Was wondering what folks with a lot of actual play experience think about critical hits in starship combat? I haven't gotten to actually play often but on paper critical hits seem problematic given:

1) lots of starships have linked weapons and the 2 advantage cost for another hit seems better and more reliably positive than a roll on the critical hit table

2) critical hit thresholds are all fairly high for most ship weapons (3-4 advantages).

3) the critical hit table itself seems to have a huge variance in effects, with many of the effects very weak. There is a good chance of rolling some effect that doesn't really impact the combat much.

Am I missing something?

How often to people get 3-4 advantages and how often are they spent on critical hits vs. linked, adding boost die, or other effects?

In group play, when you have all your characters on one ship, easy crits could lead to TPK faster than desired.

After four campaigns, we've found that critical hits in vehicular combat are rather underwhelming and the most efficient way to take the target out is to exceed HTT or SST. If you have Linked it is almost always better for the shooter to take the extra hit than to take a critical.

I would say this is by design.

as Vondy stated a TPW would be a campaign killer (no pun intended)

I would say this is by design.

as Vondy stated a TPW would be a campaign killer (no pun intended)

Well, when the PCs' ship exceeds HTT it may not be instantly destroyed, but it can be fairly easily if the opposition wants to keep pummeling it with laser-fire. Critical hits actually allow for more opportunities to take out the ship without totally destroying it.

My goal in any combat is to challenge the players, not defeat them. That mentioned, criticals are great at doing just that. For example, having the hyperdrive disabled as they're fleeing Imperials is an exciting obstacle and helps grow tension in an already exciting situation. The same with losing shields, a weapon (especially if it's the best/only one) or engines. As easy as they might be to fix, that takes potentially precious time, adding even more tension and excitement. Simply pummeling away at HT/SS isn't very interesting, but when you couple it with a sparking navcomputer or a "Aft Shields Down" warning, it becomes more engaging.

I've found vehicle Crits to be more useful with low damage and/or personal weapons and collisions. I've seen plenty of vehicles disabled through Crits when the players didn't have the ability to HT them in a timely fashion.

It totally depends on what you are shooting with and what your target is. Suppose you are in an Ywing, and hit with 1 success and 3 advantages.

Your choices are

1 hit for 7 damage with a critical

2 hits for 7 damage, no critical

If you are shooting a TIE/ln, pick the linked with 2 shots, it takes it out of the fight completely (2 hits at 5 damage after armor).

If you are shooting a YT-2400, I might pick either result. 4 armor reduces damage to 3 points per hit. The YT 2400 has 25 hull, it may be better to crit it to death.

If you are shooting at a Nebulon-B, pick the crit every time. 6 armor reduces your damage to 1 point, vs the Nebs 71 hull. You will take it out by crits far faster.

Now if you regularly hit with 5 or more successes, I might go for linked more often. At that point, armor becomes far less relevant.

As a GM I find using criticals rather then extra damage can keep the party from going down to quickly and add more flavor to the fight. My goal isn't to beat the PC's, it's for everybody to have fun, so crits for the win.

IF the PC's want to forgo crits in favor of damage and blowing up the badguys that's fine to. NPC's are meant to be blown up. I can't image a TIE fighter really has that many crits in it anyway.

I may have been playing this wrong, but I thought that a single crit would take out any minion craft, such as TIE Fighters.

As a GM, I will almost always do a crit rather than a linked just because it makes the game more fun when there are problems for the players to solve during a fight.

I like the system that way. Instant death for the bad guys, minor annoyance for the good guys.

My goal in any combat is to challenge the players, not defeat them.

As a GM, I like to consider the goal of the NPC that's in combat with the PCs. Quite often, that NPC's goal is to defeat them rather than to simply "challenge" them. I think that they'll find challenge enough in trying to avoid defeat.

I may have been playing this wrong, but I thought that a single crit would take out any minion craft, such as TIE Fighters.

As a GM, I will almost always do a crit rather than a linked just because it makes the game more fun when there are problems for the players to solve during a fight.

I like the system that way. Instant death for the bad guys, minor annoyance for the good guys.

I had forgotten that, but I think you are right. In the past I have played it so a crit will take out any minion ship.

We didn't have much starfighter combat in our most recent campaign, so my memory is a little rusty. We nearly always had to open the book and check the rules again every time we started shooting at each other in ships.

I may have been playing this wrong, but I thought that a single crit would take out any minion craft, such as TIE Fighters.

As a GM, I will almost always do a crit rather than a linked just because it makes the game more fun when there are problems for the players to solve during a fight.

I like the system that way. Instant death for the bad guys, minor annoyance for the good guys.

I had forgotten that, but I think you are right. In the past I have played it so a crit will take out any minion ship.

We didn't have much starfighter combat in our most recent campaign, so my memory is a little rusty. We nearly always had to open the book and check the rules again every time we started shooting at each other in ships.

Remember that no craft is actually spelled out in the rules as being a minion craft.

True, but there are minion pilots. As far as I'm concerned if a minion pilot is flying it then it's a minion craft.

True, but there are minion pilots. As far as I'm concerned if a minion pilot is flying it then it's a minion craft.

Does this include capital ships, or only small craft (Silhouette < 5)?

This is wear a GM uses there brains a bit and applies common sense.

I ask because there were plenty of "nameless" (at least as far as we never got told the names) capital ships in many of the Clone Wars battles as well as at Endor. Would you have them eliminated with a single critical hit?

BTW, your last post sounds rather unfriendly. Was that your intention?

Remember that no craft is actually spelled out in the rules as being a minion craft.

There are Minion starfighter pilots. So a ship piloted by a Minion is also a Minion. At least that is my reasoning.

I guess if I were running a humungus space battle where entire squadrons of CR90s were attacking, I might treat them as Minions. But that's never happened.

True, but there are minion pilots. As far as I'm concerned if a minion pilot is flying it then it's a minion craft.

I've been playing the same way, which makes crits useful against minion pilots.

Also, I find crits useful against larger ships. Against a non-minion starfighter, yeah linked weapons are probably better, but on a good roll you might be able to do both.

As a GM I find using criticals rather then extra damage can keep the party from going down to quickly and add more flavor to the fight. My goal isn't to beat the PC's, it's for everybody to have fun, so crits for the win.

IF the PC's want to forgo crits in favor of damage and blowing up the badguys that's fine to. NPC's are meant to be blown up. I can't image a TIE fighter really has that many crits in it anyway.

Yeah, I guess I can see this. If crits are really meant as a GM tool to add drama and lesson the lethality of space combat then it works ok I guess.

I still think it's a piece of pretty sloppy design on FFG part. For instance you have

* the general "uses for advantages" in space combat table that tells you that you can use three advantages to pick a component and by its example do something like outright reduce all shields to 0 until the crit is removed by a mechanics check (just as good as a 118-126 Major System Failure on the crit table)

* the Easy component hit on the crit table which only lasts one round but says "knocked offline". Does that mean all shields reduced to 0 for 1 round?

* The component tables themselves which list more minor effects (shields are only reduced by 1 in all facings)

*Effects on the crit table that are higher numbers but seem less onerous than lower numbered effects

If FFG is going to go into such specific detail than I just wish it was a bit better thought out.

It totally depends on what you are shooting with and what your target is. Suppose you are in an Ywing, and hit with 1 success and 3 advantages.

Your choices are

1 hit for 7 damage with a critical

2 hits for 7 damage, no critical

If you are shooting a TIE/ln, pick the linked with 2 shots, it takes it out of the fight completely (2 hits at 5 damage after armor).

If you are shooting a YT-2400, I might pick either result. 4 armor reduces damage to 3 points per hit. The YT 2400 has 25 hull, it may be better to crit it to death.

If you are shooting at a Nebulon-B, pick the crit every time. 6 armor reduces your damage to 1 point, vs the Nebs 71 hull. You will take it out by crits far faster.

Now if you regularly hit with 5 or more successes, I might go for linked more often. At that point, armor becomes far less relevant.

This makes some sense and it would be great if crits were a more reliable way to attack larger ships. But don't larger ships have a much better chance of having 1 or in the case of a Nebulon-B multiple engineers so they are much more likely to be able to use actions on mechanics to get rid of the crits and so the crits are not likely to "stack" or stick?

It totally depends on what you are shooting with and what your target is. Suppose you are in an Ywing, and hit with 1 success and 3 advantages.

Your choices are

1 hit for 7 damage with a critical

2 hits for 7 damage, no critical

If you are shooting a TIE/ln, pick the linked with 2 shots, it takes it out of the fight completely (2 hits at 5 damage after armor).

If you are shooting a YT-2400, I might pick either result. 4 armor reduces damage to 3 points per hit. The YT 2400 has 25 hull, it may be better to crit it to death.

If you are shooting at a Nebulon-B, pick the crit every time. 6 armor reduces your damage to 1 point, vs the Nebs 71 hull. You will take it out by crits far faster.

Now if you regularly hit with 5 or more successes, I might go for linked more often. At that point, armor becomes far less relevant.

This makes some sense and it would be great if crits were a more reliable way to attack larger ships. But don't larger ships have a much better chance of having 1 or in the case of a Nebulon-B multiple engineers so they are much more likely to be able to use actions on mechanics to get rid of the crits and so the crits are not likely to "stack" or stick?

The number of crew that can take an action increases, but so too should the number of crew needed to take that action at all. Twenty engineers on a frigate shouldn't be ten times as effective as two engineers on a light freighter, as they are likely to be spread even thinner than the pair on the smaller ship. However, if every crewman is able to take actions, then bigger crews make ion weapons fairly useless as large ships can shed hundreds of SS per turn. Obviously an extreme example, but I've seen a PC and NPC crew on a Gozanti shedding 4-6 strain per turn and making me wonder why the bad guys (pirates) would even bother with ion weapons.

one of the things about crits that I think you guys are missing is that crits add a +10 to the next roll. So yeah the first crits aren't that bad but if you get a second one the die roll gets a +10 and the third one gets a +20 and so on. if you don't do something about those crits it is going to be bad. As a GM you can use this to add drama. You got out of that fight with a couple crits. You don't have time to fix it right now...Later in the night you get into another battle and now crits are going to be worse...

I ask because there were plenty of "nameless" (at least as far as we never got told the names) capital ships in many of the Clone Wars battles as well as at Endor. Would you have them eliminated with a single critical hit?

BTW, your last post sounds rather unfriendly. Was that your intention?

Sorry if I came across as snippy. Rereading it does seem a bit stronger then I meant.

I'm just trying to convey that you need to look at it through a certain logical filter. No matter how minions, you're Yt1300 is not going to crit a Star Destroyer to death. They are the big scary threat. TIE fighters however are fodder. Just treat them like minions so the combat moves quickly and the PC's can mow through a swarm of them.

one of the things about crits that I think you guys are missing is that crits add a +10 to the next roll. So yeah the first crits aren't that bad but if you get a second one the die roll gets a +10 and the third one gets a +20 and so on. if you don't do something about those crits it is going to be bad. As a GM you can use this to add drama. You got out of that fight with a couple crits. You don't have time to fix it right now...Later in the night you get into another battle and now crits are going to be worse...

The GM could make some special ruling, but I think the default (p.234 EOTE) is that crits can be repaired using a single action and Mechanics check AND can be attempted multiple times until repaired.

Unless you are in a single seat fighter, the mechanic can get rid of crits pretty easily assuming a halfway decent ability/skill combo.