I have limited access to the internet and my questions build up, so I'm trying not to force too many topics up at once. So two separate questions:

1) How do people rationalize the fact of the difficulty of a turret to shoot down a target? It's easier for the same gunner in the same turret (same weapon type) to shoot down a fighter (silhouette 3) from a light freighter (silhouette 4), than a cruiser (silhouette 5), than a battleship (silhouette 6+). It just doesn't really make sense to me, but I'm willing (hoping?) to accept cogent answers.

2) Another item I have a hard time rationalizing: the spacer's duffel. Why is it only a 2 encumbrance increase? I realize that encumbrance is weight and size, but that's 2 less than a simple backpack and the same amount as the surveyor's bag. I guess I just think a duffel bag listed as half the size of a human at least about equal to a backpack. Thoughts?

Thanks for your consideration.

1. Turrets on a cruiser are bigger and slower moving and designed for fighting other ships of the line.

2. Dufflel bags are a pain in the ass to use in comparison to a back pack that more efficiently holds the weight closer to your body and does not hinder you the way a duffel bag does.

Carrying my 6yo son by 1 hand is a lot harder than him having a piggyback ride.

The duffel bag needs a hand or at least a shoulder to carry, whereas the backpack has all the straps to keep both arms free

I see the advantage of a duffel being in that it's easy to drop. good for a techs tool kit, doctors bag, a bag of survival gear.

Or a bag of ammo for that Heavy in the party with the Flechette launcher!

Turrets on larger ships that mount point defense weapons have no reason to be larger and slower than those mounted on smaller vessels. The size of the turret/weapon mount should depend on the weapon itself, not the vessel it is mounted on. It's a poor rule, but one that the games are stuck with, at least for these editions. House ruling this is rather easy though.

Page 267 of the EotE core book says capital ships firing smaller weapons in an anti-starfighter role treat their silhouette as one size category smaller.

I could see turbo lasers falling under the current rules and being designed to deal with ships of the line - the movies even support that, but for weapons designed as a defense against fighters it doesn't make sense. The same gunner using the exact same quad laser cannon turret mounted on larger ships hits less often.

I suppose so, though I feel like the cumbersome rating should already take care of that. I guess it's just the fact that the bag increases the character's encumbrance threshold and doesn't have a separate encumbrance rating that gets me. At a 2 increase I see the bag as being able to hold 2 encumbrance worth of things, which isn't nearly enough stuff for a half-human sized duffel bag, especially if a simple backpack is 4.

Thanks for the responses.

Most of the larger ships in star wars have lots of bumps. So it is more likely as your ship size increases that you will not have the fire arc to properly target the fast moving smaller ship. Also as the ship you are targeting gets nearer your own size it is more likely that the pilot of the ship will work to line up a better shot for the turret. Just a couple thoughts off the top of my head.

Page 267 of the EotE core book says capital ships firing smaller weapons in an anti-starfighter role treat their silhouette as one size category smaller.

I was looking for that!

That rule didn't make the cut for inclusion into Age of Rebellion.

I feel like gunners on a big ship are going to be working as batteries, with a commander in charge and giving orders. So i look at it like the gunners on a ship are mostly minions, a group of 5 or so on dual or quad laser turrets with the gunnery skill will very quickly balance out the difficulty upgrade. IMHO changing the rules will very quickly make being shot that much easier.

Basically when you are flying across the surface of these ships it's a shower of bolts that your dodging, the difficulty reflects coordinating Fire and also the fact that there are so many targets. Like trying to swat a single wasp in a swarm of bees. Let's face it, while the capital ship is firing they are trying not to hit the swarm of Tie fighter on your tail.

Edit: spelling...

Page 267 of the EotE core book says capital ships firing smaller weapons in an anti-starfighter role treat their silhouette as one size category smaller.

Thanks! I don't know how many times I've skimmed right past that sidebar. It doesn't quite answer my question, but at least they were thinking about it.

Turrets on larger craft often have to be reinforced against the kind of hits that level of craft might take, leading to heavier and lower tracking on the turrets. In addition, being mounted to a less agile craft means it's easier for the smaller fighter to spend a smaller percentage of a turn (remember they're a minute long) in gun range & arc, leading to less time to achieve firing solutions or manage a solid hit through the shields (if any).

I'm just going to go back to my example that a CIWS on a carrier is just as effective as a CIWS on a LCS. The size of the hull may affect how much it defensively covers, but it matters not at all if offensively engaging nearby aircraft.

I'm just going to go back to my example that a CIWS on a carrier is just as effective as a CIWS on a LCS. The size of the hull may affect how much it defensively covers, but it matters not at all if offensively engaging nearby aircraft.

The key word there is aircraft. Naval weapons systems are predisposed to deal with attack vectors of 180 x 180, not 360 x 360 (as is the case in space). Due to the nature of capital ship construction, fields of fire for weapons systems, even turret-based, are going to naturally be restricted. In the case of forward-mounted weapons systems on fighters (as most weapons systems are on that class of vehicle), it necessitates orbit of the target vessel in order to bring them to bear. This means that, due to field of fire restrictions, turret gunners on larger vessels (capital ships) are going to have much shorter periods during which to engage the fighters. This is translated into the higher targeting difficulty experienced when firing those weapons systems.

For a real world example, consider the difficulty of engaging an enemy fighter aircraft with a .50 caliber machine gun from a turret on a Flying Fortress versus wing mounts on a P51. Obviously the turret is going to have a harder time hitting the attacking fighter as the gunner has a significantly restricted field of fire, while the P51 is able to maneuver the entire craft to cover an effective 360 x 360 field of fire.

Yet somehow the turret on the Y-wing doesn't suffer these difficulties despite the fact that his platform should be less stable than a turret on a capital ship (which isn't going to be doing a lot of fancy maneuvers).

Also "able to maneuver the entire craft" is more accurately "is forced to maneuver the entire craft" for the purposes of targeting. Turret mounts are supposed to add to arc of engagement, not be a detriment.

I'm just going to go back to my example that a CIWS on a carrier is just as effective as a CIWS on a LCS. The size of the hull may affect how much it defensively covers, but it matters not at all if offensively engaging nearby aircraft.

And in the case of the CIWS, the size of the turret isn't the same as the hull. So it is like the Strike Cruiser's in that it is a different silhouette size relative to the ship it is on. As opposed to the turrets on a battleship with those 6, 10, 18 inch guns... which are the same silhouette as the ship and so have issues being used to hit something smaller/more maneuverable like a fighter aircraft.

The thing that gets me is size and numbers. The number of CIWS on a ship is relatively small. A Nimitz class carries what? 4 at most? And that bad boys is a little shy of 350m.

By comparison a 100m sized ship in star wars will often carry 3-5 or sometimes even more point defense guns to a side.

Even when you don't think of mechanics and making adjustments to keep fighters from becoming obsolete, the simple fact that the number of point defense guns is that high suggests that the accuracy is fairly low. Or perhaps is a matter of cyclic rate. A CIWS shoots how many times for each actual hit?

In my mind the numbers would be more related to rate of fire and area. I have a hard time believing a society that's capable of faster than light travel and instantaneous long distance communication can't figure out how to design accurate targeting systems.

Laser systems do seem to fire more slowly however, and starships do need to cover all of the space around the ship, while a naval vessel need only worry about what's above the surface.

The turbolasers on a ship are representative of the bigger guns on a battleship that aren't used against aircraft, but the weapons that are designed specifically as anti-aircraft are much smaller.

In my mind the numbers would be more related to rate of fire and area. I have a hard time believing a society that's capable of faster than light travel and instantaneous long distance communication can't figure out how to design accurate targeting systems.

Laser systems do seem to fire more slowly however, and starships do need to cover all of the space around the ship, while a naval vessel need only worry about what's above the surface.

The turbolasers on a ship are representative of the bigger guns on a battleship that aren't used against aircraft, but the weapons that are designed specifically as anti-aircraft are much smaller.

And for every system they invent to improve accuracy, someone invents a way to screw with it. We built radar to see long distances, now we and many other countries have radar jammers, spoofers, stealth, etc... which all reduce the viability of a given radar in a war scenario.

The thing that gets me is size and numbers. The number of CIWS on a ship is relatively small. A Nimitz class carries what? 4 at most? And that bad boys is a little shy of 350m.

By comparison a 100m sized ship in star wars will often carry 3-5 or sometimes even more point defense guns to a side.

Even when you don't think of mechanics and making adjustments to keep fighters from becoming obsolete, the simple fact that the number of point defense guns is that high suggests that the accuracy is fairly low. Or perhaps is a matter of cyclic rate. A CIWS shoots how many times for each actual hit?

Remember, a Carrier isn't alone on the ocean. It is the center of a larger battlegroup with other ships also having defense systems for dealing with offending aircraft. The CIWS isn't designed to shoot down airplanes. It was designed to shoot down Anti-ship missiles that come in fast and low. For air defense the carrier group has its own fighters providing a CAP as well as things like the various cruisers and destroyers for dealing with air and undersea threats.

As for their effective RoF and range... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system

4500 rnds/minute with an effective range of less than 500m.

Another point to consider is the speeds that SW ships are travelling, I takes us a 9 years to get to get to Pluto with New Horizons and we are definitely no able to stop there. That same trip would take The Falcon a day? And stop there. The ships are much faster, the computers do more work for the gunners too, but with the extra flanks a starship needs to defend against, and the relatively low rate of fire it seems feasible to me.

Also silhouette does not go up smoothly, the jumps get bigger and bigger. Am I correct in guessing out biggest carriers would only be silhouette 6? That would be just 2 extra difficulty to the attack on a sil3 fighter. Make the turrets Minion gunners with gunnery and they overcome that very quickly. And those minions won't get taken out all that quickly either

Yes, it seems like the Silhouette system in FFG is similar to WEG's TORG system of scales... which, IIRC was basically a logarithmic scale.