Fellow greetings my fanboys,

I am currently developing a capital ship One-shot where the PCs take the roles of various officers around the starship.

I want to include a squadron officer who jumps into a fighter and simultaneously coordinates the fighter offence and defense of the ship. My first thought was to make this pregenerated character a Squaron leader because that makes sense like Gold Leader from episode IV, but since he will be flying with NPCs not fellow PCs I also saw the argument to make him an Ace Pilot who simply issues orders to about 6 or 7 NPC pilots like Luke in Rogue Squadron at the Battle of Hoth.

So my question is as a player and as a GM, which would you have more fun playing?

Honestly, make a list of all the types of officers on the capital ship and let the players decide what role they want to fill. Also, make it first come first serve, once a role is taken it cant be taken by another player. After that let the player build to that position however they want. If they fail at it so be it, thatll make the game more interesting.

If your going to use the Squadron rules from AoR GMK then the character will need a good Leadership roll, no matter what specialisations you choose. Then they also need a good Piloting pool as well, probably with decent Gunnery to match.

Personally I would be building a character around the Field Commander talent, with a good Leadership and Presence. Then focus on Agility, with some ranks in Piloting and Gunnery. Let the skills and basic Actions/Maneuvers cover the flying part, and have the core specialist thing be from Squadron Leader. There are a couple of cheap talents in the tree that boost the flying side of things, so grab those as well. Then give them some Rivals to boss around. Depending on the amount of CP the Form on Me talent works with alied NPC's too.

The version in my game is both...

Both Specs are certainly possible for such a character, so the question becomes which Career--Ace or Commander--should the character choose. This obviously also dictates which Spec is taken first. I would suggest Commander: Squadron Leader and then pick up Pilot in order to maximize the career skill spread.

Agreed. If he's got a squad of minions in tow, Piloting skill can wait - because he's got free boost dice to tests - and so can talents like tricky target/defensive driving - because he's got a tonne of guys to take hits for him, as long as he can hold the squad together. I'd use the Gamesmaster's kit squad rules and go with a commander for first call, and pick up ace later.

For a squadron commander I would go with squadron commander, especially in a one-shot.

Long-term the ace career seems more interesting based on signature abilities, better options with additional careers and the lack of leadership as career skill is just a 25 xp tax which gets compensated to a good deal by getting hotshot/rigger/gunner cheaper which builds to perfect third spec for such a character. Besides, the leadership role to form up a squad is not that hard AND you do not want to have your whole squadron as part of your formal "squadron" game state anyway, splitting up a squad of 12 into 3 or 4 flights makes a lot more sense, especially as rivals, nemesis and other pc can not use the squadron rules to build a super-unit anyway. Form on me makes little sense if you have just 11 minions as your meatshield, so organizing the squadron into flights and/or pairs of wingmen helps to improve the performance of the squadron to a great deal.

Though I would not expect a player to do all this relatively complex and rules reliant stuff on his own in a one shot in the first place, so go with squadron commander and don't sweat the details. ^.^