18 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Setback dice are capped at 4. It's trivially easy to overcome this with Talents, Minion swarms, or even a halfways competent Ace.

Defense is capped, not setback dice.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Defense is capped, not setback dice.

Ahh, good point, this is setback from terrain. Though generally speaking even raising the number of setback dice to 5 doesn't really affect a whole lot when you take into account the many Talents that can negate setbacks, upgrade the roll, allow rerolls, or any of the rest. And not every battle in space will have "terrain", remember that going into an asteroid field was NOT a standard maneuver.

20 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

I'm not going to quote your quotes of my quotes, because down that cascade, madness lies. So I'm going to try and just address them in lumps.

You talk about how the ship can be taken out super quick, and it means the player loses turns because they can't do anything. Again, how is this any different than a player being dropped in one shot (which does happen), and being unable to act for a few turns because they are unconscious? And again, I stress that just because the ship is out of commission, doesn't mean the player is. They are still alive, and awake in the ship, and able to take actions to fix their situation, or even help the fight. Perhaps their engines are out, but their systems are still working, so they are able to do some combat slicing to hamper an enemy ship.

To your comment about the system being narrative, not simulationist. I agree, you are the one who was citing how the combat mechanics in the movies were apparently informing the rules. And saying that the space combat in the movies was dangerous. And I was saying that it's only dangerous, in the movies to the minions. The main characters never experience the high danger of space combat. They don't blow up in one shot, they don't get (usually) shot down in one hit, though Luke did in his speeder in Empire. And since the PCs are supposed to be the main characters, to say they are subject to the rules that only apply, in the movies, to the extras, seems unfair.

You also say that RPG's are not movies, and shouldn't be subject to the constraints of movie logic for the logistics of funding a war. I agree, however, I'm not the one citing the movies for why the combat should be as lethal as it is. You are. If you are going to use movie logic to justify the combat being how it is, and it being as costly as it is, then you should also use movie logic to justify the support structure that allows that combat. You don't get to cherry pick aspects and ignore others. If you are going to have the combat be so cost prohibitive, that it's constantly bankrupting your players, then you should either not make it so dangerous, so they are almost insured to never lose their ship. Or you shouldn't focus on combat so much. Or, you should have the invisible support structure be in place to back them. I don't see how this is a big issue, if you KNOW your campaign is going to center on massive amounts of space combat, and you don't have a system for replacing those vehicles, then you are not fully fleshing out your campaign.

As to the players not being linked to the Rebellion, and thus not having that backing, then why are they engaging in tons of space battles? And they don't need to be part of the Rebellion to get backing. They could work for the Black Sun Cartel, or the Hutts, or any number of corporate entities, that would provide them with support and equipment for their activies. Again, if the point of the campaign is to be space heavy, then there needs to be an equivalent system in place to reflect what is actually there in the Star Wars universe.

If they are still wanting to fly it solo, well then they need to be aware that they might lose their ship. They can get a new one in plenty of ways that lead to fun. They could take a page from Rebels, and steal some ships. No cost needed, just some possible Obligation due to the annoyed previous owner. They could get into any number of interesting deals to get the credits to buy one, now with a debt obligation, etc. A good GM will provide them ways to replace their ships without too much issue, it's up to the players to take advantage of it. And then maybe not seek out space combat, if they aren't focusing on it.

44 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Again, it's not that they get hit , it's that they get knocked out of the fight (without ion cannons) without being destroyed. Can you name a single instance of that in all the movies?

He already has, Wedge Antilles. The Prototype Ace of of the rebellion in legends. ;-)
edit:
And I personally would like to add Luke, R2 is repairing the ship with damage control during the attack on the first Death Star and allows Luke to continue the fight. Astromechs are awesome and so is damage control.

11 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Ahh, good point, this is setback from terrain. Though generally speaking even raising the number of setback dice to 5 doesn't really affect a whole lot when you take into account the many Talents that can negate setbacks, upgrade the roll, allow rerolls, or any of the rest. And not every battle in space will have "terrain", remember that going into an asteroid field was NOT a standard maneuver.

All those talents and nice effects are not subject to your John Doe TIE-Pilot, not even to John Doe Ace TIE-Pilot rivals

Aswell keep in mind that while 4 setback dice are the cap in space combat, it is as well the norm for rebel fighters based on aligning shields, astromech actions and pilot talents and the ability to pick the side you get hit. Any PC pilot worth his salt gets usually his defense 4 + whatever upgrades and additional setback dice he can generate from his action. Usually those are upgrades adding more challenge and difficulty dice to the pool.

Last time we had this discussion you gave me the challenge to deal with larger amounts of TIEs in a TIE-Fighter, my personal record so far is 24 TIE-Fighters without getting hit even ONCE. Admitted I was 1 below my strain threshold after 3 rounds and my astromech is a top notch Ace: rigger/scientist, but I was as well out of my comfort ship and into a bog standard alliance X-Wing without any mods. Lost not a single ship in my squadron either ;-)

Just now, KungFuFerret said:

You talk about how the ship can be taken out super quick, and it means the player loses turns because they can't do anything. Again, how is this any different than a player being dropped in one shot (which does happen), and being unable to act for a few turns because they are unconscious?

Because it happens far more often to a player in a ship than a player on the ground. Please read my posts.

1 minute ago, KungFuFerret said:

And again, I stress that just because the ship is out of commission, doesn't mean the player is. They are still alive, and awake in the ship, and able to take actions to fix their situation, or even help the fight.

They player is out of commission until the ship is back IN commission. This takes up an action (if the player is lucky or the roll is easy). Then the player gets taken back OUT of commission. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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Perhaps their engines are out, but their systems are still working, so they are able to do some combat slicing to hamper an enemy ship.

I shouldn't have to take slicing to be able to be effective in combat as a starfighter pilot.

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I agree, you are the one who was citing how the combat mechanics in the movies were apparently informing the rules.

Noooo, I was informing you that the movies in form expectations. Getting to hull threshold 0 is not "taking a hit" in the movies. It is being catastrophically disabled, to the point where the fighter is out of the fight until the pilot can manage to get it back online. This does not happen once in the movies; every fighter taken out of commission explodes violently. Thus, the expectation is carried over to the game. It may not necessarily be right , but it's why people hgave this perception, and running a game where people are constantly being disabled without the use of ion cannons in fighters isn't in line with what we see in the films.

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You also say that RPG's are not movies, and shouldn't be subject to the constraints of movie logic for the logistics of funding a war. I agree, however, I'm not the one citing the movies for why the combat should be as lethal as it is.

I'm saying that if you follow the movie logic, starfighters should have more defensive agility because only unskilled minions get taken down like flies, not heroes.

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As to the players not being linked to the Rebellion, and thus not having that backing, then why are they engaging in tons of space battles? And they don't need to be part of the Rebellion to get backing. They could work for the Black Sun Cartel, or the Hutts, or any number of corporate entities, that would provide them with support and equipment for their activies. Again, if the point of the campaign is to be space heavy, then there needs to be an equivalent system in place to reflect what is actually there in the Star Wars universe.

So basically, players shouldn't be able to fight impossible odds and survives on the basis of their own skills and talents? They should just find a magical patron with bottomless pockets to fund their constant trail of wrecks across the galaxy? How is THAT fun for the players?

29 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

1. Because it happens far more often to a player in a ship than a player on the ground. Please read my posts.
2. They player is out of commission until the ship is back IN commission. This takes up an action (if the player is lucky or the roll is easy). Then the player gets taken back OUT of commission. Wash, rinse, repeat.

1. My pilot is hitting the ground more often with his body than with his ship. Focus fire usually takes him down in a single turn if he is not careful enough to get out of range before the opposition acts.
   My pilot was in about as many vehicle combat scenes as in ground combat scenes and so far has not been even hit once. Either he controls range via chase rules, arranges for the opposition to die in a fire before they can shoot or controls their fire-options with GtA and makes himself a daunting or formidable target via tools like tricky target, ECM, Weave, One with the Fog, Watch your Vector, Heavy Flak, evasive maneuvers, Tuck and Roll, and nightshadow coating, etc. Always depending on what kind of ship he uses. Just running away is a solid choice in sil 5+ freighter, you ain't outmaneuvering fighters in that, but you can force them into a chance and use superior range against them.
2. That is not how it works as damage control to repair hull trauma is a once per encounter thing. But hey, my awesome, sweet and totally loveable astromech does quite a lot of damage control actions between my turns, I tend to burn quite a lot system strain if that mech is around, because it saves me strain, burning 4 strain instead of 6 per round helps at least somewhat.

On 4/5/2017 at 8:23 PM, KungFuFerret said:

Right, I understand it's a concern that people voice, like I said, it's been popping up on these forums for years. My point, is that's it's a false concern. In most of these threads, when I browse them (I admit I don't read all of them, or every post), the entire conversation seems to just orbit around the "OMG space battle is so deadly it sucks! I can't have fun if my PC dies!" kind of statements. Nobody, that I've seen, has ever made an effort to simply say "no, you are not playing it right. The ship doesn't blow up when at 0 HTT, it just goes dead, just like your PC goes unconscious."

My point that it seems to be unusually focused on space combat, is that I don't see an equal number of threads that say "OMG personal combat is so deadly! I can't have fun if my PC dies!". The amount of space hate is disproportionate, and apparently isn't being resolved by the discussion, because it keeps coming up, sometimes by the same people.

I mean heck, I would be kind of one of those people. I've never done space combat, when I GM'd this game, it was always personal scale stuff, but I always was under the impression, based on the player community, that space battle is just super lethal, in comparison to personal . Everyone seemed to agree on this, and nobody could seem to come up with a way to "fix" it. I even made a thread like a year ago, with ideas on how to fix it. And nobody in that thread said "it's not any more dangerous than personal, because the ships don't blow up when they go 0 HTT". All the responses were critiques of my ideas on fixing the assumed problem, or their own ideas on fixing it.

But this time, I actually asked if it was supported by the RAW, and the answer was apparently "no, it's not". Which doesn't seem to be getting out there in the community much. Hence, why we keep having these threads, that go on for page after page, of us chasing our own tails about something that is, apparently, a problem of our own making.

I get what you are saying, and I understand that there are always going to be new players, that have to be educated on the nuances of the rules, and the overlooked details. But it doesn't take 5+ pages to do that. These space battle threads should all be like 6 posts tops. We correct the error, and then it dies there. No reason to hash it out for weeks. If the thread mutates into a different discussion about space battle that's fine, threads morph, that's just a fact. But it shouldn't be a lengthy discussion about what is apparently, not actually an issue.

Now this thread is different, as it is talking about combining system rules, which is a different topic to the basic "space battle is super deadly" one we keep seeing. A thread which we kind of hijacked away from the original topic. Sorry angry penguin!

I am constantly telling people in those threads 0 hull is not boom. It tends to not sink in very well...

6 hours ago, Daeglan said:

I am constantly telling people in those threads 0 hull is not boom. It tends to not sink in very well...

Reaching your Hull Trauma Threshold is not even out of combat, as you need to exceed it, right? ^-^ (and technical zero hull means you got no damage at all, as this system is counting up ;-))
See the X-Wing example someone made on page 3 , which turns out that 10 damage to an X-Wing does not take it out, but leaves it in a state when any additional damage would take it out.

10 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Reaching your Hull Trauma Threshold is not even out of combat, as you need to exceed it, right? ^-^ (and technical zero hull means you got no damage at all, as this system is counting up ;-))
See the X-Wing example someone made on page 3 , which turns out that 10 damage to an X-Wing does not take it out, but leaves it in a state when any additional damage would take it out.

exactly....

On 4/5/2017 at 9:31 AM, 2P51 said:

I've never had heartburn after the squadron rules. Seems in line with the movies. Gotta have your Porkins, and Biggs, and Wedges, taking hits so you get your shot off.

I ran a lead-in to the latest play-test with my guys as Y-wing pilots each with 2 loyal wingmen. None of my PCs were lost, but they lost 8 or 9 wingmen, in return took out like 15 TIEs and a small cap ship. Seemed about right to me.

Seems like it works perfectly to me.

Back to topic. It's fairly well proven in this threat, that in RPG, it's still very hard to actually kill PCs in space combat (incapacitating and getting them out of combat is another matter), unless GM and player want the PC to die. In X-Wing when ship gets damage equal or over its hull, it is destroyed. Now, because of different focus of the X-wing, rules don't take into account the pilot. As stated before, in movies non hero pilots generally don't survive being hit, but go down with their ship. And IMO, X-Wing describes those minion/rival pilots well. Hero pilots may be different story.

Top 4 reasons for me not to combine those to game lines are:

1. Focus of game (abstracted narrative storytelling vs literal tactical simulation)
2. Narrative dice
3. Destiny points (adding it to x-wing is possible, but adding narrative element to tactical game is probably not best solution)
4. I don't think combining those game systems add anything to actual game.

Bottom line: I don't see any reason to artificially combine those to games, because they were not meant to be combined. Now If someone thinks they gain something from combining them, then more power to them. Generally I just wouldn't recommend that to inexperienced GMs.

As a veteran Rp'er - older, wiser, more world weary etc - all I saw was a 'How can we get two groups of players of two vastly different games buying our s*** and doubling our $$' article. OK, I like both the RPG line and the minis (toy ships) game, but if the suggestion ever came up in a game of Edge I'd much rather be in a YT-1300 or a VCX-100... I feel sorry for those poor saps in a TIE Fighter

Exceeding a wound theshold merely disables the ship, so with a machanics check you can either reduce the hull to below theshold, or alternatively jury rig it so it can limp to relative safety.

Sometimes the starship is lost, so all you can do is wait for a pickup or alteratively crash land. Theres nothing wrong with either of those things in moderation.

As an old-school fan of Battletech, I remember loving the second edition of Mechwarrior; it found a perfect method of merging the tabletop wargame with an RPG.

But... The key to the BT universe is this: MOST people prefer the wargame and just use the RPG as a fluffy means of creating some drama for their combat.

With these FFG Star Wars games, it seems X-Wing and the RPGs have separate and fairly content fanbases. (I actually own a little more than 40 X-Wing miniatures and all of the EotE books. That said, I have never felt the need to merge the two games.)