Hi all

yesterday while doing a chase, a TIE squadron used Gain the Advantage to put them on tail of a fleeing PC in a skyhopper. I thought that would be their "standard" rule of engagement in a dogfight using higher speed against opponent

however, now i was thinking if i used the action correctly, and some question arise

a) can a minion squad declare Gain the Advantage (or even Stay Focused)? if that's possible, could that mean every single TIE is on tail or just one while the other are doing some sort of covering file?

i assume the Gain Advantage is what TIE/ln was declaring while chasing Luke's fighter in the Death Star's valley at the end of ANH; so long, they are working like a single entity and put themselves all on the tail

b) the Advantage'd TIE can declare wich fire arc are shooting at. That's cool, against a bigger shielded target, but pretty useless against a smaller "papercraft" like the Skyhopper. However, skyhopper's cannon is fixed on forward fire arc, and because of TIE attacking from aft fire arc, skyhopper could'nt shoot at them.

Is that correct?

c) to disengage from "gain the advantage", the skyhopper has to roll a "gain the advantage" roll against TIE's speed, right? (i remember something similar but did'nt found it on rulebook)

in the next turn, assuming he could survive and TIEs does'nt do "gain the advantage" again, he can then shoot back the TIE, 'cause they are no more locked in a "chase the tail" fight type...

right?

i never played a dogfight before, so thank you for your help

A) I assume minion fighters are flying in formation most of the time, so I would concur on running it like Darth Vader and his posse in the Death Star trench. Minions can generally do anything another character can do, so long as it doesn't involve voluntarily suffering strain.

B) The ability to choose a facing is still significant against smaller craft, because the fact that they can normally choose which facing to take the shot on makes angling deflector shields a strong move. Why have your shields spread out at 1/1 when you can angle them forward to 2/0 and always take shots on the stronger facing? A ship that has the advantage on you forces you to rebalance your shields and get a correspondingly weaker defense. You are correct that a ship with a forward fixed cannon can't shoot on an opponent who has the advantage and is sitting on their tail. For that you need something like the BTL-S3's turret, which has Fire Arc All.

C) You are correct that it takes a Gain the Advantage action to get away from a ship that has the advantage on you, which is why fighters that get a TIE on their tail often either get blown up or rescued by another pilot. Note that the Hotshot spec gets a talent (Koiogran Turn) that allows them to break away from a ship that has the advantage on them with a maneuver instead.

a) can a minion squad declare Gain the Advantage (or even Stay Focused)? if that's possible, could that mean every single TIE is on tail or just one while the other are doing some sort of covering file?

i assume the Gain Advantage is what TIE/ln was declaring while chasing Luke's fighter in the Death Star's valley at the end of ANH; so long, they are working like a single entity and put themselves all on the tail

Yes, understand that minion grouping is really more of a GM trick to allow multiple throwaway characters to be tracked as if they were only one so the GM doesn't go totally insane and combat doesn't take a year per turn. So if a group succeeds at a GtA action, the entire group benefits.

b) the Advantage'd TIE can declare wich fire arc are shooting at. That's cool, against a bigger shielded target, but pretty useless against a smaller "papercraft" like the Skyhopper. However, skyhopper's cannon is fixed on forward fire arc, and because of TIE attacking from aft fire arc, skyhopper could'nt shoot at them.

Is that correct?

By book RAW, yes the skyhooper can still shoot back because the game isn't that fiddly.

HOWEVER, my group submitted this as a Dev question and got a message back from Fischer that the GtAing fighters does indeed populate the arc he selects as his target.

While we suspect that a different Dev might give a different answer, this actually does seem to work slightly better in-game. If a targeted craft puts all shields back, you have to choose between a tougher attack difficulty, or getting shot yourself. Likewise the TIE series, with it's high speed and handling becomes really good at GtA, making it actually make some sense in the system instead of being like other games where it's a throw away fighter the players will avoid using at all costs. This is also relevant to the Opposed piloting check entry.

c) to disengage from "gain the advantage", the skyhopper has to roll a "gain the advantage" roll against TIE's speed, right? (i remember something similar but did'nt found it on rulebook)

in the next turn, assuming he could survive and TIEs does'nt do "gain the advantage" again, he can then shoot back the TIE, 'cause they are no more locked in a "chase the tail" fight type...

right?

Yes, though every time you counter-GtA the difficulty in increased by one step. (last paragraph in GtA entry on pg 247)

You can also attempt a similar effect using an opposed check (pg 127) that will allow them to bring their guns to bear, but will not actually cancel out GtA, so all the other effects of GtA will still stand. (this is usually a better option for craft that are to slow to counter-GtA, or multi-crewed combat craft that have the weapons and initiative slots to make this work, one-man snub fighters are less likely to benefit and should instead counter-GtA most times)