Ok, first, I'm going to talk about the things I saw as issues in the way things work, because that will provide the context for why each rule was put in place. So here are the stated issues first:

• Gain the Advantage as written is almost never better than firing for a starfighter.
• Once someone has Gain the Advantage on you, because of speed difference and escalating difficulty, there is very little reason try to GtA back.
• Survivability of Starfighters. Because starfighters can't take more than a couple of hits, and the system favors offense over defense so much, starfighters are deathtraps.
• Even with the penalties in place for size difference, capital ships weapons are still easily able to hit small ships even at incredibly long ranges, making things like the Falcon outrunning and surviving two Star Destroyers in A New Hope very very improbable, even with tons of defensive Talents (exception being Brilliant Evasion: it says something when the only really reliable way to not die is to have a talent that makes you literally untargetable).
• Sensor ranges so short that fast ships can outrun their own sensor range in one turn.
• The need to double up on maneuvers to both change speed and move in the same turn.
• Fast ships not accelerating any faster than slow ships.
• Punch it needing starfighters to use the majority of their strain to reach speed quickly (the A-Wing would nearly knock itself out of combat just to get to speed in one action)

Anyway, here is a pdf of my house rules . (v1.21, Sep 8, 2015)

Previous Versions:

From opening to ending, here is my reasonings:

Vehicle Weapons Difficulty
Make range matter more than "can't fire/can fire" This doesn't effect small ships very much, but does affect capital ships, keeping them from sniping fighters at long range. Adding the Impossible level means that firing a capital ship weapon at a small ship at decent range will have to flip a destiny point to even try, its that difficult. The penalty for firing at close speed 4+ vehicles is to add in a bit of the Death Star Syndrome to capital ships, and make starfighter to starfighter combat seem more turn and burn as it isn't as easy to light someone up.

Target Lock

Really, the only reason for this rule was that I liked the idea of target locks being required for missiles/torpedoes. You can still fire blind, but you are going to suck if you do, but if you bother to target first, they will be slightly more accurate since they can track.

Slow Tracking
Once again, this one is for keep capital ships from not needing fighter screens because the turbolasers could easily take out all the starfighters in seconds. It also makes it harder to torp/missile someone in starfighter to starfighter combat.

Shields

I like this change a lot because it makes shields act like the parry rules from Force and Destiny. It also means that tougher ships are harder to damage rather than being harder to hit, which never made good sense to me. One difference from Parry/reflect is that it adds to armor, so Breach weapons can still pierce it. The doubling of all shields is to make more variability, since we no longer have to be restricted to defense dice numbers.

Handling

With shields no longer counting as Defense, I felt using positive handling as defense would be a good benefit for small, fast ships.

Full Stop
This revision is to fix the talent based on the new fly/drive rules.

Hold it Together

Revised to not overlap with new Shields rules.

Accelerate/Decelerate & Punch It
Rolled into Fly/Drive so that changing speed is part of moving.

Fly/Drive
Roll the speed changing maneuvers into this one. Made faster ships accelerate faster. Made Punch it cost a flat strain equal to the silhouette of the ship, making it a more viable option for starfighters to use (props to, I can't remember who it was that came up with that in an earlier thread, it is a genius change).

Blanket Barrage
From Age of Rebellion. Changed so that capital ships still have a way to target starfighters even if the check is "impossible". It makes capital ships more like terrain for small ships, which I think is a solid move.

Gain the Advantage
Gave advantage options that make GtA more attractive. The ability to "get on someone's tail" or to force them to pay attention to you. I also flattened the speed advantage. This was to make GtAing someone back not nearly impossible for a slightly slower ship (TIE Interceptor vs X-Wing, if the TIE GtAed, the X-Wing was facing a PPPP difficulty to win it back in the old rules, A Y-Wing would be facing a PPPPP , neither of which are attractive options). I felt this was doubly necessary with the advantage spending allowing you to get in a firing arc they couldn't fire into. An ability to use with triumph once per check to allow you to do base damage with the weapon will make really skilled pilots even more dangerous with GtA.

Sensors
Now ships can see farther than they can move!

Individual Ship Changes
Just made a few ships a little less paper. Lowered the TIE Fighter handling to make the TIE Interceptor/A-Wing handling a bit more special. Upped the Assault Gunboats maneuverability to portray the only real representation they've had in Legends (the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series). Made the TIE Defender Faster but a bit more fragile.

Other thoughts on house rules: I would love to include something similar to parry/reflect into the starship rules somehow.

Something like "Pilot may take 7-Pilot skill strain to prevent 2+handling damage". The reason I would say pilot rather than ship is to prevent it from being another "light ships can't use this much because they have no strain threshold" rule. It also makes it more dependent on being a rival/nemesis or PC (I mean, a minion could use it I guess, but would more than likely destroy the pilot in wounds.)

I'm not as sold on this one though, so it isn't in the document. If I did do this, I would probably get rid of the black dice for evasive maneuvers rule.

Another idea: add black dice equal to handling to the difficulty of all attacks against vehicles (leave out my evasive maneuvers house rule), then remove shields as defense. Instead have the rule: "suffer 3 system strain to reduce damage by 2+Shields". This makes shields ablative, makes taking damage to them make your shields less and less useful as your system strain goes down. If I did this I might change the shield levels, as they are balanced around not going to high on black dice. Maybe double the shields on each ship, or something a bit more personal to each ship.

I've been thinking about basing GtA on Handling instead of Speed: It's not that hard to hit something that goes in a straight line very fast, in contrast to something somewhat slower zigzagging around. I'm aware that this won't help the Y-Wing, but then, they're not supposed to GtA on a TIE, in the first place.

Well, handling is really already included in GtA just because its a Pilot check. (Plus since blue dice are great for advantage, its even better using my house rules with the two options for spending advantage)

Anyway, after some thought, I did some revisions. I really liked the using shields as a kind of reflect/parry style mechanic, which freed up positive handling to provide some defense. Here are the new ideas in context.

EDIT: Made a few changes to counter some fears that I had on making shields too powerful.

What?!?! HOUSE RULES?!?!? The core rules are perfect in every way. You must not understand them!!

(My bad joke is at least obvious, I hope!)

I'm no rules expert but it sounds like the rules you worked out would be fun to try. We've felt that there were some parts of the space combat rules that weren't working quite right. Well... my group did but they play board games and miniature battle games like X-Wing. I just worry about the narrative, for the most part and I don't want rules to get in the way of that. These rules don't seem bolted on and wouldn't change things for me while still giving my D20 loving gaming group some more strategy to consider. I'm going to sow them to my gm.

The only question I have is on the Full Stop Talent. It allows you to drop speed to 0 but costs Silhouette strain. The revised Fly/Drive maneuver allows you to increase or decrease the speed by any amount then pay Silhouette strain. It doesn't seem like the Talent would be necessary.

I changed the talent to an incidental, so it doesn't use one of your maneuvers. I thought about dropping the strain cost as well though, to make it feel more worthy.

Combine it with Let's Ride and you can arrive at a location on a speeder, jump out, and still have your full suite of maneuvers and actions left.

Personal thoughts on house rules in general:

• Never ever allow anything other than an Action to call for a skill roll. doing so will mess with the advantage economy
• Never let a single stat double dip on one roll (like if you made the GtA chart work off handling, which would make it double with the blue dice handed from the handling)
• Simpler is better.
• Its always better to add a quality than change a maneuver or action
• Its always better to change a maneuver or action before changing a base rule
• Its always better to change a base rule before changing a stat block (too much work for GMs on the fly imo)

You can't ALWAYS follow all of these, but I think that in general, these should be good guidelines for working on house rules.

What?!?! HOUSE RULES?!?!? The core rules are perfect in every way. You must not understand them!!

(My bad joke is at least obvious, I hope!)

I can take a hint.

Norton, I apologize if I've come off harsh RE:vehicle rules. I've just heard too many fuzzy rants and seen too many 15 page house documents that make few improvements and add lots of unneeded complexity with only starfighters in mind.

Looking at your stuff makes it clear you're not in that category.

You've actually made some interesting suggestions and if you still want my feedback here it is:

Blanket barrage:

- By affecting only enemy vehicles you can end up something like a PC starfighter tangling with TIEs and getting blanketed. The result seems to be the PC would be in a bad spot and need to move, but the TIEs could hammer him with impunity. Might want to consider the barrage affecting all targets to keep this from becoming a kind of "I toss a grenade into the melee without concern for my friends because my grenades know the difference" thing.

- The range increase and arc specification brings up a pair of situations. First off, I can see something where a Capship gunner launches a barrage early in the round, affecting a large set of targets in one arc, and then the pilot turns the capship later in the round to affect a different group of targets. Bug? Feature? Not intended for capships above Sil X?

- The range increase also means you could have Fighters approaching from far out getting hammered on approach. The easy if not making a check thing does help mitigate this a bit, but I could still see a hot roll with lots of advantage knocking the players out before the combat can even get interesting. Bug? Feature? Maybe limit it to short range to better match your adjustments to difficulty at range?

GtA: Consider increasing the fire arc limitation cost to 3 Advantage. This would put it more in line with existing Advantage costs relating similar effects like forcing an enemy to drop a weapon, or temporarily disabling a ship's system.

Sensors: I find the range vs. information especially interesting... I need to chew on this in relation to nonstarcraft and narrative (sensor are a pain story wise, and FFG handled it only so-so at best) but I think you are coming from an interesting direction.

I don't have any complaints, I like it much better than the core rules. I particularly like the sensor changes, I was already doing something like this but it's nice to have it codified.

@Ghost

Apology accepted, man. I admit I got a bit snippy as well, much faster than was needed. So sorry on my side too.

I probably should call it out closer, but the only part of blanket barrage that only affects opposing ships is the upgrades of the difficulty. All the ways you can get autohit applies to ALL ships. Basically, I'm assuming the people pulling a blanket barrage are trying not to hit their own ships, but they still can (and the ships in the arc still have to make a combat or pilot roll every round or get autohit).

On the range of blanket barrage. The distance thing is a good point. I think maybe only making the difficulty upgrades at short or close range, and requiring an additional threat per range outside of short to activate a hit might mitigate that. Make it still POSSIBLE to be hit outside of short range, but not likely unless you screw up.

I hadn't thought of the firing and moving on separate init portions to move the blanket. that is a good point. I tend to run an entire enemy ship on one initiative slot, so it didn't occur to me, BUT I can see how that is an interesting conundrum. I'll have to think on that one.

GtA. Yeah, I could see moving it to three, though I think I would need to test two versus three a bit to make a decision. Leaving it at two lets it be a bit more useful, which I like actions to be very solid considering it takes an action. While yes, the disarm is at 3 adv, that is on top of hitting, which is one of the best situations you could be in. I'm going to try this out in a couple of set pieces when I get a chance.

Sensors as written are just really really hard to use. and weird.

@whafrog

Yeah the sensors was something that I just couldn't grasp how it was supposed to even function properly in the core. I really like the idea of active targeting as opposed to active sensors as well. It sort of makes me think of locking on with torps in the old X-Wing games (I admit I'm a huge fan of the x-wing games)

Sensors as written are just really really hard to use. and weird.

Agreed. Sensors are by far the biggest pain, and hardest to write solid rules for. It seems like every time you try and adjust the range or hash out how to scan for something the very next adventure requires you to do something different.

Yeah, I know people go on rants about things being broken, but in general, I think things DO work, even though I wanted to do some tweaking.

Sensors though, wasn't the same. I feel sensors really WERE broken.

I like it so far, just from a dry reading, but the wording on Evasive Maneuvers could be a little clearer. It took me a minute to realize that it's one SB die per +x of Handling. If handling is 0 or negative, no change, right?

If time permits, I'll test them this weekend or so.

Pretty good houserules mate

We are using also an alternative to Shields using an "Armor and Life Pool". Shields have an Armor/Soak value and "Hit Points".

I like it so far, just from a dry reading, but the wording on Evasive Maneuvers could be a little clearer. It took me a minute to realize that it's one SB die per +x of Handling. If handling is 0 or negative, no change, right?

If time permits, I'll test them this weekend or so.

Yes, handling 0 or less changes nothing.

I'm actually leaning more towards the second set of house rules I uploaded further down though, which makes shields a parry/reflect type mechanic and makes handling like defense. It just feels more RIGHT to me. It makes tough ships tough, and maneuverable ships hard to hit, which is what I wanted the whole time.

Okay, I'll have a look at those. I think it was GM Phil who dabbled with borrowing the Parry mechanic, and it struck me as worthwhile since the same arguments for keeping the game about resource management (rather than lucky rolls) can apply just as easily to starship combat as peronal scale.

I also intuitively like the mechanic = defense (or SB) and am wondering if the Skilled Jockey talent shouldn't come into play here...

Also amused at how my shields as parry/reflect rules make the B-Wing possible to take some pretty harsh hits (angled shields of 5 in one direction), but it can do it so little because it has almost no system strain. An interesting balancing mechanic for its very strong shields.

I do like these shield rules better as well. A setback is almost nothing, requiring system Strain is more in flavour. It makes the calls for "R2, boost the shields!" to both part of the game play, and simply be a Mechanical attempt to remove system Strain. Plus, a good shooter with plenty of dice can still punch through, or get crits, which is also more in flavour. Simple!

I'm not sure doubling is enough though in some cases, or maybe reduce Strain a bit. Both the Falcon and especially the Ghost can take quite the pounding on the shields, even from turbo lasers, before they have to worry about the hull.

The "Shields Down" critical might need a revisit too.

I would say the Ghost and the Falcon both have characters on them with Fine Tuning (Chopper/Chewie), keeping that system strain down. Mostly just want to keep things from surviving OVERLY long. I might do some testing on it. Originally I had 2+shield rating rather than just shield rating, which would have made it much stronger.

Also, it seriously, seriously makes Fine Tuning a much better talent.

I do think that Hold Together would have to be revised as it doesn't really do as much special with shields acting like reflect/parry. Maybe have it be flip destiny and 3 system strain to cancel a critical hit after seeing the effect?

Also, extra guideline for making house rules: After making a house rule, check every single talent to make sure there isn't an unfortunate side effect with a talent interacting funny with your house rule or being invalidated by your house rule.

FWIW, GtA is even more pointless when a silhouette 3 w/ targeting goggles is up against a silhouette 4 light freighter. Cannot go less then 1×P. Big advantage for only 1k.

The thing that really bugs me about the space combat rules as written is that pilot skill has virtually no bearing on how the fight goes. In fact, if the ship you're flying is too slow to use GtA (such, for example, most of the light freighters unless their engines are upgraded), then pilot skill will only be a factor if you're flying in confined terrain like an asteroid field.

The sensor ranges also wind me up, and have done since the WEG days. I don't like the idea that a Star Destroyer can open fire on an X-Wing and the X-Wing pilot won't even realise the SD's there until streams of green nastiness (hopefully) go flying past the cockpit.

*Waves hand* This is not the post you're looking for...

(Thank ye bradknowles)

Edit: ...And I hit submit by accident. Oh bugger. For future reference, how does one delete accidental posts?

You can’t delete them once you’ve hit the “Post” button, but you should be able to go back and edit them to remove any and all content that you didn’t mean to post.

If you want to “delete” the whole post, you could just replace everything with the word “deleted”, or somesuch.

Okay, I'll have a look at those. I think it was GM Phil who dabbled with borrowing the Parry mechanic, and it struck me as worthwhile since the same arguments for keeping the game about resource management (rather than lucky rolls) can apply just as easily to starship combat as peronal scale.

Yup; my Snap Roll option; take 3 strain and negate Handling + Ranks in Pilot damage. Can only be performed by Silhouette 4 or smaller.