So if I kill an enemy they should be allowed to shoot back with setback because of overlapping timing? I guess it really doesn't even matter if Han Solo shot first.

If you totally take them out as a result of your action, then no — they don’t get another action after yours and then wind up dying at the end of the round.

But if you don’t totally take them out, then yes — they get to take their action split seconds after you take yours, and while yours was resolved first, they do still get to take their action. Their action might be further modified by what you did as part of your action, but they still get to take it.

It’s not like you stop time for the entire field and only one guy gets to move or take any actions for an entire minute, and then the next guy gets to do all their movements and take all their actions, for their minute, and so on and so on.

This is why some people make the analogy to “Rocket Tag”. The party that gets to move first, if they can make their action big enough and effective enough, then the other party simply ceases to exist and never gets a chance to respond.

But if the other party is still standing and all you’ve done is piss them off, then they get to take their actions, and the timeframe of those actions is interleaved with the timeframe of your actions.

You may have been running into a doorway, fired some shots, and then ran out of the doorway, but during the time you were standing in the doorway and after you fired your shots, they got a chance to shoot back at you.

The rules of this game are fully built on sequential turns. You can make a realism argument against that, but not a rules argument.

Like I said, if you're going to argue that moving out of the line of sight doesn't count because the opponent was firing back in the meanwhile then running up to someone and whacking them with a concussive weapon shouldn't count either because they should have been firing back in the meanwhile. The more you get into this argument of what people should have been doing while you're performing your action the more you realize that the whole ruleset starts to unravel.

For example, you're holding a blaster rifle, a charging beast is at medium range from you, it will use two maneuvers to go from medium to short, and from short to engaged to attack you. The optimal time for you to fire that rifle would be in the middle of the enemy's move, right as they pass through the short range band, where you'd get to make an easy check against it. However, regardless of whether you're before or after that opponent in initiative, you have to take your shot at medium or engaged range, where the difficulty is higher. You cannot simply declare that you will take your shot during the opponents turn, even though in a world where all actions overlap that would be the smartest thing to do.

Sequential turns produce some weird results some time, you just have to roll with that. Another example from D&D is the knockback conundrum. If you walk up to an enemy and use a knockback ability you are then out of moves for your turn, so they can simply walk right back up to you and attack before you get to move again. If you let an enemy walk up to you and then use a knockback ability on them you can then move backwards to get out of their reach. Of course realistically there is no good reason why you should be able to knock someone back and then have time to retreat sometimes, but at other times when you knock someone back they can get back up and get right back in your face before you can move again, but for the sake of gameplay you just run with the limitations of sequential turns and strategize around these artifacts in the rules.

There are games like Battletech that are built on the idea of simultaneous resolution, and they function completely differently than Star Wars Roleplaying. For one, in a simultaneous resolution game the highest initiative goes last, because it actually becomes an advantage to be able to observe what your opponent does before you make your move. Since all effects are applied at the end of the turn there is no need to go first, it's better to know as many of the inevitable outcomes of the turn as possible before you decide what to do. Simultaneous resolution games also produce a gargantuan advantage to the person with high initiative that manifests in weird artifacts in the rules though. For example, if you have won initiative in a battletech game and your opponent has to move first they have to make their move completely blind to where you will be when the turn resolves, and you then get to make your move knowing exactly where the opponent will be. That means if you have initiative you can simply walk behind them, and the best thing they can do is try to position themselves so you can't do that.

No turn based system ever produces a perfect facsimile of real time battles, you always either end up with the advantage of having your actions resolve before the opponent's in sequential turn systems, or the advantage of foreknowledge of your opponent's move in simultaneous resolution systems.

Here's the thing, though: This game is not intended to be used with precise maps. You're not spending a maneuver to move 3 spaces out from total cover, shoot, and then move 3 spaces back into total cover. If one of my players were to insist on trying this, I would start hitting him with fat penalties. Why? Because in reality, this would be an utterly stupid tactic. I realize this is a game, and it can't model everything perfectly, but I'm not going to let the rules completely overrule common sense. If you run away from your covered-but-still-in-combat position, you're losing your vantage point and basically blinding yourself. You're not watching enemy positions, and you're not laying down cover fire for your buddies. If you try to just run back and forth, when you get back, everything has changed. Your enemies have moved forward (because you haven't suppressed them), they're now behind different pieces of cover, and what you thought was a perfectly covered position is now exposed, and you're taking blaster fire as soon as you get there.

Besides, what you're advocating is pretty clearly not Rules As Intended, and only RAW for certain interpretations. At my table, it's already rolled into Heavy Cover. Those two black dice don't seem like much, but they can save your bacon. Especially since, when given the choice between shooting at the guy in cover and the guy in the open, my bad guys will shot at the guy in the open pretty much every time, so that doorway or rock does double duty keeping you alive.

Greetings fellow Star Wars Fans,

I don't see a problem with running in and out of sight while shooting. It is something completely different than the cover mechanics. In order to take cover, you gain 1-2 setback on all opponents attacks until the cover is either destroyed or you move out of cover. You can use your maneuvers in the following rounds to aim, which the other tactic doesn't allow.

If you move into sight, shoot and move out of sight, you are not in cover, so enemies can shoot at you without penalty as soon as they themselves move into sight. This has IMO nothing to do with how precise the map is, but it certainly won't be possible on any location but relies on the current layout of the map, be it a physical one or one in the players' and GM's minds. But this is also true for taking cover. If the GM doesn't provide anything to take cover behind, then that maneuver won't be an option.

I'd like to vary the earlier example slightly, to make it more clear, why I think this should be possible: Take a room with Stormtroopers, door currently open, PC wins initiative: PC moves in front of the open door (one maneuver) and into sight, shoots (action), and then CLOSES the door with a second maneuver (taking 2 Strain). Surely, you wouldn't have the Stormtroopers shoot through the closed door, because "the PC was able to shoot, so they should be able to shoot him"?

I certainly wouldn't. The Stormtroopers weren't quick enough to react, therefore no shooting for them.

Now, that doesn't mean the Stormtroopers sit on their hands and wait for the PC to open the door, shoot at them and close the door in the next round. No, either the Stormtroopers are close enough to the door, to move towards it and take cover close to it, so they can open it and shoot in the next round or they might take improved cover somewhere else and call for back-up. A Rival or Nemesis might even move to the door, open it and shoot the PC in the face.

This is also true if the PC moves out of sight instead of closing the door. It's mechanically the same: The PC spends 1 maneuver to be momentarily safe, unless the NPC catches up.

I can't really see a setup, where moving in and out of sight while shooting becomes game breaking. The NPC won't just sit around and wait to be picked of one by one, just because the PC is momentarily out of sight. In most cases taking cover is more sensible option, unless you are trying to get away from the enemy.

May your cover always stack with your defense (whoops, totally different can of worms )

Fred

I don't see a problem with running in and out of sight while shooting. It is something completely different than the cover mechanics. In order to take cover, you gain 1-2 setback on all opponents attacks until the cover is either destroyed or you move out of cover. You can use your maneuvers in the following rounds to aim, which the other tactic doesn't allow.

Exactly. When you use movement to avoid getting attacked in the vast majority of situations the enemy can use movement to counter it. If a situation arises where the enemy can't counter it then the player isn't at fault for recognizing a winning move, the GM is at fault for creating a flawed encounter. It's a situation that is no different from, let's say, placing a powerful melee enemy at the bottom of a hole. Unless there is something trying to throw you down the hole why shouldn't the player just stand at the edge and shoot it dead from total safety? Enemies that attack unsupported from extreme range where they have no chance to make a countermove simply have to disengage and harass the player again later, or attack at a time when the players are in a killzone where they can't maneuver out of the line of fire.

Great debate everyone, thanks for the replies.

I feel like the problem with moving in sight, shooting, moving out of sight, is that narratively it doesn't make any sense. Opening and closing the door, while shooting in between, might make more sense.
One important thing to mention, if i am right. I think the rules of moving says something about not being able to move to two different locations in one turn. Like moving here, shooting, and then moving elsewhere. I am not sure you can designate two different locations to move in one turn. (Engaging and disengaging is different, because you dont technically move). I am not sure about this either, but someone in the group mentioned that everything happens at the same time in your own turn. What i mean by this, is that when you move here, and then shoot, it happens simultaneously. You move here, while you shoot. Since you can't see your opponent as you begin your turn, you can't shoot them. The problem here is that changing the range between you and an enemy, your shot would only count as the range your had before. I am not sure any of this is true, but let me know.

All maneuvers and actions in this game are applied sequentially.

You have to basically imagine the turns in the game like a movie, it's not that everyone else just stops shooting while you take your turn, but while the camera is focusing on you everyone is just background acting.

Detention Center Shootout

When you watch this classic Star Wars combat scene you can pick up on how despite the fact that the action looks dynamic and ongoing people are kind of taking turns doing things.

The door blows open, the action is on Han and Chewy, they kill a Stormtrooper and move back into the detention block. Now the action is on the stormtroopers, who fire but miss, scaring the heroes into cover. Now the action goes to Luke and C3PO, who have a quick conversation, after which R2D2 rolls a despair on his computers check and has Imperials knocking on the door. The action goes back to Han, who shoots another Stormtrooper. Now Leia takes an action and shoots out the grid of the garbage chute, maneuvers to get inside. Han has to make a Leadership check against Chewy to convince him to jump in the chute as well. The stormtroopers make another attack, in a movie the characters don't have hitpoints, but you know they are closer to losing when the music turns more dark, then Luke moves into the chute, and Han moves into the chute.

The action never stops, the Stormtroopers are always shooting, the other characters are always returning fire, but the movie shows you a sequence of events that is easy to follow by making it so that only one character at a time is ever actually changing something about the scene.

By the way:

Han chases Stormtroopers

This is what moving into a room, firing at a stormtrooper and running back out of the room should look like in your mind. It's not that the Stormtroopers didn't fire back, it's just that it needs to be their turn for their fire to be effective.