I don't think there is a rule, it's a meta game conversation to a certain extent. However, I'd say it's likely self evident to both of you when it comes up what they'll use it for. The exact use isn't important as long as some narrative effort into the explanation makes for a fun part of the story.

Regarding spending advantage/threat and triumph/despair in space combat. I thought that giving setback or boost to another character during space combat was like in personal combat, one can give it to whomever depending on if it was "to the next" character or to "any character" depending on number of advantage/threat spent and that character can spend it on any action they choose. But I was GM in my session last night running my 2nd space combat ever, and another player said that in space combat the player passing on boost has to specify what action the character getting the boost is going to have to use it on either piloting, gunnery, mechanics etc...skill check. Is this correct?

Again, I thought that the player giving the boost determines which character gets the boost die (according to how many advantage is spent) and that the gaining character gets to choose what action to apply it to as long as it is for a piloting, gunnery, mechanics, or computers check (as stated in the "how to spend" tables).

I've done a quick scan of the books and don't see this stipulation.

Chart 7-6 stipulates that, but the write up also states its to be used as a guideline, so that GMs and PCs can agree on anything they want to. The table isn't a set of commandments, it's a list of suggestions to spur creative thinking.

As in above reply, my question is who determines which of the actions listed (piloting, gunnery, mechanics, computers) the boost is applied to- the player spending the advantage to give boost to another character, or the character getting the boost.

OH!

In that case I'd say the guy using it, in much the same case as in personal combat.

I'm assuming the defining of the skills is a narrative crutch to avoid silly pairing. So like the pilot can use Advantage to boost the next players check to do those things because how he is flying the ship can directly impact things like gunnery, or repairing the ship, or activating countermeasures. In most normal situations you can't fly so well the guy in the back can negotiate better (there's always an exception to the rule of course, but in most cases).

But yeah, the guy receiving the bonus can apply it to whichever skill he uses. If not it becomes an almost totally worthless bonus because, as fast as vehicle combat can go, by the time you get to use it that action might not be a good idea anymore.

Regarding spending advantage/threat and triumph/despair in space combat. I thought that giving setback or boost to another character during space combat was like in personal combat, one can give it to whomever depending on if it was "to the next" character or to "any character" depending on number of advantage/threat spent and that character can spend it on any action they choose. But I was GM in my session last night running my 2nd space combat ever, and another player said that in space combat the player passing on boost has to specify what action the character getting the boost is going to have to use it on either piloting, gunnery, mechanics etc...skill check. Is this correct?

Again, I thought that the player giving the boost determines which character gets the boost die (according to how many advantage is spent) and that the gaining character gets to choose what action to apply it to as long as it is for a piloting, gunnery, mechanics, or computers check (as stated in the "how to spend" tables).

I've done a quick scan of the books and don't see this stipulation.

Chart 7-6 stipulates that, but the write up also states its to be used as a guideline, so that GMs and PCs can agree on anything they want to. The table isn't a set of commandments, it's a list of suggestions to spur creative thinking.

As in above reply, my question is who determines which of the actions listed (piloting, gunnery, mechanics, computers) the boost is applied to- the player spending the advantage to give boost to another character, or the character getting the boost.

OH!

In that case I'd say the guy using it, in much the same case as in personal combat.

I'm assuming the defining of the skills is a narrative crutch to avoid silly pairing. So like the pilot can use Advantage to boost the next players check to do those things because how he is flying the ship can directly impact things like gunnery, or repairing the ship, or activating countermeasures. In most normal situations you can't fly so well the guy in the back can negotiate better (there's always an exception to the rule of course, but in most cases).

But yeah, the guy receiving the bonus can apply it to whichever skill he uses. If not it becomes an almost totally worthless bonus because, as fast as vehicle combat can go, by the time you get to use it that action might not be a good idea anymore.

Yes, these are my thoughts exactly. I was just wondering if maybe I had missed something in the rules, especially since I don't really have space combat in my games- just seems so cumbersome in my personal opinion.

There's no specific rule. Just remember the dice are meant primarily as a narrative tool. A specific rule that gets in the way of the narrative use (within reason) is essentially going against the core philosophy of the game.

One thing you can do is sit down with your players and just do some mock space combats whre they try all the actions they can do with the combat not meaning anything character wise. You can do the same with personal scale. Hopefully hash out any questions in a shake down session...Hopefully make things smoother in the future..

Daeglan is dead on. The system is pretty good, but it is really weird to get used to. Having some throw away encounters to figure it all out will pay off, and you'll find vehicle encounters will run just as smooth as personal once you figure out just what the heck FFG was thinking when they wrote them.

There is also another advantage to running mock combats. You can see what the players can and cannot handle and they can see what they can and cannot handle. You can use this to make your games interesting.

As in above reply, my question is who determines which of the actions listed (piloting, gunnery, mechanics, computers) the boost is applied to- the player spending the advantage to give boost to another character, or the character getting the boost.

I would go with the player handing out the boost - within reason of negotiation. The key thing is that it's that player's job (along with the GM) to describe what he's actually done, and why it's so awesome it gives his wingman/gunner/cheerleader an advantage - which will probably only make sense to provide an advantage for one of those skills.

Feel free to debate what you're getting a bonus for between the two players, but if the player doesn't do what he planned to in that turn, the boost is lost.

Look at it this way; imagine you spend a manoeuvre to aim. Imagine that (due to some weird 'interrupt' ability or just aiming one turn and firing the next) between spending the manoeuvre to aim and actually getting the chance to fire, the target you aimed at has disappeared and you've been punched in the gentleman's area by an extremely large but uncharacteristically stealthy gamorrean you hadn't seen until this point.

Does it make sense to be able to gain the boost from aiming at someone else when shooting at the gamorrean?

One thing you can do is sit down with your players and just do some mock space combats whre they try all the actions they can do with the combat not meaning anything character wise. You can do the same with personal scale. Hopefully hash out any questions in a shake down session...Hopefully make things smoother in the future..

Agreed. A few quick dogfights - ship on fighters and even fighters on fighters goes a long way to making the rules make sense.

If you have access to the Age of Rebellion GM's kit, the 'massed combat' rules in there are quite nice, too - essentially allowing a character who matters to have one or more minion 'wingmen' - which is quite nice if you've got a rival or nemesis 'ace' that you want to actually challenge the players. Otherwise, unless you really go to town on the quality of their ship or give them a hell of a lot of ranks in Tricky Target, Defensive Driving, and Adversary, even a really good pilot in a fighter isn't that tough.

Hi,

I have some questions about the space combat.

1) Does a NPC astromech per Stay on Target book gives boost die to the Initiative check of the pilot? The sidebar does not say it, I am not sure if you can Assist for the Initiative check, but as a GM I would say yes in this situation. How do you handle this?

2) Do I need to engage (spend a maneuver) a target that is within my range when I begin a combat with it for the first time, or I can attack it immediately with my Gunnery action (and it is consider that the action itself consist of such engage maneuver)?

For example, TIEs are on patrol scanning transport ship (Close range), suddenly an enemy fighter flew out from the transport and attacked one of the TIEs (won Initiative check). TIEs begin to respond.

In my understanding, Z-95 had to spend a maneuver to flew out from the transport and engage one of the TIEs. After firing shots it did not move away as it wants to destroy the TIEs. Now the TIEs react, since Z-95 is in the Close range it can be immediately attacked, but narratively I would say that maneuver is required to engage Z-95 (change the course and line up its guns on Z-95).

Thanks in advance!

1) Does a NPC astromech per Stay on Target book gives boost die to the Initiative check of the pilot? The sidebar does not say it, I am not sure if you can Assist for the Initiative check, but as a GM I would say yes in this situation. How do you handle this?

My first assumption is "no", but I looked at everything regarding assistance in the CRBs and there is nothing that rules it out. Rolling initiative is like any other skill check, and the sidebar says that each skill check made by the pilot assumes that the droid is assisting. Flavor-wise, it completely fits the narrative to have the astromech whirring and squealing in alarm to notify the pilot of danger.

2) Do I need to engage (spend a maneuver) a target that is within my range when I begin a combat with it for the first time, or I can attack it immediately with my Gunnery action (and it is consider that the action itself consist of such engage maneuver)?

Assuming you're still talking vehicle combat, no. Vehicle combat isn't like personal combat where two foes are standing toe-to-toe, trading blows and dodging each other. They are in constant movement so there is usually some distance between them. As long as your target is within range of the weapon you're using, you're fine. And there is no "engaged" in vehicle combat, the closest range band is "close" which is the range of most smaller starship/vehicle weapons.

For example, TIEs are on patrol scanning transport ship (Close range), suddenly an enemy fighter flew out from the transport and attacked one of the TIEs (won Initiative check). TIEs begin to respond.

In my understanding, Z-95 had to spend a maneuver to flew out from the transport and engage one of the TIEs. After firing shots it did not move away as it wants to destroy the TIEs. Now the TIEs react, since Z-95 is in the Close range it can be immediately attacked, but narratively I would say that maneuver is required to engage Z-95 (change the course and line up its guns on Z-95).

Not necessary, if the Z-95 was within close range to begin with it can attack immediately. For details, read the "PERFORM A COMBAT CHECK WITH VEHICLE WEAPONS" description in the "ACTIONS" subsection of the "STARSHIP AND VEHICLE COMBAT" section of the "Starships and Vehicles" chapter of any of the Core Rule Books.

ETA: I think I missed something on my first read of this. If you mean that the Z-95 was actually docked on the transport, as in the Z-95 wasn't even flying yet at the start of combat (but there was a pilot sitting in it with the ship powered-on and ready to go) then it would be a maneuver to get out of the transport first, yes. I would probably make the Z-95 pilot make an Accelerate maneuver (raising his speed from the initial speed of 0) to get moving but not force him to make a Fly/Drive maneuver because flying out of the ship is pretty quick and he's not changing Planetary range bands (he was already in Close range to begin with since the transport is in Close range).

The TIEs don't need a maneuver to engage the Z-95, and if you impose that requirement on space combat then that would be a house rule. Space combat is intended to be pretty fast-paced and a Combat Check action is more than just aiming and shooting; regular piloting of your craft within a range band (such as flying your TIE at/past an enemy fighter) is included.

Warning: this turned into something a bit rambly...

One thing to bear in mind in space combat is that the RAW seem to be focused on dogfighting...and I think they probably work well for that. However, Star Wars actually quite rarely has straight-up dogfighting - TIEs vs Red Squadron being the obvious one, and I guess the battle above Naboo in Phantom . Almost all the other cinematic space combats are something different. And normally, that something different is a "chase" scene.

There's the obvious chases, like Millennium Falcon escaping the TIEs in Empire , Obi-Wan trying to escape Jango Fett in Attack , Anakin and Obi-Wan chasing the changeling in Attack , Luke and Leia on the speeder bikes in Jedi . But even something like Luke flying down the Death Star trench is really a "chase" scene: will he make it to the exhaust port before Vader catches him? Using the ordinary space combat rules, that is a seriously tedious scene to play out as each pilot uses their manoeuvres to move closer to/further from each other - but using the chase rules, with some difficult terrain piloting checks thrown in? Exciting stuff.

Outside of that you've got things like Anakin and Obi-Wan navigating the Battle of Coruscant to rescue Palpatine - not a chase scene, but basically an obstacle course (almost like a classic arcade game where you HAVE TO KEEP GOING FORWARDS) for the pilots to navigate. Again, I'm not sure how good the standard space combat rules are for this - manoeuvres to move towards or away from things seem pretty redundant, as do things like "gaining the advantage". Instead, the GM is dealing out check to deal with specific narrative situations (A pair of missiles have locked on, what do you do? Your ship is covered with buzz droids, what do you do? You've destroyed the ship's shields but that's activated the blast doors, what do you do? etc.)

What has occurred to me literally as I write this (although I like to think I knew it subconsciously) is that all space combats in the movies have at least one party that is either trying to reach something (the Death Star exhaust port, the Separatist ship, the Droid Control ship, etc.) or escape something (TIE fighters, normally, but there's also plenty of occasions when the TIEs are the ones trying to escape). Almost never do a bunch of ships show up and go "hey, let's have a dogfight, yeah? That'd be fun". (Of course, this goes for a lot of combats, not just space ones). Even if you do have an actual dogfight, where both sides are actively focused on blowing up the other side, there's normally some sort of external motivation (can't think of anything from Star Wars off the top of my head, but think of BSG - the vipers are engaging the cylons to give the Galactica enough time to make its jump calculations. Easy to see how this could apply to a Star Wars setting).

TL;DR: So what I'm really saying is that, as with any encounter, thinking about what the PCs and the NPCs are actually trying to achieve will help the adjudication of the rules, and make the encounter much more fun.

This post ended up in a different place than it started out in...but I hope it was helpful in some way. I'd like to take more time to edit it so that it actually, you know, makes sense or whatever, but I'm at work right now and there's probably something I'm meant to be doing...

Great posts. Especially liked yours, edwardraven. It's good to be reminded of what I'm trying to accomplish in an abstract sense, and you explained it simply. A friend of mine says that you need to think of the GM as "just another person at the table," but sometimes it's easy to forget how different player and GM roles are, and to get too deeply entrenched into player mode.

Warning: this turned into something a bit rambly...

One thing to bear in mind in space combat is that the RAW seem to be focused on dogfighting...and I think they probably work well for that. However, Star Wars actually quite rarely has straight-up dogfighting - TIEs vs Red Squadron being the obvious one, and I guess the battle above Naboo in Phantom . Almost all the other cinematic space combats are something different. And normally, that something different is a "chase" scene.

There's the obvious chases, like Millennium Falcon escaping the TIEs in Empire , Obi-Wan trying to escape Jango Fett in Attack , Anakin and Obi-Wan chasing the changeling in Attack , Luke and Leia on the speeder bikes in Jedi . But even something like Luke flying down the Death Star trench is really a "chase" scene: will he make it to the exhaust port before Vader catches him? Using the ordinary space combat rules, that is a seriously tedious scene to play out as each pilot uses their manoeuvres to move closer to/further from each other - but using the chase rules, with some difficult terrain piloting checks thrown in? Exciting stuff.

Outside of that you've got things like Anakin and Obi-Wan navigating the Battle of Coruscant to rescue Palpatine - not a chase scene, but basically an obstacle course (almost like a classic arcade game where you HAVE TO KEEP GOING FORWARDS) for the pilots to navigate. Again, I'm not sure how good the standard space combat rules are for this - manoeuvres to move towards or away from things seem pretty redundant, as do things like "gaining the advantage". Instead, the GM is dealing out check to deal with specific narrative situations (A pair of missiles have locked on, what do you do? Your ship is covered with buzz droids, what do you do? You've destroyed the ship's shields but that's activated the blast doors, what do you do? etc.)

What has occurred to me literally as I write this (although I like to think I knew it subconsciously) is that all space combats in the movies have at least one party that is either trying to reach something (the Death Star exhaust port, the Separatist ship, the Droid Control ship, etc.) or escape something (TIE fighters, normally, but there's also plenty of occasions when the TIEs are the ones trying to escape). Almost never do a bunch of ships show up and go "hey, let's have a dogfight, yeah? That'd be fun". (Of course, this goes for a lot of combats, not just space ones). Even if you do have an actual dogfight, where both sides are actively focused on blowing up the other side, there's normally some sort of external motivation (can't think of anything from Star Wars off the top of my head, but think of BSG - the vipers are engaging the cylons to give the Galactica enough time to make its jump calculations. Easy to see how this could apply to a Star Wars setting).

TL;DR: So what I'm really saying is that, as with any encounter, thinking about what the PCs and the NPCs are actually trying to achieve will help the adjudication of the rules, and make the encounter much more fun.

This post ended up in a different place than it started out in...but I hope it was helpful in some way. I'd like to take more time to edit it so that it actually, you know, makes sense or whatever, but I'm at work right now and there's probably something I'm meant to be doing...

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.

Also - it can really help in personal combat. There is almost always a reason beyond "he doesn't like you, and I don't like you either."