MY house rule (and a simple one i think)

Evasive Maneuver

Any attack made against a ship doing evaise maneuvers receives an upgrade in the difficulty equal to the piloting (space) skill of the target.

Any attack made by the ship doing Evasive Maneuver receives one upgrade in difficulty.

Has worked so far.

MY house rule (and a simple one i think)

Evasive Maneuver

Any attack made against a ship doing evaise maneuvers receives an upgrade in the difficulty equal to the piloting (space) skill of the target.

The number of dices upgraded this way cannot be greater then the target ship handling value and if the target ship has 0 or less handling then upgrade the difficult one time only.

Any attack made by the ship doing Evasive Maneuver receives one upgrade in difficulty.

Has worked so far.

I'll have to test that out but it sounds like what I have been looking for.

I think that something that mitigates damage rather than adjusting the dice pool is the answer. A talent like Parry/Reflect usable by the pilot to reduce damage would be ideal.

So something like this?

Evasive Action

Reduce incoming damage from all attacks against the ship by 1 per rank of Piloting(Space) skill of the target pilot.

A ship taking Evasive Action upgrades the difficulty of its next attack roll by 1.

So something like this?

Evasive Action

Reduce incoming damage from all attacks against the ship by 1 per rank of Piloting(Space) skill of the target pilot.

A ship taking Evasive Action upgrades the difficulty of its next attack roll by 1.

More like reflect. Spend X system strain to reduce damage by Y. That way you makeittougherwt but still attach it to a finite resource.

So something like this?

Evasive Action

Reduce incoming damage from all attacks against the ship by 1 per rank of Piloting(Space) skill of the target pilot.

A ship taking Evasive Action upgrades the difficulty of its next attack roll by 1.

More like reflect. Spend X system strain to reduce damage by Y. That way you makeittougherwt but still attach it to a finite resource.

That would have the oddity of making the A-wing and other craft with low SST less able to use the rule.

So something like this?

Evasive Action

Reduce incoming damage from all attacks against the ship by 1 per rank of Piloting(Space) skill of the target pilot.

A ship taking Evasive Action upgrades the difficulty of its next attack roll by 1.

More like reflect. Spend X system strain to reduce damage by Y. That way you makeittougherwt but still attach it to a finite resource.

That would have the oddity of making the A-wing and other craft with low SST less able to use the rule.

If you don't then you end up applying free damage reduction. has the potential to become a oversoak issue...

My group discussed this (potential) issue, and we are going to play around with a house-rule:

Once per session (and perhaps at the cost of a Destiny Point, we haven't decided), when a PC (or important NPC) is hit by an attack, they may reduce the damage by a set amount, and instead take an automatic critical hit with a corresponding bonus to the crit roll. We will start off using a conversion of -1 damage to +10 crit roll.

For example, they might reduce final damage from the attack by 2, and then would roll a critical hit with a +20 modifier.

Benefits:

Cinematic, dramatic, and will make the player think carefully before using it. Also gives more for the team mechanic to fix.

Downside:

Can be very lethal if used at the wrong time or if the player makes an unlucky roll.

Had a game the other day with two rebels hitting a pair of Gozantis, each with two minion groups of two TIEs under the stubwings.

It was very, very messy, but they survived and won.

Thoughts:

- The players had just been re-equipped up to an X-wing and a Y-wing (previously in Z-95s).

- Both ships came back massively damaged, but alive

- The astromech droids are a massive, massive deal - one player's ship essentially recovered from full hull trauma level.

- There is a big difference between a minion fighter and a player's fighter. Minions who take full hull trauma or a critical hit explode, whilst full trauma is 'getting concerned now' levels of damage, not death. Realistically a fighter can take three or four hits to kill once at full hull trauma.

- Don't underestimate strain. The fact that the players will be pulling evasive manouvres and aim every turn gives them a substantial edge over standard TIE pilots

But aren't player/nemesis fighters effectively scuttled/hopeless when they hit 0HT? That still means you are out of the battle/unable to retreat after 1-3 hits, at most.

Pretty much unless you have a way to repair them in the middle of the fight, and that's still just a once per encounter deal.

Hmm, threads an interesting read.

At least I'm not the only one out there with about 200xp into Pilot-talents who consistently gets really expensive things horribly broken and shot out underneath me. Its not so much for lack of trying, but all it takes is an enemy success and a couple of advantage and its all over rover. Fork out $5000 for repairs, do not pass go and hope someone can come get me... I get kind of mopey being shot down.

Now of course to be fair, the game swings both ways and when I run games I'd kind of like the evil empire not to suck as horribly either when beating on the door of the space bus full of PC's. Being the space bus can take a hit or two, there is the option to bug out most of the time if things get too perforated. Its pretty unlikely however, in a single-person fighter, you have any real options.

spending 5,000 to fix a 120,000 fighter is getting off **** cheap from a fight. Even for a 50,000 freighter, that is pretty **** cheap.

spending 5,000 to fix a 120,000 fighter is getting off **** cheap from a fight. Even for a 50,000 freighter, that is pretty **** cheap.

Indeed. It also means that PC-used ships will never suffer damage with a repair cost that exceeds the value of the ship, meaning that beat-up and repaired becomes the norm rather than just buying new ones, so it does enforce a very Star Wars mindset.

I find it really odd that the repair cost doesn't care whether you're fixing a speeder bike or a Star Destroyer. I'd think that the cost per point of repair would increase based on the Silhouette, but no.

I find it really odd that the repair cost doesn't care whether you're fixing a speeder bike or a Star Destroyer. I'd think that the cost per point of repair would increase based on the Silhouette, but no.

I personally increase the repair and running costs for anything larger than 4 based on its silhouette as a multiplier and some things like modifications will also have their cost + availability go up considerably. Sil 2 or smaller is much cheaper, bikes aircars and speeders aren't really huge space-going vessels or nearly as complicated.

spending 5,000 to fix a 120,000 fighter is getting off **** cheap from a fight. Even for a 50,000 freighter, that is pretty **** cheap.

Yep, but its a constant drain on resources and if you're running 1-2 fighters as escorts, spending 8-10k after each space encounter is going to add up pretty quickly, more if you get a weapon destroyed or have some other kinds of crits that need either a specialist workshop or wads of cash thrown at it.

I'm just looking at it in the fact that fighters don't carry enough 'weight' to offset their effectiveness and cost

Fighters that we use cost a ton to keep flying. That's just the cost of high performance superiority craft. I would expect military type craft, especially fighters, would spend as much time, if not more, under maintenance for every hour they spend flying, even without going into combat. Most scenes that I recall from the OT showed the ships in the hangers with quite a bit of crew around them.

The old WEG Rebel Alliance sourcebook says that full proper maintenance on a star fighter takes around an hour for every ten minutes of combat, and that modern fighter engines take very specialized fuel cells.

The old WEG Rebel Alliance sourcebook says that full proper maintenance on a star fighter takes around an hour for every ten minutes of combat, and that modern fighter engines take very specialized fuel cells.

That sounds about right. And that's even without the craft taking any hits. Just the stress of combat in general (shield generators in use, hard maneuvering, changes in throttle, etc...)

Of course, these are starfighters capable of making week-long flights and many of them have an astromech aboard tweaking things constantly, so the time needed for on the ground maintenance might not be nearly so high.

I know some people have speculated whether the Hotshot spec would make starfighters more survivable. Personally, I'm more curious about the Rigger. My guess is that it'll have some talents along the lines of "Tinkerer" (add a hardpoint) or "Jury Rigged" (pick from a list of generic bonuses), only applied to ships.

With an extra harpoint, PCs can increase the armour on a starfighter. I could also see a talent which increases the trauma threshold on vehicles. Together, they might not enough to make PCs feel totally secure, but it would help make starfighters more than just "vape bait".

Even a point of armor or a little more hull trauma wouldn't quite be enough to fix this problem. Its just putting a bandaid on the issue.

Ultimately, the problem isn't the fragility of fighters, its that they get hit too easily(and thus die)

Even a fighter should have issues hitting another fighter.

Maybe if ranged difficulty in vehicles wasn't a comparison of Sil, but with flat Sil being a modifier to the distance. Sil of the firer doesn't matter.

Sil 1-2: +3 difficulty

Sil 3: +2 difficulty

Sil 4-5: +0 difficulty

Sil 6+: -1 difficulty

So even at short range, a fighter will be rolling 4 difficulty against another fighter. A hit will still hurt, but will be very difficult.

I'm betting that the hotshot specialty in Stay On Target will have some talents that give defense based on speed.

Even a point of armor or a little more hull trauma wouldn't quite be enough to fix this problem. Its just putting a bandaid on the issue.

Ultimately, the problem isn't the fragility of fighters, its that they get hit too easily(and thus die)

Even a fighter should have issues hitting another fighter.

Maybe if ranged difficulty in vehicles wasn't a comparison of Sil, but with flat Sil being a modifier to the distance. Sil of the firer doesn't matter.

Good idea.

Another modifier we could look at is maybe raw speed?

Speed 0-1 No Change

Speed 2-3 +1 Difficulty

Speed 4-5 +2 Difficulty

Speed 6-7 +3 Difficulty

That way, your Full Throttle talents and the like, becomes a little more useful, as does flying a bat out of hell Interceptor type of craft which is both small in terms of Silhouette and moving extremely rapidly. Because SW is primarily "gun-combat" from vehicles, the ability to track, react and pull the trigger is much harder and I think it would lend something to the game that small craft like your TIE's and A-Wings are harder to hit, simply because they're really **** quick and out of your fire-control and gun sights very rapidly.

Against Capital class ships, they rely on their own sides fighters and point defence guns (equivalent to AA/Flack) to keep bombers and other multi-role's away, simply because they can't track something very quick like an X-Wing or Interceptor at full tilt coming in on an attack run with their 'battleship' types of cannon.

Course, the downside for this is that flying at those speeds is very difficult, but the upside is you're not getting turbolaser's in the face either.

Ultimately, the idea's here are presented to make things 'fun' for people playing and I think we've found something 'not fun' here that needs to be addressed.

If I had to pick something, I wouldn't choose Silouhette - or at least, not purely Silouhette - if you want an 'evasivenenss' characteristic, then an A-wing and a Y-wing should definitely have different characteristics..

Comparative size is already included in the standard roll to hit - which is there to make it hard for capital ships to hit fighters and easy for fighters to hit capital ships.

I would probably use Handling as a second modifier - it is a value already expressed in a number of boost/setback dice.

The one concern is that it probably shouldn't be a general rule, so much as an easily accessible talent.

I might suggest a new universal specialisation - a 'basic flight school' version of the recruit universal spec - which could have it.

The reason I wouldn't want it to be universal is that it makes TIE/ln much harder to kill (effectively defence 3!) and that is something that shouldn't be available to minions. Nemesis, fine. I want a bloodstriped ace to be a bugger to kill, even in a stock TIE interceptor.

Also, making it a talent makes it optional. Which is good, as the most common PC fighter according to the book is a Y-wing, which will actually get easier to hit with this rule in play...

Finally, making it a talent alows you to have 'improved' version - It might be nice to have a strain-incurring free 'dodge', similar to the deflect and parry abilities of jedi in F&D.

FFG just announced the signature abilities to the Ace career that will be featured in Stay on Target.

One of them "Unmatched Survivability" sounds like just the thing to keep that starfighter going and make up for its flimsy hull and shields.

"With Unmatched Survivability, you can keep your ship fighting even after a crippling blow. By spending two Destiny Points, you can keep a crippled ship with a silhouette of three or less running as if it were unharmed for three more rounds"