and around 2:52:56 it goes into a combat example.

Yeah. It's a long episode, but I felt it was very enjoyable.