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.

Smaller craft typically don't carry more than 2 CIWS though. So an entire battlegroup might have a dozen between them. Though I concur that it's mostly a last-ditch anti-missile system with air defense far more likely to be handled by guided missiles.

Back to the game though, there's got to be some balance. If you take your fighter group in on a torpedo run, a lot of larger craft have 5ish defense guns to a a side (if not substantially more) The existing downgrade of 1 Sil is probably more then enough of an advantage you want to give them.

If anything we should be quite happy that the really big ships tend to only have turbolasers...

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.

Smaller craft typically don't carry more than 2 CIWS though. So an entire battlegroup might have a dozen between them. Though I concur that it's mostly a last-ditch anti-missile system with air defense far more likely to be handled by guided missiles.

Back to the game though, there's got to be some balance. If you take your fighter group in on a torpedo run, a lot of larger craft have 5ish defense guns to a a side (if not substantially more) The existing downgrade of 1 Sil is probably more then enough of an advantage you want to give them.

If anything we should be quite happy that the really big ships tend to only have turbolasers...

and in AoR I believe an option was added for barrage as an anti-fighter choice for larger craft to do to make it more difficult for fighter groups to get through to the larger ship. Think of it like the flak barrage that older battleships put up to try and make bombing runs more difficult, and makes sense since Star Wars is closer to WWII fighting than modern day capabilities.

I like to think about the difficulty to hit things in the same way they deal with dogfights in the rules. When it is fighters and light transports swirling around each other, it is the person you are shooting at that decides which shield facing you hit because everything is moving so fast, so the pilot can quickly move to take the hit where they want. But when you deal with bigger ships against each other it is dependent on ship position and where the gunners are aiming, the target ship can't quickly move out of the way.

So, a gunner on a slow moving big ship using a quad cannon like that you can mount on a YT is going to have to deal with a fast moving fighter that can pick where they shoot. The gunner in the YT going after the fighter has the benefit of the pilot moving around to give the gunners the best shot that they can get. Thus easier to shoot a fighter from a YT than shoot a fighter from a cruiser.

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.

By that logic it could be far easier or far more difficult for a gunner on a smaller, more maneuverable craft to hit a fighter than a gunner on a battleship due to the vector differentials (e.g. hitting a moving target while also moving in a different direction is more difficult than hitting the same target while moving slowly in a constant direction is more difficult than hitting the same target while stationary). The limiting factor I could see based on speed is how quickly the turret can rotate and angle its gun, though that feature should be similar regardless of the ship for the same weapon type.

Not to mention that unlike in our world, the projectiles fired from weapons in Star Wars are near instantaneous, which really reduces the complexity of the calculations.

Back to the game though, there's got to be some balance. If you take your fighter group in on a torpedo run, a lot of larger craft have 5ish defense guns to a a side (if not substantially more) The existing downgrade of 1 Sil is probably more then enough of an advantage you want to give them.

If anything we should be quite happy that the really big ships tend to only have turbolasers...

And squadron rules. I think assaulting a capital ship bristling with point defense lasers should be a dangerous endeavor. I can accept game balance as a reason though. It's usually best to just accept the abstraction in RPGs anyway.

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.

Encumbrance is an overall rating that includes weight, bulk, and stability, it's not specific to any one of those. Think of a Duffle as adding 2 effective Encumbrance as opposed to it's overall carrying capacity. As was pointed out you can fit a lot in a duffle bag but is bulky, will shift around a lot (often requires a hand to stabilize it), and lacks the stability and weight distribution mechanisms that a good backpack provides. So a backpack my "carry" less but it carries it more effectively.

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.

Encumbrance is an overall rating that includes weight, bulk, and stability, it's not specific to any one of those. Think of a Duffle as adding 2 effective Encumbrance as opposed to it's overall carrying capacity. As was pointed out you can fit a lot in a duffle bag but is bulky, will shift around a lot (often requires a hand to stabilize it), and lacks the stability and weight distribution mechanisms that a good backpack provides. So a backpack my "carry" less but it carries it more effectively.

Right. It's just the dissociation between the narrative of what fits in the bag and how it affects what the character can carry that throws me a bit. I guess my next question would be: if a PC is just stuffing items into the bag itself, how much would you allow into the bag, and what might be the total encumbrance that the bag could carry? So the bag might only increase the character's encumbrance by 2 due to its unwieldiness, but how much could fit into the bag?

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.

Encumbrance is an overall rating that includes weight, bulk, and stability, it's not specific to any one of those. Think of a Duffle as adding 2 effective Encumbrance as opposed to it's overall carrying capacity. As was pointed out you can fit a lot in a duffle bag but is bulky, will shift around a lot (often requires a hand to stabilize it), and lacks the stability and weight distribution mechanisms that a good backpack provides. So a backpack my "carry" less but it carries it more effectively.

Right. It's just the dissociation between the narrative of what fits in the bag and how it affects what the character can carry that throws me a bit. I guess my next question would be: if a PC is just stuffing items into the bag itself, how much would you allow into the bag, and what might be the total encumbrance that the bag could carry? So the bag might only increase the character's encumbrance by 2 due to its unwieldiness, but how much could fit into the bag?

That's up to the GM/Players as it really depends on what exactly you're trying to stuff into it and how. It might only hold a weeks worth of clothes, or a months depending all on how you're trying to get it in there. Same thing with how much fits inside a D&D backpack or Bag of Holding.

Right. It's just the dissociation between the narrative of what fits in the bag and how it affects what the character can carry that throws me a bit. I guess my next question would be: if a PC is just stuffing items into the bag itself, how much would you allow into the bag, and what might be the total encumbrance that the bag could carry? So the bag might only increase the character's encumbrance by 2 due to its unwieldiness, but how much could fit into the bag?

Duffle bags come in various size so I guess you'd have to just wing it at the time. In the end it doesn't really matter as Encumbrance still adds up and will eventually top out for the PC.

Encumbrance is an abstract balancing tool in the RAW to put some limits on PCs so they, like real people, have to make choices about what they carry around with them and can use on adventures. Be strict so the balance works but don't be nit-picky.

why use duffel bags when you can use Spacer chests with a repulsorlift and a small droid brain that follows you?

There are rules for Backpacks, which would be the equivalent of a large canvas bag you can stuff things in

why use duffel bags when you can use Spacer chests with a repulsorlift and a small droid brain that follows you?

There are rules for Backpacks, which would be the equivalent of a large canvas bag you can stuff things in

Because the duffel doesn't take power and you don't have to worry about how fast it can move if you have to run.

Why do we use duffel bags in real life? they are convenient for certain situations... but if you wat to carry stuff long distance you would use a pack obviously. But from a hotel room to your ship.. a duffel makes sense.