I haven't introduced the really big ships in an FFG SWRPG yet

...which raises a tangentially related question: What are the "big Corellian ships" Han is referring to?the CR90 doesn't strike me as terribly large...does CEC produce capital warships as well?

I agree speed is odd, especially considering no speed is used at personal scale.

That's kind of why it occurred to me. I like the way personal combat flows. If you have to account for speedy animals and the like, you just boost their Athletics or give them a Talent for movement.

"Never tell me the odds" is quite complex, I think I would need to run through that in a game to fully understand it.

I stole that from Traveller, I thought they had a brilliant idea which fits well with the FFG narrative mechanics. It's pretty simple, I just didn't explain it well.

Basically it's a skill "challenge", where the active character sets the difficulty and everybody in the chase has to roll against that difficulty. It thought it perfectly captures the E5 asteroid flight, where Han pulls out all the stops and one by one the TIEs smash themselves up. So the pilot might set the difficulty at PPPP (upgraded by Sil/2 as per normal terrain rules), and everybody rolls their Piloting against that.

The twist on the normal chase rules is this: with the normal rules, the difficulty is set by the GM for all parties, and the player is a passive operator. With "Never Tell Me the Odds", the player sets the difficulty, daring everyone else to keep up.

I probably need to add a specific chart for that one, detailing how to spend the dice results.

...which raises a tangentially related question: What are the "big Corellian ships" Han is referring to?the CR90 doesn't strike me as terribly large...does CEC produce capital warships as well?

It was more a comment about his days smuggling in the Corporate Sector. The main enforcement wing there is CorSec out of Corellia. In this context, "the big Corellian ships" refers to CorSecs Patrol and Anti-Piracy fleet, not the designer of the specfic ships themselves. Remember, amongst smugglers, CorSec is the big scary, not so much the Empire.

CorSec != Corporate Sector

CorSec is the Corellian Security force, which operates in, naturally, the Corellian Sector. It's much more a police force.

In contrast, in the Corporate Sector, they have the Corporate Sector Authority (CSA) and their paramilitary Security Police ("espos").

Two very different law enforcement bodies, methods, and rationales there.

It's not about outrunning the Star Destroyer, it's about out running it's guns.

...which are attached to the Star Destroyer...last time I checked, yes?

Which are fairly long ranged.

That's completely irrelevant to the point of relative speed, though. The range of the weapon isn't changing, and it's travelling at the same speed as the ship it's mounted upon, so the distinction is completely meaningless.

It's like the stupid dad joke about, "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom! Ha-hyuk!"

It's not stupid, ask a skydiver.

And I don't laugh like that. its more of a Muttly snigger.

Your love of awful jokes aside, it still doesn't lend much credence to the argument of "the ship doesn't matter, it's the guns!". The ship giving chase and staying close is what allows the guns to continue to be effective. I can't believe that's a difficult mental obstacle for some.

Start out standing next to someone holding a rifle. Now run away.

How long does it take you to run out of the range of their weapon, on completely flat, completely open ground?

Okay, here's the thing:

You can't answer that. There's not enough information.

You'd need to know how fast the person can run (and for how long), the skill of the shooter, the caliber of the rifle, the twist on the barrel, size (in grains) of the round, amount and type of powder, what kind (if any) sighting mechanism, calibration of said mechanism...and a host of other variables...just to get a time value.

All of that being accounted for, however, you're still very much dealing with an equation in which all of those variables are static values, and as such will essentially drop out of the equation. The thing is, the weapon's effective range, by virtue of depending entirely on static values is itself a static value, and will drop out of that same equation.

Going a step further, in the broad scope of the discussion, it can be inferred that even the effective range of the weapon is mostly irrelevant in the majority of cases, provided the limits of being long enough to be a practical weapon in the context but short enough that an average target stands a reasonable chance of escaping beyond that range...this is evident from the facts that (a) ships flee from star destroyers and (b) star destroyers pursue them. If the range of their main guns were sufficiently vast, they wouldn't move, taking one big variable out of the firing solutions of their gunners and targeting computers. Likewise, if the range was sufficiently short, the prospect of engaging a fleeing craft would be out of the question. So the very fact that star destroyers chasing down fleeing craft, main guns blazing is even a thing implies that the range of said guns is short enough that escaping their range is a plausible outcome, yet that range is also long enough that pursuit is capable of keeping the target within that range for a long enough duration that the chances of a disabling or killing shot increase to a tactically justifiable percentage.

Still, that range is finite.

Naturally, the only way to effectively increase the amount of time during which the target craft is within that range, is to move the guns. And since those guns are attached to the destroyer, for the purposes of the discussion, there is no meaningful difference between outrunning the guns or outrunning the ship they are mounted upon.

It is a distinction as meaningless as going a step further and saying, "It's not about the range of the guns, it's about the distance from the emitter tip."

That's a lot of typing to avoid the point.

The point was that when your enemy has a gun, you have to cross a lot of distance to get away from the gun, even if you're two or three times faster than your enemy is.

Getting lost in the details of exactly how long that takes to the second... is missing the forest for the trees.

That's a lot of typing to avoid the point.

The point was that when your enemy has a gun, you have to cross a lot of distance to get away from the gun, even if you're two or three times faster than your enemy is.

Getting lost in the details of exactly how long that takes to the second... is missing the forest for the trees.

Missing the forest for the trees is assuming that you are starting right beside the one with the gun. That's the immediate flaw in the whole line of reasoning. If a frieghter starts out an arm's length from the ISD, he's got way bigger problems because at that range, he's getting a tractor beam.

So basically, your whole point is, "If he's too close to the ISD, he's f-ed."

Which is so beyond obvious that it's simply understood. In fact, that's a worse situation than just being "in range", and the whole reason for giving chase in the first place.

This is without even giving a second thought to the fact that, to get right beside the ISD the target ship had to close distance to get there.

It's only in this narrow, completely implausible situation, that the distinction has the least bit of merit. In any situation where the fleeing craft is...you know...attempting to flee...it's a non-issue.

Of for pete's sake... stop fixating on the minutia. You're hammering on meaningless details in the analogy so fervently that one has to suspect you'd like to talk about anything other than the actual point. The situation was just an attempt to illustrate the thing that you appeared to be missing, not to give you a bone to gnaw on.

The point is, was, and always will be that it doesn't matter if you can outrun someone with a gun, he can still shoot you until you're out of range of the gun.

If the enemy ship's guns have a range of 30*X per Y time, and you have a speed of 2*X per Y time, and you start 20*X apart, you're still going to take 5*Y to get out of range -- assuming that the enemy ship is stationary. Add more time the faster the enemy ship is.

At the risk of jumping in late and coming across belligerent, it sounds to me like you're both missing the original point of the argument and just beating a confused semantics horse into the ground.

It seems like the original point was a counter argument to "Star Destroyers can't catch up to and overtake a fleeing freighter" by way of saying "they don't have to, they have long range and powerful guns, so they just need to stick around long enough to disable the other ship". If that's true, the intent was never to bog the discussion down in a back-and-forth about what an ISD would do if you began your day right next to it or if a person with a rifle could kill you while you were running around like an idiot. The point was that an ISD has to stay in the chase long enough for its considerable amount of guns to cripple you, which is a totally different beast than winning the chase through piloting alone.

Is that a totally reasonable argument? Well, probably not. But it's not the same one you've made it in the last two pages. Yes, Star Destroyers probably should be faster, and it certainly helps the SD to be able to keep pace with you regardless of whether it wants to shoot off your engines and leave you dead in space or overtake you to hover over the top of your ship like the ominous behemoth it is. However, the point that "you don't need to outrun the destroyer, you need to outrun its guns" is an admittedly poorly worded way to say that, up to this point, we've only factored Speed in - whether or not you can ultimately outrun the ISD - but the real issue is - I assume Max posits - if you can run away fast enough to get out of range of the guns before you're blown up and the Speed stops mattering. It's a salient point: in a snubfighter chase, you're generally fielding guns with Close range, unless someone brought missiles (which people in your freighter can spoof and such). As long as you can consistently win more opposed Piloting checks and maintain any distance longer than Close range, Speed and your relative Piloting skills are the only factor - even if it's a back-and-forth, so long as you're outside Close range, you're safe. Against a larger vessel with larger guns, your opponent has more ways to make up for poorer Piloting and, to a degree, poorer speed as they can simply keep shooting you at as you pull away. And, with a lot of guns (and assuming the Aim maneuver can be used to call shots in space combat as it can in personal combat), they're more likely to cripple engines and make up for lost ground in the end.

Granted, it's mostly a reasonable argument in theory. In practice... well, let's say that a Chase starts at Short Range - after all, who tries to flee a system circled by a Star Destroyer and thinks a good first step if to fly right up next to it? And since this is a chase and not a blockade run past a static ship, let's assume the ISD is already going Speed 2. Your (unmodified, sadly) YT-1300 is going Speed 3. You Succeed at the Chase check, putting you at Long Range. That gives one round of shooting with the big guns - and over half of an ISD's armaments are actually Medium Range, with the additional problem that everything outside of Short or Close range burdened by Slow Firing 1 or 2, so after that initial volley, the ISD is done. Even if its Long range guns weren't totally spent in all practical sense, the only hope the ISD has is to beat you at the next check because one more and you're past Extreme range. Of course, if it does pull in to Medium range, it has a whole host of weapons it can unleash on you, but it's an admittedly unlikely scenario given your average YT-1300 pilot is much more dedicated to the role than your average ISD helmsman and with the Talents and Attachments that come with any serious freighter and its pilot the situation only becomes more grim for the ISD. That means that, by virtue of the chase roll and its effects happening at the start of a round, your run-of-the-mill ISD-tries-to-run-down-a-smuggler scene lasts only one round.

I'm probably missing rules, I'll admit. I don't have a great enough grasp on space related maneuvers and actions to list every other advantage and disadvantage the ISD has. I know that none of the stock capital ship firing patterns (overwhelming, blanket, concentrated) provide any benefit at all to this situation, and the freighter can take maneuvers to make combat much more difficult for the ISD (and themselves, but who is really wasting energy shooting back?) . From where I'm sitting, it looks like the theory doesn't hold up in practice. Yes, in a lore sense, any captain or pilot trying to escape an ISD has to not only think "can I outrun them" but also "can I outrun them before I get blown to bits" - the concern represented by "outrunning the guns" which can, on a capital ship, stay in play much longer than those in a chase with a smaller vessel - but in this game the guns aren't really that much of a help. They just ensure the chase isn't an immediate auto-win by the faster vessel. I can also see that, grand scale, the guns are attached to the ship... a problem represented in this issue by the fact that, long range guns or no, it is so easy to escape an ISD that their attacks practically never become an issue (thanks to relative speed rules and Slow Firing), so even if theoretically their guns are a factor over a greater number of potential rounds in a chase, those rounds will likely never come up.

Overall? I would say that the "outrun them" vs. "outrun their guns" argument would be totally valid if the ISD were somehow capable of maintaining the Medium and Long range bands. Is it ever going to catch you on its own? No. But it wouldn't matter - it could shoot you until you can't run. You've effectively outrun the ISD by ensuring there is no practical way it can overtake you and end the chase, but you haven't outrun the guns. Even if you somehow break from Medium or Close range to Long range, you've made a huge quantitative leap but qualitatively you've done next to nothing. It's not a perfect resolution to the argument - after all, even in the scenario where the ISD maintains a relatively steady but manageable distance from you, it's important to remember, as hydrospanner insists, the guns are attached to the ship. The ISD only has the freedom to not care if it can't catch you because it can keep pace with you.

The short version is... well, it's that the argument is entirely semantics and basically useless. In an ideal scenario where the ISD isn't left in the dust like the game implies but can at least keep up like shown in the movies, you're both right and you're both wrong. However, by RAW the argument is skewed more in favor of hydrospanner's statement... even though the bickering devolved to the point where even hydrospanner seemed to lose sight of that. In RAW, the guns aren't a factor because a difference of even one Speed means a chase can be over practically before it begins. If the ISD has an exceptional pilot, able to match whatever PC is flying your freighter, it might be able to keep pace for an additional round, but as your freighter takes two steps forward for every step back, in a sense, it won't matter in the long run. The best likely case for the ISD is that you pull to Long range, take some hits, and then it closes to Medium range and has an incredible chance to cripple you. Maybe you go out to Extreme range and then the ISD pulls up into to Long, and by then its can fire again, but you can see at this point it's an untenable situation in the long run. Of course, clever readers will notice that, at this point, the only thing that gives the ISD a chance of winning is the guns (which, with high damage and Breach qualities can disable you in the blink of an eye)... bringing us back to the understanding that both of you are right and wrong and that, ultimately, the bickering isn't getting us anywhere.

In conclusion? Yes, the ISD's guns are dangerous - probably the only thing making it remotely a threat in a chase - but the examples of the movies mean it should be Speed 3 at least, or every ISD pilot needs to be extremely skilled and have some talents to compensate. To get back to the topic of the OP, the game doesn't represent the movies, and something needs to be done. In the movies, ISD's don't blast the opposing ship to near-slag every time and then limp up to them; it maybe cripples their engines while keeping up or even gaining. If you want to make your solution about the example that ISDs are hard to outrun, you need to do something with the speed mechanic or make the argument that all ISD helmsmen (or, at least Vader's) have some useful pilot talents and a good number of skill ranks. If you're in the camp that it's the guns you have to worry about - and even if they aren't hitting you they're forcing you to travel through an erratic path as you dodge laser fire while the ISD is free to move straight on with impunity - then you need a fourth firing option for massed guns and that somehow reduces or caps a target's speed to represent them zigzagging and dodging fire (or at least give an additional effect to blanket barrage when used in chases).

Of course, it's also important to remember that exceeding Hull Trauma doesn't immediately explode your ship, it just leaves it a sitting duck... and the ISD's weapons are more than capable of doing that do you in two hits (much less than it can throw out in a rounds). Still, the OP is right in that something is off, if not mechanically then thematically, and solving it without making the ISD too strong in a chase is difficult. And you can forget about being chased by a Victory. Speed 1? Bleh.

I think that everyone seems to have forgotten or overlooked that a round is "about" a minute long. So a "chase" that lasts 1 or 2 rounds is movie accurate. Also I think the gunners on an ISD would stagger their shots (not all fire at once) so they can disable instead of destroy a fleeing vessel in case more than one shot "in the same volley" hits. I think that the issue here is not the chase mechanic per se but the time resolution is in units as large as "rounds"... and I get that rounds are abstract and their length can vary as narratively appropriate... but unfortunately shortening the narrative duration of rounds in a chase scene doesn't increase the number of rounds in a chase scene to a coresponding narratively appropriate number.

Elias is right on point, 1 or 2 rounds to escape and ISD is plenty of time for a chase and plenty of action when one or two good roles out of those batteries can annihilate your ship. Keep in mind here that you absolutely need to group tons of batteries minion group style to even have a chance to hit an target as small as VCX-100 or YT-1300.

It has always seemed odd that Gunnery skill make a better Dogfighter than Pilot skill, the Dogfight rules you put in make it much more balanced.

You can not shoot something which is in your blind spot and "Gain the Advantage" is still a piloting check. Once they have you are in that hole, especially if the enemy is able to actually FLY his ship at highest speeds you 'never' get out of it. Pilot skill IS the most important thing in a dogfight, everything else becomes secondary. And this holds even more true as most ships allow for using actually dedicated gunners instead of the pilot shooting himself.

Back in the WEG version of the RPG, they were fast.

ISDs are faster than the Falcon in FFG's own Star Wars: Armada as well. Luke clearly states that the ISDs were "gaining" so all the talk about TIEs and gun ranges is irrelevant.

It's an easy enough fix to add one to the speed of the ISD (or all capital ships) to better match the movies. The lack of hyperspace chase rules is a more serious problem.

It's not about outrunning the Star Destroyer, it's about out running it's guns.

...which are attached to the Star Destroyer...last time I checked, yes?

Which are fairly long ranged.

That's completely irrelevant to the point of relative speed, though. The range of the weapon isn't changing, and it's travelling at the same speed as the ship it's mounted upon, so the distinction is completely meaningless.

It's like the stupid dad joke about, "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom! Ha-hyuk!"

It's not stupid, ask a skydiver.

And I don't laugh like that. its more of a Muttly snigger.

Your love of awful jokes aside, it still doesn't lend much credence to the argument of "the ship doesn't matter, it's the guns!". The ship giving chase and staying close is what allows the guns to continue to be effective. I can't believe that's a difficult mental obstacle for some.

Start out standing next to someone holding a rifle. Now run away.

How long does it take you to run out of the range of their weapon, on completely flat, completely open ground?

I get what you're saying. However, if I was running with a buddy while someone was shooting at me from a static position I wouldn't say "Are you kidding, at the rate they're gaining?" I'd say something like, "Holy ****! We're about to get shot!"

So while you have a valid point, I think there is nevertheless precedence for the significant speed of an ISD.

Elias is right on point, 1 or 2 rounds to escape and ISD is plenty of time for a chase and plenty of action when one or two good roles out of those batteries can annihilate your ship. Keep in mind here that you absolutely need to group tons of batteries minion group style to even have a chance to hit an target as small as VCX-100 or YT-1300.

It has always seemed odd that Gunnery skill make a better Dogfighter than Pilot skill, the Dogfight rules you put in make it much more balanced.

You can not shoot something which is in your blind spot and "Gain the Advantage" is still a piloting check. Once they have you are in that hole, especially if the enemy is able to actually FLY his ship at highest speeds you 'never' get out of it. Pilot skill IS the most important thing in a dogfight, everything else becomes secondary. And this holds even more true as most ships allow for using actually dedicated gunners instead of the pilot shooting himself.

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

It's the Empire. The really good pilots get put into TIEs so they can die quickly.

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

Piloting large ships isn't the same as with smaller ships. There's a lot more coordination between the helm and engineering. Most shows/movies don't show this as it means more cast to pay.

Frankly, I don't get the reason for big ships to be slower than smaller ships. I get they might have lower accelerations, but that doesn't mean their top speed can't be the same. Especially since we're talking about space where there is little in the way of resistance, meaning it is all about overcoming inertia instead.

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

To be fair, the Empire is usually portrayed as incapable of pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. They've jobbed so much it's stopped being funny.

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

Piloting large ships isn't the same as with smaller ships. There's a lot more coordination between the helm and engineering. Most shows/movies don't show this as it means more cast to pay.

Frankly, I don't get the reason for big ships to be slower than smaller ships. I get they might have lower accelerations, but that doesn't mean their top speed can't be the same. Especially since we're talking about space where there is little in the way of resistance, meaning it is all about overcoming inertia instead.

This is along the same lines as I suggested (and have implemented in older versions of SW RPG). The idea of smaller being faster is very relative to vehicle and environment, in a way I liken it to early (around 17th-ish century) naval vessels where the larger ships would travel a fair bit faster than their smaller cousins due to the fact that they could mount more/larger sails.

Han was boasting.. it bears no relevance to the argument/discussion/debate. Move along, move along.

...'..Kessel Run in 12 parsecs'

The only thing I will add to this is I've seen a few times references to the helmsman of the ISD having to be good to beat a PC, or how the pilot PC will be more focused than the ISD's Helmsman.

Lets take a step back here... This is an ISD.. this isn't a customs corvette.. a police ship, a raiding frigate, or some other lower end Imperial ship but a FRIGGIN STAR DESTROYER! Yes it should have a GREAT helmsman, the best of the best!

It's the Empire. The really good pilots get put into TIEs so they can die quickly.

It's the Empire. The really good (insert armed force, rank, personnel,vehicles, ships) got put on the Death Star to ALL DIE!! (except Vader)

Han was boasting.. it bears no relevance to the argument/discussion/debate. Move along, move along.

...'..Kessel Run in 12 parsecs'

EU - time isn't the only measure of "shortest"

Whether it be traveling closer to blackholes, or along some other path. Heck, airplanes here on Earth don't travel in straight lines to get to destinations as that does reduce the distance they have to cover (and therefore the time taken to get somewhere, heheh).

In-setting reason -- hyperspace is full of junk and shadows, and part of the challenge of making a fast run is making the shortest run in actual distance while avoiding it all.

Real reason -- George Lucas couldn't be arsed to do his **** research.

In-setting reason -- hyperspace is full of junk and shadows, and part of the challenge of making a fast run is making the shortest run in actual distance while avoiding it all.

Real reason -- George Lucas couldn't be arsed to do his **** research.

Like most writers, which is why cars explode when they hit, or have a strange tendency to jump into the air in a crash with another car.

Or just basic physics for most any story. Like fist fights where the worst that seems to happen is a slight limp or a bloody lip after a 10 minute brawl. Or people falling 40 feet and just walking away.