I do believe that The Adversary Talent does have an effect on Rival/Nemsis NPC in space combat.

I myself would not change the rules, but I have ran very little space combat. The little I have done, the characters were in no great danger of dying, but it is very costly to repair the ship. There are also a ton of great talents that help with space combat, both for defense and offense.

Also, remember that the main goal of space combat is to get out of it quickly and get into hyperspace, this is not Star Trek where you can fight while in warp. A good pilot should always being doing gain the advantage, and trying to get the hell out of dodge.

A swarm of TIEs should be deadly, and not want to be tangled with. The Falcon had a hard enough time with just two after leaving the Death Star.

A question about your house rule. You say minions stay the same, but for PCs/named NPCs is different. So you will have two types of difficulty based on minions and Rivals/Nemsis?

I would not change the difficulty system just based on if it is an Ace shooting at the PCs or minions.

This is also true in ground combat - regardless of athletics skill, anyone with a gun (or without) is equally easy to hit. This system handles all defensive via equipment & talents. Skilled or ace pilots should have Advistary or defensive talents. Same with PC pilots who don't want to get shot down.

In the latest Order 66 podcast (mentioned on the AoR forum ), DarthGM mentioned a house rule idea where a pilot could take an Incidental/Out-of-turn to do a defensive maneuver that would allow them to reduce the amount of damage done by the Handling of the ship plus the Pilot skill, for a cost of 3 Strain.

So, minions couldn’t use this rule at all. And Rivals could use it, but only by literally bleeding themselves to death. Nemesis characters could use it, in combination with their Adversary talent, etc….


The game designers replied that — unofficially — this sounded like a reasonable House Rule, so long as it was equally available and applied to both sides of the fight. This rule would stretch combat out quite a bit, but it would allow the PCs to come closer to Wedge Antilles level of dogfighting where he can take on six opponents at once, and still survive.

But on the whole, the game designers seem to feel that space combat should absolutely be brutal and short.


Anyway, IIRC DarthGM said that he’d be providing a writeup of his House Rule on this matter, and posting it soon.

This is also true in ground combat - regardless of athletics skill, anyone with a gun (or without) is equally easy to hit. This system handles all defensive via equipment & talents. Skilled or ace pilots should have Advistary or defensive talents. Same with PC pilots who don't want to get shot down.

The difference is that you’ve got a lot more ways to be defensive in ground combat, and most of the weapons used in ground combat can’t just completely wipe you out in two shots, even if you are wearing pretty heavy-duty armor.

Yes, there are some ground combat weapons that can do that. And with them, the result is pretty much the same — whoever fires first, wins — and lives.

But the ground combat weapons that can do this are relatively few and far between, and there are very serious consequences for casually running around with those kinds of weapons in most places.

None of that can be said for ship-to-ship combat. Which makes it really, really deadly.

I'd be curious to see the damage reduction rule. Space combat was always a huge part of the appeal of the setting to me, and I'd love to be able to throw an ace in a starfighter into a big combat and not get exploded immediately. It sounds like that's at odds with the intentions of the original designers, but hey, that's what house rules are for!

Having started back into the world of X-wing games (thank you Good Old Games) I started to think along similar lines of using piloting skill to make it harder to hit a foe. But having a proper sit down to look through the pilot options again, there are plenty of ways to out fly an enemy starship - you just need to invest some XP in some talents.

I'd also say you have plenty of environmental options in space, just like you do in ground combat. Very few fights will be in deep space for EotE, but will more so in AotR. As a Rebel pilot you are more likely to be doing hit and fade actions against Imperial cargo fleets, while in EotE as a smuggler or such you will likely be in a high traffic area either making a run to or toward a planet or station to escape authorities or rival criminals. You can use other ships for cover, or the engine wash from big ships could be used to deter a foe, turret gunners putting down barrages to discourage persuit, etc. all these and more will help with defence. Putting something solid between you and an enemy will allow your GM to give you a few defence bonuses or have the enemy not able to take a shot until they gain line if sight again (narratively or if you use maps).

Weapons fire from both friendly and enemy ships will provide difficult areas for pilots to weave through. You can have your character with amazing high piloting skill use something like that as a way of getting rid of an enemy simply by being a better pilot.

The other thing is that space combat in the movies is brutal, fast, and very destructive. Ships do not survive more than one or two hits, so I think the RPG covers it fairly well to give you that fear of death, but allow you to do things like the above to make it pretty amazing.

Speed is taken into account when you do the "Gain the advantage" Manuver. your basically making speed pointless, and instead turning everything into a chase that ignores speed.

The problem I think,with GtA. people don't like to use it because it doesn't allow them to shoot until the next round. But it is the heart of a dogfight IMHO

still working on my revised starfighter combat. Might get a chance this month

I added a few ship house rules here http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/106434-house-rules/page-7#entry1326306

You need to keep in mind that just because a ship goes above its Hull trauma threshold that doesn't mean it's going to explode. This is especially true for any ship carrying a PC or a nemesis-level NPC. It just means the ship has been disabled and is no longer combat-worthy.

There are multiple ways to get around this. You can have the players abandon ship in escape pods or ejection seats. The ship is then floating around in space, and the PCs need to get themselves aboard another ship along with lots of spare parts and get back up there to repair it. This could be an adventure in itself. Or salvagers could find it and demand salvage price for it; the PCs can either scrounge up the money or take on some Obligation to the scavengers (or a loan shark). Either way, you have a couple of new adventure hooks. And finally, they could get captured when floating helplessly in their damaged ship - tractored aboard a pirate/Imperial/Rebel Alliance/other vessel. And who knows what might happen then?

You need to keep in mind that just because a ship goes above its Hull trauma threshold that doesn't mean it's going to explode. This is especially true for any ship carrying a PC or a nemesis-level NPC. It just means the ship has been disabled and is no longer combat-worthy.

There are multiple ways to get around this. You can have the players abandon ship in escape pods or ejection seats. The ship is then floating around in space, and the PCs need to get themselves aboard another ship along with lots of spare parts and get back up there to repair it. This could be an adventure in itself. Or salvagers could find it and demand salvage price for it; the PCs can either scrounge up the money or take on some Obligation to the scavengers (or a loan shark). Either way, you have a couple of new adventure hooks. And finally, they could get captured when floating helplessly in their damaged ship - tractored aboard a pirate/Imperial/Rebel Alliance/other vessel. And who knows what might happen then?

Not to mention other things like you can do a last ditch repair, or use talents and signature abilities that allow you to keep flying.

I still think that a lot of the issue is the Squadron rules being in a secondary book, and virtually no guidance on space encounter design. If you're a low level character flying a single X-wing against a squadron of TIEs you deserve to be exploded.

Starfighter encounters need to be more like you see in the films: Either Squadroned up like you see in ANH and RotJ, or as a couple independents executing specific objectives while others manage the mess of the greater battle like in TPM and RotS.