Just a general question on how the rules work in regards to using personal scale weapons against vehicles, because I was always under the impression that missile tubes and heavy repeating blasters were portable anti-air defenses that could be used to knock out fighters, and even scare away larger starships. (In Rebels the Ghost gets damaged by E-web cannons and has to retreat, in Rogue One they shoot the leg off an AT-CT with a side gun on a transport, though a shoulder fired missile fails to harm the walker, in Force Awakens Poe's X-wing gets blown up by blaster fire) By SWRP rules it seems that a missile can't actually really damage a TIE fighter though, it just has too much armor. So, just a question on how the rules work here:

A missile tube has damage 20, breach 1, and is a personal scale weapon. A TIE-fighter has vehicle armor 3, which means even after breaching 1 of those, the missile barely just breaks the TIE fighter's armor.

So here is the question: Do I need to roll 10 successes on the missile shot to actually do damage to a TIE fighter, or will a lower number of personal scale damage count?

If personal scale damage does count, is the TIE fighter treated as having 60 hitpoints when taking personal scale damage?

Can I activate a crit off the missile if I only inflict a few points of personal scale damage with it?

And most importantly: Is there some kind of rule about using missile tubes or other personal scale weapons against vehicles that I'm overlooking entirely?

Yes, there's an implicit assumption written into the rules which makes these sorts of encounters a lot easier.

Vehicles can count as Minions too. Furthermore a crit on a vehicle only has to equal a vehicles armour value to count.

If you hit a TIE Fighter with a Missile Tube or Light Repeater Blaster you should only need to score a crit to take it out. Same can apply for any other 'disposable vehicle'.

RAW regarding personal scale weapons vs vehicles makes it nearly impossible to harm vehicles in the ways shown in the movies and shows. Here's some ways I've learned you can still affect vehicles:

Anti vehicle mines have breach 4 and I believe around 20 damage. They can get a couple points of damage in maybe, but aren't going to destroy vehicles.

Anti-Vehicle Fletchette Cannons are good against vehicles.

Missile tubes are almost ineffective against vehicles with armor. However, in the same way you can take a maneuver to aim and take 2 setback dice to shoot a blaster out of an adversarie's hand or temporarily cripple them by aiming for their knee, you can aim (most people refer to it as a called shot) by taking the 2 setback and if you happen to hit you can deal one of the component criticals listed in tables 7-10 and 7-11, depending on the size of the ship.

Also, if I recall correctly, as long as you deal enough to get past the armor, even if the vehicle takes no hull trauma, you can still crit the vehicle, unlike with personal scale where you have to deal wounds to activate a critical.

*EDIT*

I forgot about considering the vehicles themselves as minions. That also makes a lot of sense and is thematic. TIE Fighters should collapse pretty easily.

I'm not a fan of the 10:1 ratio, too many times in the media we see people shooting at vehicles. Against speeders and the like it's very often effective, against ships it's rare, but still occasionally useful. I think it can be more effective to simply drop the conversion rate (e.g.: 5:1), or bump up the Breach values on certain weapons. A missile really shouldn't have trouble causing damage, and likely critical damage, to anything Sil4 or lower, whether it's piloted by a minion or not.

I think my main issue with the personal to vehicle scale transition is that if you were firing a weapon that was vehicle scale 2 damage and you rolled 3 successes you'd be punching through a TIE's armor and then some, but if you were firing a weapon that's personal scale 20 damage and you rolled 3 successes it does nothing, even though technically these weapons do the same damage.

I'm kind of tempted to just rule that a Missile Tube is a Personal 20 when used on people and a Vehicle 2 when used on vehicles, that way it's damage doesn't go bonkers when you shoot it at personal scale enemies, but it isn't completely toothless against vehicles either.

Same with the E-web, just treat it as a Vehicle 1 damage when firing at vehicles and suddenly there is some serious potential in it.

Maybe it would even be fine to count any regular weapon as a vehicle 0 damage when used on vehicles, so a high skilled attack with anything can inflict damage.

Vehicles can count as Minions too. Furthermore a crit on a vehicle only has to equal a vehicles armour value to count.

Ok, being able to crit by just beating the armor at least means TIE fighters are vulnerable to missiles.

I don't think vehicles with minion rules get destroyed by a single crit though, since the vehicle is equipment, only the pilot is a minion.

There is a bit of weirdness in the rules when it comes to minions and their equipment though, like if you're a Jedi trying to disarm a mob of angry people by sundering their weapons with a lightsaber, with 5 advantages and a half way modded Ilum crystal you could slaughter the whole minion group, but it'd take 30 advantages to destroy their guns if you count them individually.

Perhaps you could add a house rule weapon special ability called "anti-vehicle". When a weapon with the Anti-Vehicle rule hits a vehicle, convert the weapon's damage to vehicle scale. Thus, a missile tube that deals 20 damage with breach 1 now deals 2 vehicle scale damage and ignores 1 armor. However, it still deals 20 damage against infantry, because it's a friggin' missile.

Perhaps you could add a house rule weapon special ability called "anti-vehicle". When a weapon with the Anti-Vehicle rule hits a vehicle, convert the weapon's damage to vehicle scale. Thus, a missile tube that deals 20 damage with breach 1 now deals 2 vehicle scale damage and ignores 1 armor. However, it still deals 20 damage against infantry, because it's a friggin' missile.

And make sure to use the Gunnery skill when firing against vehicles like that.

Hmm, at some point we'll have to make a thread that collects all these good ideas for 2nd Edition

Can I activate a crit off the missile if I only inflict a few points of personal scale damage with it?

Yes! You only need to exceed the Armor rating of a vehicle to be able to crit. You need not do hull trauma.

So....

How to RAW kill a standard minion operated TIE fighter with a missile tube:

Shoot the missile at the tie fighter and hit.

Do enough damage to exceed the Armor rating (simple).

Roll enough advantage to Crit (not easy, but not hard).

The TIE is now dead.

I thought only the pilot was a minion, not the starfighter.

I thought only the pilot was a minion, not the starfighter.

Technically, that is correct.

However, for cinematic story purposes, the GM can choose to be flexible.

Well, fighting a TIE fighter on foot is actually kind of a boss battle, not a minion encounter. When you're in a ship 9 damage kills the TIE, and that's fairly easy to do with a vehicle damage 6 weapon.

I thought only the pilot was a minion, not the starfighter.

Okay, so your attack kills the minion pilot, and the TIE crashes and is destroyed.

Simple!

You could always just create an armor piercing missile. Like Damage 15, Breach 3, etc.

Well, fighting a TIE fighter on foot is actually kind of a boss battle, not a minion encounter. When you're in a ship 9 damage kills the TIE, and that's fairly easy to do with a vehicle damage 6 weapon.

This is all going to depend on the encounter design, and will be based more off what the players are able to do and it's part in the narrative.

One of the things to bear in mind for the "TIE Strafing" encounter is the difficulties and damage modeling.

- Assuming the players are normal Sil 1 character, the TIE's base difficultly will be three Purple. The players can still take cover, or go into concealment to add 1 to 3 setbacks on that, but the bottom line is 3 purple isn't that tough when the average TIE Pilot minion has 3 Agility. A TIE Ace Rival have 4 agility and a few skill points to boot, making it even easier. So when strafing the TIE will hit more often than miss.

- Damage is huge. So assuming the TIE pilot hits with just 1 success, he'll be doing 70 damage to the guy on the ground. Thanks to the game's damage modeling that's not a death sentence, but he's probably out of play for this encounter and it's going to take most, if not all, of his daily stimpack ration to get him walking again. So basically, once the TIE hits you, you're out.

- As you noticed, damage against the TIE is not huge. A TIE has Armor 2, so the Missile Tube will only do about 1 hull point of damage per hit. But that's the catch with encounters like this, it's often more about the crits, which is why most anti-vehicle weapons also have a crit of 2. As a minion, a single Crit will do it, but that assumes the player can get a crit. Assuming the Sil 3 TIE is at Extreme range the difficult is what? Three Purple? Even with 4 Agility, Aiming, and 2 ranks in gunnery the odds of a kill are about 20-30%.

- Guided: On the up side, the missile tube does have guided and, while not great, it does change the dynamic, as it forces the TIE pilot to consider spoofing the missile, which is an action.

So you can see how it's really going to depend on the big picture. How many players have Missile Tubes, what is their agility and gunnery rating, is the TIE fighter spoofing missiles instead of attacking, do the players have cover or concealment, and so on.

I'm not a fan of the 10:1 ratio, too many times in the media we see people shooting at vehicles. Against speeders and the like it's very often effective, against ships it's rare, but still occasionally useful. I think it can be more effective to simply drop the conversion rate (e.g.: 5:1), or bump up the Breach values on certain weapons. A missile really shouldn't have trouble causing damage, and likely critical damage, to anything Sil4 or lower, whether it's piloted by a minion or not.

I don't think missile tubes do usually damage to AT-ATs and similar heavy armored targets.

Though I am … conflicted with the 10:1 ratio as well. In the OT it seems fitting rather ok, but not only in new canon, but as well in the prequels we see indeed vehicle weapons and armor much more in line with the 5:1 ratio, we even see plenty of vehicle weapon shots getting deflected by lightsabers and people surviving hits from vehicle bombs or torpedos within the immediate blast range while being engaged with the primary target.

I think the main difference in the movies is that they treat the distinction between fighters and walkers more like the real life distinction between soft skinned and armored vehicles. In the game a fighter can easily have an armor of 2 or 3, making it utterly impervious to most man portable weapons, but a walker only has an armor of 5, which means the standard armament on a fighter can easily penetrate the armor.

Either way, the game works pretty well in vehicle scale, and it works really well in personal scale, but the intersection point is a bit bumpy.

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

This seems like a solid solution, I think i'll go with that as well.

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

I can fully support this house rule. Even if the text is otherwise painful to read.

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

This is actually kinda an interesting idea. Not sure if it lines up perfectly with everything as-is, but for a Second Edition some kind of "Anti-tank" weapon quality that does something like this would go a long way without having to totally rewrite everything....

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

Verpines will love to hear from this house rule, demand for heavy railguns on the rise.

Which makes me wonder. Can you proc knockdown on a AT-ST? ^-^

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

Verpines will love to hear from this house rule, demand for heavy railguns on the rise.

Which makes me wonder. Can you proc knockdown on a AT-ST? ^-^

I would assume so... The Knockdown rule does account for Sil differences, and the Harpoon on the Alliance Airspeeder has Knockdown...

I think it's fairly realistic that a missile fired by a character not trained to use it optimally doesn't necessarily bring down a vehicle with a single shot. If you want to one-shot starships with a personal scale weapon it should take some preparation.

First, there's the obvious stuff like a decent skill and characteristic. Then you have talents like True Aim and Deadly Accuracy, which makes it easier to do high damage and generate more Advantage. You also have the Heavy Hitter talent, which gives you another rank in Breach for a Triumph. Remember, the damage is only important in that it lets you get past the armour rating; when using a weapon like the missile launcher it's the Critical Hits that get the job done. Having Jury Rigged to reduce the crit cost by one would also be useful.

Then do some work on the launcher itself. A missile launcher has 4 hard points. That's a Superior attachment (free Advantage), a Laser Sight (free Advantage on hit), Custom Grip (remove setback die from pool and a mod that gives you Accurate 1), and maybe a Telescopic Optical Sight to reduce the difficulty to hit even further, since your target will most likely be at long range or further out.

With this sort of preparation a single character can be devastating against vehicles (and yes, I fully realize that this is a character built for this purpose). But even less specialized characters can be dangerous with just the modified launcher outlined above, and two or three could get some serious Critical Hits against a single target.

The house rule I use is this: "Any personal scale weapon that requires the use of the Gunnery skill to use applies successes in Vehicle scale against vehicles, and Personal scale against individuals." This allows E-Webs, Missile Tubes, etc to deal significant damage against heavy targets without being bonkers against smaller ones, and it depends entirely upon the firer being competent in its use.

This is great. It's difficult to even pull off a component critical when you get to vehicles with 4 and 5 armor rating since component critical starts with "when dealing damage..."

I'm not one to house-rule but this house-rule needs to be an official rule.

Let me see if I can try to rework this to flow a little better.

"When making combat checks with personal scale weapons that use the Gunnery skill, successes are applied in the scale of the target."

Does that make sense and keep it simpler?