To set the scene. I've ran and played a variety of tabletop games before, I'm good with systems and rules, though run games in a very loose and narrative style and am now running a AoR/EoE game with a few friends.

From the game and reading various forums and actual plays the main things that seem to stand out are:

- Stim pack healing seems very effective compared to medicine checks (and there's a medic in the party). Obviously crits are there to represent lasting wounds that they'll be grateful to the medic for help with. Anyone adjust the starting points for these down to 3/2/1 rather than 5/4/3/2/1?

- Autofire. Not come up yet but the sharpshooter may well go this way (or their opponents

Stimpaks... They may be effective at first but when your PCs get lit up by a Nemesis or a strong Rival, they will be hurting.

Autofire can be very destructive but your NPCs can have it too. And I tend to limit PCs heavy weapons in major urban areas. Especially Imperial controlled planets.

If someone in your group isn't a pilot, be prepared for them to get torn up in space encounters. I try to throw in starship/vehicle stuff to mix it up. There are a lot of cool pilot talents, gear and vehicles and it is STAR WARS. Stay on Target added a lot of cool stuff too.

And with the setbacks, yes add them as much as possible so PCs get to use talents to negate them but think of interesting ways WHY there is a setback. Not just, +2 black dice to make it harder.

The easiest way to impact Stims is to insure the group ends up involved in multiple combats within a 24 hour period.

Lots of house rules on autofire, pretty common consensus it's needed. Most tables find their happy place with it. I've got my house rule, lots of them out there.

Don't know anything about Link changes or much discussion about it. It's deadly in ship combat, but it's also more ubiquitous there.

Sensors are meant to be much more narrative and aren't directly tied to combat and range, etc. I salute your hand wavery. Sturn has some stuff for using sensors more detailed in this thread.

You are correct on Pilot skills, just remember nearly all battles we see in Star Wars in space involve obstacles and/or chases when you think about it. There was also a discussion about how long it takes to power up and lift off with a ship and how to set a time and then reduce it with a good skill roll per successes.

The characters are:

A Sullustan Sharpshooter, Agility 4, no 1s, at least 1 rank in Ranged Light, Ranged Heavy and Gunnery.

A Gran spy, several 3s no 1s, ( Mental note. Need to remember to add some visual penalties so she can negate them tonight as it didn't come up last session. Smoke should be good and a power failure).

A force sensitive Twi'lek medic. Several 3s a 1 in Brawn. A few steps into Force Move though planning to throw multiple knives at people rather than big stuff.

They're currently in a Loronar E9 Explorer with an extended sensor mod (they got to pick from 5 as part of their first mission).

No one has ranks in pilot space so the sharpshooter is piloting with the spy on sensors and the medic on the guns. (If anyone knows of a good deck plan for this ship that'd be great or I'll have to draw one).

Session tonight will probably have some ship combat unless they get very clever. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

If you don't have a dedicated Pilot among them just go easy on the challenges for Pilot checks, include some but just make em easier. To really get crazy there are a number of Talents in the Pilot tree for that.

I was planning on warming up with a flight through an asteroid belt probably consisting of two checks, one to leave the 'official path' and fly through it, one to get the ship tucked into a good spot to hide/scout from.

After that I'm imagining a fight with two ties plus more if they hang around too long. Does that sound like a decent start?

I'm hoping the end of the session will be a frantic astrogation check and a jump before something big catches them

- Stim pack healing seems very effective compared to medicine checks (and there's a medic in the party). Obviously crits are there to represent lasting wounds that they'll be grateful to the medic for help with. Anyone adjust the starting points for these down to 3/2/1 rather than 5/4/3/2/1?

This number is carefully tuned as is. Right now, if your character takes 15 wounds, you can heal all of them in one 24 hour period with nothing but stimpacks. Since most player characters will have a wound threshold around 12-14 (at least at first), that means that even if you are hit by something catastrophic (say strafed by a TIE causing your character to be 2xWTed in a single shot) you'll still be able to easily heal to or below your WT without needing anything fancy, thus allowing your character to get back up and in the game (not necessarily in great shape, but conscious, probably walking, and able to converse, make checks, ect).

If you drop that heal total down to 6 per day, you may find an issue where a 2xWTed character is now out of the game for the next 3 days. Usually Star Wars adventures are a little too fast paced to have someone being dragged around on a stretcher for 3 days.

- Autofire. Not come up yet but the sharpshooter may well go this way (or their opponents ). Common ruling seems to be to enforce social stigma for carrying a too big gun and/or to make it cost a 2 advantage for the first then +1 advantage per extra shot rather than just 2 advantage per extra shot.

It depends on the campaign, but generally social stigma is enough. The character is carrying around a Machine Gun.

Try and think Right Tool for the Job sense to weapons. RPGs (especially video game) traditionally don't really factor in weapons beyond the base listed stats. As a result you tend to get players thinking only "what is the most powerful weapon I can carry" with no sens about appropriateness. As a tabletop you can really use your noodle and encourage the players to think of a weapon as a tool. If the next adventure is to go crawling through tunnels or hacking through jungle, apply 2 setback to all checks with long weapons (rifle, heavy rifles, light repeaters) to represent how they are always getting snagged on stuff. Anyone with a carbine or smaller though is in better shape. Likewise when they walk around the city with a repeating blaster in the open, they'll have a lot of trouble sneaking around. If you show up at Don Corleone's mansion gates with a machine gun slung across your back, it's a good bet his security people will just slide him out the back first and ask questions later.

EDIT: Also Encumbrance encumbrance encumbrance. Most autofire weapons are pretty heavy. Not horribly so, but more then the players expect, and that adds up fast when paired with the usual adventuring gear.

- Linked. I thought I saw a ruling changing linked to flat add ?? extra damage rather than allow doubling/tripling of damage for 2 advantage a time but can't remember where that proposal was. I can see this being interesting as it encourages more ship crits instead of linked usually being better apart from against capital ships.

Kinda your call. Remember that things like Linked are activated options. In most cases linked is going to be in relation to vehicle weapons, so as the GM you can offset it pretty simply by adding more opponents or not activating it when it means smoking your players.

There's also some advanced play options you may want to look into likes Squads/Squadrons that relate to effects like this.

- Starship sensors and comms. I've gone with hand waving to cover any gaps. Should be fine.

Yes..... yes....

- Why have a pilot? Main solution seems to be add terrain and obstacles and make most things a chase scene. Anything else big here I should remember?

Also note that "amazing pilots" in this system aren't just people with skill ranks, but also with talents. Something like "Full Throttle" can allow a craft to perform maneuvers it normally can't. Skilled Jockey and All Terrain Driver can completely change a vehicle's performance.

The scary Imperial Ace squadron in my current campaign is a Gunboat unit composed of guys with ranks in Skilled Jockey, Full Throttle, and Defensive driver. Otherwise there's nothing special about them, but those talents make a huge difference when paired with that craft.

They're currently in a Loronar E9 Explorer with an extended sensor mod (they got to pick from 5 as part of their first mission).

No one has ranks in pilot space so the sharpshooter is piloting with the spy on sensors and the medic on the guns. (If anyone knows of a good deck plan for this ship that'd be great or I'll have to draw one).

Colonial Chrome is what you seek.

Excellent resource I now have a floor plan - it doesn't match my description from last session but I'm sure they'll forgive me!

Excellent resource I now have a floor plan - it doesn't match my description from last session but I'm sure they'll forgive me!

Just spend a Dpoint to introduce the "Fact" that ship now looks like that and always has.

Gotta love a game that has an integrated "retcon" system.

Also check out the thread on https://www.reddit.com/r/swrpg/comments/3se01e/help_us_overhaul_the_loronar_e9_floorplan/

It has some links to alternative deckplans, based on issues that people had with the ones from Colonial Chrome.

As a general tip I suggest looking in a broad sense what makes your PC's tick. When your designing encounters put some obstacles in that restrict certain aspects of a character, and other times put elements in that let them shine.

So for Auto-Fire; those guns really need 2 hands to use, probably with a sling as well. If you put them in situations where they either only have one hand available, or have a choice to hold on or shoot then your giving them challenges to make for an interesting story. Perhaps there is a Vehicle chase over rough terrain, hold on and suffer a bunch (4?) of Setbacks to attack (Brace could overcome this) or don't hold on but suffer a single upgrade, if your not holding on and roll a Despair you fall over in the vehicle... If the Pilot rolls Despair your possibly falling out.

Of course other times you want them to have their fun, the rest of the party have a job to do and the Auto Fire guy gets to stand at the front gate and keep the minions at bay, plenty of easy to hit soft targets.

As for the Piloting conundrum in a straight up dog fight Gunnery is actually a better skill than Piloting, so your Sharpshooter is actually the right person for that task. In your current situation your probably better sticking to dogfighting, unless your looking for a challenge for the Party.

Thanks for the help and links everyone, it's much appreciated.

I ran the session last night, not my best game night - everyone was a bit tired including me do we we're a bit slow getting into the groove. Went OK in the end though.

I'd mis-remembered which ship they'd ended up with it was actually the Incon A-36 Pathfinder Recon Vessel. Another very stylish ship. We've described the laid out with 3 cockpit seats (Pilot, Sensors/Comms and Co-pilot/Internal systems) plus a seat in the Ion cannon turret. With the pilot or co-pilot able to fire the forward facing guns and the Pilot and Sensors able to fire the torpedoes and run astrogation. The extended sensors and tracking computer are run from the sensors position. The ion cannon is only usable from the turret seat.

Anyway. For next session I need to sort some simplified cheat sheets for ship combat, using force move (with multiple objects) and plan a more larceny or political session.

My favorite thing on handling characters with large weapons.

In the black, or out where they aim to misbehave, it's not an issue.

In the city though, when they mean to be prim and proper like, I used this:

1. Have the local constabulary purposefully walk up and question them directly as to their intent. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Don't mind a couple of questions do you? Well, you're carrying an awfully large stick there, so I thought I would do my duty and see what it is you need that for. You're absolutely correct that you are legally allowed that. Your ID please, and weapons permit please?"

2. "Okay that checks out. Thank you very much, I feel better knowing that I have your name and registered ship. Now your weapons permit does allow you to carry that, good for you. Meet Charles and Tulane. They are deputies who will be happy to help you find anything you need. Just ask them, because they will be at your side for the entire time you're here, which is something they're also legally able to do." (Make sure Charles talks about his kids and Tulane speaks about caring for his grandmother which is the only reason he's a deputy here).

That was on a back-water world with five peace officers. They haven't tried to calmly carry their light repeating blaster into any town or city ever since.

I'd mis-remembered which ship they'd ended up with it was actually the Incon A-36 Pathfinder Recon Vessel.

If you’re interested, Domingo has done up some nice graphics for this ship in his thread at https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/125292-a-36-pathfinder-design-pics/

For quick-reference sheets, I like the ones done by GM Hooly:

For starships, see https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/131666-starships-player-dashboard/#entry1402699

For player actions, see https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/134044-feedback-sought-player-action-sheets/#entry1435352