Hi, new to the forums so please bare with me

I have a player in my group who isn't to keen on the current Starship & Vehicle Combat rules and he has proposed his own idea on how it should work.

I have already read through it, but I was wondering if I could get the opinion of other seasoned GM's before I made my final call.

Here they are as he wrote them, and thanks again for any thought you may have.

STAR WARS FFG RPG: STARSHIP and VEHICLE COMBAT

The Current method for determining the difficulty to hit is as follows: Compare Silhouettes, The End.

There are modifiers for Maneuvers that a character has taken, such as “Evasive Maneuvers”, etc., which often upgrades difficulty; and for “Defense” in the form of Shields, which adds boost dice, but it still doesn't really do anything to simulate the movement of flight.

I would like to offer an alternative.

As in the current rules, the Silhouette difference would indeed be the starting point, but there should be 2 modifiers to this, they are Speed and Skill.

First, the Speed at which the 2 ships in question are traveling should come into play. I feel that this should Add OR Subtract from the BASE difficulty based on the DIFFERENCE in the Speed of the ships (modifying to a minimum of 1: Easy, to 5: Formidable) but NOT actually Upgrading or Downgrading the dice (i.e. NOT adding or subtracting the red Challenge dice). So if your ship is smaller, thus starting with a difficulty of 1: Easy, but you are cruising at a slow Speed 2, while your larger opponent is zipping by at a breakneck speed 5, the difficulty would add 3 (the difference), making the new total difficulty 4: Daunting; it would be to that new difficulty to which Boost/Setback dice and Upgrades/Downgrades are applied.

As for Boost dice, instead of Shields, this should be based on a DIFFERENCE in Pilot Skill, i.e. a Skill 5 pilot attacking a Skill 3 pilot would get 2 Blue Boost dice, whereas the 3 skill pilot’s counterattack would instead add 2 Black Setback dice. A better trained pilot would and should inherently "bob and weave" more than their less trained counterpart. This would of course be in addition to what they get for individual Talents, Ship Handling, etc..

So where does this leave Shields? The way they use them in this game is just, well… wrong. Shields are like an extra layer of hit-points, but should not act as perfect absorption. Therefore, the ship’s Shield number should be converted to an HP like number (basically multiply by 10), which can be moved around (ONLY in groups of 10, unless there is less than 10 left to move), to cover different or weakened areas of a ship as they can now. However, regardless of how many “SP” (Shield Points) are protecting a certain area, it should only be able to absorb HALF of incoming damage (up to the total SP, draining as it does); also Shields counts damage BEFORE Soak.

Example: Your Ship is hit for 15 Damage on a side with 20 Shields and 3 Armor, the Shield can absorb half of the 15, so 8, meaning that 7 damage gets through, 3 Armor soaks as normal, so a total of 4 Damage actually damages the Hull. If the Hull started with 25, this would leave it with 12 Shields and 21 Hull. Assume a second hit comes into the same side, this time dealing a massive 28 points, the Shield could absorb up to 14, but as it only has 12 left that is all it can do; so in this case the other 16 damage continues on, 3 is still soaked by Armor, meaning the remaining 13 comes off the Hull. After this, the ship is left with 0 Shields and 8 Hull.

At this point it would behoove the player to either “Angle the Deflectors” moving another 10 Shields over from another Side or try a new Action that needs to be added to the list:

“Shield Repair”, difficulty 3: Hard Mechanics Check, On success, choose one defensive side and heal the Shields for 5 points plus 1 point for each Additional Hit (up to starting). Can spend 2 Advantage, if rolled, to use the Maneuver: “Angle the Deflectors” freely. On a Triumph, Heal the current Shield side to full (there is no benefit for further Triumphs).

The “Shield Boost” Maneuver , which is a difficulty 3: Hard, Mechanics check, needs to be changed, and thus it should effectively add Soak to your shield. So a Success would give your Shield 1 Soak, plus 1 soak for each Additional Hit for a single round, which comes off the top BEFORE the shield absorbs half the damage. Also, for Every 2 Advantages the number of rounds can be extended by 1. A Triumph means the NEXT Hit scored on the side that is Boosted is ignored (but only if it occurs while the Boost is effective and only for the affected side, it does not carry over and cannot be “shifted” to another side via skills/talents or actions such as “Angle the Deflectors”). Multiple Triumphs do however protect against additional hits.

For Example, like before, your ship is hit for 15 Damage, but this time you have “Shield Boost” active for 3 Soak. That 3 comes off FIRST, so only 12 Damage hits the Shield which therefore absorbs 6, so the other 6 gets through, 3 is soaked by Armor leaving 3 to damage the Hull; leaving the ship at 14 Shields and 22 Hull. Even on the second hit, for 28, the Shield soak would still apply, so only 25 damage is applied to shields, which this time can absorb the entire 13, so the remaining 12 would get through, 3 of which is again soaked by Armor, leaving 9 damage to the hull. This time you are left with 1 Shield and 13 Hull; so a little bit better than in the first example above. In the case of a Triumph, the first attack for 15 damage would instead be ignored entirely; this could NOT be saved for the second more damaging attack (however if a second Triumph had been rolled then the second attack would also be ignored).

On a final note, while this does not come up as much, this should also change the way Personal Deflector Shields work in the same way. Each Single point of Shield should become 10 Hit-Points; for each Hit scored against the character the Shield absorbs half the Damage (BEFORE Soak) up to the Max HP of the Shield. This would only apply to ENERGY Shields, not Defense Bonuses from Armor, the Smuggler’s Trenchcoat, or Skills/Talents (unless they specifically state the defense comes from an Energy Shield).

Now that is interesting. BTW you mixed soak with armor up. And I think you meant for "shield boost" "So a success would give your should 1 soak plus 1 soak for each additional success for a single round", at least I guess so, getting more soak for each hit you take would make you invulnerable pretty soon for the rest of the turn.

Astromechs make it trivial to have 40 shields points and the first thing a astromech should get is mechanic 5. Even in the official space combat the damage control action is super important as you can keep system strain under control, but in the new systems shield repair basically guarantees a free angle deflector maneuver and has a 40% chance to restore the full shields, while only 4 success are needed to do the same. Basically, outside of heavy incoming fire you have halved the incoming damage.
Now shield boost is a maneuver, meaning in the same turn the mech can shield boost, create a 40% chance for another triumph to spend on the "Spend advantages … in space combat" table or just come up with something cool and increase armor by one or spend it on that "ignore next hit", on top the maths introduces another step as we have to first apply soak/armo, then half the damage and then subtract armor.

Example: A signature vehicle defender with astromech socket gets into combat (+2 Hardpoints from modder spec). The droid brings the shield to 40 with "watch my back" before combat starts for several rounds. It gets attacked by standard TIE-Fighters (TIE/LN). The pilot takes the first init slot, droid second, then the TIE-Pilots. Pilot picks double evasives, and makes a gain the advantage action against the squadron leader to get out of his guns. The droid shoots down the flight leader as TIE-Fighters have no shields. Afterwards he uses the shield boost maneuver twice and takes two strain. He has one triumph and choose to ignore the next incoming hit, let's assume conservative 3 successes and 3 advantages for the mechanic checks. This gives him 8 soak applied before shields.

Two Minion Groups of 5 and a squadron and flight commander, both rivals. 5 Attacks, let's assume all have 5 successes and two advantages despite double evasive maneuvers from the defender pilot. As both rivals can't shoot, it leaves the task up for the minions. 4 Hits with 10 damage each. First hit is ignored, second hit applies reduces the shield to 39 and applies zero damage the 3 armor points absorb the remaining damage. Hit 3 and 4 do the same and reduce the shield value to 37 while the armor deals with the rest of the incoming damage.

But hey, maybe I missunderstood you on shield boost. Let's assume it applies just +1 Soak. First hit is ignored, second hit applies 9 damage to the shields, the defender takes 1.5 hull damage. This happens 3 times, and the shields are down to 13.
Next turn the astromech takes a shield repair action and the shields are fully restored, again double shield boost maneuvers, just because spending advantages in combat would help, while the pilot eliminates the wing leader. The defender takes another 3x 1.5 damage and is down to 1 ht, the shields are down to 13 hp.
In the next turn the mech takes a damage control action with a destiny point, we assume 6 success, which is reasonable for mechanic check with 6 dice. The defender is back to 7 HT. The pilot eliminates two TIE-Fighter from one of the minion groups. The first group deals again 3 damage and finally overwhelm would overwhelm the shields if the astromech would not have transferred 20 with angle deflector , while the second loses two hits based on the less of two dice in their pool, they deal 2x0.5 dage. 3 HT left on the defender.
In Turn 4 the pilot takes a GtA against the fresh minion group, outmaneuvering them to stay on their six. The astromech destroyers another two TIE fighters, he rolls again a triumph on his shield boost action. The triumph becomes irrelevant as a single TIE-Fighter minion has little chance to hit that speed 5 defender with double evasive maneuvers.
Turn 5. GTA against the fresh minions, which at this point should decide to split up the group, pew pew against the last remaining solo TIE-Fighter and afterwards it is just cleanup.


It close sure, but it is one fighter against a dozen. And it is a harmless example to show out outrageous strong shields and armor become. Want to see a even funnier one? Equip a Gozanti-Class Armed Transport with an astromech socket and armor the armor upgrade attachment. The mech needs in this case just to load up the shields to full each turn, the rest will be dealt by the armor 6 and shield boost. Unless you deal more than 14 damage per shot or can bring down the shields completely in one round you will not deal any damage at all to that little transport. It gets even worse if extra successes increase the soak before shields apply.

I guess those house rules come with a bag of problems, mainly because it more than doubles armor values.

I agree that FFG’s system is wonky, and doesn’t easily allow you to simulate what we see in the movies.

However, it has been tested and balanced over a long period of time, so I wouldn’t throw out the whole thing and start over from scratch. Unless, that is, I was sure that I had a replacement that made a lot of sense at the technical level and also fit well into the narrative style of the game.

There are other forum members that I know have worked on tweaks to the spaceship combat system, but I don’t know the status of their work. You might want to ask around about that.

I believe that “Sturn” is one member who has done some work in this space, but there may be others.

There are other forum members that I know have worked on tweaks to the spaceship combat system, but I don’t know the status of their work. You might want to ask around about that.

I attempted a number of different methods, including using Silhouette as a damage scale factor, but I found that anything I did added needless complexity and just slowed things down, even in my solo test session wherein I just rolled a bunch of dice. In the end, we at our table ended up leaving the rules untouched and instead decided that we would chuck the rules and narrate a conclusion we found satisfactory and made sense both to us and within the context of the setting if it made better sense than RAW. It has not failed us yet!

I am always interested to see some playtest results from rules variants to see how they sake out over time.

The game is an RPG and changes have to incorporate vehicle stats, Talents, and Skills imo. I think FFG made things like Gain the Advantage, Evasive Maneuvers, and Stay on Target, because they were running out of room in the Pilot Talent tree honestly. There should be some consolidating and swapping of Actions, Maneuvers, and Talents I think. Gain the Advantage for example has always just felt clunky for my tastes.

Defense in general is under consideration and I've never been a fan of it used for shields. I'd rather ballistic protection overall was Soak, armor, deflector shields or otherwise should all be Soak. Defense Setbacks should be external/environmental stuff that make being successful on a combat check harder, like smoke, stealth fields, unsteady ground, EW, etc.

The game is an RPG and changes have to incorporate vehicle stats, Talents, and Skills imo. I think FFG made things like Gain the Advantage, Evasive Maneuvers, and Stay on Target, because they were running out of room in the Pilot Talent tree honestly. There should be some consolidating and swapping of Actions, Maneuvers, and Talents I think. Gain the Advantage for example has always just felt clunky for my tastes.

Defense in general is under consideration and I've never been a fan of it used for shields. I'd rather ballistic protection overall was Soak, armor, deflector shields or otherwise should all be Soak. Defense Setbacks should be external/environmental stuff that make being successful on a combat check harder, like smoke, stealth fields, unsteady ground, EW, etc.

I kind of agree. Alternatively some form of armor could provide upgrade of the difficulty of the check, shields for example are a good example, Setback dice in general for defense feel underwhelming, even when they are more effective than most people assume … at least once you stack them to 4 and combine them with other effects, like environmentals or abilities like dodge or evasive maneuvers, etc

Rebalancing this whole system is still not an easy task, because the actually system seems to for rather well, even when those defense setback dice do not feel good, but instead rather underwhelming.

Thanks for the input. Read through the comments, and I think there is a point about "Shield Boost" being a manuever and so can be combined with "Shield Repair" as I wrote them. But I think one could fix that by making "Shield Boost" an Action instead of a Maneuver.

I would say that while there might still be some minor tweeks that need to be done, it is more in line with how shields work in the SW universe (i.e. Films and TV). Also it will mitigate the massive amount of $$ tgat needs to be shelled out to repair Hull ALL the time (which also shouldn't be necessary after every little firefight.

There are always going to be some Min/Max Metagaming things that could potentially be abusive ( in our game it was discovered that cybernetics can improve base stats and suddenly half our group was looking to cut off their arms!!); ala the Gozanti w/astromech socket example, but other than because it's strong in game there is no logical reason to have done that - astromech sockets are supposed to be part of the rig to add hyperdrive to starfighters, so I would think a good GM would restrict something like that anyway without a good in-game reason. (-This is meant to be part of an open discussion and not just a snap defense of what I wrote, but sometimes tone can be lost in typing. It is not my intention to iump down the throat of critics and I truly welcome hashing out the details, and want to thank everyone for their input)

As another alternative, as the" Shield Action" bits were a bit brainstormy anyway, just go back to having "Shield Boost" and have that be the heal 5 points +1 each for extra successes (or does that need to be a little less maybe?), and just allow every 2 advantages add a Soak for the current turn (maybe keep the Triumph for Ignore the first hit still, maybe not, it's not super important).

The main thing here was changing Both HOW one Hits, to include relative Speed (which should be pretty important in a dogfight) and even pilot skill (also should play a factor) AND converting Shields to a form of Soak - but one that is both limited (i.e. Shields run out) and imperfect (in that ships still get some damage even with shields are up).

Also, one other thing that occurs to me, on a successful Critical Hit, one should maybe bypass Shields altogether (which would therefore bypass the Triumph Ignore, but it should then apply to the next non-crit, if the crit didn't take out the shields)

Thank you all for your input and patience on this.

A Y-WIng, the standard ship players can choose in AoR comes already with a Pilot, Gunner and Astromech Slot, meaning that changing Shield Boost to an action helps only a little and empowers the most powerful fighter in the game even more.

And on larger ships with dedicated engineering stations it literally does not change anything.

Reducing the ability to heal shields significantly is a good idea, you do heal system strain as well at a rate of just one per success.

Oh and btw, the change for the difficulty for shots themselves seems ok, even when a little bit … well, it adds even more stops to form this dice pool and makes non pilots even more useless in space combat.

Scenario using the difficulty modifiers proposed in the OP: Imperial-Class Star Destroyer firing on a TY-1300. Seen in A New Hope when Han leaves Tatooine's atmosphere. Han has to make quick hyperspace calculations while dodging shots from the Star Destroyers, showing that being hit by one is seriously dangerous.

YT-1300: silhouette 4

Imperial-Class Star Destroyer: Silhouette 8

The difficulty with the rules begins at Formidable (5 purple)

Assuming they are moving at their max speeds: an additional purple is added, now we have reached 6 purple dice and are technically in the realm of Impossible checks according to the game's rules.

Regarding the bob & weave rules: the gunners on Star Destroyers are not trained Pilots and would therefore get no boost in this situation & would actually accrue setback dice based upon the skill ranks of the Pilot in the YT-1300. I find this to be odd because it punishes people who act as Gunners only for not taking ranks in Piloting. Let's assume the YT-1300 pilot has 3 ranks in Piloting (Space).

So now we're looking at 6 purple, 3 setback dice for this attack.

Regarding shields: Let's assume the Star Destroyer manages to hit the YT-1300 in the aft section with 1 success 2 adv, using one of its Twin Heavy Turbolasers. in which it has 1 shield (so that would be converted by these rules to 10). That's 12 damage coming at the YT-1300.

By these rules the YT-1300 would first reduce the damage by half, so now that's 6 damage and then it would apply armor, now that's only 3 damage coming through as Hull Trauma on the YT-1300, making a light freighter stupidly tankier than it ever was supposed to be against far superior warships and making the group less concerned about being shot at by warships.

How would qualities like Breach apply in this situation? I ask because the Twin Heavy Turbolasers have Breach 4. Would that still breach armor as normal? How would it affect shields?

Also, how would something like Linked apply? Because Twin Heavy Turbolasers also have Linked 1. Do you apply shields as many times as possible but only up to the shield rating, so in this case, 10?

Let's reverse the situation now.

YT-1300 fires on Star Destroyer at the Aft Section. Gets a lucky hit with 5 success at 11 damage, allowing you to do at least 1 point of Hull Trauma under the normal game rules. Half of it gets soaked by the shields. Assuming we round down, that would mean 5 damage left coming at it but it has 10 armor, so that negates the attack completely. Given, Star Destroyers already have a high Armor rating but this makes them even tankier against such things as torpedoes which are specifically designed to deal damage to capital ships.

It feels like this punishes larger ships that are meant to deal damage and makes smaller ships that have weak armor & hull unnecessarily tankier. It also makes warships nigh untouchable. I'm not a big fan of it as it is written here.

I'm sorry, but these proposed rules are a mess, written by someone who obviously doesn't have a full grasp on how the game works (if he's calling Setback dice "Boost" dice, I think it's safe to say he's still getting the hang of it). They over-complicate the heck out of space combat, and throw a monkey wrench into every piloting specialization in the game. I'm all for House Rules, but you should really play for a while as written.

Yes, on paper, the vehicle combat rules seem to be missing something. It is very much up tot he players and the GM to make them work for you. I like to think that when George Lucas was running his players through the module, "A New Hope," they really got their first crack at the vehicle rules when escaping the Death Star. He was smart and made it pretty simple, just four TIE's chasing the YT-1300. It was mildly fun, but not very interesing, as it was just a chase in open space.

For the next session, GM George hit these very forums and got some good advice. Use terrain. Have a goal in mind other than just fighting. Give the players some Minion Group allies, and introduce an enemy Ace. He played the enemies smart, too. The TIE fighters used Gain the Advantage on the X-Wings, locking into their rear fire arc so they couldn't shoot back ("It came from behind!"). Fortunately, the PC's quickly realized that you can cover each other handily when you have allies like Wedge. Han's player showed up late, of course, and got to seize some glory.

So, do that. Use terrain. Give an objective other than fighting. When your players make a great piloting roll, they can use Advantage and Triumph to increase their defense. And by the way, while Setback dice seem pretty lame at first, if you can stack a few of them, they can be a lifesaver. An extra failure might only prevent one point of damage, or it might prevent the hit entirely. Threat helps prevent those nasty critical hits. When it comes to causing Failure, they are actually better than upgrading a Purple to a Red, and almost as good as increasing the Difficulty.

Speaking of increased Difficulty, you need to be careful with it. There are hard rolls in this game, but you'll notice there are very few ways for characters to increase the basic difficulty of actions taken against them. Setback Dice and Upgrades abound, but stacking Difficulty can very quickly make a roll dang-near impossible.

I appreciate all the helpful remarks and ideas being given. But as the original writer of this post can we keep this civil and not resort to personal insults.

Other then that though I really do appreciate all the feedback

My apologies, I didn't mean to be insulting. I do get the impression that these rules are written by someone fairly new to the game. Believe me, space combat is one of the first things folks start tinkering with, and a lot of overhauls have come through these forums over the years. The best are those that take a very light touch, adding a couple of player options here and there. Sweeping rule changes like this start upsetting the balance in places you won't even expect. Has your group played extensively? Have you had multiple space battles and decided it wasn't working, or did your player read the rules and, being underwhelmed, start tinkering before really giving them a shot?

We have been playing for about a year now and have had about a half dozen space battles (yeah I know, kinda low) but space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking, but I kinda figured with the system being a minimalist system that it was intentional.

Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat, there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

We have been playing for about a year now and have had about a half dozen space battles (yeah I know, kinda low) but space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking, but I kinda figured with the system being a minimalist system that it was intentional.

Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat, there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

LOL, you seriously call this mess of rules over rules over special rules minimalistic?

1. space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking

2. Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat

3. there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

1. Lacking in what ways exactly?

2. Larger ships tend to not do much of anything except get in position, fire back and forth with other larger ships & launch fighters. That's really their purpose in the movies & in the game. They are tougher to take down and carry way more weapons, usually requiring hundreds if not thousands to operate them efficiently. They aren't going to do barrel rolls and such. I guess what I'm asking here is what exactly do you expect from capital ship combat?

3. Are they interested in doing more intricate combats with the various things available to smaller starships? If so, I'd say they should install a Retrofitted Hangar Bay and start getting ahold of some fighters.

1. space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking

2. Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat

3. there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

1. Lacking in what ways exactly?

2. Larger ships tend to not do much of anything except get in position, fire back and forth with other larger ships & launch fighters. That's really their purpose in the movies & in the game. They are tougher to take down and carry way more weapons, usually requiring hundreds if not thousands to operate them efficiently. They aren't going to do barrel rolls and such. I guess what I'm asking here is what exactly do you expect from capital ship combat?

3. Are they interested in doing more intricate combats with the various things available to smaller starships? If so, I'd say they should install a Retrofitted Hangar Bay and start getting ahold of some fighters.

And use the Chase rules, they will improve many vehicle based encounters significantly.

We have been playing for about a year now and have had about a half dozen space battles (yeah I know, kinda low) but space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking, but I kinda figured with the system being a minimalist system that it was intentional.

Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat, there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

LOL, you seriously call this mess of rules over rules over special rules minimalistic?

Heh, touche

1. space combat rules do appear to be kinda lacking

2. Though to be fair it does leave a little to be desired in some areas, especially for larger ship combat

3. there flying around in a modified Gozanti.

1. Lacking in what ways exactly?

2. Larger ships tend to not do much of anything except get in position, fire back and forth with other larger ships & launch fighters. That's really their purpose in the movies & in the game. They are tougher to take down and carry way more weapons, usually requiring hundreds if not thousands to operate them efficiently. They aren't going to do barrel rolls and such. I guess what I'm asking here is what exactly do you expect from capital ship combat?

3. Are they interested in doing more intricate combats with the various things available to smaller starships? If so, I'd say they should install a Retrofitted Hangar Bay and start getting ahold of some fighters.

I apologize, I was being a tad hyperbolic.

What I was trying to say was starship combat can be fairly bland and flavorless when dealing with larger ships and extremely lethal when dealing with smaller starfighters, though I do agree that it is my job as the GM to make such experiences interesting.

At this point I realize I am getting off topic a bit, sorry.

The issue I think my player is having is that he feels like the Starship combat rules as they are presented in the game doesn't fit his impression of how starship combat looks in the movies, and though I may not agree that such a drastic rules adjustment needs to be made I can see where he is coming from.

Being the GM, I would like all my players to enjoy the experience so I want to somehow accommodate him, even if it isn't exactly the way he may want it (this is not to say that I am ignoring his suggestions, just making a point).

Once again though, I must say that I am greatly appreciating all the feedback and constructive criticism I am receiving. It is helping me come up with a final decision on the mater and I'm always interested in the opinions of fellow GM's.

Understood.

Larger ships have access to some Actions that are not available to smaller ships actually, they can be found in the Age of Rebellion Core Rulebook in the Starship Actions section of the book. Those might add some flavor into the game.

Typically I find that space combat needs more narrative description of actions to really feel good. I put on some star wars space battle music and every time I control NPCs to do things I describe what they do, how it looks, what the mechanical effect has. I highly encourage my players to do the same as well.

As far as being creative in the combat options, there are some ship attachments that can give additional variance, such as ramming attachments & extra weapons, your crew can begin to use Ion weaponry to then board vessels for piracy or claim the ships as your own without damaging them in a large way. Having terrain in the encounter goes a long way, as whomever is getting shot at more will want to use it as cover. As has probably been said here, or elsewhere on the forums, consider giving the players a goal other than just destroying their opponents. Maybe they just need to jump away to their destination or maybe they have to dock at a nearby shadowport but have to get there before the shields are raised due to the combat.

Something I've found ramps up the tension of the scene is using the Gain the Advantage Action right out of the gate when controlling NPC Fighters, so that I can get behind or out of any specific firing arcs and onto a side of the ship that has the least shields. When the PCs start freaking out that they can't shoot my TIE Fighters for a round and they are exposed to being shot at their worst facing, they tend to want to get out of dodge.

Also, Starfighters do not blow up when they exceed Hull Trauma; just like PCs, they need to take the high level crits that mean destruction. If they find that they want to do more fighter combat, it might be good to hint that they should join some sort of larger group (or create their own!) and use the squadron rules... Those rules will go far to emulating the kind of space combat in the movies.

Also, Mass Combat would be great for simulation of a large scale battle.

One of the house rules I really like comes from one of the guys at The Order 66 podcast. It's modeled after the Parry and Reflect talents, and is a good example of the "light touch" approach.

When the vehicle takes a hit, the pilot can choose to suffer 3 Strain to himself and 3 System Strain to the vehicle. If he does so, he may reduce the damage dealt by his relevant Piloting skill plus the vehicle's Maneuverability rating.

Simple, right? It also reflects the capabilities of different vehicles. A Tie Fighter ace might be able to negate an entire hit, but if he tries to pull this trick twice, he's going to overload his ship's systems and be disabled (which is still better than going over your HT). Meanwhile, a bulky freighter might only reduce a point or two (since it probably has a negative handling score), but it has much higher SS, and hopefully an angry Wookiee or droid in the engineering bay making Mechanics checks to keep it flying.

The ability to take strain and ignore up to ~10 damage per hit is heavily changing the dynamics of the space combat, while ships with astromech can switch pilots and regenerate strain at a decent rate via shooting.

Actually, I think the Y-Wing might sustain incredible amounts of damage over long terms this way and keep this up indefinitely, but the X-Wing can do a similar trick.

Not sure if this is a light touch.

Couple of things. We do use "starfighter" clmbat as opposed to capital combat - the gozanti has been scaled back (in armor and hp) to more reflect the original (episode 1) design, not the Imperial Carrier as it is presented in the rules. We have an 8 person group so this ship has enough to do to accomodate everyone.

Second, I was a big X-Wing player for the PC (any video game actually), also look at FFG's own X-Wing miniatures game (in addition to films and TV), in ALL other cases Shields are a form of Hit Points, an amount of Damage one can take, not how hard one is to hit. Furthermore, they run out, can be damaged, etc. This the only version of any game I can think of where neither of those things is the case, this is an attempt to rectify that. Also, (as is in a video game that takes place in real time and not turn based) the Speed of the ship is a major factor and how well they bob & weave (i.e. the Pilot Skill), this also tries to remedy that. Those are the inspirations behind the proposed changes.

Maybe there are some tweeks that need to be done, but there are some things in there that were already addressing some criticisms, (off the top of my head the hard cap of 5:Daunting difficulty regardless of relative speed/size before boost/setback dice in the Star Destroyer vs Millennium Falcon example used above, this is done specifically to not let things get out of control).

Butl boost/setback dice come from all the same sources they do now except shields, and instead it it based on difference in pilot skill.

In other words I do think this is a pretty light touch actually, it's just add relative speed to base difficulty (max 5, min 1), relative pilot skill to boost/setback instead of shields, and shields act as a form of HP instead... That's it, actually fairly minor (I think), I just wrote it as a full set of rules.

The Gozanti from Fly Casual / Age of Rebellion is already the pre-imperial version. ;-)

The imperial carrier is not represented in the rules.

And btw, the shield change basically doubled all armor ratings as long as the shields are up and introduced a mechanic to indefinitely regenerate them on top. This change makes capships invincible.

... in ALL other cases Shields are a form of Hit Points, an amount of Damage one can take, not how hard one is to hit. Furthermore, they run out, can be damaged, etc. This the only version of any game I can think of where neither of those things is the case, this is an attempt to rectify that.

It is true that shields have been abstracted in this system to Setback dice rather than some form of hit points, but keep in mind that the failure results on those dice directly reduce the amount of damage the ship will take. Think of these shields as as a variable armor that if not exceeded by the precision/force of the shot completely negates all damage. As to the second point, shields can run out and be damaged in this system. There are four shield specific Critical Hit results, plus shields are a component possibility for the two component Critical Hit results. Just like everything else in this system running out or being reduced is a matter of narrative results, just like ammo and even major injuries/death.

The vehicle rules seem most focused on dog fighting. Speed and skill is mostly taken into account by Gain the Advantage, combined with Evasive Maneuvers and/or Stay On Target. This is to create a back and forth of setting up shots rather than just shooting every round since movement is narrative rather than physically based such as with the miniatures game. Back and forth Gain the Advantage to represent the jockeying for position, followed by an attempt to blow the opponent out of the sky. GtA continues to ratchet in difficulty, so eventually someone will fail and that is the time the other should strike. Or, forgo GtA, attempt a shot with the disadvantages of the maneuvers, but give a more patient enemy a good setup if that shot fails.

For the weak parts of starship fights in this game I feel AoR was a step in the direction. More types of actions limited by silhouette. Giving larger ships massive numbers of actions to represent their numerous artillery really bogs down an RPG. Multi-weapon actions like the Barrage actions go a long way to replicating how characters interacted with capital ships from within starfighters. If 7+ silhouette ships were restricted to multi-weapon actions, and there were a few more like a Focused Fire for firing at other capital ships, that creates more narrative interactions between vastly different ship types.

As for a parry/reflect type capability, that is a big game changer but could be great. Parry/Reflect came fairly late into the system. Marauder and possibly a few other specs would have benefited from Parry. A comparable vehicle talent could be something like Jinking to represent last ditch efforts to spoil a shot. Limit it to 4 or less silhouette, and the amount reduced be handling plus ranks in the talent. The house rule of using piloting skill is a reasonable bridge. A huge change to the dynamics of combat, which will drag out longer with skilled combatants.