In about to run the conclusion to Beyond the Rim this week with my small group of 3 players. They are going to be escaping a planet in a CR90 Corvette while under attack from TIE fighters and Imperial Patrol Craft.

The CR90 has 6 big guns, but there are only 3 PCs and one of them is probably going to be piloting. Does anyone know if there's a precedent for letting NPCs fire the other cannons (I assume there will be a lot of crew on board)? If so, what Gunnery skill would these nameless NPCs onboard have?

Also, is it possible for a pilot to fire a gun turret - logically he/she would be in a different location on ship to the firing station?

The scenario is running a cap ship with being low on crew, its reasonable. If there are minion or rival crew, they could be firing the rest, even if there are slot of them, the PCs, or one of them can be commanding over such crew, which makes it cool and different.

The issue of a pilot using on-board weapon is left for the GM. I would rule if its a forward facing weapon, it might have controls on bridge. Also making the pilot use his Skilled Jockey talent, without it he would need to spend two maneuvers, leaving him non to be used on piloting stunts (Stay On Target, etc).

I would recommend NOT having a PC do the piloting. It's just not a very exciting role in a Silhouette > 4 vessel. Leave piloting to an NPC and get on a gun.

The main reason that Capital ship guns have "Crews" is to maximize the efficiency of TurboLasers. Remember The Battle of Yavin, where you saw the gunner dealing with an overheating turbolaser? That is why you need crew

Eventually the gun will overheat, or lose power (Capacitors) or even have a gas leak. As damage is taken the targeting system can go out. YOu got one or two good shots with the things before things start going pear shaped.


Look at that, what if one of those moving parts breaks down? you need a body to do the work. "lasers" might not need Projectiles or Gun powder. But they need Gas and Capacitors/batteries to power

Minions or other NPCs to operate the other cannons is one good idea. Maybe combined with an Advanced Targeting Array that helps upgrade the ability of the firing PCs/NPCs.

Another thing to look at is some of the “Barrage” actions from the AoR CRB that are only applicable to ships that are Silhouette 5 or larger.

Between those two solutions, you should find something that works reasonably well for you.

The game system is pretty open. Nothing stopping you from say, adding setback dice + increasing base difficulty to reflect the downside of having a pilot fire certain guns. Or say slaving one or more batteries to a single gunner PC.

Previous editions allowed pilots to fire turrets if they were locked in the forward firing position, with an increase in the difficulty or decrease in accuracy.

You should really try to find time to listen to The Order 66 podcast, Specifically the following segments:

Episode 48 - Capital Interest. Starting at 16:49 and going through to 1:18:06 GM's Phil and Chris guide you through exactly how to best run your party on, in and around capital ships.

Episode 49 - Now I Am The Master... And Commander. Starting at 1:13:48 through to 2:18:10 GM's Phil and Chris actually play through an example of Cap Ship combat, using all the tricks from the previous episode. Its a great listen.

don't forget that a lot of the pilot actions aren't available in bigger ships...

Thanks for the responses.

I think actually my confusion arises from lack of understanding how capital ship attacks work - the rulebooks don't go into much detail about to run combat scenes when the PCs are operating in a capital ship. It seems to make sense that some of the crew would operate the many cannons.

I wonder if doing this would take some of the spotlight and focus away from the PCs though.

I think actually my confusion arises from lack of understanding how capital ship attacks work - the rulebooks don't go into much detail about to run combat scenes when the PCs are operating in a capital ship. It seems to make sense that some of the crew would operate the many cannons.

The NPCs don’t necessarily have to operate all the cannons. Nor do the PCs.

You get to help the PCs choose where they want to be, based on where they (and you) think the action will be. And whatever the choices are, you should have at least a couple of options for how you handle things.

I wonder if doing this would take some of the spotlight and focus away from the PCs though.

Help them figure out what they want to do, and then help them work out what the options would be.

It is possible that you may not find a good solution. You may be forced to choose between a bad solution and a worse one. But you should have some options, and some flexibility. You can share that with the players.

I generally group the cannons up as minion groups. For example, I'll be using a Vigil-Class Corvette in an upcoming adventure, which has three turbolaser turrets and three laser cannon turrets. When it fires, I'll be treating the turbolasers as a single minion group with Agility 3 and a group skill of Gunnery. The laser cannons will be another minion group, and with three turrets each, they'll be rolling YYG. Now, if a player wanted to take over on one of the turrets, I would let him hop right in there. He would have the whole gunnery crew helping him out, but he could just use his own Gunnery skill. The other two turrets could act independently, or they could focus fire together, and I would give him some boost dice.

The same goes for characters who want to get into the mechanics bay or computer station. They can roll their own stats, but they do have a whole crew working with them. This allows your character a chance to fix the blown hyperdrive of a Nebulon-B Frigate without breaking the sense of reality.

But it feels like there ought to be a benefit of a PC firing the capital ship cannons, over the NPC crew doing it.

To me, on capital ships, it should be a matter of fire control crew in the bridge or CIC indicating targets, and the targeting computers actually firing the weapons.

The scene(s) of gun crews loading individual "rounds" into turbolasers / blaster cannons in the prequels is just Lucas choosing "I want this to look like the gun crews in movies I used to watch because it's cool" over anything that makes any **** sense at all.

But it feels like there ought to be a benefit of a PC firing the capital ship cannons, over the NPC crew doing it.

Definitely, but only if the PC has a better dice pool, those gunners are trained whilst lots of PC's wont be.

A Commander is better taking a Fire Control or Field Commander action to make everyone onboard more effective.

An Engineer is better off repairing System Strain, boosting shields, jamming Comms and scanning the enemy.

Anyone who can pilot is in the hot seat and can likely fire some guns too. Extra Pilots may want to jump in a bomber and try torpedoing the enemy or acting as fighter protection.

Anyone else is either co-pilot/gunner or just straight gunner.

Lots of cap ship weapons are slow firing so a PC can often switch back and forth between weapons to maximise their efforts, so I'm with Max when said :

To me, on capital ships, it should be a matter of fire control crew in the bridge or CIC indicating targets, and the targeting computers actually firing the weapons.

The scene(s) of gun crews loading individual "rounds" into turbolasers / blaster cannons in the prequels is just Lucas choosing "I want this to look like the gun crews in movies I used to watch because it's cool" over anything that makes any **** sense at all.

To me, on capital ships, it should be a matter of fire control crew in the bridge or CIC indicating targets, and the targeting computers actually firing the weapons.

The scene(s) of gun crews loading individual "rounds" into turbolasers / blaster cannons in the prequels is just Lucas choosing "I want this to look like the gun crews in movies I used to watch because it's cool" over anything that makes any **** sense at all.

Agreed. Also 80s technology versus today. Even in modern tanks (if you country doesn't spend enough to build a death star every year) rounds are still loaded by hand - at least partly.

To me, on capital ships, it should be a matter of fire control crew in the bridge or CIC indicating targets, and the targeting computers actually firing the weapons.

The scene(s) of gun crews loading individual "rounds" into turbolasers / blaster cannons in the prequels is just Lucas choosing "I want this to look like the gun crews in movies I used to watch because it's cool" over anything that makes any **** sense at all.

Agreed. Also 80s technology versus today. Even in modern tanks (if you country doesn't spend enough to build a death star every year) rounds are still loaded by hand - at least partly.

Just as an aside, there's a lot that goes into the decision between having a loader as part of the crew, or installing an auto-loader, in the design of a tank. Some tanks actually have a completely mechanical loading system, some have a mechanical assist, and some have a human loader doing most of the work. There are a lot of tradeoffs.