Using a nuclear bomb to swat a fly should never be a viable tactic for players to use.

The Empire might DBZ an entire planet in order to make an example of it for other planets, but players should be actively discouraged from that kind of activity. Whatever they’re trying to achieve, the use of vehicle-scale weapons on personal scale targets should destroy the very thing they’re trying to do.

So Anakin was trying to make a good movie in this scene and GM Lucas said screw it, you are gonna pay for this?

https://youtu.be/MomPi52KpxI?t=1m

Besides, when players bring vehicle combat than literally everyone in the game can just move along. You won't outgun the empire, they build precisely for this reason a death star.. ;-)

The narrative correct answer for this kind of problems is: Once the player reached their ship, they have won. Blasting stormtroopers with vehicle guns in this case is just a bonus stage, you already won, because there is nothing infantry troops can do about it … outside of calling the heavy guns. The empire has plenty of heavy guns and the second you discharge your quad-laser cannons in a hangar might be the moment when the imperial star destroyer in orbit might discharge his guns onto your starship. But that is besides the point, the point is that using planetary scale weapons against personal scale enemies is just fine. What are the characters supposed to do? Get out of their ship and fight the imperial stormtrooper regiment mano a mano first before leaving the planet?

But playing tiddly-winks with them and tossing them into each other, that’s not really something we see in canon. And yet, this game makes that kind of mechanic pretty easy, if you don’t otherwise do something to reduce/eliminate that kind of behaviour.

I mean, if you want to read the rules in the most literal way, it doesn't say anywhere in the rules for move that you can actually move a person at all. It only ever mentions objects and items, never once does it use the words enemy, ally, person or target which denote an opponent in the parlance of FFGs rules. I think the reason why the rules are so screwed up is because they were written without the intent of actually being able to move enemies. It's only because we've seen people use move on other people and droids a bunch of times in the movies that people read "object" as "anything". The second you take object to actually mean object the rules make perfect sense.

We know that the rules as written by FFG differentiate between a person and an object, because for example the rules for Misdirect state: "unable to perceive a person or object of silhouette 1 or smaller" Why would it say "person or object" if objects included people?

When ask about the rules if you could levitate yourself with move FFG was pretty clear that you could. As objects can not be force wielders only persons can, your argument falls flat.

I think that using vehicle scale weapons against personal scale targets is the sort of thing that might do well as one phase of an adventure (freighter trying to shoot down the flying beasties that are trying to swarm it, that sort of thing) but shouldn't be a regular thing.

Basically, a scene where you get to mow down some minions is neat and perfectly thematic depending on circumstances, and (as has been mentioned) a nemesis is never dead until you see the body. (Rivals might be a problem or not, depending.)

That said, an inquisitor coming back as a cyborg after they got ship-weaponed sounds like a pretty great scene. I mean... I can't disapprove of that happening.

So Anakin was trying to make a good movie in this scene and GM Lucas said screw it, you are gonna pay for this?

https://youtu.be/MomPi52KpxI?t=1m

Droidekas in the movies don’t work like Droidekas in this game.

In the movies, Droidekas are nearly vehicle-scale weapons in and of themselves. Even Jedi can normally defend against one or two, but it takes a lot of experience and knowledge for even a good-size platoon or company to take on more than a couple of them.

In that case, since the Droidekas are effectively self-propelled light vehicle weapons in the movies, it makes sense that heavier vehicle weapons could be used against them and quickly take them out.

This is one aspect in which there is a notable difference between the way the movies played out and the way this game works.

AT-ATs against infantry and turrets at hoth:

Rogue One as another examples. those AT-ACTs seem to slaughter the rebel infantry.

Bombardment, Orbital and with Bombers against ground troops in TCW and Rebels, etc

Here another beautiful from the prequels: Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett on Kamino

https://youtu.be/8tMZdrUx8eM?t=35s

So yeah, the movies are full of such situations and the Fear rules in this game explicitly call for a real nasty fear check if you are the poor sob on the ground facing this terrifying enemy fire. So it is in the rules as potential scenario too. The one thing the rules and the canon really are not getting along is planetary scale weapons and reflect. We have a few cases of lightsabers reflecting TIE-Fighter fire. You could add this easily and allow reflect to apply before the conversion to personal scale, or not, depending on the taste you aiming for.

AT-ATs against infantry and turrets at hoth:

Rogue One as another examples. those AT-ACTs seem to slaughter the rebel infantry.

Bombardment, Orbital and with Bombers against ground troops in TCW and Rebels, etc

Here another beautiful from the prequels: Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett on Kamino

https://youtu.be/8tMZdrUx8eM?t=35s

So yeah, the movies are full of such situations and the Fear rules in this game explicitly call for a real nasty fear check if you are the poor sob on the ground facing this terrifying enemy fire. So it is in the rules as potential scenario too. The one thing the rules and the canon really are not getting along is planetary scale weapons and reflect. We have a few cases of lightsabers reflecting TIE-Fighter fire. You could add this easily and allow reflect to apply before the conversion to personal scale, or not, depending on the taste you aiming for.

The thing is, I don't think reflect is the only odd point in the vehicle/personal scale interaction. Consider how quickly Poe's X-wing was demolished by troops using blasters, the sand crawler scarred by blaster fire, stormtroopers acting like assembling their heavy squad weapon would actually do something against a light freighter space ship, etc. Vehicles (without exceptional armor like the ATAT which shrugs off even vehicle weapons) seem a lot more vulnerable to hand held weapons than 10x soak and HP would indicate. A missile launcher, with 20 damage and Breach 1, isn't even trashing a normal land speeder because they have 40 effective HP. In modern terms, that seems like shooting a sedan with an RPG only to leave it somewhat banged up, instead of burning wreck.

And by the same token, while vehicles are no joke offensively with big weapons, long range, and stable firing platforms, it doesn't exactly seem like they are massively more likely to take out major characters in personal scale combat than normal weapons. See Obiwan mitigating autoblaster fire. They're really effective at destroying positions or squads, but not exactly 3 or more times as good at dropping heroes compared to normal guns.

So maybe 10x HP, soak, and damage is just not exactly the best idea