page 224 states that "...to avoid weapons such as blaster pistols dealing critical damage to heavily armored starships, the damage must exceed the starships's armor before the shot can inflict a critical hit."

that seems quite straightforward.

but what about simply damaging the ship?

what if i lob a thermal detonator at a yt-1300 parked in a hangar? does this cause damage? i am not quite sure what raw is here.

the ship has armor 3, reduced to 2 by breach 1. i get 1 success. considering the quote from p224 i can cause a crit if i also get 2 advantages or a triumph.

but if i don't cause a crit, does the grenade do 1 ht damage to the ship? or would it cause only 1/10 damage and therefore no damage at all?

when i shoot my heavy blaster pistol at a mobquet flare-s swoopbike and score 3 successes it will suffer 1 ht damage, cause the shot caused 10 damage.

if the thermal detonator in the first example caused damage, would the swoop bike go down with a fourth success, making it 11 damage?

please don't give me any houserules, just explain raw and post any significant rules. i am only interested in raw atm.

A thermal detonator has the Breach quality and high damage, so it stands a good chance of doing some damage anyway. But it still needs to do a full 10 damage for every 1 Hull trauma it inflicts. That being said, if it's a parked/docked starship you can always place the detonator inside an engine nozzle or other vulnerable spot, bypassing armour completely. I believe Dangerous Covenants have rules for placing explosives rather than throwing them.

Any damage to vehicles does 1 damage for every whole 10 damage you inflict. Minus armour, of course.

And how many advantage are required to trigger a Critical varies from weapon to weapon. Most ranged weapons require at least 3 advantage (or a Triumph).

There is no definitive answer and you will get opinions and interpretations. Some will say anything that exceeds the armor equals a crit potential, others will say it has to be 10 personal scale damage. There is no clear answer. I have submitted a rules query on this and am awaiting a response.

There is no definitive answer and you will get opinions and interpretations. Some will say anything that exceeds the armor equals a crit potential, others will say it has to be 10 personal scale damage. There is no clear answer. I have submitted a rules query on this and am awaiting a response.

thanks a lot.

Yeah, per RAW Armor 3 targets just can't be damaged with existing personal scale weapons through conventional non-narrative attacks unless you manage to make a seriously epic roll that generates somewhere around 10+ successes.

Use of actual demolition weapons (using a mechanics check) will do it IIRC, but again, that's not really a conventional non narrative "attack" so much as it it's just planting explosives, which does sorta get back into narrative territory...

This is a bit of an issue relating to certain targets that players often expect to be destroyable with man portable weapons like missile tubes and thermal detonators. AT-STs, AT-PTs, Landspeeders with the up-armor adjustment package that makes them repulsor tanks, many starfighters, all fall into this category.

It's also possible the solution is simply a weapon that hasn't been published yet.

page 224 states that "...to avoid weapons such as blaster pistols dealing critical damage to heavily armored starships, the damage must exceed the starships's armor before the shot can inflict a critical hit."

that seems quite straightforward.

but what about simply damaging the ship?

what if i lob a thermal detonator at a yt-1300 parked in a hangar? does this cause damage? i am not quite sure what raw is here.

the ship has armor 3, reduced to 2 by breach 1. i get 1 success. considering the quote from p224 i can cause a crit if i also get 2 advantages or a triumph.

but if i don't cause a crit, does the grenade do 1 ht damage to the ship? or would it cause only 1/10 damage and therefore no damage at all?

p.224 also states that "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."

that means the ships armor is 30 (treated as soak) when attacked at the personal scale. so breach brings that down to 20 on the personal scale weapon.

basically, here's the RAW as I've been able to compile for your example.

YT-1300 has ARMOR 3, SILHOUETTE 4, HT THRESHOLD 22, and DEFENSE 1

on the personal scale those become ARMOR (SOAK) 30, SILHOUETTE 4, HT THRESHOLD 220, DEFENSE 1

for creating your dice pool:

1 Setback (from ship's Defense 1)

Difficulty is Simple as determined by rules regarding Silhouettes (p.212)

Thermal Detonator can cause DMG 20, CRIT 2

You must exceed the ship's ARMOR 20 (reduced by Breach 1) to cause any damage and before you can activate a Critical Injury.

That means you need to have 1 uncancelled successes to cause 21 points of damage and a net 1 point of damage to the ship after subtracting ARMOR, HT THRESHOLD --> 219. Additional successes add +1 dmg per.

If you got a Triumph or two advantage in addition to the needed success then you could activate the Critical Injury and roll d100 AND add +40 to the result (from the Vicious 4 ability of the thermal detonator). That's best case for you, without even considering the weird rules regarding what happens whenever you throw a thermal detonator at something and don't set the timer:

Range = Short, p.165 "Thermal detonators are so potent that their Blast quality affects everyone within short range of the original target." This is different from the normal Blast quality affect on p. 155: "each character (friend or foe) Engaged with the original target suffers wounds equal to the weapon's Blast rating..." (emphases mine)

Overall, something is off with this besides the range making this basically a suicide bomb whenever it's not used as a trap or thrown with a delay. I can't agree with the result only causing 1 dmg against a hull trauma threshold of 220 since the thermal detonator "can level a building." (p.165) but then you can always spend additional advantage x 2 or triumph to add +10 more to the crit per.

Best option would be throw the grenade with a short timer allowing you to retreat to medium range before it blows.

(thanks to awayputurwpn for helping me fix some of this)

p.224 also states that "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."

that means the ships armor is 30 when attacked at the personal scale, not 3. so breach brings that down to 29, as the thermal detonator is a personal scale weapon.

The equivalent characteristic of Hull Trauma Threshold at personal scale is Wound Threshold. 1 point of starship scale damage is 10 points of character scale damage and vice-versa.

Your ship examples are, unfortunately, way off-base due to this skewed interpretation of the rules :-/ my suggestion is to scrap whatever work you've done in that regard and re-read the rules. It really is more simple than you're making it.

sorry, the lateness of the evening and having to keep flipping through all the relevant sections of the core made me a bit sloppy. hopefully my corrections are accurate.

By RAW, it's very difficult to damage anything bigger than a speeder bike with personal scale weapons. That's why I favor making tweaks or handling things narratively.

For instance, when I'm in the GM seat I treat the E-Web as a man-portable auto-blaster rather than a Heavy Repeating blaster, not that that's come up yet.

Yeah, per RAW Armor 3 targets just can't be damaged with existing personal scale weapons through conventional non-narrative attacks unless you manage to make a seriously epic roll that generates somewhere around 10+ successes.

Use of actual demolition weapons (using a mechanics check) will do it IIRC, but again, that's not really a conventional non narrative "attack" so much as it it's just planting explosives, which does sorta get back into narrative territory...

This is a bit of an issue relating to certain targets that players often expect to be destroyable with man portable weapons like missile tubes and thermal detonators. AT-STs, AT-PTs, Landspeeders with the up-armor adjustment package that makes them repulsor tanks, many starfighters, all fall into this category.

It's also possible the solution is simply a weapon that hasn't been published yet.

How hard did you have to try to not say too much? Because I'm sitting here like 'Come on, hurry up!!!!'