I couldn't find this in the book anywhere, so can someone explain how combat should work with personal weapons (blasters, etc.) against a vehicle. I know that 1 point of armor is equivalent to 10 points of soak, but how does one target, etc.?

Thanks!

No differences, targeting, shooting difficulties, ect, are all essentially the same. Note that with existing official weapons it is impossible to damage an armor 3 vehicle with personal weapons.

Hmm. Ok, so it's just as easy to hit a stationary target at medium range as it is a military swoop that's careening around at full speed? Is there any modifiers for handling/speed?

What about hull trauma? Is this the same as wound threshold, or is it a factor of 10 higher like soak? E.g., the military swoop (I forget the actually name, the speeders on Endor), have an armor of 0 and a HT of 2. Would it only take one successful hit from a blaster to destroy it? Or is the HT essentially 20 on the personal scale?

Thanks again!

What about hull trauma? Is this the same as wound threshold, or is it a factor of 10 higher like soak? E.g., the military swoop (I forget the actually name, the speeders on Endor), have an armor of 0 and a HT of 2. Would it only take one successful hit from a blaster to destroy it? Or is the HT essentially 20 on the personal scale?

It's multiplied by ten on personal scale. So a weapon that does 4 damage on starship scale does 40 damage in personal scale, and a vehicle with 2 HT has the equivalent of 20 WT in personal scale.

I couldn't find this in the book anywhere, so can someone explain how combat should work with personal weapons (blasters, etc.) against a vehicle. I know that 1 point of armor is equivalent to 10 points of soak, but how does one target, etc.?

Thanks!

Page 230 in the CRB starts a long section on Starship and vehicle combat.

Page 224 has a blacked out text block on "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale" at the bottom of the page.

Page 225 has a blacked out text block on "Starships and Personal Scale" at the top of the page.

Page 238 and 239 have relevant information.

If you are running combats at both the personal scale and vehicle/ship scale at the same time it will be beneficial to understand how they both work and how they are different.

I had to read those sections multiple times and run it a few times in a game to get a handle on it.

Hmm. Ok, so it's just as easy to hit a stationary target at medium range as it is a military swoop that's careening around at full speed? Is there any modifiers for handling/speed?

What about hull trauma? Is this the same as wound threshold, or is it a factor of 10 higher like soak? E.g., the military swoop (I forget the actually name, the speeders on Endor), have an armor of 0 and a HT of 2. Would it only take one successful hit from a blaster to destroy it? Or is the HT essentially 20 on the personal scale?

Thanks again!

There are modifiers for handling/speed, just not hard tabled ones like other systems have. Adding a setback die or two would be the way to go. Understand the reason why this isn't spelled out specifically for vehicles is because, to get the most out of this system, the gm should be applying setback dice to almost every check (so characters with gear and talents that remove setback can have something to remove). So explaining that you should apply a setback for X would be virtually every other sentence in the rulebook.

The x10 is for hull trauma too, that's why even a small AT-PT with armor 3 is currently untouchable by man portable weapons. Nothing has enough breach and damage to get through 30 points of soak and still do 10 points of damage.

See ya when you find out pilots don't have to roll piloting every turn in combat .

Seems to make vehicles more powerful than they should be.

An AT-PT is still very lightly armored. Its no better than a humvee in power scale, heavy blasters and repeating blasters should be able to take it down.

A piddly little speeder shouldn't be able to shrug off blaster fire, and what barely qualifies as military equipment shouldn't be able to ignore high end personal scale weapons.

I was laughing my ass off when I read the weapon descriptions in AoR. The light repeating blaster is supposed to be able to take down light and medium armored vehicles. Good luck with that!

The most effective ways to destroy a vehicle is to get a despair on your piloting roll.

The most effective ways to destroy a vehicle is to get a despair on your piloting roll.

Ha!

I was laughing my ass off when I read the weapon descriptions in AoR. The light repeating blaster is supposed to be able to take down light and medium armored vehicles. Good luck with that!

And so sayeth me, "x5". Preach it.

Theoretically, an epic roll with a lightsaber can critical an armor 3 vehicle. The RAW is that you must exceed a vehicle's armor to cause a crit, not that you must actually damage it. The intention may be the that you actually have to hurt the vehicle, but that's not what they wrote. If you get 11 extra damage from talents and the roll you'd do .1 damage to the vehicle because of breach 1. That's enough to allow you to buy a crit with advantage.

It's worth noting that most vehicles have crappy hull ratings. It only takes a few points past armor to take them out. I think a TIE fighter has like 3 hull. With most vehicle scale weapons, a hit is a kill.

Like all previous attempts by Star Wars RPGs FFG didn't manage to merge grunt scale and vehicle scale combat very well. Their attempt is just as clumsy as the previous ones. Shooting at a parked TIE fighter is so easy it should be an auto hit. Shooting at one moving at full throttle should be next to impossible unless you have a vehicle you can chase it down with (like a missile - AKA a suicidal droid vehicle). Part of the problem is that folks aren't comfortable with the idea that a direct hit from a Hellfire missile will vaporize a mere human. That said a hellfire isn't intended to hit an individual. It's an anti-tank weapon, so dodging the direct hit ought to be pretty easy. Unfortunately, close counts with missiles. I'm not smart enough to know what the answer is.

A vehicle's maneuverability should matter to the difficulty to hit it, but an A-Wing or TIE is just as easy to hit as a B-Wing or Bomber. There are other oddities to the system, but overall it seems to work surprisingly well.

Seems to make vehicles more powerful than they should be.

An AT-PT is still very lightly armored. Its no better than a humvee in power scale, heavy blasters and repeating blasters should be able to take it down.

A piddly little speeder shouldn't be able to shrug off blaster fire, and what barely qualifies as military equipment shouldn't be able to ignore high end personal scale weapons.

The thing to note is what armor value = what, and how the game determines what constitutes an "armored vehicle"

A "piddly little speeder" likely has an armor value of 0 and only 4 HT. So a few decent attacks from blaster pistol wielding characters will take care of business.

A T-16 has an armor of 1, but only 4 HT. So you'll need something with some punch to take it out, but heavy weapons like a heavy repeater or missile tube will make pretty quick work of it.

An outdated APC has an Armor value of 0..... but it's HT is actually pretty high at 8. So you'll need to score good hits with your blaster pistol over about 2+ turns to wreck it... but a repeating blaster can shred it. Essentially the vehicle is less about armor and more about absorbing hits through it's sheer bulk.

An AT-PT or repulsortank? These are supposed to be "fairly modern" frontline combat vehicles, so now you're at Armor 3, but still fairly low HT. So once you turn vehicle scale weapons on it, you're in good shape, but even a heavy repeater is gonna be hard pressed to kill it.

Now AT-STs are armor 3 as well, but with a much higher HT, making it more modern and harder to kill, and an AT-AT is waaay up at Armor 5 with a massive pile of HT (so taking it out with a snowspeeders cannons is possible...if you've got a few hours....)

The catch is there's also the "narrative" aspect, and that's a big part of what I suspect part of the intent was. They didn't want you to just sit back and shoot at the repulsortank till it died. They want you to sneak around, hop on top, use your lock breaker to skulduggery open the hatch, and toss a thermal detonator inside.

BONUS:

As an exciting addition, I was referencing my Age of Rebellion books weapons chart while writing this and noticed the anti-vehicle mine now has a breach of 4! With it's damage of 25 that allows a decent roll to lay 3 hull trauma on a lot of previously untouchable vehicles. So if you want to take out an AT-PT or AT-ST without relying on narrative effects, sabotage, or vehicle weapons, now you have the option of luring it into a minefield...

I was laughing my ass off when I read the weapon descriptions in AoR. The light repeating blaster is supposed to be able to take down light and medium armored vehicles. Good luck with that!

And so sayeth me, "x5". Preach it.

I second this. x10 is way too big; in that case, why would the stormtroopers ever bother shooting at the Falcon as it took off? x5 means a rifle with a few successes can actually penetrate the armor to do at least a little damage.

I was laughing my ass off when I read the weapon descriptions in AoR. The light repeating blaster is supposed to be able to take down light and medium armored vehicles. Good luck with that!

And so sayeth me, "x5". Preach it.

I second this. x10 is way too big; in that case, why would the stormtroopers ever bother shooting at the Falcon as it took off? x5 means a rifle with a few successes can actually penetrate the armor to do at least a little damage.

It's why I like the one point always get through soak and armor rule. It allows for crits, ie. lucky shots, while simultaneously not allowing small arms to simply overcome a large vehicles hull points.

Searching the forum i found this thread which answers some of the questions i had on vehicular combat on the personal scale range. However, i cannot find anything about who or what gets hit on a successful attack in vehicular combat. Maybe i'm just missing it. My questions are:

1. When shooting at a vehicle, such as a speeder or speeder bike, who/what gets hit. If a player wants to specifically hit the driver or the vehicle how, do you resolve it?

2. How are minions driving vehicles handled. Where does the damage go, into the minion group, and just ignore the vehicle?

Any help or experience with these questions is appreciated.

Searching the forum i found this thread which answers some of the questions i had on vehicular combat on the personal scale range. However, i cannot find anything about who or what gets hit on a successful attack in vehicular combat. Maybe i'm just missing it. My questions are:

1. When shooting at a vehicle, such as a speeder or speeder bike, who/what gets hit. If a player wants to specifically hit the driver or the vehicle how, do you resolve it?

He targets the driver and rolls to hit vs. the driver. Between the Sil difference and/or range and setbacks dropped on it for speed, cover, ect. you're good to go.

2. How are minions driving vehicles handled. Where does the damage go, into the minion group, and just ignore the vehicle?

Could you elaborate on the scenario? I'm not clear on if you're asking about a group of Swoop Gangers on swoops, or three thugs in a single landspeeder...

Searching the forum i found this thread which answers some of the questions i had on vehicular combat on the personal scale range. However, i cannot find anything about who or what gets hit on a successful attack in vehicular combat. Maybe i'm just missing it. My questions are:

1. When shooting at a vehicle, such as a speeder or speeder bike, who/what gets hit. If a player wants to specifically hit the driver or the vehicle how, do you resolve it?

He targets the driver and rolls to hit vs. the driver. Between the Sil difference and/or range and setbacks dropped on it for speed, cover, ect. you're good to go.

2. How are minions driving vehicles handled. Where does the damage go, into the minion group, and just ignore the vehicle?

Could you elaborate on the scenario? I'm not clear on if you're asking about a group of Swoop Gangers on swoops, or three thugs in a single landspeeder...

Thanks for your insight Ghostofman.

Either of your examples. If a player character targets the minion group of Swoop Gangers on swoop bikes. Does he target the minion group like normal? Judging by your answer on my first question i'm assuming he does.

Yeah, it doesn't matter if they are on swoops, in TIE Fighters, or riding Unicycles, a minion group is still a group and essentially acts as one organism.

It's a little weird but the system can allow a minion group to pilot a single vehicle if you wanted. Not 100% sure what that would look like or why you would want to, but there it is...

I was laughing my ass off when I read the weapon descriptions in AoR. The light repeating blaster is supposed to be able to take down light and medium armored vehicles. Good luck with that!

And so sayeth me, "x5". Preach it.

I just read this post and seen the x5 idea. I have to say I like it for a mixture of vehicle/personal combat. It's enough to prevent a small arms weapon from hitting but is low enough for possible lucky shot from a strong handheld weapon. Example, a Z-74 speeder with a light repeating blaster which has has 11 damage, auto-fire and Pierce 1. Yes you probably can't take it out but it can get through to do some hull damage forcing the AT-ST or a low armored vehicle to take you serous enough that using a speeder bike to draw their fire while a PC tries to get close enough to mount it or use an armor piercing grenade to take it out. I did a few rolls with a blaster rifle shooting at an AT-ST and it never penetrated the armor, At x5 but the speeder bike did get a few damage through.

What about range bands in context of this?

Vehicles which move on planetary scale can move beyond extreme ranges while still being within planetary close range bands. Is this not enough bonus for zipping around?