Hi guys! I've just started running EotE, played three sessions so far, and really loving it. I found our first space battle, however, really bogged things down - combat and other encounters on the ground went quickly and smoothly, but the space combat system seemed clunky. As a result, I have a specific question, and a general question.

First, how do you handle system strain for minion groups of ships? I love the minion group system on the ground, part of which is that wounds and strain are conveniently bundled together. But since it's the stats of the pilots that stack in a minion group of small ships, what do you do about the ships' system strain? Do you give each ship in the group its own system strain, or add them to the ship's hull, or...?

More broadly, what tips and tricks do more experienced gms have for making sure space combat goes quickly? I printed off some maneuver and action cheat sheets for my players, but do you do anything beyond that to make ship combat fun and dynamic?

Thanks!

Technically there is no such thing as a minion ship, just minion pilots. For the sake of brevity, if the pilot is a minion, I treat the ship as a minion of sorts and just apply system strain as hull trauma instead. I don't group ship HT together into one large pool but you certainly could if you wanted to and I doubt it would cause any real problems.

You should also check out the rules for squadrons. It's another way to make things interesting without handling a dozen different actions each round.

Having a handy cheat sheet of space combat actions and maneuvers definitely helps too. In my campaign, space combat isn't necessarily rare but it just doesn't happen with the same frequency as ground combat so the players seem to have a harder time remembering what they can do.

I also apply some of the same tricks that I use for ground combat. Simple things like not having every enemy fight to the death can go a long way towards shortening the encounter, especially once you see that the balance is definitively tipped in favor of the PCs. Also, it doesn't have to go quickly as long as it is interesting all the way through. So just like ground combat is more interesting when all the combatants don't just go to cover and trade blaster shots, so too can you spice up space combat with things like unusual terrain, bystanders, other factions, or objectives for the encounter that involve more than "kill/stun that guy."

Always try and incorporate Chase rules and Stellar Phenomena to give a pilot more to do.

Stage the encounter somewhere interesting and not just 'in orbit' or a blank section of space, orbital dockyard, asteroid field, in the middle of a huge space battle they aren't even necessarily part of, etc.

Have a point beyond shooting at each other, getting away, being boarded, doing the boarding, blowing the comm tower, etc.

If you don't have PCs focused on being Pilots and Gunners the cool Talents are buried in those trees that really make them shine in space combat, so honestly just lower expectations of using it.

While I agree that the chase rules and stellar phenomena are important, I can not stretch how important gain the advantage can be as well. And as gta is dependent on speed you can make stellar phenomena extremely deadly and dangerous for minion and rival pilots. Pilot checks at high speed become quickly dangerous and gta can force pilots into using those.

Just keep in mind that the rules themselves are abstract and represent a long, long time for a dog fight, so ship positions can drastically change from round to round and even within a round which means that a lot of fire arcs can come up. Just placing tokens in arc to remember the last position might help, this does not define the narrative position and can quickly change, but it helps to remember which arcs and effects currently apply, especially if you create chains when one ship gained the advantage at one ship, while being chased by other who gta on that, etc.

I really love the vehicle combat rules, but it is really not easy to grasp at first. Creating your own little cheat sheet with all the actions and maneuvers possible should help, and don't forgot those tons of non-pilot actions like damage control, co-pilot or course plotting. A crew an easily do more than the pilot and not only as gunners. Speaking of gunners, gunnery droid brain or autopilot droid brains can dramatically increase the power of a ship. They come with a skill of 2, can be upgraded to 4 and either assist or apparently can be assisted with a character's attribute. I am not 100% sure if they can assist a character as well, but I would assume so. The gunner droid brain is basically an aimbot for starship combat, very useful for single-seaters to gain a better action economy even when you sacrifice one maneuver if you want to assist with your agility. Helps as well when the crew as no gunnery skill of their own. edit: Though I am getting OT here.

Back to topic: Narrative, narrative, narrative. Dogfighting is incredible dynamic, you chase, you get shacked, you try to shake someone on your six, you try to get on their six, so they can't shoot back, while you hammer them with your guns (gain the advantage against an arc they have no weapons), you try to evade incoming fire with evasive maneuvers sometimes even twice when in a bad spot, stuff gets hit or system strain becomes a problem and someone NEEDs to do the damage control, maybe even everyone after a bad ion hit … I would say with a huge amount of maneuvers it is easy to make space combat not only narratively, but as well mechanically more dynamic than ground based combat. It is imo really the best part of the system when the mechanics themselves are narrative in nature as they are abstract enough to suit the narrative of a dogfight / space combat perfectly.