Hi ll,
Well I had a crack at the rules for Capital Ship Combat to make it easier. I based a lot of my ideas on the details provided in the Order 66 Podcast for Capital Ship Combat . I expanded on it to make it a little bit easier to understand in written form.
I'd love some feedback.
Edited by GM Hooly
I was totally expecting a dashboard like you did for starfighters....Which I thing would be more helpful at the table.
this is good. but the dashboards are better for remembering the rules while playing
What? Like
THIS
.
I am not sure how this improves space combat beyond standardization of the sizes and amount of minion groups on capital ships.
Generally, this is a well phrased and well produced homebrew, but in my opinion, hardly adds to the situation. Capital ships will obviously max the actions they will take (due to large amount of operating crew), but most of them shouldn't be tracked too much. The ship will usually just lunch starfighters and shoot its guns....
Maybe it will have added value when capital ship combat is the center of the scene, and the players are interested in waiting for their turn while you roll for the crew's actions...
As it stands, this system, in my opinion, makes running Capital Ship Combat much easier than the rules as they stand, and lays the foundation for scalability without hampering combat too much. Obviously, a Capital Ship is NEVER going to let lose with all of its weapons at a PCs ship, so I doubt the players will be sitting around doing nothing.
I think in Capital Ship versus Capital Ship, this rule set will come into its own. I am yet to play-test this myself, but hope that this could be a good rules fix for something that I see lacking in the system.
Capital Ship combat should be no harder that standard starship combat with several wings of fighters, or when the players are flying their favourite hunk of junk. I think this rules-set makes it a lot easier for the GM and the player to manage, but people's mileage may obviously vary, and I'm happy to have improvements and additions suggested as people attempt to use these rules.
Personally, your description of the gunnery dice pool confused me so I would like to suggest the article describe how the dice pools for the gunnery team are selected. It states that the gunnery minions have an agility and gunnery skill of 2, making the dice pool GGGYY. I don't get where that dice pool comes from. I get that the yellow is the gunnery skill...but with an agility of 2, where did the 5 green dice base (before upgrades) check come from?
Don't consider all of the comments below to mean I didn't like it. I loved it. It puts on paper things I've kinda been doing anyway. I don't look at this as a house rule document, but perhaps an
clarification
interpretation (a good one) of how it could be done using RAW.
Page 2 under Minion Crew first gray example box remove the first "has": "A CR90
has
would normally have....".
Command Crew. Is there a reason you used 1/3 of Silhouette instead of something like 1/2?
Gunner Minion Crew is how I've been running it. I like the idea of using some of the batteries to Assist others (bonus) which could allow the GM to cut down on number of rolls for very large ships and gives a solution for "Fire everything we've got at them!". I'm not sure if I would make a solid rule on how to divide up the batteries though. A.i. 10 turbolasers - I would allow the GM to divide up the # of attacks and minion numbers however he wanted. While the norm could easily be two groups of 5 each, I might divide it into Five of 2 each if I wanted to fire at several craft getting all PCs in on the action.
Perhaps you structured the division of batteries as you did due to what you thought would be an exploitation of Assist? A.i. 10 turbolasers firing at one target you would say one 5-gun group and the other assists with a single Bonus. Without set rules you could have said a 6-gun group (more dice) with two 2-gun groups giving 2 bonus with Assists. Were you trying to simplify or reduce the power of such an attack? I think I'm fine with the GM (or PC running a capital ship) dividing up the attacks in whatever way he sees fit. A poorly trained ship Captain wouldn't be using the best combo's but Admiral Thrawn might be.
In your example on page 3, gray box, first column: Example has you firing all 20 turbolasers from both port and starboard at one target. Would this be possible? I would have said only 10 could fire at one target due to firing arcs.
Pilot group /2 but Command group /3. Would it be simpler to use the same dividers for both? A.i. both use /2 or /3, round down?
Technicians. You state /4 Silhouette for number of teams. However, your example has a Silhouette 9 with 3 teams. Did you mean /3? Also, your ISD example lists Silh 9, but RAW in AoR lists Silh 8 (as an aside, I prefer it to be 9). Finally, what was your reasoning for 4-minion teams versus say 3 or 5?
Nebulon-B frigate example at the end. Command: The "X" is confusing to me. Should it say, "Rival + 2 Minions" or perhaps "Rival + Minion Group of 2". I would divide the Pilot and Technicians under their own categories. "Pilot - 3 Minion crew" and "Technicians - 2 teams of 4 Minions each". Also, you seem to indicate the Nebulon has 2 Tech teams but it has a Silh of 6. /4 means only 1. /3 does give you 2 (see above).
Again, I love having this spelled out. Thanks for the work.
Edited by SturnPersonally, your description of the gunnery dice pool confused me so I would like to suggest the article describe how the dice pools for the gunnery team are selected. It states that the gunnery minions have an agility and gunnery skill of 2, making the dice pool GGGYY. I don't get where that dice pool comes from. I get that the yellow is the gunnery skill...but with an agility of 2, where did the 5 green dice base (before upgrades) check come from?
The 6 turbolasers firing at once at one target is like a 6-man minion group firing at one person. A minion group of 6 gives a skill of 5 (1 per extra past the first minion). So skill 5 and Agility 2 (typical) would give GGGYY. 5 dice total but 2 turned to yellow. The yellow is actually from the Agility using RAW for minion groups. The 5 is from the skill.
To say it another way, in RAW you use the highest number for number of dice, the lower number for yellows.
Edited by SturnHi GM Hooly,
I like it and I'm reading it now.
That first sentence needs a look, right around "is, by necessity, can be"
I like it. Thanks for the updates.
I whole heartedly agree with your initiative GM Hooly. I had the same idea, more in the form of an online calculator, but this does a great deal of it without skirting with copyright, etc.
I came to the conclusion, after... not... listening to the Order 66, that it would be helpful to have a way to quickly generate a credible encounter by processing the stat block through some sort of algorithm. Your document takes the advice from the podcast and basically does that.
The advantage a calculator would have is flexibility, once it's done, but would require a lot of programming and data entries. I was thinking of a kind of dropdown menu for choosing the capital ship, then choosing the desired threat level posed by what is opposing the Capital ship (a middling freighter wouldn't generate the same kind of armed response from a Star Destroyer than a Nebulon-B, for ex.).
I was also thinking of a kind of, either alternate or as an additional option, a "difficulty level" which could be expressed in raw "gained XP" or in a more wordy / less numeric way, to account for higher level groups. I find that the suggested dice pools / minion group sizes are great for a 0-150 acquired XP group, but wouldn't quite cut it, realistically, for a very highly trained party of Capital ship crew and leadership. And by "realistically" I mean that the 150 guns on those ISDs should be more threatening versus a higher level group, just as I would add many more members to the piloting crew and a lot more technical teams to account for the full staff.
Great job!!
Hello
I think an easier way to do this is:
Both captains make a leadership skill check. GM sets diff. Any success will give a boost dice to the final roll due to inspired crew.
Both captains make a warfare skill check. GM sets difficulty. Players with good ideas may get boost die. Any successes becomes boost die in the final roll.
GM then gives the players dice out from who has the best/largest ship. One may have 2 dice while another have 4 dice due to a much better ship. Here the boost die from warfare and leadership are added.
Winner with:
A tie will result in 50 % damage on both ships.
one success. Damage the enemy ship 25 %
two success. Damage the enemy ship 50 %
three success. Damage the enemy ship 75 %
four success or more. Destroys the enemy ship.
Every advantage from both ships gives damage control by 5 %
Since it is unlikely that the winner ship takes no damage. It always take 20 % of the damage done to the enemy ship.
Edited by WetaasI would say for a standard ISD, sure, but for a well known Capital Ship, you might upgrade the minions a bit, maybe even give them Rival bosses and then their "teams" give them boost dice.
Hello
I think an easier way to do this is:
Both captains make a leadership skill check. GM sets diff. Any success will give a boost dice to the final roll due to inspired crew.
Both captains make a warfare skill check. GM sets difficulty. Players with good ideas may get boost die. Any successes becomes boost die in the final roll.
GM then gives the players dice out from who has the best/largest ship. One may have 2 dice while another have 4 dice due to a much better ship. Here the boost die from warfare and leadership are added.
Winner with:
A tie will result in 50 % damage on both ships.
one success. Damage the enemy ship 25 %
two success. Damage the enemy ship 50 %
three success. Damage the enemy ship 75 %
four success or more. Destroys the enemy ship.
Every advantage from both ships gives damage control by 5 %
You may be missing the point of doing things the way I have suggested. My suggestion is to make the event of a Capital vs Capital an epic occurrence which could go either way - perhaps even the end of a story arc, or even a campaign. It can also allow PCs who have become involved in being aboard the ship a way to influence how things have gone.
Got a mechanic who is just plain awesome? Have them command a tech crew to attend to the damage of the ship.
Got an amazing pilot? Have them helm the capital ship and giving commands to his fellow pilots.
The aim is to make it an interesting and fun encounter where everyone can be involved. These rules are scalable, and work with the current rule set - and changes nothing.
Capital Ship VS Capital ship should feel no different and be no harder than a Freighter VS FREIGHTER or Freighter VS multiple Starfighters. And the rules are there already to be used - just in a different way.
If I wanted to do it your way, I would just tell the PCs what the outcome was using narrative description and avoid dice rolls altogether,
Just my 5 credits worth
I do thank you all for the input though.
The only suggestions that I've been thinking I want to add are:
1) Effects on aiming at a weapon group
2) Special scenario effects such as fighting in an asteroid field and using fighters within the scenario as terrain.
Edited by GM HoolyTo add my two cents to the whole "including Capital ships in your game" thing.
It helps to remember that the Empire has access to several classes of ship , and will likely use the most appropriate one for the threat the PCs pose, usually the most cost-efficient/least expensive one for the situation at hand. The way I see it, encountering an Imperial-class Star Destroyer should be a rare and scary encounter that's not to be taken lightly (unless the events of the campaign absolutely dictate it). According to former EU/now Legends sources, there were only roughly 25000 ISDs total in the Imperial fleet's history ( http://jasonfry.tumblr.com/post/23039847571/eg-to-warfare-endnotes-pt-7 ), though debates rage between minimalists and maximalists (apparently, see source). The Galaxy is big, there are 100 quadrillons living beings in it for the Empire to subjugate, the Rebels are doing a hit and run guerrilla not solely based on full scale confrontations. There are countless reasons not to jump the gun with ISDs.
I would advise against using ISDs too quickly in your games, speaking as a GM of a 1000xp group who have yet to encounter any imperial ship bigger than silhouette 5. Even the utter combat monsters they are, even as rich and crazy resourceful as they have become, the fear of encountering the Imperial fleet drives them crazy and plays a role in keeping them sane and well behaved, and not frothing mad berserkers wreaking havoc because they "can". Keeping the ISD as a very rare and utterly dangerous opponent plays into that. Heck, those things can even cause orbital bombardment ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Orbital_bombardment ), what's not to instill absolute terror and fear ? O_o
According to the Anaxes War College system ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anaxes_War_College_System ), you have a lot of choice before resorting to the biggest Capital ships out there. Even a Nebulon-B is far from being a "beginner" cap ship to oppose.
In order from biggest to smallest:
And that's without even counting the oddities like the Gozanti "cruiser", an armed freighter we see a lot in Rebels, or all the other gunships and patrol ships covered in the books.
My point is that GMs should refrain from using the big Capital ships before the smaller ones if they want to keep their scare factor up there. I seriously think it's preferable to hold no punches when using Capital ships of smaller size than downplay the danger of the biggest out there by fudging rolls, reducing the size of gunner minion groups, reducing the number of technical teams, forgetting about boost dice, not aiming enough, or treating the Capital ships as a simple "terrain" feature.
Edit: Once an ISD fails to become a fearsome opponent, that your players feel so high and mighty that they start to think OOC on how to game the system and "beat it", like any other encounter, what's the GM's last resort? Throwing them "a Darth Vader" and seriously messing up your Sorting Algorithm of Evil? ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SortingAlgorithmOfEvil ) That's why it's better to keep them as last resort plot device and use the bevy of smaller classes first.
Edited by BarbeChenueWhat? Like THIS .
Yeah that... that makes it easy to use the info on how to do Capital ship combat easier. Now include an action summary sheet like you did for fighters... That way you take this dashboard and can sort out barrages etc.
After not listening to Order 66 I realized capital ship combat is not hard. You just need a cheat sheet and a dashboard to organize your info.
Edited by DaeglanHere is Version 1.2 which includes the rules for using starfighters as a terrain piece (as per the Order 66 Podcast), and the effects of targeting weapons:
Edited by GM Hooly
Hi ll,
Well I had a crack at the rules for Capital Ship Combat to make it easier. I based a lot of my ideas on the details provided in the Order 66 Podcast for Capital Ship Combat . I expanded on it to make it a little bit easier to understand in written form.
I'd love some feedback.
Very very pretty. I am at work so I will have to wait to really read it. What fonts did you use?
Edit as I read -
I like the idea for the various minion crews. Under command crew you have a few typographical errors in the first column, last paragraph.
Edited by FangGripElectra Light Pro and Electra Medium Pro
Electra Light Pro and Electra Medium Pro
Thank you very much.
Found this thread - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/138567-crew-breakdown-for-a-nebulon-b-frigate/
Has nice ideas about crew breakdown for a Nebulon B, you might want to look at.
So this is what I came up with after a play-test. I'll be doing a second play-test tomorrow night, so I expect other issues will arise.
So this is what I came up with after a play-test. I'll be doing a second play-test tomorrow night, so I expect other issues will arise.
Thanks for the update! I'm lazy and lack time over lunch. What were the basic changes?
No exact details needed.