Capital Ship Combat - A User Guide

By GM Hooly, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Cosmetic. Edited the wording to flow better. Included initiative. Reduced the complexity of the damage to weapons. Included damage to all components.

Hey there,

Read through your ideas and I like them for the most part. However I feel you neglect fighters as they are a very important part of Star Wars and are a viable threat to the "behemoths". A squadron of bombers or a barrage of torpedo is just as dangerous as any turbolaser barrage, especially when attacking critical systems. I am currently trying to think of a good mechanic to include, however it is ending up bloating up the treatment of squads beyond the simple “crew” level.

Also, how do you propose you factor in escort ships? Do we do a comprehensive breakdown for each ship in the fleet (say an ISD a Victory class, and an Interdictor) or are we supposed to relegate them to a lesser standing?

I don't think that we have forgotten the fighters, but am certainly willing to look them over again. The way we pictured it is that fighters worry about fighters, and capital ships worry about capital ships. The rules allow for threat to be used to represent that "lucky shot" which managed to slip through the fighter screen.

Having said that, I haven't really looked at the situation of Capital Ships versus Fighters. I will certainly take a look at that for my final version - its a work in progress.

Also, how do you propose you factor in escort ships? Do we do a comprehensive breakdown for each ship in the fleet (say an ISD a Victory class, and an Interdictor) or are we supposed to relegate them to a lesser standing?

Could you be a little more specific? Any ship of Silhouette 5 or greater fits into these rules no matter what the stats.

Edited by GM Hooly

I don't think that we have forgotten the fighters, but am certainly willing to look them over again. The way we pictured it is that fighters worry about fighters, and capital ships worry about capital ships. The rules allow for threat to be used to represent that "lucky shot" which managed to slip through the fighter screen.

Having said that, I haven't really looked at the situation of Capital Ships versus Fighters. I will certainly take a look at that for my final version - its a work in progress.

Also, how do you propose you factor in escort ships? Do we do a comprehensive breakdown for each ship in the fleet (say an ISD a Victory class, and an Interdictor) or are we supposed to relegate them to a lesser standing?

Could you be a little more specific? Any ship of Silhouette 5 or greater fits into these rules no matter what the stats.

Well in reference to Fighters, I feel they should be less a target of opportunity (triggered via threat) but something actively given orders too, like a weapons crew. Rebel fighters have in universe history of helping clinch capital battles, and as it stands it takes a pretty serious situation for them to come into play.

In reference to ships, a weakness of this system is that the more ships I add the number of crews and initiatives balloons like crazy (necessary to keep it intact), even with smaller ships. Is there something that could be done to prevent escorts from dragging out combat turns too long because we have have an additional 5-10 crews being added?

Edited by Cmdr Kalic

FIGHTERS:

Good point. You could provide an additional "initiative" slot to fighters and effectively treat them as a mobile gunner slot. I will explore that as an option.

MULTIPLE CAP SHIPS:

This is where it might get tricky. We are dealing with ships with multiple dozes of weapons. I guess you could split the ship's weapons into one gunnery slot, and therefore removing all of the different gunnery initiative slots. I'm not sure how that would work with one on one though, as I would imagine combat would be over fairly quickly.

Back to the "playtest mobile" Batman!

When it came to fighters, more specifically fighters dealing with fighters, I was thinking squads could to "engage" fighters locking them up and preventing them form attacking anyone other than the squadron they are dealing with. The same could be achieved with "point defense guns" like laser cannons and auto-blasters. The only two ways out of being "engaged" is a hard piloting check or eliminating the squad engaging them. Not quite sure how to factor in the differences in fighters (I.E. X-wings being superior to TIE, and some Y-wings having a gunner slot).

It depends on how complex you want to get. If its a case of the players being involved, you may have an issue doing it to such a scale. If its just backdrop, but you want to get a random result, it may be a case of playing a game of Armada and whatever the results are, is what happens in the story. I know that sounds like a "cop-out", but mechanising this process may bit a lot harder using the narrative rules.

I am willing to give it a try though, and I like the idea of starfighter actions.

Edited by GM Hooly

It depends on how complex you want to get. If its a case of the players being involved, you may have an issue doing it to such a scale. If its just backdrop, but you want to get a random result, it may be a case of playing a game of Armada and whatever the results are, is what happens in the story. I know that sounds like a "cop-out", but mechanising this process may bit a lot harder using the narrative rules.

I am willing to give it a try though, and I like the idea of starfighter actions.

Actually, you may also want to take a look at my various articles on that for ideas as well.

https://fanggrip.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/quick-dirty-cinematic-warfare/

https://fanggrip.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/quick-dirty-mass-combat/

Hello GM Hooly, I've a question about using gunnery crew minions.

What about "barrages" action (blanket, concentrated, overwelming)? When using these action you should use all the weapons of one kind on a facing arc; are you going to roll the attack with the base gunnery ability of the crew?

Let's take a nebulon B figrate as an example.

6 turbolaser on each side.

If you roll a "normal attack" with minion groups rule (agility 2) you're going to roll 2 Y and 3 G dices. If you use the concentrated barrage action you're going to use anyway all your turbolasers but rolling only 2 G?

Thanks for clarification

I would say yes. Its harder to coordinate all of those gunnery teams to perform a barrage attack. Sure its only 2G, but think of the damage at the end of the hit. Additionally, 1 Advantage activates the Barrage. The attack can also involve the commander providing additional boost dice along with aiming and spending Destiny Points.

Having said all of that, I am looking at the rules again. I wrote these rules when I had little experience with the system. I also realised the editing of this document is terrible.

Great, thank you for your feedback.

In the 2.0 pdf it says on the 2nd page that Technical Crew can only perform Damage Control action, but on the last page they have much more actions listed. Which is true?

Excellent Content. Thank you for all the work.

Yep, old guide but still nice. Except I dunno how he would handle a CR90 with only a single turbolaser on top and a single one bottom.