Masque- this intrigues me. I shall have to reexamine my rule book again. But it still holds out that more guns equal better coverage of the arc. (Also the type of guns used is really helpful. Bb with turbo lasers is just.. ugh. How does that work with slow firing?)

HappyDaze- pretty much, yes. But I would also think that a dorsal-all arc weapon could choose which directions to be a part of, on top of being able to exclude itself, as it can pick and choose.

Oddly enough, if you actually want to hurt anything with BB, you need to use turbolasers.

Oddly enough, if you actually want to hurt anything with BB, you need to use turbolasers.

I think that Blanket Barrage is not really meant to hurt anything. If there are way more fighters than you have guns start a BB and try to run or wait for backup or whatever. If you have enough guns to actually take care of the fighters, just shoot them normally.

"Shooting to Scare" is only going to work if your enemies are worried about taking a hit. Suppressive fire with BB guns just doesn't make sense to me.

You aren't necessarily scaring them enough to prevent them from attacking, but you are scaring them enough to make their attacks less successful.

Don't know if this was touched on in regards to Blanket Barrage. The difference between firing one quad laser (or whatever gun) and four and eight or whatever are the amount and type of dice in the Gunnery check being that the guns are treated as minions. The lancer could set up barrages in each of the four arcs with four quads each and still keep one set of four quads for more directed firing. And larger ships have more guns to to group thus increasing their Gunnery check. The larger the dice pool the more chances for advantage and thus increasing how many upgrades are given. And then that increases the chance the attacking ships will also take damage getting in close.

Or am I missing something here?

If a skilled character (non-minion) is firing/directing the firing of one gun, then the number of guns doesn't matter. There's also the problem that successes rolled on BB do nothing.

A maneuver like this is enacted by ships with silhouettes 5 or larger. How often is a non-minion going to be involved with their multitude of guns?

I don't consider Corellian Corvettes, Gozanti Armed Transports, or the assault ship based on the Episode I consular ship to be outside of the range of PC use. Failing that, the Wayfarer is Sil 5 and can be fitted with enough weapons that BB is an option. Enemy ships can likewise have non-minions directing fire.

Because of how the three Barrages work, I've always assumed that it would be some officer taking the test rather than the people actually manning the guns.

The point of blanket barrage is not to inflict damage. It's to prevent fighter craft from shooting at you. It can give your ship adversary 5, with a skilled gunner. That's at least 3 red dice. Sometimes 5 with destiny point usage, and gunnery talents, depending on the original firing difficulty.

It also has the bonus of " small amount of threat could trigger lots of small hits, or any one despair showing up means each ship in the group attacking takes a full hit." It's the biggest defense in the game, with the chance to score a hit per attacker out of turn.

Small hits from small guns often amount to no damage once armor is considered. There is nothing there that says any single target can take more than one despair hit or threat hit (things that can be triggered multiple times specify that), but it is possible to take a despair hit and a threat hit. Against minion groups, the entire group is one target, so a large group can still only take one or two hits from a failed roll and bizarrely, a large group of minions is less likely to take any hits than a lone fighter. There are so many bad things about BB that I just don't bother with it.

Sounds like nitpicking to me. The point of Blanket Barrage is to increase the difficulty of attacks with a small probability of damage. Seems pretty simple to me. If you want to take out a minion group you would use Overwhelming Barrage which is what it is for. Just as Concentrated Barrage is for attacking other battleships.

Small hits from small guns often amount to no damage once armor is considered. There is nothing there that says any single target can take more than one despair hit or threat hit (things that can be triggered multiple times specify that), but it is possible to take a despair hit and a threat hit. Against minion groups, the entire group is one target, so a large group can still only take one or two hits from a failed roll and bizarrely, a large group of minions is less likely to take any hits than a lone fighter. There are so many bad things about BB that I just don't bother with it.

Bb quite specifically states "each SHIP" attacking receives either half a hit, rounded up, or a full hit. So if a minion group gets hit, they all take damage, just like grenades. I posted the action description verbatim earlier. It's very clear.

And merc wins the thread, btw.