This is an endless topic and a popular view is that there's no way to properly represent brilliant pilots because star fighters are too much like eggshells. Anakin is one of the best pilots in the galaxy but the enemy fighter rolls well and hits, disabling Anakin's craft and leaving it floating there in Space. There are some talents that will help but (a) they're hard to come by and (b) don't really change things that much.

I have not thought this idea through so consider it a starting point.

In regular combat a defending character can make it harder to defeat them by piling on the Brawn / Soak. In Space combat there is no parallel to this so even great pilots can be brought low easily. You don't want to make ships unrealistically tough because (a) that doesn't fit what you're describing and (b) it's something that applies across the board rather than just the ace pilots. So I see two options: (1) allow someone to reduce damage based on their piloting skill somehow. (2) Make it harder to hit someone based on their piloting skill somehow.

Taking the second idea first, you could switch the difficulty for attacking another ship from just being based on their Silhouette difference, to being more like an opposed roll. So if you attack someone with Agility 2, it's 2 purples. Attack someone with Agility 2, Piloting 1, and it's 1 Purple, 1 Red. You could also modify it based on Silhouette. Upgrade or Downgrade once per difference in size according to direction.

Of course it gets rather horrifically high if you're targetting a really, really good pilot (so someone with 4 Agility and 4 Piloting would be 4 reds). That's the main problem as I see it. But I don't have experience of high level play, yet. If 4 reds isn't too high to be playable, we could go with that. If it is, you could perhaps determine things differently. E.g. use the existing Silhouette difficulties but just add upgrades based on one upgrade per rank of piloting skill. That way if you're shooting some Nemesis hotshot (Piloting 4) and the base difficulty was 2 Purple, it would end up as 3 Red. Still nasty, but better.

The other option would be something like a Parry for spaceships. Perhaps everyone should be able to spend a Strain point to add their Piloting ranks to Armour as an Incidental.

There are things about these ideas that I don't like - they are an exception to the rest of the combat system, they make a particular skill more valuable than other skills. However, the basic problem I am trying to solve is finding a way to translate Piloting skill into longevity for small ships. Thoughts on these ideas?

When I started fiddling with this recently I started to go the same route, but didn't want to completely change the system. I like how one system is used no matter what you are doing - fighting in a ship or on foot. If you add competitive defense in Starfighters then you no longer have a concise system across the board.

I do agree how it feels right though. Dog fighting just reeks of Competitive rolls. But, you would then need to house rule several talents, some actions/maneuvers, and perhaps look into Competitive rolls for Melee/Brawl combat too? I don't know if you would want to go down that path.

It also may become very difficult to challenge a PC veteran starfighter pilot. Unless you kept throwing rival pilots or large swarms of minions, they might become untouchable with the added difficulty to hit them? I'm not a veteran of high levels so I don't know. Others perhaps could comment better. But, you could run the risk of going too far the other way?

Using only Silhouette to determine Difficulty I agree seems non-sensical. When I started brain-storming I had a list of affects - Silhouette, Speed, Handling, Pilot skill. But, trying to meld all of that into one Difficulty roll with Setback/Bonus was a mess.

My recent try to solve these same problems is over here:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/138522-evaluate-house-rules-re-starfighter-survivability-pilot-skill/#entry1500517

I liked the opposed roll, or factoring the opponent's piloting skill into the difficulty. It really bothers me that being a superior pilot (say, Agility 4, Pilot: Space 4 or something) does absolutely jack to prevent you from getting shot.

I tried your option #2 today and it worked well. My player had a firespray against 2 MA3s in an asteroid belt. The only problem is despair as you will increase its frequency of occuring against a pilot with 2 skill, but a clever GM should be able to deal with it.

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

My group has a much simpler rule: you are not out of the fight when you run out of wounds/hull. If you still have Strain/System Strain, and have not receved a lethal critical yet, you can limp on to victory.

Minions and rivals, of course, take strain as wounds, so this rule only applies to Nemisi and PCs.

> It also may become very difficult to challenge a PC veteran starfighter pilot.

When I first started 'flying' an online World War 2 air combat simulator over the internet, I was already a 'very good' simulator pilot. (That's a joke... online, _everyone_ was 'very good' back where they came from.)

On Sunday mornings our country of pilots knew where to find a fight. We'd get on the server and xxxx killed by litn, yyyy killed by litn, zzzz killed by litn would scroll by on the all game announcements. We knew to go to a particular area to find this furball.

So three or four of us would be attacking the enemy ace already in combat. He'd kill a few of us until he ran out of ammo, then fly back to base. Or maybe one of us would eventually get lucky with a head to head snap shot. (I don't recall ever getting him.)

WB: para

Basically, small ships are like minions, and inherently vulnerable. I don't see how it is bad, its balanced somewhat.

If your PCs don't want to die, they should use minion crew to pilot starfighters, and think twice before they send a few sitting ducks to fight a ship larger then it

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

This is good, really good! I am going to use this.

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

Do you think that many upgrades will be a bit much? Honestly asking. Once you are in high levels you have a Pilot-6 upgrading difficulty vs him 6 times. I proposed a change that is very similar (see link above, additional upgrades to EM based on skill+handling) in another thread yesterday, but it ends up with about half as many upgrades (not tested).

I'm trying to figure out where the sweet spot is on number of upgrades. What is too much versus what is too little.

Basically, small ships are like minions, and inherently vulnerable. I don't see how it is bad, its balanced somewhat.

If your PCs don't want to die, they should use minion crew to pilot starfighters, and think twice before they send a few sitting ducks to fight a ship larger then it

It's bad for two reasons. Firstly, it's not representative of what we see in the films and cartoons which many of us want to emulate - Anakin Skywalker does not become a minion because he's in a small fighter. Secondly, it allows little differentiation between pilots - a highly skilled veteran ace and a first day in a cockpit pilot both get reduced to "minion" status.

If your PCs don't want to die, they should use minion crew to pilot starfighters, and think twice before they send a few sitting ducks to fight a ship larger then it

So, the PCs shouldn't even consider being starfighter pilots which is an iconic role in Star Wars?

I tried your option #2 today and it worked well. My player had a firespray against 2 MA3s in an asteroid belt. The only problem is despair as you will increase its frequency of occuring against a pilot with 2 skill, but a clever GM should be able to deal with it.

One thing that I anticipate is that this is going to be common to higher level play. When you start out a Despair is going to be a rare thing and the inclination is to treat it (and Triumphs) as amazing events. And that's not entirely bad, but by the time people are rolling 4 yellows, they're going to be seeing Triumph roughly one in three dice rolls. So you can no longer treat every triumph as "the opponent's weapon shatters into a hundred pieces" or whatever. My feeling is that with Despairs, you have to respond similarly. Is four red horrible? Yes, I think so. But it's not going to be uncommon - by the time you're at that sort of level, you're going to see this quite often. Opposed checks generate red dice routinely.

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

Do you think that many upgrades will be a bit much? Honestly asking. Once you are in high levels you have a Pilot-6 upgrading difficulty vs him 6 times. I proposed a change that is very similar (see link above, additional upgrades to EM based on skill+handling) in another thread yesterday, but it ends up with about half as many upgrades (not tested).

I'm trying to figure out where the sweet spot is on number of upgrades. What is too much versus what is too little.

I don't think ix upgrades is going to be that bad, to be honest. I mean it's awful , but I think it's appropriate is what I'm saying. If the difficulty is 2 Purple as standard, then six upgrades means four red as the difficulty. You're dog fighting Anakin Skywalker by that point, so it's not bad. My concern would be any existing talents out there that stack with this. Maybe we adjust the base difficulty something like as follows:

Same Silhouette size: 1 Purple.

1 - 2 Silhouette larger than target: 2 Purple

3+ Silouhette larger than target: 3 Purple.

Now if you're shooting at one of the galaxy's finest pilots from your own fighter, it's 3 red and a purple. Firing at them from your Star Destroyer, it's 4 red + 1 Purple. Which does kind of match what we see in the movies and TCW.

Hmmmm... I've written all that out now, and I'm having my doubts. If we consider a much more average pilot, but still an expert, let's say someone with 3 Piloting skill, you're now looking at 2 red. I suppose that could feel about right, but the normal way to do it would be to increase the difficulty (purples) rather than upgrades. :/ I think it's better than what we have but still not right.

Oh, an obvious caveat with all of these approaches is that Minions should not get the Piloting skill.

I ran 6 simulations earlier today involving 4 tie minions against a rival Y-wing and 2 minion M3-as with the following changes:

1) Gain the Advantage as an opposed Piloting check modified by the difference in handling. No fighter pilot is just going to let you get on his 6, especially an experienced one

2) Evasive Maneuvers upgrades the to hit difficulty once per pilots skill level so an experienced pilot will be harder to hit. A pilot with 3 skill will result in 2 red and 1 purple. A minion group of 2 tie pilots will result in 1 red, 1 purple.

These changes resulted in some really cinematic give and go dogfights (I use miniatures to keep track of positions) that lasted for multiple turns with ships maneuvering for a kill shot.

The only problem I ran into is the first combat turn when fighters come at each other head to head. Two fighters approaching each other at full throttle should be a daunting (4 purple) shot IMHO.

The one thing I missed was factoring in speed.

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

Do you think that many upgrades will be a bit much? Honestly asking. Once you are in high levels you have a Pilot-6 upgrading difficulty vs him 6 times. I proposed a change that is very similar (see link above, additional upgrades to EM based on skill+handling) in another thread yesterday, but it ends up with about half as many upgrades (not tested).

I'm trying to figure out where the sweet spot is on number of upgrades. What is too much versus what is too little.

Well, gunners can get YYYYY G (6 ability, 5 skill) vs a pilot's potential RRRRP (6 skill, 2 silhouette + 1 rank of Defensive Driving – assuming starfighter vs starfighter). Even when you look at a more realistic gunner with 3 ability, you are YYY GGG and that's still better than even odds. Yes, pilots can get more than one rank of Defensive Driving and I'm not counting shields, but I'm also not counting advanced targeting computers or True Aim which add even more to gunner's attacks.

It also makes Gain the Advantage incredibly useful, which has been a perennial complaint.

I read your other example, but I don't like things that have to be calculated that way; It slows things down at the table too much because players have to be reminded of it. This way is simple to implement and easy to remember.

In the big scheme of things, it doesn't add nearly as much as you can add to a gunnery roll and keeping it in Evasive Maneuvers means it hurts your own gunnery, and it can take its toll with system strain if you want to do anything else.

I ran 6 simulations earlier today involving 4 tie minions against a rival Y-wing and 2 minion M3-as with the following changes:

1) Gain the Advantage as an opposed Piloting check modified by the difference in handling. No fighter pilot is just going to let you get on his 6, especially an experienced one

2) Evasive Maneuvers upgrades the to hit difficulty once per pilots skill level so an experienced pilot will be harder to hit. A pilot with 3 skill will result in 2 red and 1 purple. A minion group of 2 tie pilots will result in 1 red, 1 purple.

These changes resulted in some really cinematic give and go dogfights (I use miniatures to keep track of positions) that lasted for multiple turns with ships maneuvering for a kill shot.

The only problem I ran into is the first combat turn when fighters come at each other head to head. Two fighters approaching each other at full throttle should be a daunting (4 purple) shot IMHO.

I would consider trying out the different changes in isolation or adding them one at a time, rather than piling them all on at once. You will get a better sense of which is working for you and which isn't.

I ran 6 simulations earlier today involving 4 tie minions against a rival Y-wing and 2 minion M3-as with the following changes:

1) Gain the Advantage as an opposed Piloting check modified by the difference in handling. No fighter pilot is just going to let you get on his 6, especially an experienced one

2) Evasive Maneuvers upgrades the to hit difficulty once per pilots skill level so an experienced pilot will be harder to hit. A pilot with 3 skill will result in 2 red and 1 purple. A minion group of 2 tie pilots will result in 1 red, 1 purple.

These changes resulted in some really cinematic give and go dogfights (I use miniatures to keep track of positions) that lasted for multiple turns with ships maneuvering for a kill shot.

The only problem I ran into is the first combat turn when fighters come at each other head to head. Two fighters approaching each other at full throttle should be a daunting (4 purple) shot IMHO.

The problem I have with the above is that it's applying to Minion groups. If there are five Tie-fighters instead of one, it is now massively harder to wear down their numbers. Scoring that first hit will be immensely difficult. Is that a bug or a feature. I'm not sure.

I would tie this more into Evasive Maneuvers rather than make it base difficulty – maybe 1 upgrade per rank in Pilot. Doing it that way:

1. Weeds out larger and/or slower ships that shouldn't be doing it (like having an incredibly well-piloted Star Destroyer that is impossible to hit)

2. Adds serious value to Gain the Advantage

Do you think that many upgrades will be a bit much? Honestly asking. Once you are in high levels you have a Pilot-6 upgrading difficulty vs him 6 times. I proposed a change that is very similar (see link above, additional upgrades to EM based on skill+handling) in another thread yesterday, but it ends up with about half as many upgrades (not tested).

I'm trying to figure out where the sweet spot is on number of upgrades. What is too much versus what is too little.

Well, gunners can get YYYYY G (6 ability, 5 skill) vs a pilot's potential RRRRP (6 skill, 2 silhouette + 1 rank of Defensive Driving – assuming starfighter vs starfighter). Even when you look at a more realistic gunner with 3 ability, you are YYY GGG and that's still better than even odds. Yes, pilots can get more than one rank of Defensive Driving and I'm not counting shields, but I'm also not counting advanced targeting computers or True Aim which add even more to gunner's attacks.

It also makes Gain the Advantage incredibly useful, which has been a perennial complaint.

I read your other example, but I don't like things that have to be calculated that way; It slows things down at the table too much because players have to be reminded of it. This way is simple to implement and easy to remember.

In the big scheme of things, it doesn't add nearly as much as you can add to a gunnery roll and keeping it in Evasive Maneuvers means it hurts your own gunnery, and it can take its toll with system strain if you want to do anything else.

I like tying it to Evasive Manoeuvres and the impact on Strain. This makes it a bit more of a decision for the player and it also resembles what has been done elsewhere with things like Parry where one cannot just keep doing this forever. Five tie-fighters becomes a problem for the player whereas without the Strain cost, they may not be, simply because with the cost, they are wearing you down, but they're not getting the insta-kill effect that causes problems with the current system, either.

Some quick thoughts with not much consideration.

Instead of upgrades for Evasive Man, use added Difficulty? Not at a 1D:1 Skill basis, something less? You might then need to adjust the base Silh difficulty to attack. Ex: ISD vs Starfighter is already 5D, then you are adding even more D with Evasive Man.

The Silh difficulty rules of vehicle combat are meant to not just reflect size differences, but maneuverability, per RAW text. If you lower the overall base difficulty based on Silh, you will still have large difficulties for a big captial ship targetting a starfighter....but only when they are actively evading. Something the bigger ships can't do. Makes sense. For example, as is a Silh 8 Capital ship uses 5D when attacking a Silh 3 Starfighter. If that base difficulty was dropped to 3D plus some EM difficulty based on Pilot skill, you might have it be 3D when the Starfighter fails to evade, but 4D, 5D, or even more when evading depending on the Pilot's skill.

Oh, an obvious caveat with all of these approaches is that Minions should not get the Piloting skill.

I could go either way on this. Yes it makes that group of 4 TIEs suddenly harder to kill with Pilot 3 combined with EM. But, there is more to consider. First, they are only harder to kill if using Evasive Maneuvers. That's not necessarily the mindset of Strormtroopers pilots (extending their life at a cost to firepower is against their thinking), but of course would be foremost amongst other minion pilots. Realistically (perhaps not Star Wars cinematic) I don't have a problem with it since when dogfighting it has always been considered a huge hazard to lose your "wing man". Minion starfighter groups would lose a level of Pilot skill each time you took one of them out. Each time you took one out, they as a collective whole would be easier to hit. Makes sense.

I thought I read somewhere that minion groups are 2-4 in number? Well one fighter trying to GtA on 6 would be difficult for sure, but that doesn't stop the pilot form trying to GtA on only 2.

As for speed, I think it plays for of a factor in chases than dogfights where pilot skill and handling are more important.

This is just a thought, but if you're thinking of house-ruling vehicle combat, maybe go in reverse a bit and see how the same logic could be applied to personal combat as well. Then make it consistant with both forms of combat.

I've considered using Melee/Brawl comparisons to determine base difficulty in melee with 2D being typical. You have much less skill then your opponent, your attack difficulty goes up. It doesn't involve a Competitve roll at all and shouldn't slow things down. I've also considered a simple chart that assigns a difficulty to a melee target based solely on its skill (not skill comparisons).

Without quoting the rest of your post, remember the comparison should be about the Actions/Maneuvers, not just the skills. We are talking about a Maneuver (Evasive Man.) adjusting difficulty to attack a target. The comparison would be using a Guarded Stance that provides more or less Setback to defense based on skill. I also wouldn't equate the movement skills of personal combat to having the same affect of the movement skills of vehicle combat. In a dogfight, movement ability hugely affects your ability to attack especially when you can't immediately "turn around" as you can in personal combat. It's apples and oranges and shouldn't be the same. Melee/Brawl includes the skill of moving around while fighting (footwork, tumbling, etc) imho while Gunnery doesn't, for a reason.

Gain the Advantage already involves an action roll. A change making it a Competitive roll so skills are included isn't adding much time to the process. Instead of comparing speeds of the two craft you are now comparing the skills of the two pilots.

Edit: I'm not sure if all of this made sense I've been peering over too many messages and rulebooks today and I think I need to take a break for a bit.

I wasn't decriptive and elaborate enough to emphasis my point, and for that I apologies. Therefor my response will be a bit more long then what I usually expect of myself.

Basically, small ships are like minions, and inherently vulnerable. I don't see how it is bad, its balanced somewhat.

If your PCs don't want to die, they should use minion crew to pilot starfighters, and think twice before they send a few sitting ducks to fight a ship larger then it

It's bad for two reasons. Firstly, it's not representative of what we see in the films and cartoons which many of us want to emulate - Anakin Skywalker does not become a minion because he's in a small fighter. Secondly, it allows little differentiation between pilots - a highly skilled veteran ace and a first day in a cockpit pilot both get reduced to "minion" status.

First off, I am in the opinion that you can not recreate the movies, which are a different narrative then roleplaying. Not all characters are heros, and not all situations are heroic. However, if you want to create the epic battle over Naboo or Death Star I, you will have to script it the way that many minions will be targeted by the enemy first, before targeting the PCs, who will eventually succeed in their end goal.

Moreover, the point I wanted to make, is about the vehicle and not about the pilot. Eventually, the user is restricted by his gear and not by his skill (generally speaking, a soldier with a rusty old gun wont have the same shooting score as with his tweaked out modern rifle). If you have a weak starfighter with low shields/armor/HT, it will be gunned down. I think a pilot needs wits, and skill is good to have. A veteran ace will know not to engage the enemy he can not win against.

If your PCs don't want to die, they should use minion crew to pilot starfighters, and think twice before they send a few sitting ducks to fight a ship larger then it

So, the PCs shouldn't even consider being starfighter pilots which is an iconic role in Star Wars?

First of, I covered some of it above. Secondly, I would like to change my suggestion to "Players/characters should consider wisely on engaging in starfighters". Especially against superior targets. They should not stop being starfighter pilots, but they should stop climbing into the next best rusty startfighter and get shot down by the first shot... they should get a good starfighter, and use their wits and choose their battles.

Generally speaking to all who read this thread, I think you should consider what happened to most named character pilots... Biggs gets killed, Naboo Royal Space Fighter Corps killed in droves, (and more examples I can't quote from non-movies content) Both of this are well trained pilots, who got unlucky to participate in a battle with obvious losses.

Its dangerous out there, and house-ruling it out, might change that feeling.