Double wall of text incoming regarding ship damage. Y-wing example 1st, then gozanti

It is the power and responsibility of the GM to not let the game devolve into this line of thinking, but for the sake of conversation let’s give this a shot.

---The Y-wings---

I don’t have star destroyer stats offhand, but I’ll try to do my best. I’m going to assume it can angle/boost its shields to get 4 defense in each arc the fighters are attacking in making the difficulty PBBBB to hit. You can assume the fighters run 2 ways (see below), in the spirit of the game, I would place the 25 Y wings into 5 minion groups of 5, making the attack dice pool YYGG (you said they’re double moving to get in range (I’ll forgive that they’re not speed 5), so they would not have the maneuver to aim).

This dice pool results in a 63% chance for each minion group to land a hit, so just over 3 hits for the entire 25 Y-wing attack force. Now, the game2.ca dice roller doesn’t really give the details needed to answer the question, “how many hits will have 2 advantage for linked?” But it does tell me that 15% of YYGGPBBBB rolls will result in having 2 advantage (regardless of if they hit or miss), so it’s unlikely linked will activate anyway. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) per hit vs probably armor 10 means about 15-20 damage per volley will get through to the star destroyer. (Triumphs/advantage could come up to trigger linked and increase this to maybe 4 hits, but it’s unlikely and only adds another 5ish damage)

Now, we know the gamey types would run the Y-wings as individuals (wouldn’t let this happen if I was GM, but that’s not the point) in order to maximize rolls, and more rolls means more hits. So a YYPBBBB dice pool results in a 24% chance for each fighter to hit, so we could expect 6 hits from the 25 y-wings. With only a 4% chance of any given roll (success or failure) coming up with 2 extra advantage (and zero chance of triumph) for linked, I feel comfortable saying the chance of linked is insignificantly small. So 9 damage (breach 6) on 6 hits vs probably armor 10 will end up with 30 damage on the star destroyer per volley.

In neither of these cases will the Y-wings have a hope of taking down the star destroyer in 1 round. I am unfamiliar with the star destroyer’s HT threshold, but it would take no less than 5 rounds to take down a nebulon-B (ht 71 IIRC). Further, the star destroyer would be aware of the Y-wings before they got in range and would likely be blanket barraging to upgrade the attacks’ difficulties. I won’t crunch out a new set of probabilities, but it would be complicating things for the fighters further.

---The Gozantis---

This is a little easier, though I don’t have the Gozanti stats either. First, you’d have to get this idea by the GM who should disallow it from the start. Then, assuming you can RAW add all these weapons you’ll need to decide how they’re grouped. Because this is a powergaming discussion, I’ll assume you want to fire them individually, which I will allow for the sake of argument. Next, there are never going to be enough gunners with either of those talents to crew all the weapons on all the ships; naval gunners stat blocks are minions w/ 2 agility and no talents. Additionally, minions cannot voluntarily suffer strain to perform both talents if they had them.

On to the numbers. There are 42 single barrel light turbolasers and 12 twin light turbo lasers firing. Dice pool (counting modded adv targeting and aiming) is YYBPBBBB (as above, the star destroyer adjusts/boosts shields to cover the arcs it’s being attacked from) so we have a 42% chance for any given shot to hit. The single light turbolasers will then land 17 hits and the twin lights will land 5 hits, there is also probably around 20% chance of linked being activated (15% chance of 2+ advantage between both successful & unscuccessful rolls, 16% chance of triumph). In this way we have 22 (23 with 1 linked being triggered) hits of 10 damage (breach 2) vs armor 10, or 2 damage per hit and 44ish damage per round for firing them regularly (could go up a few points if more than 1 success (20% chance per shot) is rolled).

However, you said you wanted to use concentrated barrage. You can put out 2 concentrated barrages from each gozanti (one for individual turbos and one for the pair of twin lights), for 6 of each type of barrage. The 7 individuals fire with dice pool YYYYGB (5 ranks, 2 agility, 2 targeting computer, aim) against the same PBBBB. This ends up with 83% chance to hit (likely (69%) to have more than 1 success), and between a 73% chance to generate advantage (regardless of check pass/fail) plus 29% chance of triumph, I think it is safe to say the barrage could be triggered reliably. The twin light barrage has a pool of YYGBPBBBB and yields a 57% chance to hit, 50% chance of getting advantage (again, between both passing checks and failed ones), and 16% chance of triumph. Given this, I think either barrage or linked could be activated some of the time, but either option only adds 2-3 damage. This leaves us with nearly 5 (4.98) hits for the individual barrage and 3 hits for the twin barrage. So 5 hits of probably 11-13 damage (breach 2) plus 7 damage per hit vs 10 armor is 50-60 damage from the singles and 3 hits of 10 damage (breach 2) vs armor 10 is 6 damage from the twins. With a damage total of 56-66 (with a few extra points if the twins trigger linked/barrage), the concentrated barrage will beat out firing individual guns by a little bit.

Neither of these cases is the 300+ damage you were talking about (though I now see you were using a Victory class as the target, so increase each hit by 1 damage (64ish for individual and 64-74 for barrage)). I think the part which got missed is that with the barrage action each gun only -counts- as firing for the round, it doesn’t actually fire and do damage. You use the guns to shoot themselves -or- take part in the barrage, never both.

My final comment (b/c this got out of hand, fast) is that this ship configuration is cheese o’ rama and I’d have to look in to things more to see if it’s even RAW, b/c it’s certainly not RAI. I would never allow that many turbolasers on that size ship, and the advanced targeting array (imo) should only effect a single weapon system (with mods to effect more).

Here are the links for various ships listed above:

BTL-A4 Y-Wing Attack Starfighter: http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/432/

BTL-S3 Y-Wing Attack Starfighter: http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/433/

Gozanti-Class Armed Transport: http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/1242/

Victory-Class Star Destroyer: http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/1249/

You’ll have to get the stats for the weapons from somewhere else, however.

With regards to calculating the exact probabilities of rolling whatever with certain dice combinations, I would use Litheon’s generator instead of the one from game2.ca.

Yeah, I've looked at that in the past, but I have no idea what it takes to open a .rb file (my desktop certainly seems to not know it) and the .ca I can go to on the phone.

Handy link for the ships (and what looks like other stuff) though.

Double wall of text incoming regarding ship damage. Y-wing example 1st, then gozanti

It is the power and responsibility of the GM to not let the game devolve into this line of thinking, but for the sake of conversation let’s give this a shot.

---The Y-wings---

I don’t have star destroyer stats offhand, but I’ll try to do my best. I’m going to assume it can angle/boost its shields to get 4 defense in each arc the fighters are attacking in making the difficulty PBBBB to hit. You can assume the fighters run 2 ways (see below), in the spirit of the game, I would place the 25 Y wings into 5 minion groups of 5, making the attack dice pool YYGG (you said they’re double moving to get in range (I’ll forgive that they’re not speed 5), so they would not have the maneuver to aim).

This dice pool results in a 63% chance for each minion group to land a hit, so just over 3 hits for the entire 25 Y-wing attack force. Now, the game2.ca dice roller doesn’t really give the details needed to answer the question, “how many hits will have 2 advantage for linked?” But it does tell me that 15% of YYGGPBBBB rolls will result in having 2 advantage (regardless of if they hit or miss), so it’s unlikely linked will activate anyway. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) per hit vs probably armor 10 means about 15-20 damage per volley will get through to the star destroyer. (Triumphs/advantage could come up to trigger linked and increase this to maybe 4 hits, but it’s unlikely and only adds another 5ish damage)

Now, we know the gamey types would run the Y-wings as individuals (wouldn’t let this happen if I was GM, but that’s not the point) in order to maximize rolls, and more rolls means more hits. So a YYPBBBB dice pool results in a 24% chance for each fighter to hit, so we could expect 6 hits from the 25 y-wings. With only a 4% chance of any given roll (success or failure) coming up with 2 extra advantage (and zero chance of triumph) for linked, I feel comfortable saying the chance of linked is insignificantly small. So 9 damage (breach 6) on 6 hits vs probably armor 10 will end up with 30 damage on the star destroyer per volley.

In neither of these cases will the Y-wings have a hope of taking down the star destroyer in 1 round. I am unfamiliar with the star destroyer’s HT threshold, but it would take no less than 5 rounds to take down a nebulon-B (ht 71 IIRC). Further, the star destroyer would be aware of the Y-wings before they got in range and would likely be blanket barraging to upgrade the attacks’ difficulties. I won’t crunch out a new set of probabilities, but it would be complicating things for the fighters further.

Firing individually (which is the point of having 25 of them in the first place), they'd each get a maneuver and an action. If necessary, the maneuver would be to attack whichever area of the shields is weakest (fighters can do that to capital ships), if unnecessary, can be used for an aim. If they're firing individually, they'll be Rivals, at least, so they can now aim twice (or once if they have to maneuver).

Probabilities on a YY BB PBB pool are ~67.4% chance of a hit, with a 15.8% chance of a triumph (linked or crit) and a 20% chance of 2Adv (linked or crit).

Single aim drops it to ~59.8%, 15.9% and 16.2% respectively.

No aim drops it to 51.4%, 16% and 9.8% respectively.

I'm not saying it's guaranteed, but there's a reason Star Destroyers have fighters (and, yes, this is all predicated upon bypassing the fighters in some way). I'll work on a more realistic and gimmicky way to drop a SD for under 2m, but I have work at the moment.

Double wall of text incoming regarding ship damage. Y-wing example 1st, then gozanti

It is the power and responsibility of the GM to not let the game devolve into this line of thinking, but for the sake of conversation let’s give this a shot.

---The Y-wings---

I don’t have star destroyer stats offhand, but I’ll try to do my best. I’m going to assume it can angle/boost its shields to get 4 defense in each arc the fighters are attacking in making the difficulty PBBBB to hit. You can assume the fighters run 2 ways (see below), in the spirit of the game, I would place the 25 Y wings into 5 minion groups of 5, making the attack dice pool YYGG (you said they’re double moving to get in range (I’ll forgive that they’re not speed 5), so they would not have the maneuver to aim).

This dice pool results in a 63% chance for each minion group to land a hit, so just over 3 hits for the entire 25 Y-wing attack force. Now, the game2.ca dice roller doesn’t really give the details needed to answer the question, “how many hits will have 2 advantage for linked?” But it does tell me that 15% of YYGGPBBBB rolls will result in having 2 advantage (regardless of if they hit or miss), so it’s unlikely linked will activate anyway. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) per hit vs probably armor 10 means about 15-20 damage per volley will get through to the star destroyer. (Triumphs/advantage could come up to trigger linked and increase this to maybe 4 hits, but it’s unlikely and only adds another 5ish damage)

Now, we know the gamey types would run the Y-wings as individuals (wouldn’t let this happen if I was GM, but that’s not the point) in order to maximize rolls, and more rolls means more hits. So a YYPBBBB dice pool results in a 24% chance for each fighter to hit, so we could expect 6 hits from the 25 y-wings. With only a 4% chance of any given roll (success or failure) coming up with 2 extra advantage (and zero chance of triumph) for linked, I feel comfortable saying the chance of linked is insignificantly small. So 9 damage (breach 6) on 6 hits vs probably armor 10 will end up with 30 damage on the star destroyer per volley.

In neither of these cases will the Y-wings have a hope of taking down the star destroyer in 1 round. I am unfamiliar with the star destroyer’s HT threshold, but it would take no less than 5 rounds to take down a nebulon-B (ht 71 IIRC). Further, the star destroyer would be aware of the Y-wings before they got in range and would likely be blanket barraging to upgrade the attacks’ difficulties. I won’t crunch out a new set of probabilities, but it would be complicating things for the fighters further.

Firing individually (which is the point of having 25 of them in the first place), they'd each get a maneuver and an action. If necessary, the maneuver would be to attack whichever area of the shields is weakest (fighters can do that to capital ships), if unnecessary, can be used for an aim. If they're firing individually, they'll be Rivals, at least, so they can now aim twice (or once if they have to maneuver).

Probabilities on a YY BB PBB pool are ~67.4% chance of a hit, with a 15.8% chance of a triumph (linked or crit) and a 20% chance of 2Adv (linked or crit).

Single aim drops it to ~59.8%, 15.9% and 16.2% respectively.

No aim drops it to 51.4%, 16% and 9.8% respectively.

I'm not saying it's guaranteed, but there's a reason Star Destroyers have fighters (and, yes, this is all predicated upon bypassing the fighters in some way). I'll work on a more realistic and gimmicky way to drop a SD for under 2m, but I have work at the moment.

Realistic? No. Gimmicky, absolutely.

Now do one that actually follows the rules.

Realistic? No. Gimmicky, absolutely.

Now do one that actually follows the rules.

Right... 4x Davro-Class Light Freighters, kitted out with Advanced Targeting Array, Nightshadow Coating and 2 Proton Torpedo Launchers for it's hard points. Laser cannons upgraded to Proton Torpedo Launchers. Crewed with 4 JC Series Pilot Droids each with 3 +1 Agility implants. Should be easily able to sneak close enough, drop off enough proton torps to crit the SD to death or outright destroy it approximately 85% of the time.

Alternatively, 19 Cloakshape Fighters, kitted out with Advanced Targeting Array, High-Output Ion Drive and Proton Torpedo Launcher. Piloted by the same droids. Speed 5 should be able to close fast enough that the fighters the SD spits out aren't going to be an issue. Kills in one round once in range, even losing a few fighters on the way in.

Both of these don't take into account extra dice from aiming which, as Rivals, they're all allowed to do. This is most dangerous on the Davros as they'll be able to aim without being fired upon due to cloaking.

Yeah, I've looked at that in the past, but I have no idea what it takes to open a .rb file (my desktop certainly seems to not know it) and the .ca I can go to on the phone.

The .rb file is a program written in Ruby, so if you install Ruby on your desktop, then that should do the job.

Re Individual firing: As NPCs, the GM determines if fighter pilots are rivals and if they are, the GM will determine if they are willing to take wounds in order to do 2 maneuvers in a turn. Additionally, the rules encourage fighter swarms to be treated as minion groups for ease of play, so even if a PC insists on taking these fighters into battle the GM should group them into minion groups in order to not hold up play. This being the case, I contend the fighters would never aim as they would spend their maneuver maneuvering, though they would likely move to a defense zone with the fewest setbacks (as you say). If I was the GM and a player were to push the issue with me, I would start by ensuring the attackers suffered a Hard or Daunting Fear check (once upgraded) b/c of attacking a star destroyer without a fleet (or giant ion cannon) behind you.

---The Davros---

Ok, first you will be unable to aim before being detected b/c the stealth systems reduce the passive sensors by only 2 range bands (from long to short). So when the ships move in to short range they will be detected, so will need to shoot the turn you move. Also, it takes an action to power up the weapons when using the gimmellian device, so you're better off not using it. Second, multiple copies of a cybernetic do not stack, so at most you could put one +1 agility implant into each droid.

For a dice pool, the advanced targeting mods and droid's agility 4 yield YYGGPBB for 3 torpedo launches per freighter (note the crew for this freighter is only 1 pilot, 1 co-pilot, and 1 gunner (though see below)). This is an 77% hit chance on 12 attacks, so 9 hits with half (55%) more than 1 success. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) vs armor 10 is 45-63 damage. As the chance for triumph/4+ advantage is 16%/9%, respectively, we can trigger 1.5ish criticals w/ triumphs and maybe one (.81) critical w/ 4+ advantage. Thus, the final critical will at most be with +20 to the roll (from 2 previous criticals), which obviously is a maximum of 120 on the crit table, not enough to destroy even on a maximum result.

Obviously you either overlooked the crew or assumed you'd be allowed to add an additional gunner position. We'll assume the GM somehow allows this (or you change vehicles which allows for 4 people shooting). In this case, still an 77% hit chance on 16 attacks, so 12 hits with half (55%) with more than 1 success. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) vs armor 10 is 60-84 damage. As the chance for triumph/4+ advantage is 16%/9%, respectively, we can trigger 2ish (1.92) criticals w/ triumphs and one (1.08) criticals w/ 4+ advantage. Thus, the final critical will still be with +20 to the roll (from the 2 previous criticals), which obviously is a maximum of 120 on the crit table, not enough to destroy even on a maximum result.

Sidebar: This approach is very intensive on rarity. the ships are 9®, the coating is 8®, the droids are 7, and the cybernetics are 6.

---The Cloakshapes---

19 attacks with YYGGPBB (as they would be detected far off, they would need to close the gap and would be unable to aim first round. also, at my table they would have more defense dice, but I'll leave it at 2) is 77% chance to hit, or 15 (14.63) hits with half (55%) of them with more than 1 success. So 9-11 damage (breach 6) vs armor 10 is 75-105 HT. This solution is obviously more dangerous than the others presented so far, but falls short of the claim.

Also, any attacks made by any craft which does not stealth close to the SD will be facing at least one blanket barrage which (assuming a minion group of 5 guns) has an 84% chance to upgrade the difficulty once, and might (54% chance of 2+ advantage/16% chance of triumph, but original roll needs to hit) upgrade it a second time. Obviously this is not counted for in any of the above scenarios.

Anyway, while this was a fun exercise I will knock off feeding the trolls. The bottom line is even if a way to 1 round a star destroyer was to be found out, the GM is well within his rights to simply flip a destiny point and say, "heavily damaged, the star destroyer escapes a losing fight and makes the jump to lightspeed". Any of these solutions, if they were to appear at a table, go against the spirit of the game and such an adversarial attitude should not be a part of the game even in "high level" play.

Here go some responses, same format as last time:

• No one will ever play out a ship battle including multiple star destroyers and their escort and a rebel fleet using individual stats and initiatives for everyone involved. You might as well have said that the star destroyer had 6107-7707 initiatives, shouldn't each crew member get a turn, gunner or not? What about the mouse droids? What about any mynocks living on any of the ships?
• I will fully admit that as a dm I allow players to do anything that I think makes sense within the context of the game. I would rather players invest time and effort into figuring out how to defeat a vastly superior fleet, then have them avoid an interesting or challenging encounter because I'm scared of what they can think up. Yes if you place artificial boundaries on player characters it certainly allows a game to go on forever regardless of xp or wealth. My argument is that, from what I have seen, the system is not designed to remain internally stable and balanced once players start filling out a second tree. Yes a player at 700xp with nothing but 5 ranks in the 6 skills of their choice will have no problems finding challenges. I've just never seen a player like that and I have trouble wrapping my head around a group like that existing. That could very well be a me problem.
• I called it, weapons-grade childishness. I came to this thread because I wanted to discuss game balance and my experiences, if you disagree with me, you can add something to the discussion like literally everyone else. Believe it or not I see this as an exchange of ideas and every post has given me an opportunity to reflect upon my game experience or even just look over parts of the rulebook I haven't bothered with in ages.
• If I was putting together y-wings to destroy a Victory, I would give them high-output engines, that was the source of speed 5. It totally slipped my mind. I am not of the opinion that that is a viable strategy, or even competent, but I don't think Braendig or I were implying that. It was just an example of how easy it is to come up with ways to seriously damage capitol ships with comparatively minuscule forces. I was also generalizing the situation to make the point that ship combat rules in EotE don't make fighter screens a viable defensive option, showing that the majority of fighters (some with high-output engine, some without) don't have problems engaging at capitol ship range.
• The player strategy was not to enter into a battle with star destroyers, it wasn't to charge the empire's front line. The strategy worked because they had longer range sensors and higher speed then their foes and could thus line up an attack vector before the enemy redirected all of their shields towards them. They also had an expert slicer to reduce shields, as for the y-wings, they would be at close with the destroyer and could choose a target facing. Assuming a Victory on stand-by keeps 2 shields in each quadrant, that's 1B for defense after a successful slice.
• If a player tells me they want to spend the credits to retrofit a ship with guns that are suitable for its silhouette, why should that be an automatic 'no'? I assume you would't have a problem with someone replacing their x-wing's weapons with 2 ion cannons? Or a YT-2400 with two quad laser cannons? A frigate can mount light turbolasers, considering the talent they had available and the credits, I don't think it was an unreasonable request. In the future I might try to limit it if only by never giving them access to that many credits at once.
• The talents are provided by the targeting computer: base upgrade once, +1 upgrade, +1 true aim, +1 sniper shot. Hence the 4300 price tag in the explanation. The gunners were Wanderer Scout droids they had previously acquired, agility 4 and rivals. Also only 2500 a piece for the few they asked the Alliance for. This put the pool at YYYGB vs RB, with a blue "negating" a black (blues have slightly higher average results, but for the sake of this hypothetical) and a yellow "negating" a red, YYG is 2.3 successes and 2.2A advantages on average if I recall correctly (that is counting triumphs as 1 of each). If they pass as transports or imperial craft, they don't even need to sniper shot. The same goes if the pilot can take maneuvers before the gunner shoots.
• Concentrated Barrage lists "weapons of a single type" and doesn't appear to differentiate between twin, tri, or singular weapons. I could very well be wrong here, but it doesn't have an impact on the damage results. I read the rules for the barrage as the gunner firing each weapon as described in the firing weapons section, thus they would roll once to represent the average accuracy of each battery, because of this special action, they could then spend an advantage to add additional damage to one of the hits based on the sheer volume of firepower. The "to one hit of the attack" line seemed to support this. If you read it a different way, I don't see anything wrong with it, but it seems strange to me from a narrative perspective that one skilled marksman coordinating the firepower of a full broadside would result in -1 attack roll, +1 point of damage per attack lost. Ultimately, this is still < 20% of the ship's firepower.
• It is very much RAW as each weapon replacement costs 0 hard points unless the new weapon is linked. A silhouette 5 ship has access to light turbo lasers as weapons. The Gozanti has 7 existing weapons and 4 hard points. It feels fairly RAI to me, it's an 85m military vessel with a bunch of guns already attached and lots of extra space, why not pump up the firepower?
• Targeting computer mentions weapons and gunners in it's flavor text, it seems pretty certain it wouldn't be the single attachment that only helped one person at a time.
• If you wanted to actually get cheesy, give each bot cyber legs and a cyber arm and have some npc or droid with 1+ ranks in gunnery assist on the check. Have a togruda shout encouragement for their +2 blue on unskilled assistance, and pick up improved inspiring rhetoric and firing discipline from the party face and the other ship captains. That is taking things a little too far, but would yield YYYYGGBBBBBB vs RB, or more than double the results my players managed.
• GMs create worlds, players decide what they want to do within those worlds, GMs create appropriate challenges and should enjoy player success, particularly when it's obvious they care about something. It is precisely because the game is NOT adversarial that player and GM can create these insane and memorable scenarios. The game becomes adversarial when the GM cares more about their own ideas and narrative than the players. "Heavily damaged, the star destroyer escapes a losing fight and makes the jump to lightspeed" is a perfect example of what happens when a GM wants to go out of their way to invalidate player accomplishments. It comes off as petty and vindictive, and is almost always the result of a GM having a knee-jerk reaction to "losing." If players earn the destruction of a formidable enemy, why would it hurt your pride to let them win? No one cheated, no one even stretched any rules. Heck if anything i would say making a silhouette 8, speed 1 ship at -195 hull manage not only survive, but break from combat, make time to plot a hyperspace route, and then jump to hyperspace, is stretching destiny point rules. Not to mention suspension of disbelief.
• If someone has a different opinion than you, that doesn't make them a troll. It could be that other people just play games too, but somehow manage to have different experiences and enjoy different things.

Without the arbitrary credit amount, the ultimate point of my talking about star destroyer destruction was to comment on the logarithmic nature of ship price and effectiveness in the game. Once you reach a certain point it no longer matters how much bigger the other ship is, 10% of its cost can still destroy it before it can act. Gozantis will always be more cost effective than Rendili Bulk Cruisers, which will always bring more power per credit than nebulons, which in turn pack more punch per dollar than vindicators, more than victories, more than imperials, more than praetors. Because hull and armor also increase more slowly then weapon capacity, this will lead to shorter, more deadly conflicts in which the speed and versatility of fewer smaller craft will inevitably win the day. So with each new ship a party gains, it requires more and more to challenge them. That is why I have found ship combat to break down just like personal combat.

No one will ever play out a ship battle including multiple star destroyers and their escort and a rebel fleet using individual stats and initiatives for everyone involved. You might as well have said that the star destroyer had 6107-7707 initiatives, shouldn't each crew member get a turn, gunner or not? What about the mouse droids? What about any mynocks living on any of the ships?

That's what I was trying to say, but sarcasm doesn't translate well in written form, my bad. In a battle of this scale, no one would treat the opposing forces as individuals, so why would one do that for the 12*6=72 crewmembers of those gozantis. I can understand theorycrafting in videogames, but in a narrative system it won't do any good I think, especially when there's always a GM to adjust the encounter to provide an appropriate challenge.

Also now that I think about it, the mass combat rules from Onslaught at Arda might suit this kind of battle more. The gozantis would be somewhere around GYYYYPPRRR (considering they are really that maxed), with the SD getting GYYYPRR, with boosts and setback as seen fit (for example one or more boostdice if they really can close in on the SD and ambush it), which seems much more balanced imo.

Alternatively, 19 Cloakshape Fighters, kitted out with Advanced Targeting Array, High-Output Ion Drive and Proton Torpedo Launcher. Piloted by the same droids. Speed 5 should be able to close fast enough that the fighters the SD spits out aren't going to be an issue. Kills in one round once in range, even losing a few fighters on the way in.

Might want to add that cloakshapes don't have hyperdrives afaik, so unless you have a carrier, or the Star Destroyer orbits the planet your fleet is on, this probably won't work.

I never said it was a good idea, only that it was possible. And I'd forgotten about the Cloakshape's hyperdrive limitation, but getting a SD to come to you isn't all that hard either.

AFAIK, Cybernetics -do- stack, though that might merit a question to the devs...

I never said it was a good idea, only that it was possible.

Which does not sound unreasonable, does it? Dedicated attack craft trouble capital ships ... that is pretty much Star Wars.

I still do not get this pissing contest. If your 300 XP group runs around with millions or even tens of millions of credits and dozens of henchmen, yeah, a small army like that can achieve big things. Hardly a surprise.

After 300xp, characters can essentially auto-pass almost every challenge -in their lane-.

I don't think that's true. Let's assume characters with YYYYY which I think is a very, very high dice pool. If we pitted that against Daunting and Formidable skill checks it's still some way to go from being an auto-win. Your average hits would be roughly as follows at each level of difficulty:

Daunting v Five Yellows: 2.17
Formidable v. Five Yellows: 1.67
Daunting w. 1 Upgrade v. Five Yellows: 1.92
Daunting w. 2 Upgrades v. Five Yellows: 1.67
Daunting w. 3 Upgrades v. Five Yellows: 1.42
Formidable w. 1 Upgrade v. Five Yellows: 1.42
Formidable w. 2 Upgrades v. Five Yellows: 1.17
Formidable w. 3 Upgrades v. Five Yellows: 0.92

I haven't added Boost dice but I also haven't added Black Dice. So yes, you're likely to pass even daunting and formidable checks at extremely high levels of skill. But it's still not an "auto-pass" and I'm not sure that at 300XP as you talk about, you're likely to get five yellows. That's a pretty scary high pool. So drop this lower and you get even further away from it being an "auto-win".

Reply to the points of Zamp's post which relate to mine (or I think are interesting).

- I guess a difference of opinion regarding what should be possible within the context of the game exists.

- The PC I used to play ended with around 600 earned XP and I had gotten everything I wanted out of the Bodyguard (135xp) and Merc Soldier (245xp) specs. She was getting pretty good at shooting (talent wise), only had a skill rank of 3 in 4 skills, and that was about it. She didn't even have one of her signature abilities. I honestly have no idea how any party which has started to fill out a second tree could start to break the game.

- An unsupported Y-wing attack is a viable option for the truly desperate (which the alliance certainly can be), and in my game it would have a chance of succeeding since two squadrons of Y-wings is a real threat to a SD without fighter cover. But pulling it off in 1 round without casualties is not something which would happen with any ship, imo. Those going out on the mission would know full well it's probably a suicide mission.

- I wasn't balking at adding light turbos, but the number of them. The most you could do would replace the quad lasers (fire arc all) with the 2 twin lights, replace the 2 HLCs on one side of the ship with single turbos, then dump the remaining hard points for 4 single lights in a side arc as well. This nets 6 singles and 2 twin light turbos in 1 arc; which is far more than I thought you could when I wrote the post I admit. The far side HLCs and the forward proton torp launcher would not have the SD in arc.

- Looks like I misremembered the advanced targeting array and its mod options (thought it was only 1 additional upgrade). I dislike it effecting all mounted weapons because, if it was a competition, I'd certainly put that on every imperial capital ship (with hardpoints at least) to give the opposition 3 free upgrades too. I don't have strongholds of resistance yet, so was unaware of a droid with native 4 agility, I'd assumed the gunners were stock NPCs.

- As I understand the "to one hit of the attack" phrase, it is there in case you're firing weapons with linked or autofire and trigger multiple hits along with the concentrated barrage. The action which is being taken is "Concentrated barrage" which is distinctly separate from "Perform a Combat Check with Vehicle Weapons" action. The barrage text calls out the weapons firing to trigger slow firing/limited ammo/etc (I assume).

- The heavily damaged jump to lightspeed is actually a nod to a written adventure

where the destiny flip is suggested to ensure a certain NPC escapes an encounter no matter what. Whether intentional or not the written adventures guide GMs and set precedence for similar uses. This use is in line with other uses of destiny points on the GM's side I've seen suggested on these boards, such as overwhelming reinforcements to arrive for the enemy. Personally, i think the GM doesn't even need to flip the destiny for this to happen, but i could see why it'd be less cutting if the players get a lightside DP out of it.

- You are correct. None of the posts were trollish and I should not have used the term, I apologize.

In general, it's been pointed out many times in many threads starship combat is the weakest part of this system (and each system before it, it seems). The rules fail to capture the fearsome power of capital ships (particularly large ones) and I personally dislike the idea that simply because the rules suggest capital ships might be destroyed so easily means a GM must let them be destroyed so easily.

There's also the rules with the AoR GM screen that allow PC's and major NPC's to use minions as meat shields... ie AsGM if you try to pull this kind of crap in game then every shot you make in the first round of combat magically hits 1 of the many Tie Fighters swarming around the SD. Then it's the SD's time to lay waste.

There's also the rules with the AoR GM screen that allow PC's and major NPC's to use minions as meat shields... ie AsGM if you try to pull this kind of crap in game then every shot you make in the first round of combat magically hits 1 of the many Tie Fighters swarming around the SD. Then it's the SD's time to lay waste.

While that, and many other things, are allowed to be done by the GM, if my party and I put together a group to "kill" a Star Destroyer, I'd be really ticked off if we never got a chance to actually hit the damned thing. Possibly ticked off enough to leave the group. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm asking for things to be given to me on a silver platter, but if I come up with a plan that has a reasonable chance of working, I'd at least like the opportunity for it to do so.

While that, and many other things, are allowed to be done by the GM, if my party and I put together a group to "kill" a Star Destroyer, I'd be really ticked off if we never got a chance to actually hit the damned thing. Possibly ticked off enough to leave the group. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm asking for things to be given to me on a silver platter, but if I come up with a plan that has a reasonable chance of working, I'd at least like the opportunity for it to do so.

Which is fair enough, but I would argue that any "plan that has a reasonable chance of working" against a Star Destroyer has to incorporate a scheme for taking out/luring away its fighter complement. I mean, the reason they have fighter complements in the first place is to screen against being swarmed by a large number of smaller ships. Fighter complements are one of the ways in which capital ships justify their cost; otherwise everyone would just field swarms of cheaper ships.

• I haven't looked through Assault On Arda, but mass combat rules sound pretty awesome, might just have to pick it up. As for my group, we have just been rolling once for each weapon that shares a gunner statline, weapon type, and target. That way we had two rolls per ship, one for light turbolasers and one for twin light turbolasers. 12 rolls was a little high, but not out of hand, I suppose we could have just rolled twice for the whole batch, but that seemed a little too simplified.

• Cybernetics do NOT stack, only a cyber arm and a pair of legs with the same effect can be combined for a total of +2 to said ability. No double brains or double arms.

If you as GM don't want the party to become over powered through MinMax mentality then outline it at the start and enforce it throughout the campaign. If you're going to let them start with a 5 in a characteristic without a dam good reason and a plan to roll play their flaws your going to have problems. seriously starting with a 5 in this system is possible but only recommended for players who want to explore a PC with 5 flaws and 1 gift. Then to let them have a 7 by 200xp is just letting them Max their character. You have given them too much rope then are wondering why they used all of it.

My advice is play some of the Beginner Boxes with the expansion PDF modules. See what the RAI actually are. Letting go of the GM vs Player idea and embarrassing the idea that your all at the table to build a fun, Narative story in the Star Wars universe is important. A PC can start with a 5 in Agility, 2 in Ranged Heavy, and a Light Repeating Blaster. Then by the end of session 1 the Auto-Fire cost is down to 1 Advantage. Now they kill everything in site and they have only spent 15xp to break the game. Where's the fun? But if a player was then to say to the GM "actually my PC hates his former life and only brings the big gun when they are severely overwhelmed then that same character is a lot less game breaking.

And if that doesn't work and your group is so into optimisation and finding the weak spots of an enemy then X-wing, Armada and Imperial Assault have much stricter rules that will keep the game balanced for a lot longer. You will have just as much fun but know that the exploits are not there and the GM vs Player is entirely intended and embraced.

Not trying to light fires here, I completely accept your Campaign had problems and would like to help you find a way for your group to enjoy this system. In honesty it's an awesome system and some really cool story telling mechanics are built in, but if that's not embraced then problems can easily arise.

If you as GM don't want the party to become over powered through MinMax mentality then outline it at the start and enforce it throughout the campaign. If you're going to let them start with a 5 in a characteristic without a dam good reason and a plan to roll play their flaws your going to have problems. seriously starting with a 5 in this system is possible but only recommended for players who want to explore a PC with 5 flaws and 1 gift. Then to let them have a 7 by 200xp is just letting them Max their character. You have given them too much rope then are wondering why they used all of it.

My advice is play some of the Beginner Boxes with the expansion PDF modules. See what the RAI actually are. Letting go of the GM vs Player idea and embarrassing the idea that your all at the table to build a fun, Narative story in the Star Wars universe is important. A PC can start with a 5 in Agility, 2 in Ranged Heavy, and a Light Repeating Blaster. Then by the end of session 1 the Auto-Fire cost is down to 1 Advantage. Now they kill everything in site and they have only spent 15xp to break the game. Where's the fun? But if a player was then to say to the GM "actually my PC hates his former life and only brings the big gun when they are severely overwhelmed then that same character is a lot less game breaking.

And if that doesn't work and your group is so into optimisation and finding the weak spots of an enemy then X-wing, Armada and Imperial Assault have much stricter rules that will keep the game balanced for a lot longer. You will have just as much fun but know that the exploits are not there and the GM vs Player is entirely intended and embraced.

Not trying to light fires here, I completely accept your Campaign had problems and would like to help you find a way for your group to enjoy this system. In honesty it's an awesome system and some really cool story telling mechanics are built in, but if that's not embraced then problems can easily arise.

I think you are misunderstanding my stance. I didn't have a problem with my players doing as they did, and I certainly could have limited them, but that isn't something I find conducive towards having fun. What I did was find that players who made the choices they wanted to make were coming up against the edge of the game by tree two's end. This conversation is because I have a problem understanding how a player gets to 600 xp without eventually managing to pick up enough game breaking abilities by virtue of sheer luck. Or, in your case, why someone would say "no you can't spend you xp on this thing because it's a good decision." So long as a player doesn't deviate from their character and works to make the game more interesting, more power to them if they try to make their character the best that they can, rolls and roles. I've been saying this for a while.

To answer about the 5 character, the stat was well within the parameters of the character. He was an obsessive compulsive givin savant scientist who had dedicated his life to the accumulation of knowledge and managed to accidentally steal an old jedi holocron. He was socially inept and basically couldn't be left alone with normal people, had no combat experience and as a doctor stuck to a Hippocratic oath for a large portion of the game, only finally hurting someone in order to save another pc's life, something that deeply troubled him and led him to a realization about the nature of the Force and the corrupting effect of the Dark Side. He was also easily manipulated and spent some time convinced the Empire were the good guys thanks to one of the early BBEGs. But behind a computer or at a surgeon's table, he was brilliant. He had a singular mind and could run numbers like no one else, he memorized the binary of astrogation charts to help relax and, like most givin, could plot courses without a navicomputer. The player role played him well, in fact he was probably one of the best characters in the campaign, and definitely had the most fulfilling character ark.

I also wouldn't consider putting dedication into the stat you like and buying an item to improve it after 15 sessions or so any sort of massive breach in etiquette, heck it seemed a simple enough progression to me.

Believe it or not, this wasn't my first rodeo. We did start with the beginner box, but then we grew. It wasn't our first campaign, it won't be our last. It was fun all the way through for me and for all of the players (hopefully, though I shouldn't speak for them). Even the fact that the game started falling apart when it did wasn't a problem, every rpg has a point when it starts to get out of hand. Why do you think most systems have a cap? Epic levels in dnd are fun the first time, but then it's obvious they can't be held together without heavy house ruling. Rogue trader caps after rank 8 because man alive you are a force by that point. All good stories have an end. A timely end. That was why I was so surprised by everyone else's experience, not because I didn't know games could be fun, but because it never occurred to me that someone would actually have fun rolling the same dice and the same abilities for one thousand hours. Progress should feel fun, and narrative progress should be accompanied by statistical progress.

It's also pretty bloody insulting that you think playing a different way means I can't have fun. I've played with a lot of groups and a lot of people and it is a rare day that we don't walk away happy and looking forward to the next session. Maybe if you let your players out of the starter box they might have fun too.

I have never had a character start with 5 in a combat stat, not that I wouldn't allow it, but because I think players understand that combat is more fun as a progression. If they pitched me a reasonable character to go with the sheet, i would have no problem having them start that way. However, most of my players have realized that means they are going to have a lot of down time because my games tend towards short, brutal, but infrequent conflicts. The scientist understood and had no problem playing a completely unaware character in social situations, or hiding and healing in combat, so he had a good time because he got to play the character he wanted to play.

If you didn't approach the conversation like you were proselytizing, maybe you would have picked up on the line about the sharpshooter never touching auto-fire weapons. Yes we discovered that and there was one scene in which 14 storm troopers died to a heavy blaster rifle in one player initiative in one of our first games. Because my group enjoys challenges and the idea of building rules for a person, we ignored auto-fire for the most part. I mentioned how the noghri used a model 38, his in character reason was a mistrust for high technology and laser weapons in particular, not to mention the legends that force users had more trouble reflecting slugs. We also had a Dashade pc in a TOR game who refused to use weapons that could be traced or made too much noise. Both managed to build powerful, skilled characters who accurately represented the people their characters were and no one ever used the same gimmick twice.

I would also encourage you to read my post back at the end of page 3, specifically the last two bullet points. I have you ever considered that maybe investing so much energy into trying to control what your player can and can't do might be the combative attitude?

My advice is to play the game with all of the source material you can get your hands on, really just give your players options, let them see everything the game has to offer and benefit from all of the hard work Fantasy Flight has put into their addition to the universe. See what the RAI actually are. Letting go of the GM vs Player idea and embracing the idea that you're all at the table to build a fun, narrative story in the Star Wars universe is important. A PC can start with a 2 in Agility, no ranks in ranged heavy, and a broken holdout blaster. Then by the end of 100th session every non-class skill is 2. Now they still won't be able to do anything in combat and continue feeling like they should have made a character who fit what they wanted to play having only spent 2000 xp. Where's the fun? But if a player was then to say to the GM "actually my PC hates his current life and only wishes for the sweet release of death because he has spent the last 30 years of his life accomplishing nothing and rolling YY on every check," then rerolled a more interesting character with fun abilities that do what they envisioned them doing, that character would be a lot more fun.

The same goes with the Gozantis, we discovered what they could do, we allowed the event to happen, then we agreed the Alliance needed the fleet on a distant front and the party had more pressing problems. There are still many ways to hull a star destroyer, and many don't even require any math. Yes that is the cheapest I've seen, yes it won't be featuring in one of my games again unless something clever is suggested, but it was still fun and within the bounds of both rules and universe. And most importantly it was something new and unexpected that we enjoyed experiencing.

We do play board games, x-wing and armada have graced our tables more than once, but what I personally love about pnp is creating that world, all those boundless possibilities, the stories we can tell. There is nothing about a strong party, or a difficult encounter, or a smart escape plan that will ever detract from a story unless you let it.

I'm here to ask and answer questions, I've tried to provide as much information as a could throughout this thread. I get that you want to be helpful, and I'm sorry if this makes me sound like a jerk, but it really feels like you haven't bothered to read any of what I've been posting. Believe it or not this isn't the first time someone has told me that my fun is wrong. This is the internet. Maybe it was an honest mistake and you just missed a line here or there, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't condescend.

Fair call, and no you're not a jerk, I just got the wrong impression and read things differently. Sorry for seeming like one myself. I have had conversations similar here and elsewhere with newer GM's that where struggling and I completely missed the boat here.

Your campaigns do sound fun and I did miss the mark thinking your group had not enjoyed the system. Bloody internet!

Glad to hear we're on the same page and sorry for the fuss!

My biggest problem with high "level" games is the dice pools.

We are right now with PCs hitting 300 xp (which reading the post tells me it is not a high "level" game) and dice pools including 4 yellow happen quite often. This means we have to interpret "often" dice outcomes including one and two triumphs and several advantages / disadvantages. Honestly, it slows down the game, at some point we become tired of getting side effects and finding a way to alter the situation to fit them.

Combats become pretty hard to run too as weapons drop from hands, lights switch off and on, gas explode here and there, people trip, doors open and close... and many times in a single combat round

The way I have found to deal with it is to call for less and less check rolls (it still leaves unsolved the problem with combat), but I am not sure my players are enjoying this, as rolling dice is a fun part from rpgs.

So, how you deal with this in your games?

Combats become pretty hard to run too as weapons drop from hands, lights switch off and on, gas explode here and there, people trip, doors open and close... and many times in a single combat round

That sounds AWESOME.

My characters started seeing that stuff at around 200XP and they did what real groups in combat do when they realize how chaotic fights can be: they focused on intelligence-gathering and prepping the battlefield, or else tactical retreat if the tables are ever turned. It's meant for a super thrilling focus on spying and social encounters from my most meat-shield-y PCs.