Faster reflexes does not negate someone else's evasive manuevers. They should still be effected by someone bobbing and weaving.

Your reasoning for not carrying over the bonuses amounts to you are too lazy. That is a terrible reason.

Faster reflexes does not negate someone else's evasive manuevers. They should still be effected by someone bobbing and weaving.

PCs don’t have to take the same initiative slot every time. You could easily go last one round, and then first the next — it’s all up to you and the other PCs.

So, if you’re seriously hurt and you really need to do evasive maneuvers so that you can do the fly/drive actions and get the pudu out of Dodge, just take the first slot and do so. Your evasive maneuvers would last to the end of the round, by which time you are hopefully very far away.

Your reasoning for not carrying over the bonuses amounts to you are too lazy. That is a terrible reason.

How many space combats have you tried to manage with a dozen or more capital ships?

It’s really easy to puke all over someone else’s idea when all you can see is how it would hurt you personally.

If you need to manage a bunch of ships take a hint from the Age of rebellion GM kit and run them as squads. No need to change a good mechanic. Also If you can manage to keep track of the bonus for a few characters actions is it really that hard to keep track of them for the rest of the actions they are supposed to apply too? Screwing over characters because you can't bookkeep seems wrong to me. It is a change that really is not going to make book keeping any easier and screws the players.

Think about it. If you can track it for 12 character actions at the top of the round. You can track it for 12 actions for someone farther down the initiative. What are you doing to track it during the turn? Why can you not continue this into the next turn? If you have to bookkeep it for the turn you are not saving any bookkeeping by dropping the bonus at the end of the turn.

I have done lots of space combat. It is no more difficult than personal scale combot. In fact there is very little difference between the 2. Yet everyone acts as if it is somehow massively more difficult. It really is not more difficult. You have to keep track of speed and size matters and range does not. ...That pretty much is the majority of the changes. I have done x-wing miniatures combat with over 30 ships on a side. the RPG is really not more complicated than that.

Everyone treats space combat as if it is some arcane construct. It is not. Wanna get good at it? just run a bunch of scenarios for space combat till everyone gets it. If you can handle personal scale combat you can handle space combat. They are the same systems with minor tweaks between them. If you can handle the bookkeeping for personal scale combat you can handle the bookkeeping for space combat. You are tracking the same kinds of modifiers.

Take advantage of minion groups like you do in personal scale. Take advantage of the squad rules. they make your life easier.

I can see where both parties are coming from in terms of argument here. I'm not going to comment on that at all, though, because I don't have a dog in that fight/horse in that race/euphemism of choice here.

The thing I would like to ask about/point out is that with the X-wing system, the entire turn structure is altered from a typical RPG system, and that influences the way actions work. Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm only passingly familiar with the X-wing game itself.

The thing to keep in mind is that, to the best of my memory, each 'turn' in X-wing is effectively 2 different types of turns at once. You have your 'piloting/maneuver' phase, where you choose such things as Evading and what not. Then you have the 'combat' phase, where weapons-fire happens. Effectively, all maneuvers are called before the shooting starts, meaning that even low initiative units at least get to try to evade.

In the adapted rules proposed, that doesn't happen. Both things happen at once, denying low-initiative units the options that they would have had under the actual X-wing rules. Effectively, Initiative confers possibly an even greater bonus than intended by the alternate rules author, who seems to be a proponent of "Initiative is half the battle" philosophy to begin with. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, just pointing it out.

By switching to the X-wing system of buffs ending at the end of the round, instead of carrying over until that pilot's next action, one needs to reconcile X-Wing's "One pilot, two initiative spots" system with the RPG's "one pilot, one initiative spot" system.

At least, that's my angle on it. Granted, I'm hopped up on sour skittles right now and bored at work, so take it with a grain of salt.

In x-wing there are no bonuses. Initiative is in 2 phases. High initiative moves last. And shoots first. I am not suggesting switching to the x-wing system. Just saying I can track big combats just fine. I think you are not understand what talkie is proposing.

Faster reflexes does not negate someone else's evasive manuevers. They should still be effected by someone bobbing and weaving.

Your reasoning for not carrying over the bonuses amounts to you are too lazy. That is a terrible reason.

Initiative and turn-based combat is all an abstraction. You can't make statements like that as if your preferred abstraction is inherently more correct. Nothing has been handed down on stone tablets.

My reasoning is to open up design space and make 'Fast reflexes' a more valid trait to build a pilot around (in addition to 'Good shot' and 'Good pilot').

Is it really so important that you continue repeating yourself? There are *other* threads you could be posting in, you know.

The thing I would like to ask about/point out is that with the X-wing system, the entire turn structure is altered from a typical RPG system, and that influences the way actions work. Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm only passingly familiar with the X-wing game itself.

The thing to keep in mind is that, to the best of my memory, each 'turn' in X-wing is effectively 2 different types of turns at once. You have your 'piloting/maneuver' phase, where you choose such things as Evading and what not. Then you have the 'combat' phase, where weapons-fire happens. Effectively, all maneuvers are called before the shooting starts, meaning that even low initiative units at least get to try to evade.

In the adapted rules proposed, that doesn't happen. Both things happen at once, denying low-initiative units the options that they would have had under the actual X-wing rules. Effectively, Initiative confers possibly an even greater bonus than intended by the alternate rules author, who seems to be a proponent of "Initiative is half the battle" philosophy to begin with. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, just pointing it out.

By switching to the X-wing system of buffs ending at the end of the round, instead of carrying over until that pilot's next action, one needs to reconcile X-Wing's "One pilot, two initiative spots" system with the RPG's "one pilot, one initiative spot" system.

At least, that's my angle on it. Granted, I'm hopped up on sour skittles right now and bored at work, so take it with a grain of salt.

Yeah, it's inspired by X-Wing but not a 1:1 translation- X-Wing simply makes it clear that there's design space out there for playing with initiative. That introduces some issues, for example it'd be necessary to make PCs take maneuvers *then* actions under the new system or they could fire with no penalty then evade. I'm happy to reconsider/modify it if you can point out issues arising, unexpected interactions, that kind of thing. I'm just not interested in philosophical objections.

The problem is your system makes initiative way more important. The advantage to initiative in X-Wing is you get to move last and shoot first. that is it. In your system you make initiative WAY more important. where in the Role playing game there are benefits to the flexible initiative in that there are advantages to going later and advantages to going first. You have severely limited the options for going later. which completely mucks up the balance of the system. And your philosophy of it makes the paperwork easier is something I don't buy. If you have to track it from the top of initiative down to the bottom. Then you can track it from that characters turn to that characters next turn. As those 2 options are doing the EXACT same amount of tracking.

I have learned a long time ago in actual combat that going first is not necessarily the superior option. It is often the inferior option.

Either way, I wasn't making a judgement call.

In x-wing there are no bonuses. Initiative is in 2 phases. High initiative moves last. And shoots first. I am not suggesting switching to the x-wing system. Just saying I can track big combats just fine. I think you are not understand what talkie is proposing.

I got the gist of it, I was just making a comment about where the descrepancies between the two systems arose. Frequently, clarification of the root cause can assist in understanding, compromise, or at the very least allowing someone to adopt a system with their own personal spin on it. X-Wing tries to make initiative more of a tactical advantage than a mechanical one by letting you see what maneuvers your opponent is using before you have to decide your own, THEN giving you first shot. RPG initiative is more about mechanical bounses, as you simply go before everyone else.

Yeah, it's inspired by X-Wing but not a 1:1 translation- X-Wing simply makes it clear that there's design space out there for playing with initiative. That introduces some issues, for example it'd be necessary to make PCs take maneuvers *then* actions under the new system or they could fire with no penalty then evade. I'm happy to reconsider/modify it if you can point out issues arising, unexpected interactions, that kind of thing. I'm just not interested in philosophical objections.

Oh, agreed. Plenty of room to play around with the system. It just pays to consider how those systems flow initially, and how they translate into RPG terms. (Using Evasion doesn't mess with your own targeting in X-Wing, but does in the RPG, for example; the "initiative trumps everything" is moderated a little by the dual phase turns, etc.)

Still, it's nice to see alternate viewpoints on this sort of thing. At any rate, I'll let you all get back to the regularly scheduled uncompromising reiteration of your original positions.

Happy Holidays!

Read the rule changes. Dont like them, unessesary overhead for a GM.

Ran a 8 ship dog fight in my game took 20 minutes. Had none of the issues presented here with proper GM adjudication.

I see these changes as a attempt to satisfy a need for granular rule intrusive combat rather than narrative.

I find the idea of changing the combat checks difficulty based on starship speed good, definitely I like it more than silhouette.

I don't like that "buffs" finish at the end of the round because it gives to me an impression of time artificiality. It creates some "paradoxes", like a given buff used at the begining of the round will last longer (it will last through more characters turns) than the same buff cast at the end of the round (it will last through no character's turn). The round becomes a hard time unit that resets every effect once it finishes. While "buffs" finishing at the end /beggining of next character's turn gives me an impression of a more organic time flow.

P.S: I find that some people in these forums could make an effort to write more constructive, less childish, less agressive criticisms.

Your reasoning for not carrying over the bonuses amounts to you are too lazy. That is a terrible reason.

P.S: I find that some people in these forums could make an effort to write more constructive, less childish, less agressive criticisms.

I think we all need some of this (sarcasm, it's horrible):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WCWN53ncRc

Oh, agreed. Plenty of room to play around with the system. It just pays to consider how those systems flow initially, and how they translate into RPG terms. (Using Evasion doesn't mess with your own targeting in X-Wing, but does in the RPG, for example; the "initiative trumps everything" is moderated a little by the dual phase turns, etc.)

Still, it's nice to see alternate viewpoints on this sort of thing. At any rate, I'll let you all get back to the regularly scheduled uncompromising reiteration of your original positions.

Happy Holidays!

Well, I have tried to consider how the systems worked in their respective games- I hope, from the analysis in the OP and the level of editing done in the PDF, it should be clear that I make an effort to consider what I'm doing.

Yeah, I'm just giving up on responding to Daeglan; should've when he started ****ing in his first post, TBH. He's not given me very much substance to debate with. I'm reminded of the

Read the rule changes. Dont like them, unessesary overhead for a GM.

Ran a 8 ship dog fight in my game took 20 minutes. Had none of the issues presented here with proper GM adjudication.

I see these changes as a attempt to satisfy a need for granular rule intrusive combat rather than narrative.

Really? Er, there's no added overhead and the focus has been on streamlining where possible. For example, attacks no longer require a table, and Gain the Advantage has been condensed into 3 sentences and no longer requires a table. The supplimental actions have all been simplified too (as can be seen from the fact that they take up much less space in the summary). Banks are just codified minion groups, and by codifying them the rules for Concentrated Fire and Point Defence have been simplified and brought in line with existing systems. More importantly, the new rules make CF more predictable and so easier for GMs to manage- 30 turbolasers have, on average, 5x the damage of 6 turbolasers. That's not the case with the AoR Concentrated Fire rules.

I only added 2 actions (Delegate and Jump to Hyperspace) and 1 new system (Wings); wings are a little complicated, true (and I'm keen to hear suggestions to simplify or optimise them), but if you want to run 20 fighters vs. a Star Destroyer they're the lesser of two evils compared to the current system.

Whether or not you've run into issues, many, many people on these forums *have*. One of the most common examples of the issues with vehicle combat is the cloud car race in Jewel of Yavin; even the worst of the PC's 3 adversaries (12, 21, 3) has a 55% chance of hitting an evading PC cloudcar, which only has enough health to survive 2 hits. If the PCs strip the armour off the car, their least competent rival has a 25% chance of oneshotting them, in a race that is intended to last 9 rounds.

[Damage 4 blaster cannons vs. 5HT, 2 soak cloudcars]

RE: The rules working with GM intervention, rules should ideally be designed to work with minimal GM intervention, to aid new GMs and for the sake of consistency. N.B. I am not saying their should be minimal GM intervention; just that it shouldn't be required.

I appreciate the need to avoid adding rules for rules' sake, but this is not the White Wolf forums circa the 2000s, we don't need to play More Narrativist Than Thou.

I find the idea of changing the combat checks difficulty based on starship speed good, definitely I like it more than silhouette.

I don't like that "buffs" finish at the end of the round because it gives to me an impression of time artificiality. It creates some "paradoxes", like a given buff used at the begining of the round will last longer (it will last through more characters turns) than the same buff cast at the end of the round (it will last through no character's turn). The round becomes a hard time unit that resets every effect once it finishes. While "buffs" finishing at the end /beggining of next character's turn gives me an impression of a more organic time flow.

P.S: I find that some people in these forums could make an effort to write more constructive, less childish, less agressive criticisms.

Yeah, I'm aware the buff thing might not be to everyone's tastes- my group have played a lot of X-Wing, Exalted and OD&D, so we're more comfortable with alternative initiative interpretations. If you think of the round as a 1-minute long window where everybody acts at once, but initiative governs what order you resolve those actions in, the strangeness goes away. After all, the current system allows for the Peasant Railgun.

Also I really am baffled by the response, yeah. I can only imagine people are stuck at boring family events and are looking for an outlet for their frustration or something.

Ok, after giving both pages a quick looksy, i really have to say..

The additional starship actions are nice, and fits well with giving "extra" crew things to do in a star ship battle. I've run into problems where I have some players that are very focused on hitting things, and not very focused on being able to help much when it comes time to fight off anyone in a space battle. So it's always nice to see someone add in their ideas for extra stuff to do to help besides repair and strain heal.

The "wing" thing is mostly unnecessary, as the rule book itself covers that mechanic. It just didn't name it anything. But good hustle, nonetheless.

I've always felt that shooting in space combat should be tied to the targeted vehicles speed, but after looking this over, it seems like combat would get drawn out as the sheer difficulty of hitting a five purple shot would be hard to manage on average. ('Average' in my view being a two yellow, two green area) and that's not including shields, evasive actions, and any other setbacks or dp usage. Plus, I run things under the basis of "anything the players can exploit, the gm can, too." Idea. So facing off against a potential five red check to give my players for a dog fight seems like overkill.

And im afraid Im on the same thoughts as daeglan about bonuses going away at the end of the "round". Sometimes even high init players roll blanks, and it does severely punish players who roll low on initiative. Which, under the normal system only punishes them in the first few turns. It's pretty balanced as is, and it gets pretty unbalanced with your house rules.

I like the "banks" idea, but like most of what I've noticed, it's already covered similar in the rule book. You just assign a minion crew with gunnery to fire an arc of one type of weapon. And use the barrage rules. Blanket barrage for giving your ship ranks up to adversary five (blanket barrage is flippin sweet), and concentrated for offense. Im pretty sure it adds damage +1 for each gun firing beyond the first. So a 60+ gun ship in fact does deal a lot more damage with barrage than a 6+ gun ship.

Plus it seems odd that an action just hands of ranks in a skill for convenience when having minions operate the batteries works just the same.

All in all, these house rules are ok. Most of it is simply putting names to things mentioned already in the books as ideas to help gms anyways though.

The speed thing I really wanted to be cool, but it just seems to throw excess amounts of difficulty in actually hitting something in an engaged dog fight. And while that helps the players survive, it also keeps the enemies alive. Which sort of drags out combat and increases the chance of more lucky one shot kills.

I dunno.. I'll definitely take stuff from here to help out my games. As i said, I really like more crew actions in starship battles. But there are a lot of flaws that can be seen. Keep at it, though. This has potential.

I hope i helped give you good feedback.

The additional starship actions are nice, and fits well with giving "extra" crew things to do in a star ship battle. I've run into problems where I have some players that are very focused on hitting things, and not very focused on being able to help much when it comes time to fight off anyone in a space battle. So it's always nice to see someone add in their ideas for extra stuff to do to help besides repair and strain heal.

The "wing" thing is mostly unnecessary, as the rule book itself covers that mechanic. It just didn't name it anything. But good hustle, nonetheless.

The starship actions are actually from the core book (P237) with some small changes and simplifications- they're placed alongside the rest of the actions on the summary sheet to make things easier for the players.

Like batteries, wings are mostly just a codification of minion groups to make them easier for players to interact with. The only stuff I've added is how to handle mixed wings and how to take extra maneuvers with them (and formations)

I've always felt that shooting in space combat should be tied to the targeted vehicles speed, but after looking this over, it seems like combat would get drawn out as the sheer difficulty of hitting a five purple shot would be hard to manage on average. ('Average' in my view being a two yellow, two green area) and that's not including shields, evasive actions, and any other setbacks or dp usage. Plus, I run things under the basis of "anything the players can exploit, the gm can, too." Idea. So facing off against a potential five red check to give my players for a dog fight seems like overkill.

I baselined it on a 22 pool vs 41/5 target which gives a ~50% chance to hit. Given most weapons will down a fighter in 2-3 hits, this was aimed at giving a ~5 round duration for a combat, which is considered the sweet spot in most RPGs. The intent is also to make Gain the Advantage more worthwhile, as currently it's nowhere near the cost of an action; if you're firing at a 5 pool, both you and your target are using multiple points of Evasive Maneuvers so neither of you are hitting the other unless one uses GtA.

(Interestingly, statswise upgrading a purple to a red is almost exactly the same as adding a blue).

People hopefully won't be running around at speed 5 all the time if you're using difficult terrain anyway- at high speed fights will readily break up if people try making lots of 23[1-3] difficult terrain checks.

Also notably the GM generally doesn't have 2 maneuvers per round in starship combat, as minions/rivals have no Strain. A PC can move/evade/shoot whilst most NPCs can only move/shoot if they want to keep up.

The other thing I considered was adding the speed difference to attack difficulty, which would generally achieve the same thing but slightly lower- speed 3 vs 5 would be difficulty 4 rather than 5. That'd parallel the silhouette & GtA mechanics.

I like the "banks" idea, but like most of what I've noticed, it's already covered similar in the rule book. You just assign a minion crew with gunnery to fire an arc of one type of weapon. And use the barrage rules. Blanket barrage for giving your ship ranks up to adversary five (blanket barrage is flippin sweet), and concentrated for offense. Im pretty sure it adds damage +1 for each gun firing beyond the first. So a 60+ gun ship in fact does deal a lot more damage with barrage than a 6+ gun ship.

Plus it seems odd that an action just hands of ranks in a skill for convenience when having minions operate the batteries works just the same.

Yup, as I did mention- it's a summary sheet with some new rules. I did mention in the first post why I changed how Concentrated Fire worked from the AoR version- did you misread? A 60 gun AoR Concentrated Fire action does not deal the same damage as 10 6-gun Attacks, whilst the new one does. I checked this with spreadsheets and everything (and you need to use a spreadsheet to figure out whether it deals more or less damage- it's not transparent).

I based Point Defence on Blanket Barrage but was concerned that it didn't give you any benefits for having more guns; having a single weapon laying down a blanket barrage is just as effective as a star destroyer with 100. Equally, given the # weapons is generally correlated with the silhouette it's probably reasonable to assume that you get the same coverage. Just switching back to regular BB is probably better, yeah.

Not sure what you mean about "Hands ranks in a skill for convenience"? In general having a PC direct a battery will give them the chance to use their higher base stats (e.g. Ag 4 rather than the 2-3 for most minions) and use their talents. Plus it lets characters with no Gunnery fire without being a liability.

All in all, these house rules are ok. Most of it is simply putting names to things mentioned already in the books as ideas to help gms anyways though.

The speed thing I really wanted to be cool, but it just seems to throw excess amounts of difficulty in actually hitting something in an engaged dog fight. And while that helps the players survive, it also keeps the enemies alive. Which sort of drags out combat and increases the chance of more lucky one shot kills.

I dunno.. I'll definitely take stuff from here to help out my games. As i said, I really like more crew actions in starship battles. But there are a lot of flaws that can be seen. Keep at it, though. This has potential.

I hope i helped give you good feedback.

Yeah, this is both a summary sheet and set of house rules so a lot of it *is* just clarifying and making things transparent to the players. I am concerned by difficulty but I've run the statistics and it seems to work; if, in play, it doesn't I'll definitely try out the speed difference version.

Thanks for the feedback! Point Defence is definitely going in the bin.

I have been working on some simple modified rules for star ship combat. I like to keep it close to RAW as possible, but enough wrinkles and twists to make it possible

My one problem is that when adding speed as part of the difficulty, it is a lot different doing a high deflection shot, then a normal head to head, or trailing attack. Not to mention the speeds don't mean much when you are at the same speed and tailing a target.

It is a simple fix, that misses the point that I think the game writers were trying to make that speed isn't an issue. and going evasive has limited use.

The benefit for blanket barrage is more guns means more firing arcs covered. Two cans can only cover one firing arc. Generally, you don't want to use your turbo lasers on blanket barrage. That's what quad lasers are for. But it's primary role is giving the firing ship ranks in advasary.

The benefit for blanket barrage is more guns means more firing arcs covered. Two cans can only cover one firing arc. Generally, you don't want to use your turbo lasers on blanket barrage. That's what quad lasers are for. But it's primary role is giving the firing ship ranks in advasary.

There are only 4 arcs on a ship; whether you have 1 gun or 100 guns covering an arc makes no difference for Blanket Barrage. That was my problem with it. A Lancer, a dedicated anti-fighter frigate with 8 quad laser cannons covering every fire arc, gains the same benefit from Blanket Barrage as a GR-70 transport retrofitted with a single quad laser cannon turret.

I don't think you need to point out the purpose of BB is to (effectively) give Adversary when... that's clearly the only thing it does, and I've clearly read the rules for it and included that effect in my take on it?

I have been working on some simple modified rules for star ship combat. I like to keep it close to RAW as possible, but enough wrinkles and twists to make it possible

My one problem is that when adding speed as part of the difficulty, it is a lot different doing a high deflection shot, then a normal head to head, or trailing attack. Not to mention the speeds don't mean much when you are at the same speed and tailing a target.

It is a simple fix, that misses the point that I think the game writers were trying to make that speed isn't an issue. and going evasive has limited use.

Right, though the problem is that ships are generally considered too fragile & too easy to hit, so fixing that is at some level going to involve going against the writers. In addition, there's clearly intent that Gain the Advantage is a worthwhile thing to do, but in the current rules it's not.

It's unfortunately quite difficult to add in the difference between shots parallel/perpendicular to the direction of flight in a highly abstract movement system. My take on it was essentially that ships will always be doing *some* level of evasion (not just flying in straight lines into people's guns unless performing Evasive Maneuvers) and this will be more effective at higher speeds.

I'll be interested to see how your take on starship combat goes- I've tried to keep as close to RAW as possible too and make my changes self-consistent. But, of course, everyone comes up with different answers to the same questions.

(And, as has been shown, some people have wildly different tolerances for abstractions!)

I always played it out to six arcs. Fore, aft, port, starboard, dorsal, ventral.

Space is very 3d. And the lancer itself has four guns fore, aft, port, starboard, dorsal and ventral.

So running it my way, it blocks and covers all but the aft arc with four quads each. (A quad is one gun, and you need at least two to Blanket barrage, not one) plus there's no way a nebulon could hope to protect itself with even two quads. As it would only help one arc on a very large ship, and nothing stops someone from going "i target its defenses!" So more guns works by keeping it covered even through a hefty battle.

But running it your way, it leaves the dorsal and ventral guns free to target and fire on up to eight different ships individually, or two different ships to pinpoint barrage. Not so useless after all.

And yeah, it gives adversary 1-5, but with an added chance to have the attacker(s) get hit on their own turn, as well as during the defending ships turn.

Personally, I think the barrages work just great. And pretty fair if you stop and think about it without trying too hard to power spec things. But that's just me. I've used it to great effect for and against pc's.

Er, I'm sure the point of my example is clear- it doesn't *matter* how many guns you have as long as you have the bare minimum to cover all the arcs. 2 is as effective as 20 is as effective as 200- in your example, there's simply no advantage to commit 4 guns to each arc when 2 are all you need. To avoid optimisation like this BB requires you to fire all guns of a given type so the rest of your example doesn't actually work.

The *only* benefit to having more guns on an arc, beyond the bare minimum, is the difficulty in destroying them- but given you'd need to land 7 hits on a lancer to even disable enough of the Dorsal/Ventral batteries covering the rear fire arc to move even one arc out of coverage... (which given most weapons can do a minimum of 2 damage/hit would just put the ship about 25% of the way to dead anyway). There's no mechanics for targeted shots in any case beyond GM fiat, and as the saying goes, Rule 0 is no excuse for broken rules.

I'm sure BB works fine- after all, I've ditched my attempt to rewrite it. However, it does have design issues. It's not a 'power spec' things issue, it's a 'this mechanic does not allow you to differentiate between two things that should be differentiated' issue. The fact that they've specifically prevented you from *not* firing all your point defence weapons in the action description shows that FF have identified the problem too.

Well.. when it comes to numbers, there is a side table and a comment in parenthesis about that. The side table i remember saying that when dealing with things like that, the gm has to use common sense.

The difference as to why it takes up Just two guns, or two hundred guns has to do with ship size. Two guns can't cover the port flank of a star destroyer. That's ridiculous. And that's where gm common sense kicks in. Some of the bigger ships quite literally are bigger or longer than the range bands of the guns being fired from them.

So on a sil 5 gozanti, two guns will cover one arc fine. On a sil 7 victory, two guns might protect a hanger bay area on the ventral side. And on a sil 9 imperial II, you need all those guns firing to protect one arc. Because otherwise there's gaps that can be exploited.

The ships small enough to be protected with just two guns still benefit because they're small. Whereas the truly large ships NEED those larger numbers of guns to cover the sheer mass of the ship they're protecting.

If you're not committed to the action, the action doesn't work. That's why the rules say 2 to whatever number of guns.

It's not a design flaw, you just have to look at the size of the ships compared to the amount of guns they come with / can be put into them.

Tl:dr- the number of guns firing does matter. It's a representation of the area and size of the ship that's being protected. Bigger ships need more guns to cover their fatty mass than smaller ships. But it's still equal coverage.

Oh wait, almost forgot. You use the targeted shot rules. You have to spend a maneuver aiming, then take two extra black die to the roll. Boom. Easy way to target weapons.

Well.. when it comes to numbers, there is a side table and a comment in parenthesis about that. The side table i remember saying that when dealing with things like that, the gm has to use common sense.

The difference as to why it takes up Just two guns, or two hundred guns has to do with ship size. Two guns can't cover the port flank of a star destroyer. That's ridiculous. And that's where gm common sense kicks in. Some of the bigger ships quite literally are bigger or longer than the range bands of the guns being fired from them.

So on a sil 5 gozanti, two guns will cover one arc fine. On a sil 7 victory, two guns might protect a hanger bay area on the ventral side. And on a sil 9 imperial II, you need all those guns firing to protect one arc. Because otherwise there's gaps that can be exploited.

The ships small enough to be protected with just two guns still benefit because they're small. Whereas the truly large ships NEED those larger numbers of guns to cover the sheer mass of the ship they're protecting.

If you're not committed to the action, the action doesn't work. That's why the rules say 2 to whatever number of guns.

It's not a design flaw, you just have to look at the size of the ships compared to the amount of guns they come with / can be put into them.

Tl:dr- the number of guns firing does matter. It's a representation of the area and size of the ship that's being protected. Bigger ships need more guns to cover their fatty mass than smaller ships. But it's still equal coverage.

Oh wait, almost forgot. You use the targeted shot rules. You have to spend a maneuver aiming, then take two extra black die to the roll. Boom. Easy way to target weapons.

That's... a point I've already made and is why I've given up attempting to rewrite it. That in general it's okay as bigger ships have more guns. But the initial problem is still there: there's still no way to distinguish between different ships of the same silhouette with different *levels* of coverage. I mean, I even pointed out the specific example of the Lancer which is no harder for a fighter to engage than any other sil. 5 ship, despite being specifically anti-fighter and laden down with many times more anti-fighter guns than other ships of the same size.

The targeted shot rules just state "You can target a specific thing". So you're still dependent on GM fiat as to what that actually does- if I target their guns, will my GM make a hit an automatic weapon disabled critical, or just mean that if I crit it's guaranteed to be a weapon disabled one, or reduce crit rating, or what? Or is the weapon disabled but it doesn't count as a 'weapon disabled' crit (because that'd boost the next true crit)? This is a design issue. You can't claim BB doesn't suffer from Rule 0 Is No Excuse because of [Other Subsystem] when the rules of [Other Subsystem] are basically "Eh whatever Rule 0 it".

Plus, in your previous post you were under the impression that the Lancer could only fire a fraction of its guns on BB and keep the rest to fire as it wished. Surely the fact that you now realise you *can't* do that should change your interpretation of balance? I mean, you argued it was a serious benefit- has that benefit being withdrawn changed the calculations at all? Because now the Lancer, for example, can't BB and attack. It's either/or.

Please make an effort to understand what I'm writing. I'm spending a lot of time in this thread trying to properly explain my reasoning, decisions and understanding of the game as I'd like to get well-thought out feedback.

Could you tell me where you found the resources to match the CRB format and layout? I want to write some house rules myself and I'd like to use the same format.

Bb didn't say "all guns if the same type start firing" it's all guns if the same type of that firing arc start firing.

There's at least four firing arcs. Six, depending on if you count dorsal and ventral. So.. you need a minimum of eight guns, two per firing arc to cover a smaller (still sil 5) ship.

Or 12 guns, two firing per arc, plus dorsal and ventral.

If you're operating under just the gm fiat of four arcs only, that leaves the lancer with eight guns that have a different firing arc from the rest and are exempt from being forced to fire in the barrage. So other crew can operate them differently and fire at whatever.

If the gm includes dorsal and ventral as areas that Need to be protected separately, then all the guns can fire and protect all the angles and the lancer can then just smash into fighter swarms Willy nilly.

The alternate to this, is to just have one firing arc start firing, and the other arcs can fire at will. Not too complicated.

And the lancer specifically is better at this job than other ships for one reason and one reason only. No matter what, that ship has the guns to cover every single firing angle. Front, back, left, right, down, up. The micro management of it is that by the rules, each arc needs to be activated separately by crew on the ship. But being awesome, a gm can just go "the lancer is putting up its anti-fighter screen." And have it be done with its whole turn.

And for targeting, the very first paragraph when going into vehicular combat says it's just like personal scale combat, but with these slight exceptions. Then it goes into starship specific stuff. So.. you want very specific rules laid out for you. So, since we can't find it here, we look at regular combat. And find the targeted shot thingy that says aim and take two setbacks (and call me in the morning), right? At that point, it's up to the gm to narrate what he or she thinks is fair to the players. If it were me as gm, a hit would take that one gun down. As in inoperable to normal use. Disadvantage would mean they can't target, but the gun is stuck firing. Despair would mean as they come in for the strafe, they might get hit, failure as normal, a triumph or two permanently destroys the gun safely. And a crit can trigger a crit as normal. If it comes up as another weapon destroyed, maybe you can narrate it as the guns final cough of death hitting its own friendly turret as it goes down.

The way i see it. Ships are like players. Targeting a weapon on one is like trying to shoot as weapon out of someone's hand, or trying to shoot a grenade off their belt. You don't need to over think every little thing in the game. It's incredibly modular and ready, willing and easy to accommodate gm creativity. It's not a design flaw. It's just not a game that was designed to be nickel and dimed.

I keep getting the feeling like you want the rules to cover every possibly question and situation with explanations on outcomes and such. And this isn't really the game for that. Though i might be wrong, as it's really really impossible to accurately detect meaning, tone, or possible sarcasm through text.

Also, if I might bring up.. a lot of spiffy options and rules for stuff aren't always in the core rulebook. The extended stuff had rules and suggestions for even more things. Options like doctor triage, or swoop bike racing, or more in depth gambling, and all sorts of crap.

My advise, don't take stuff to hard. This games "rules" are really more like guidelines than hard set laws, anyways. Talk to your gm and your group and ask your questions and suggestions and find out what's fair and reasonable for all of you.

You've already got a **** good start with your list..

Everyone in this thread seems to be under the impression that Blanket Barrage requires more than one weapon. I see this nowhere in the description.

Rzrfrictionless, Blanket Barrage can be activated for as many arcs as desired using a single action. It specifically says so.

These are two ways Blanket Barrage is different than the other two kinds of Barrage.

I tend to go with there being four firing arcs (forward, port, starboard, and aft) with each of those having a dorsal and ventral sub-arc. If a weapon is listed as dorsal with firing arc of all, it can fire into the dorsal sub-arc of all firing arcs. Ventral is the mirror to this, and weapons not indicated as dorsal or ventral can fire into the entirety (dorsal and ventral sub-arcs) of their listed firing arcs.