So one of my players is starting off as a commander with the hope of becoming the captain of a Mon Cal Cruiser in the future

so how do you handle large ship combat.

1. How to handle 20+ guns firing per turn or every other turn. (group the guns into minion groups, roll all gun, etc)

2. How to handle maneuvering large ships in combat (run it like a dogfight, have them as set piece and just slug it out, etc)

can't think of anymore off the top of my head but if you can feel free to add to the list.

Movement is as normal. As for firing, use the Barrage rules on page 246 and 248. Concentrated Barrage against other ships and the other two against fighters.

One thing to look over is how some actions have Silhouette requirements. Some only work with fighters and others only work with large ships. This will cut down on the dogfighty stuff that big ships can do.

Keep in mind that large ships don't spend nearly as much time manoeuvring around, since a lot of those options are for ships of Silhouette 4 or smaller and/or higher speeds than most capital ships are capable of.

I recommend listening to Episode 48 of the Order 66 Podcast dealing with the commodore specialization. And Episode 49 specifically dealing with capitol ship combat. Episode 49 even has an hour-long combat scenario between 2 capitol ships.

Fair warning, both episodes run pretty long.

I could even see running capital ship combat according to the Mass Combat rules. It might need some tweaks, but would simplify life a lot.

The biggest piece of advice I can give its to use the Concentrated / Overwhelming / Blanket Barrage actions. I heavily recommend against firing the weapons normally. Blanket Barrage is what a large ship uses to try to get rid of pesky fighters swarming around it, it's like firing point defense weapons in a large cluster and praying, but very representative of the actual combat Star Wars space battles were built to represent. Concentrated Barrage is for one large ship to blast another large ship. Overwhelming Barrage is (IMO) too useful, and I personally pretend it isn't there in my games. But if you do use it, it targets one ship, and then uses advantages to blast other ships near the target ship that are as big or bigger. In other words, a star destroyer aims at a starfighter squadron, fires all of its turbolasers, then the whole starfighter squadron explodes. It's what happens when autofire and blast have a mutant love child.

As for the dice pools for these actions, I use minion groups of Imperial Gunnery Corps (AoR CRB pg 418). I put three minions in the group, plus one for every five weapons used, maxing out the dice pool at fifteen or more weapons involved in a single check. This is definitely a YMMV situation, but it works really well for me. Now if a PC or important NPC is firing a gun battery, I use their dice, and just add a boost die from the minions helping out.

With all this, big ship vs big ship is generally pretty simple. They move towards each other. They get into range. They begin shooting each other (Concentrated Barrage is great for this). Eventually, one explodes or tries to run away, then you move on to chase or just end the combat when one goes to hyperspace.

The biggest piece of advice I can give its to use the Concentrated / Overwhelming / Blanket Barrage actions. I heavily recommend against firing the weapons normally. Blanket Barrage is what a large ship uses to try to get rid of pesky fighters swarming around it, it's like firing point defense weapons in a large cluster and praying, but very representative of the actual combat Star Wars space battles were built to represent. Concentrated Barrage is for one large ship to blast another large ship. Overwhelming Barrage is (IMO) too useful, and I personally pretend it isn't there in my games. But if you do use it, it targets one ship, and then uses advantages to blast other ships near the target ship that are as big or bigger. In other words, a star destroyer aims at a starfighter squadron, fires all of its turbolasers, then the whole starfighter squadron explodes. It's what happens when autofire and blast have a mutant love child.

As for the dice pools for these actions, I use minion groups of Imperial Gunnery Corps (AoR CRB pg 418). I put three minions in the group, plus one for every five weapons used, maxing out the dice pool at fifteen or more weapons involved in a single check. This is definitely a YMMV situation, but it works really well for me. Now if a PC or important NPC is firing a gun battery, I use their dice, and just add a boost die from the minions helping out.

With all this, big ship vs big ship is generally pretty simple. They move towards each other. They get into range. They begin shooting each other (Concentrated Barrage is great for this). Eventually, one explodes or tries to run away, then you move on to chase or just end the combat when one goes to hyperspace.

From everything I've found on the subject this seems to be the best option.

Assign the character to the Liberty, and have the first battle they get to command and fire the guns be Endor?

Assign the character to the Liberty, and have the first battle they get to command and gire the guns be Endor?

You're evil.

Assign the character to the Liberty, and have the first battle they get to command and gire the guns be Endor?

It's a trap!

Just going to mention that Blast doesn't work in the planetary range band. I forget where the sidebar is, but planetary weapons with blast simply go out to short range personal scale.

Definitely check out the Order 66 podcasts on Cap ships, especially the demo session.

Just going to mention that Blast doesn't work in the planetary range band. I forget where the sidebar is, but planetary weapons with blast simply go out to short range personal scale.

Are you sure about this? I don't mean to be rude, but I've flipped through the ship combat section and haven't found a sidebar or paragraph on this. I read the entry on Blast in the Weapon Qualities section (page 168) and it did only mention personal range, but not in exclusive language, which I would normally interpret as an editor being conservative with their word count.

Mostly I noticed the entry on squadron formations: Evasive Maneuvers (page 30 of the GM's kit, Dead in the Water) which talks about several ships taking rapid maneuvers to throw off targeting and blast effects. I would think that such a chaos would be much bigger than the 'several meters' described in the rules for the short range band at personal scale.

It's in the "Starships, vehicles, and scale" sidebar on p. 236 in the core rulebook. However, blast attacks can still deal damage on a miss if you want to use three [Advantage].

Triggering blast damages targets engaged with your target. In a purely Planetary Scale engagement, there is no Engaged range. So blast doesn't hit anything besides your target. As pointed out above, it does allow you to spend advantages to hit a missed target with the blast.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if some GMs consider a minion group of starfighters to all be engaged with each other, and allow a triggered blast to hit all of them, applying blast rating damage to each minion. Some GMs also do this with grenades. I do, as it really makes grenades shine when you take out an entire minion group with one.

Other than that though, it's generally pretty rare (IMO) for any starships to actually be engaged with each other out in space, aside from docking with each other.

It's in the "Starships, vehicles, and scale" sidebar on p. 236 in the core rulebook. However, blast attacks can still deal damage on a miss if you want to use three [Advantage].

Thank you.

I convert to a movement unit system, and put counters on the table... but then, the one element of the rules I truly hate is the ship movement rules.

I convert to a movement unit system, and put counters on the table... but then, the one element of the rules I truly hate is the ship movement rules.

Indeed. Ship movement as per RAW, specially for Capital ships, does not meet our expectations here. I'll try to crack something between Armada and Age of Rebellion to run a fleet officer's campaign with a few players.

Oddly enough, firing the weapons separately is usually FAR more effective than using the special firing options. Of course, dice fatigue is likely to set in for the really big ships with tons of guns.

That is my issue with those optional rules. When is it benifitical to use them. I have a hard time determining what ships to use them with and against.

Oddly enough, firing the weapons separately is usually FAR more effective than using the special firing options. Of course, dice fatigue is likely to set in for the really big ships with tons of guns.

My problem with it being far more effective to fire weapons individually is that it becomes nearly suicidal to be in a starfighter near a much larger ship. Take the Battle of Endor, a bunch of starfighters up close to some star destroyers. Was it dangerous? Yes. Did a lot of them die? Yes, but mostly due to the imperial fighters screening their parent ships. I'm sure some of the fighters got winged by a turbolaser every now and then, but not as many as got blasted by a TIE. If you let a star destroyer roll for each of its 60+ weapon systems, then everything dies, not counting that it probably took quite a bit of real time to sit and wait and watch all 60+ dice pools be rolled, then total up their effects, and narrate what happens. Especially if the GM considers each weapon system is fired by a team of minions, or a team of minions led by rival gunnery commander. The special actions due somewhat limit the vast overpowering death that can be handed out. However, they also allow for (in my head) a more reasonable approach to large ship combat in this game. Blanket Barrage creates a "flak field" for the enemy. It's still very dangerous, especially in the hands of a skilled gunnery team. Concentrated Barrage wonderfully represents putting every weapon into one larger target. And while I personally feel that Overwhelming Barrage can be a little too powerful in some cases, it does give me the sense that the ship's commander just yelled, "Intensify forward firepower!"

I've run a couple space battles involving large ships, early on I fired each weapon system individually. It got very tedious, and the battles didn't last very long (game time). Lately, I've used the actions instead and doing so improved the overall enjoyment for everyone. Blanket Barrage really makes a good pilot character feel good when they can get their ship through the field of fire and deliver their payload. The more mechanical based players and commander types seemed to feel more successful when they could trade off some Concentrated Barrages with the enemy ship(s) and keep on ticking.

That is my issue with those optional rules. When is it benifitical to use them. I have a hard time determining what ships to use them with and against.

I've used Blanket Barrage as a "flak field." Use it to deter small ships from swarming your big ship. Keep in mind that RAW it only matters if they attack the ship performing the BB. Concentrated Barrage is for big ship vs single big ship. Mon Cal Cruiser vs ISD type battles. Though it could just as easily be Marauder corvette vs Gozanti Armed Cruiser. Overwhelming Barrage is best used when two forces are approaching each other for battle. A large ship can spread the damage around a group of clustered ships. Once things get up close and personal, and the targets aren't all nicely bunched up anymore, this one becomes a little less useful.

Eob you use these silhouette 5 and up?

Blanket Barrage is fairly terrible. The hit often does only half the base damage (rounding up), which means even a TIE can survive a light turbolaser hit from this option.

Concentrated Barrage is funny, because only the number of weapons matters rather than the type. You get the same bonus damage from 20 heavy turbolasers as from 20 light laser cannons. I can see this being useful to allow your lighter weapons to punch through a hardened target, but it's fairly weak for bigger guns.

Eob you use these silhouette 5 and up?

Yes, all three of these actions require the ship to be silhouette 5+.

ok, yes I know they have to be Sil5 or higher. What I meant to ask was , do you use this for any/all Sil5 + ships or just certain ones. And if just certain Sil5+ ships, which ships in particular. I could defiantly see benefit in using them on Sil7-9 ships but certain Sil5 & 6s ships not so much. How do YOU decide when to use them or do you use them all the time.