Just to make sure I'm understanding... if I'm reading correctly, your only source of extra hits comes from linked hits? If so, wouldn't it just do way more damage to fire a group of guns alone? Example, an impstar could concentrate barrage and score a total of 3s and 2a. That would give 14 damage, plus 2 advantage, which could activate linked, giving 28, yet not enough to activate the barrage ability. Or, you could fire guns in sections of 5 each, which if done correctly is your roll x5? Which could give over 40 damage a salvo, correct? Am I missing something here?

Good question.

I’m not clear on how barrage works, so I will add my own voice to wanting to see the answer to this one.

Another point to make, if your weapon isn't linked, like the medium turbolasers on a nebulon b, then there isn't another hit to be had...

The key phrase is: "If the attack succeeds, the character my spend one advantage to add damage equal to the number of weapons to one hit of the attack", this is key if you want to overcome high armor values, because it adds the damage to a single hit instead of spreading it over multiple hits.

The imperial class star destroyer comes for example with an armor of 10. Getting damage past that is not an easy task, especially with light weapons.

A light turbolaser is for example left with with 1 damage + successes against that, proccing link for two advantages would add another 1+successes. I would assume that you can proc the additional damage from concentrated barrage multiple times, adding each time the damage, which would give you allready 4 extra damage for two advantages even if you do have just two guns combined in the shot. Furthermore you can let the best shot take this shot, instead of spreading out fire between multiple, potential worse gunners, analog how you can use minion groups to combine several guns into one attack with a higher skill level. I supposed you could and should combine both to achieve more effective concentrated barrages and still get someone out of all those turbolaser batteries combined to get a skill level of 5 for the minion group.

But I guess its another a little vague formulated mechanic. For example is it unclear to me if you even can activate linked on concentrated barrage shots.

I mean, you'd have to if you wanted more than one hit, right?

I mean, you'd have to if you wanted more than one hit, right?

Yeah, definitely, you don't get multiple hits automatically and all those guns should count as used for the round as well.

The whole action sounds like something which you use if you need a high damage shot early in the init phase to destroy something before it can shoot back or if you need to concentrate fire to overcome defense/armor in one big shot instead of firing lesser impactful separate shots in multiple actions with a lesser skilled crew option.

But you can do much, much more damage with a both banks of medium turbolasers firing seperately than with a concentrated barrage. I don't see a point to it.

But you can do much, much more damage with a both banks of medium turbolasers firing seperately than with a concentrated barrage. I don't see a point to it.

Can you? Let's put this to the test: Imperial Gunnery Corps Minion has Gunnery (group only) and Agility 2.

An Interdictor Cruiser has Armor 5 and 5 dorsal and ventral, four port and starboard quad-laser canons with damage of 5, acurate 1 and linked 3. Let's put it against something easy like a pirate player gonanzi. The gozanti has armor 5 and as well quad-laser guns, one dorsal and one ventral, and twin heavy laser cannons on the sides with damage 6.

Sil is 5 vs 7, makes firing for the gozanti crew easy checks, while the imperial gunners roll a hard check. We assume a chase, which allows both ships to align their shields for a full defense of 4 and limits the firing arcs accordingly.

If you fire each gun solo you get a pool of AABDDDDSSSS. With 5 dorsal and 5 ventral shots you might hit a few times, but you do only as much damage as you roll successes. As I have no calculator to give you average damage output, I will just roll 10 times now.

(This shows here as well how advantageous the V-Shape from the star destroyers is as it allows to bring ventral and dorsal guns onto a front target without trouble, but that is a story for the narrative mechanics of the game ;-))

Round One

1. Miss, 1 threat
2. Miss, 3 threat
3. Miss. 1 threat
4. Miss. 1 threat
5. Miss.
6. Miss, 2 threat
7. Miss, 4 threat
8. Miss, 2 advantages, spend to boost the next shot twice.
9. Miss, 2 advantages, spend to boost the next shot twice again.
10. Hit with one success, 3 advantages, used tor one linked additional hit. 2 Damage to that Gozanti.

Overall Damage 2.

Alternatively, two Minion groups of 5, firing the dorsals and ventrals via concentrated fire. Dice pool is now PPAAABDDDSSSS.

1. 1 hit with one success, 2 threat, 1 damage
2. 1 Triumphal hit, 2 threat, applying either a critical hit and 1 damage or I would assume that the triumph could be spend to increase the lasers damage by 5 and dealing 6 damage to that Gozanti.

Overall damage 2 + one critical hit or 7 damage.

Round two (this time all minons use at least aim to get one extra boost dice)

1. 1 hit with one success, one threat. 1 damage.
2. Miss, 4 threat.
3. 1 hit with one success, 4 threat. 1 damage.
4. 1 hit with one success, 4 threat. 1 damage.
5. Miss, 2 advantages, used for another two boost dice.
6. Miss, 5 advantages, used for one upgrade and two boost dice.
7. Hit with three success, 1 Threat, 3 damage.
8. Miss, 2 threats.
9. Miss, one advantage spend for another boost die.
10. Miss, 2 threats

Overall damage is 6 damage.

1. Miss with one advantage.
2. Hit with 5 Success and 5 Advantages. If you spend one advantage to increase damage to 10, you can proc linked 2 times and deal 30 damage. Assuming you can spend one advantage multiple times you could go with increasing base damage to 15, proc link once and deal again 30 damage or you use spend all 5 advantage on concentrating fire and increase base damage by 25, dealing overall 30 damage again.

Overall damage is 30

Round 3

1. Miss
2. Miss.
3. Miss, 1 Theat.
4. Miss, 2 Advantages spend for 2 Boost dice next roll.
5. Hit with one success, 3 threats. 1 Damage.
6. Hit with two succes, 1 threat. 2 Damage.
7. Miss. 2 threat.
8. Miss.
9. Miss.
10. Miss, 4 Threat

Overall damage is 3.

1. Hit with one success, 3 advantages. 15 damage or 12 damage.
2. Mss with one advantage.

Overall damage is 15 or 12 damage.

And now I am gonna stop here, the pattern is clear that firing bundled cannons is advantageous if armor, skill level or both make it problematic to overcome the defense of your target. This test series shows as well that armor 5 is indeed a strong defense, increasing the damage per hit instead of increasing the number of hits usually proofed superior against high armor targets. This is something quite differently against targets with little or no armor. You see something similar with autofire weapons against high soak targets. I intentionally did not spend threats to reduce the dice pool, not only because my point is strong enough without an even worse dice pool for the imperial interdictor cruiser, but as well because it is often more useful against a capital to spend threats for collisions and other nasty things instead of reducing its dice pool. See Stay on Target for playing with the environment in space combat.

Exactly so.

Getting a hit on a star destroyer isn't that hard.

Getting a hit that hurts it is.

With light-to-medium weapons, you can use seperate shots, or trigger linked, or whatever, but each hit is a seperate entity, with armour, damage reducing talents, and whatever other shennanigans your opponent can muster applying each time.

With a concentrated barrage, it's just one hit causing upmty-ump damage - meaning armour only applies once.

Not to mention rolling once for each gun can eat up a lot of table time better spent doing other things......

Not to mention rolling once for each gun can eat up a lot of table time better spent doing other things......

This. In capital ship combat you have to limit the number of initiative slots for each ship. The order 66 podcast had a good sugestion in their episodes 48/49 about capital ship combat. I think it was something like 1 slot for the pilot, 1 slot for officers, technician or mechanic and 1 slot for every weapon type.

You don't want to roll for all 120 cannons of the Star Destroyer individually, do you?

May the evasive maneuver be with you

Fred

Concentrated barrage is good for two things:

1. Allows you to inflict a humongous amount of damage in a single hit, allowing you to do a lot of damage to ships with extreme armor values where lots of smaller hits would barely scratch them.

2. Allows a PC to roll for an entire battery of weapons instead of having to use minion rules for them, or making single minions roll for them. (Keep in mind that when you have a ship with a lot of turrets many targets are daunting or formidable checks to hit because of size difference)

But you can do much, much more damage with a both banks of medium turbolasers firing seperately than with a concentrated barrage. I don't see a point to it.

Can you? Let's put this to the test: Imperial Gunnery Corps Minion has Gunnery (group only) and Agility 2.

An Interdictor Cruiser has Armor 5 and 5 dorsal and ventral, four port and starboard quad-laser canons with damage of 5, acurate 1 and linked 3. Let's put it against something easy like a pirate player gonanzi. The gozanti has armor 5 and as well quad-laser guns, one dorsal and one ventral, and twin heavy laser cannons on the sides with damage 6.

Sil is 5 vs 7, makes firing for the gozanti crew easy checks, while the imperial gunners roll a hard check. We assume a chase, which allows both ships to align their shields for a full defense of 4 and limits the firing arcs accordingly.

If you fire each gun solo you get a pool of AABDDDDSSSS. With 5 dorsal and 5 ventral shots you might hit a few times, but you do only as much damage as you roll successes. As I have no calculator to give you average damage output, I will just roll 10 times now.

(This shows here as well how advantageous the V-Shape from the star destroyers is as it allows to bring ventral and dorsal guns onto a front target without trouble, but that is a story for the narrative mechanics of the game ;-))

Round One

1. Miss, 1 threat
2. Miss, 3 threat
3. Miss. 1 threat
4. Miss. 1 threat
5. Miss.
6. Miss, 2 threat
7. Miss, 4 threat
8. Miss, 2 advantages, spend to boost the next shot twice.
9. Miss, 2 advantages, spend to boost the next shot twice again.
10. Hit with one success, 3 advantages, used tor one linked additional hit. 2 Damage to that Gozanti.

Overall Damage 2.

Alternatively, two Minion groups of 5, firing the dorsals and ventrals via concentrated fire. Dice pool is now PPAAABDDDSSSS.

1. 1 hit with one success, 2 threat, 1 damage
2. 1 Triumphal hit, 2 threat, applying either a critical hit and 1 damage or I would assume that the triumph could be spend to increase the lasers damage by 5 and dealing 6 damage to that Gozanti.

Overall damage 2 + one critical hit or 7 damage.

Round two (this time all minons use at least aim to get one extra boost dice)

1. 1 hit with one success, one threat. 1 damage.
2. Miss, 4 threat.
3. 1 hit with one success, 4 threat. 1 damage.
4. 1 hit with one success, 4 threat. 1 damage.
5. Miss, 2 advantages, used for another two boost dice.
6. Miss, 5 advantages, used for one upgrade and two boost dice.
7. Hit with three success, 1 Threat, 3 damage.
8. Miss, 2 threats.
9. Miss, one advantage spend for another boost die.
10. Miss, 2 threats

Overall damage is 6 damage.

1. Miss with one advantage.
2. Hit with 5 Success and 5 Advantages. If you spend one advantage to increase damage to 10, you can proc linked 2 times and deal 30 damage. Assuming you can spend one advantage multiple times you could go with increasing base damage to 15, proc link once and deal again 30 damage or you use spend all 5 advantage on concentrating fire and increase base damage by 25, dealing overall 30 damage again.

Overall damage is 30

Round 3

1. Miss
2. Miss.
3. Miss, 1 Theat.
4. Miss, 2 Advantages spend for 2 Boost dice next roll.
5. Hit with one success, 3 threats. 1 Damage.
6. Hit with two succes, 1 threat. 2 Damage.
7. Miss. 2 threat.
8. Miss.
9. Miss.
10. Miss, 4 Threat

Overall damage is 3.

1. Hit with one success, 3 advantages. 15 damage or 12 damage.
2. Mss with one advantage.

Overall damage is 15 or 12 damage.

And now I am gonna stop here, the pattern is clear that firing bundled cannons is advantageous if armor, skill level or both make it problematic to overcome the defense of your target. This test series shows as well that armor 5 is indeed a strong defense, increasing the damage per hit instead of increasing the number of hits usually proofed superior against high armor targets. This is something quite differently against targets with little or no armor. You see something similar with autofire weapons against high soak targets. I intentionally did not spend threats to reduce the dice pool, not only because my point is strong enough without an even worse dice pool for the imperial interdictor cruiser, but as well because it is often more useful against a capital to spend threats for collisions and other nasty things instead of reducing its dice pool. See Stay on Target for playing with the environment in space combat.

Your dice pools don't account for the fact that each weapon on a capital ship can be crewed by a Minion group rather than a single Minion. We see that the guns on the Death Star have multiple crew and so do the weapons on the ships in the opening of Ep III.

If every single emplacement has 3-6 crew operating the weapon, then they become more appropriately fearsome.

Your dice pools don't account for the fact that each weapon on a capital ship can be crewed by a Minion group rather than a single Minion. We see that the guns on the Death Star have multiple crew and so do the weapons on the ships in the opening of Ep III.

If every single emplacement has 3-6 crew operating the weapon, then they become more appropriately fearsome.

That is actually not the case. You can group guns into batteries like I did. But per RAW it's one gunner per vehicle gun and not a group of 2 or 20 sitting around the gun controls. Besides you can always use rivals or even nemesis characters to increase the dice pool per gun, so that is not really an argument for against concentrated barrage. I picked a ships and npc accordingly to make my point, not to cover all potential options.

Besides, I am not rolling 200 times each time my group is running into an imperial star destroyer either. ;-)

Lastly, those guns of the example are quad-laser turrets, the same type of guns installed on the millennium falcon, I doubt that you fit a whole 5-man gunnery crew into those turrets.

It's not exactly the same gun. The larger Silhouette of the vehicle it is mounted on somehow makes it more difficult for it to track targets than when it's mounted on a smaller vessel. It's not hard to imagine that, on a large vessel, that weapon has a larger crew working it.

As for not wanting to roll 100 times, that's entirely a preference thing. A die roller can be set to resolve all of those rolls with a single click.

Not somehow, but very specifically because the vehicle the gun is mounted to is a lot more cumbersome and does not give as easy shots to fire and gets outmaneuvers a lot easier.

But whatever, does not matter really, if you add a 5 man minion group to every gun or or a gunnery 5 rival makes really no difference at all. Outside of the rival being able to double aim. ;-)

And yeah, that dice roller will auto-resolve the narrative results of the roll 200 times automatically just fine, move the fighters accordingly, etc, I got no problem with that either, I am not gonna do it, people are free to play how they like.

I am not sure why we are even talking about it, the fact stays that a 5 damage weapon against a 5 armor target is gonna do a lot less damage when you don't raise the damage significantly above those 5 damage. Furthermore, do me a favor: Start up your dice roller, and attack 50 times with a pool of PPAAABCCCCDSSSS. I do have this odd feeling that rolling each and every gun individual might destroy a star destroyed based on threat and despair if he tries to shoot at a jedi star fighter ace and his faithful astromech rigger.

And don't forget, each roll modifies the next on in actual play. So the setback dice and more difficulty upgrades pile up with each new roll and modifies the next one of those 50 rolls. At least with the use of a signature ability to survive that round of shooting.

Gunnery is a bit of a wonky skill in this game, because you're still making Agility based checks even when you're firing a battleship sized turbolaser or you're commanding a whole battery of guns. At that point it would make a lot more sense to roll Intelligence/Gunnery or Presence/Gunnery, since obviously firing a giant cannon that is aimed with power equipment and computers really doesn't require you to be overly coordinated or nimble.

As far as the difficulty being based on size difference instead of range is concerned, I think that makes perfect sense in the context. How difficult it is to fire a turret at a moving target depends on the angular velocity of the target and how often that target is changing its vector. So, it's not that the weapons on a larger ship are somehow more difficult to aim, it's that how difficult it is to aim at a ship is largely determined by whether it is running circles around you or you are running circles around it.

I am fine with gunnery being agility based, it covers from large personal scale rifles to death star super lasers. And while death star super lasers are indeed not manually aimed with, most other starship weapons are stilled indeed aimed manually in star wars, with your hands and a flight stick or yoke, etc

Same for piloting, btw.

Yea, the system works as is. I do feel it would be a sensible refinement to the system if once a ship or weapon becomes so large that it really can't react to what's going on the stat should flip to intelligence or willpower to represent that foresight and prediction have become the essential talent that sees you through. With a ship that's so huge that it takes a minute to turn around it simply doesn't help to be quick at the controls. Planning three moves ahead so you end up where you need to be does.

Furthermore, do me a favor: Start up your dice roller, and attack 50 times with a pool of PPAAABCCCCDSSSS.

$ ./dicecalculator.rb -D:PPAAABCCCCDSSSS

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: PPAAABCCCCDSSSS++++

Total Chance of Success: 27.84%

Total Chance of Advantage: 29.74%

Total Chance of Threat: 55.77%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 57.18%

Total Triumph Chance: 15.97%

Total Despair Chance: 29.39%

+++++++++++++++

Furthermore, do me a favor: Start up your dice roller, and attack 50 times with a pool of PPAAABCCCCDSSSS.

$ ./dicecalculator.rb -D:PPAAABCCCCDSSSS

++++RESULTS for Dice Pool: PPAAABCCCCDSSSS++++

Total Chance of Success: 27.84%

Total Chance of Advantage: 29.74%

Total Chance of Threat: 55.77%

Total Chance of Failure Symbol: 57.18%

Total Triumph Chance: 15.97%

Total Despair Chance: 29.39%

+++++++++++++++

Yeah, so much I get out of my head already, the issue is the streak of 50 shots and how the first result pushes the further results into a direction, while that ISD becomes more and more crippled from its own failing gunners. ;-)