I'm considering the following sweeping changes for vehicular combat:

1) The Difficulty for making attacks with vehicle-mounted weapons is based on Range to the target rather than the target's Silhouette. Close and Short Range are both Difficulty of 2, Medium Range is Difficulty 3, Long Range is Difficulty 4, and Extreme Range is Difficulty 5.

2) Increase the base Difficulty by one if the target's Silhouette is 2 or more lower than the attacker's Silhouette. Decrease the base Difficulty by one if the target's Silhouette is 2 or more higher than the attacker's Silhouette.

This means that there are reasons to close in from the maximum range of a weapon (to maximize firepower!), and explains Ackbar's line of "At that close range we won't last long against those Star Destroyers!" better than the current rules which don't offer such incentives.

Not exactly what I'd consider "sweeping" but it looks functional...

Looks functional, yeah, though I'm not entirely sure how much effect it will have- almost all combat occurs at close/short range until you start waving around turbolasers, and the difficulty is unchanged there. I haven't run much turbo-heavy cap ship combat so I'm not sure if they're really in need of a survivability buff (most of the Sil. 5 ships will still want to close to Short to use ion cannons and heavy lasers).

The flimsiness of fighters is the main problem I've come across, and at least it'd make sniping off fighters at long distances with turbolasers a bit harder.

This will also make Medium and Long Range turbolaser duels among capital ships less accurate. Even behemoths such as Mon Cals and ISDs will gain accuracy with their big guns by closing the range.

Admiral Ackbar: At that close range we won't last long against those Star Destroyers!

Edit: Font color

This will also make Medium and Long Range turbolaser duels among capital ships less accurate. Even behemoths such as Mon Cals and ISDs will gain accuracy with their big guns by closing the range.

Right, but in terms of gameplay what're you expecting from this change? Large ships will be firing using the Concentrated Fire action with large minion groups, so the 1/3 failure from an extra difficulty dice is unlikely to make them miss. Ballparking with the EotE dice roller, going from Medium-Short gives you an extra 5% chance to hit; the extra damage from success is basically negligible given these large ships will be adding +10-20 from the number of guns firing. Long-Medium is more substantial, taking you from a ~80 to ~90% hit chance, but 80% is high enough that you're unlikely to alter your behaviour just to bump it to 90%.

It seems like the changes are so small that weapon range is still going to be the deciding factor. In particular, why would you risk closing to Short range for 5% more damage when next turn your foe could move from Short->Engaged and paste you with Concentrated Fire using their point defence weapons?

You know in order to answer this it would be easy if we knew what it is you want to acomplish and what it is about the RAW you want to avoid.

Edit: nevermind... No idea how I missed it in the op.

So.. I've read a lot about people hating how thin skinned star fighters are. And to be honest, when i look back at the original trilogy, every fighter that ever gets hit by -anything- is either blown up, disabled, has to pull out of the fight, or compromised on some way. From the squishy tie fighter, to the tanky y wing bomber. (Even with shields at max on the defending firing arc)

So the whole point of a fighter is to not get hit. Now, on the other side of that argument is "but it's far easier to hit and get hit than it is to dodge or defend yourself! And shields don't do anything worthwhile!"

This is true. We see that in the movies, too. Luke is never actually hit because the other members of rogue squadron are taking the hits for him, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the mission. (And r2 took the only hit that connected, thus saving the mission)

Obi wan is nearly killed after a good shot from a minion launching a discord missile and the buzz droids would have taken him out had to not been for anikins stubborn refusal to let his master die.

The ships that we see taking hits and keep flying are either the falcon, which has a lot of hull and armor and can take at least some abuse before going down. Or capital ships like the tantiv or something. And in each case, we clearly see that every ship that actually gets hit and seems to shrug it off, pay for it in some way.

The falcon is always needing repairs, the tantiv gets disabled, and so on.

Thin skinned fighters, and space battles being extremely deadly are a fact of star wars. But that doesn't necessarily mean the system is broken. There's ways to deal with it.

The shields DO help. Any additional die working for you helps. Don't think too hard about number crunching for a second. Just accept the fact that a dice pool that outnumbers theirs is more likely to win.

Not every ship in the battle is shooting you. Most don't even know about you. The job of fighter craft is to tie up fighter craft so they can't swarm your capital ship. And at most, only 1-3 ships will be really trying to engage another fighter. (An ace with two wingmen like Vader, or a trio of minions) with the rest of the battle being the background "terrain". and most of the time, your players will be flying in formation. So they can back each other up.

If the gm is fair, there'll be some sort of perception check asked to let the pcs know some enemy fighters have seemed to have broken off and have given Chase. Now, due to range bands, that may take a turn or two of flying in "rough terrain", trying to dodge stray blaster shots and other ships while at the same time trying to jockey for position and set up a plan for dealing with the enemy closing in.

Pre-planning can help MASSIVELY. If one pc keeps on going, and cranks up the speed while the rest break off to loop around, well.. that one pc who's suddenly all by himself looks like a nice target for a cocky ace. Meanwhile, his flanks get shot up by the rest of the pcs.

That's one example.

Another is this..

Trick out your ship. Get the counter measures attachment. For anything that's not another star fighter shooting at you, it essentially adds a free extra purple die to hit you. Then upgrade shields. An extra purple plus two more blacks added on actually do help. Especially with upgrading one to a red with evasive maneuvers. The point of getting that red is for despair. Despair can be used to give you an immediate free action, if your gm approves it. Or you can upgrade the difficulty to hit you even further. Then, on top of pilot skills, or player ideas (Im flying close to the hull of that ship, in the hopes of its point defense guns forcing the other pilot to break off.) And the liberal use of Destiny points, you can really keep yourself going for a long while in space battles.

It's really not a matter of the game being broken or some mechanic needing a fix, it's just that there needs a bit less focus on number crunching and more a focus on inventive and imaginative ideas in game.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, or if I come across as if im trying to shut down your idea. I just think the star ship system works as is. It's supposed to be deadly.

That being said.. fighters have ejection seats. And space suits have limited life support. And ejection seats have thrusters. Have that player steer himself back to a pick up ship and get on a gun, or into another ship, **** it. (At the cost of time, which could end up having him(or her) fly in at the last second, shooting the big bad guy and saving the day so the other pc can make the shot and view up the death star.

Wait.. that already happened..

EDIT: Forgot to add capital ships don't like fighting at close range. That means they're getting swarmed with fighters that just can't miss then with missiles, or getting point blank shot with every turbolaser the other capital ship has. It's the fastest route to death.

Think you meant that for another thread RZ. Happy is talking weapons that will rarely if ever be fighter equipped. His proposal is largely a capital ship thing.

Also just FYI, the purpose of fighter craft (besides being cool) and pretty much every other shipboard combat craft is to extend range and capability. Fighting up close won't change the equation much because odds are you've been rubbing butts with the torpedo bombers for quite a while already.

Wow, yeah.. shows what i get for typing this up in chunks on work breaks with my phone. Totally meant this for another thread. Forgive me, for I have the dumb.

That being said, the idea is ok. But the thought of capital ships getting close and "broad siding" each other just seems like a quick death for both of the big whales if one thought to get closer to put more hits on target.

Don't the laser weapons run off the engines output? I don't think ammo is a concern, so they really can just sit back and fire the artillery as long as there's targets to fire at. and the book specifically mentions that range doesn't matter to starships due to just how advanced the targeting computers are. I believe the book also mentions about planetary distance, and extreme range in space being so freaking far out that not even capital ships can hit stuff from there and it's literally just the ships jockeying for position to set up how they'll engage.

So there's that.. personally, i always felt that was pretty ok, but that speed should've also been taken into account. (Faster ships are harder to hit)

I'm not taken by the idea that range doesn't matter. If it didn't matter then Ackbar wouldn't have been so worried about closing with the Star Destroyers once they were already within firing range.

Range matters, as speed matters. Then is a matter on how you want to implement it mechanics wise. The designers choose to use silhouette... Ok it also matters I guess. At the end they justify that range does not matter because of targeting systems... Well you can say the same for silhouette; it does not matter because of the advanced targeting systems.

I would say, choose what you think it must be the main source of difficulty (range, speed or silhoutte), pick up optionally a second source of difficulty (as you suggest) for extra simulationism and build your rules around.

Said that, what you propose seems balanced. If I will rebuild this set of mechanics I will use speed as the main source of difficulty though.

I'm not taken by the idea that range doesn't matter. If it didn't matter then Ackbar wouldn't have been so worried about closing with the Star Destroyers once they were already within firing range.

Well, it was a large scale battle and getting close would mean drawing a lot more fire from them. It is only natural to shoot at what is in front of you of course....

Aye, I think what the admiral was saying that taking on star destroyers in an direct confrontation is really unfavourable considering, pound for pound they were considered the premier battleship of its era. It's little to do with range and more to do with the fact that tactically there was no wiggle room, it was a direct, brute force engagement. In the end they were able to claw it back by taking down both flagships and breaking their moral despite imperial vessel superiority.

The rules sound cool, though I imagine broadsiding is more or less only done in cases of clear superiority or desperation. In epsiode 3 the space was so pact that most vessels probably remained in short range of a foe at best, the republic cruiser scacfricing itself to cripple the set capital ship; something that comes into play much later.