I've been kicking around some ideas about alternate ship customization systems that improve the existing system a bit, like making it less punishing to customize the weapons loadout or interior of a ship. I don't like that everything takes the same hardpoints in the current system. First thing I want to look at is weapons loadout customization.

So my alternate system would be "Weapon Capacity", a system that essentially aims to make replacing weapons less of a pain the rear, and letting people swap weapons in and out without having to burn up the precious regular hardpoints the game provides.

How the Weapon Capacity system works:

Every weapon and mounting type has a certain amount of weight. The player can replace the weapons on a ship with any configuration of other weapons as desired.

Weapon weight is:

• Auto Blaster - 1
• Blaster Cannon (Light) - 1
• Blaster Cannon (Heavy) - 2
• Concussion Missile Launcher - 3
• Ion Cannon (Light) - 2
• Ion Cannon (Medium) - 4
• Ion Cannon (Heavy) - 5
• Ion Cannon (Battleship) - 6
• Laser Cannon (Light) - 2
• Laser Cannon (Medium) - 2
• Laser Cannon (Heavy) - 3
• Proton Torpedo Launcher - 3
• Quad Laser Cannon - 3
• Tractor Beam (Light) - 3
• Tractor Beam (Medium) - 4
• Tractor Beam (Heavy) - 5
• Turbolaser (Light) - 4
• Turbolaser (Medium) - 5
• Turbolaser (Heavy) - 6

The Mounting type also has weight.

• Forward mounted weapons that can only be fired by the pilot have no additional weight.
• Weapons that can be operated by gunners increase their weight by 1 for each direction they can fire in. For example, a weapon that can fire Front and Left has an additional weight of 2. A weapon that can fire in all directions adds a weight of 4.

Adding linked weapons:

• Adding a linked weapon to an existing weapon increases the weight by 1.

You can keep the Silhouette restrictions on weapons from the book intact if you don't want people strapping turbolasers to fighters, or you can disregard them and just let people add whatever they want, which might result in ships like the B-wing with a mini Deathstar laser from Rebels.

As an example of how this system works: An X-wing has 4 linked medium laser cannons and a twin proton torpedo launcher, all forward mounted. That means, it has a Weapon Capacity of 9, 2 for the Medium Laser, plus 3 for the three additional linked lasers, 3 for the Proton Torpedo launcher, and an extra one for the second torpedo tube. A player wants to strip out the Proton Torpedo launcher and instead add a rear facing laser turret that can be operated by their astromech to create a pure space superiority fighter meant to escort bombers. Removing the torpedo tube gives them 4 weapons capacity back, which they then invest in a Medium Laser at two weight, add linked 1 for an additional weight unit, and then make it a turret mounted weapon with one facing for 1 more weight unit.

A player is also allowed to trade one hardpoint for an increase in weapons capactiy equal to the silhouette of the ship. Likewise they are allowed to trade an amount of weapons capacity equal to the silhouette of their ship for an additional hardpoint, but are never allowed to gain more than twice the number of hardpoints the ship originally had by doing so. (To prevent ships with thousands of points of weapons capacity from trading a fraction of their firepower for dozens of additional hardpoints)

Going to do another one of these about allocating deck space at some point in the future.

It's a nice system, I like it. My only question is why can't a Gunner shoot a forward facing gun? Or are you just saying that a pilot can't shoot non-forward facing while a Gunner can use anything?

I think the Mounting weight should be 1, regardless of how many directions they fire. Turreted weapons systems are fundamental for Star Wars vessels bigger than a starfighter. Adding 1 weight per barrel on a linked weapon makes sense.

5 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

It's a nice system, I like it. My only question is why can't a Gunner shoot a forward facing gun? Or are you just saying that a pilot can't shoot non-forward facing while a Gunner can use anything?

Only the pilot can fire a forward fixed weapon, which has 0 mounting weight. A forward facing gun that can be controlled by a gunner would cost 1 additional weight for the forward arc mounting so the gun can move around. Think about it as the difference between a nose-gun in a bomber and a fixed gun in a fighter.

4 hours ago, Oden Gebhac said:

I think the Mounting weight should be 1, regardless of how many directions they fire. Turreted weapons systems are fundamental for Star Wars vessels bigger than a starfighter. Adding 1 weight per barrel on a linked weapon makes sense.

Yes, but then there would be no reason to ever put a weapon that doesn't fire in all directions on a ship. The point of adding larger mounting costs for weapons that fire into more arcs is specifically because the system should encourage huge expensive weapons to be turret mounted, while it shouldn't be worth putting every random autoblaster on a full rotating turret.

3 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Only the pilot can fire a forward fixed weapon, which has 0 mounting weight. A forward facing gun that can be controlled by a gunner would cost 1 additional weight for the forward arc mounting so the gun can move around. Think about it as the difference between a nose-gun in a bomber and a fixed gun in a fighter.

So how do you propose to decide which forward mounted weapons on existing ships are Pilot only? It seems odd to me to even need to restrict them. An astromec Droid is just as capable of shooting an X-Wings guns as the pilot. Sure we don't see it much, but they definitely fly the ships alone and if they can fly then surely they can shoot. To me that's one of the reasons xwings are better than ties, they have more than one intelligent occupant. It's just a seemingly unnecessary complication to add to the rules

That is a hell of a job for star destroyers which focus all their firepower forward ^-^

BTW, we see on TCW how R2-D2 takes control of a fighter and becomes an ACE on screen within a few seconds. ;-) The rules support this as well as the astromech socket gives you full control of the ship, even more control even than the pilot has. A simple way to resolve this would be to make all single crew ships have fix pilot only guns, while all other ships use guns with the extra mounting. Which means the alliance fighters become even more OP than they are right now with the exception of the poor A-Wing which starts to suck even harder, especially a concussion missiles are ruled to be tiny and literally equal to proton torpedo launchers in size. I guess at least you can easily update to proton torpedos and out damage that B-Wing composite laser by factor 1.5 or so °_^

6 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

So how do you propose to decide which forward mounted weapons on existing ships are Pilot only? It seems odd to me to even need to restrict them. An astromec Droid is just as capable of shooting an X-Wings guns as the pilot. Sure we don't see it much, but they definitely fly the ships alone and if they can fly then surely they can shoot. To me that's one of the reasons xwings are better than ties, they have more than one intelligent occupant. It's just a seemingly unnecessary complication to add to the rules

The X-wing lists it's crew as "One pilot, one astromech" so as far as I'm concerned you have to use the astromech rules from Stay on Target to get extra actions from the droid. An astromech does not simply mean the fighter gets to take a second pilot action. and firing fixed guns is logically a pilot action, since if the guns only point where the ship points then the person pointing the ship controls the guns. Yes, an astromech can control the ship, but it can't control the ship at the same time as the pilot unless you're using the astromech rules.

If it was an actual two-person ship that listed its seats as "One pilot, one gunner" then I'd assume the weapons are mounted independently of the fuselage and the gunner is there to fire them.

Combat checks with Vehicle weapons are not Pilot Only actions and the rules state quite clearly that Starships are limited to one Pilot Only action in a round. Therefore the astromech can make a Gunnery combat check on its turn if the Pilot has used a Pilot Only action. Page 246 of AoR CRB for the reference of Pilot Only actions. Also, Page 249 of AoR shows that Combat Checks are not Pilot Only actions.

As to your argument of ships having no reason not to mount turrets the fire in all directions. The solution is simple: For larger ships, use the stats of a given ships weapons as a base for Fire Arc Restrictions. For smaller ships, the turret should be placed in a common sense manner and base Fire Arc Restrictions on that location. Large Ship Example: A PC crew wants to mount more weapons on a Star Destroyer's port and starboard sides. If you look at the Port and Starboard Turbolaser Stats for the Imperial-I Star Destroyer (AoR page 282), they show that they're firing arc is only Port/Starboard and Forward. Why do they have that restriction? It isn't because they can't physically turn that way. It's because of where they are mounted on the ship. Small Ship Example: Looking at a YT-1300, common sense locations would be where the escape pods are mounted on the sides, giving the ship a Ebon Hawk appearance. You could certainly put more fixed weapons on the mandibles but there aren't many turret locations that make sense.

I don't have the Stay on Target book handy, but I'm pretty sure it has very specific rules for how a pilot and astromech work in unison on the pilot's turn, rather than treating the astromech as an additional character who's somehow operating wing mounted weapons like a turret.

I don't see the issue with making weapons that have more arcs take up more weight. It means that any weapons you remove from the ship's basic configuration that had a limited arc also give you less weapons capacity, so the system organically encourages ships with fewer arcs to be reconstructed into ships with fewer arcs just by giving you fewer points. Of course it's theoretically possible for someone to come up with a weapons configuration that defies the geometry of the ship, but at the same time I think restricting all new weapons to arcs that already existed on the ship doesn't really give you all the logical options either. I mean what if you just put some turbolasers on the bottom of the star destroyer where it doesn't have a superstructure?

I mean, of course you are correct in saying there are only so many places you can put a gun, but if we were getting into the actual architecture of turret placement then every gun would have to be assigned to one of six facings of the ship, with full ability to fire in the direction "above" the gun, then it would have to account for all obstructions on the same facing, including any guns that are in battery, unless it sits higher in a superfiring arrangement. I find that sort of thing incredibly fun to work out in block building video games where you can make spaceships, but in a roleplaying game where firing arcs are abstracted anyways, oh well.

Besides, FFG has already published a mess of ships that have weapons that don't specify at all where they actually are. Like the Marauder Class Assault Corvette, it has 4 front facing light turbolasers that as far as I can tell are supposed to represent the two giant wing mounted cannons on the ship, and then it has 4 more light turbolasers that are simply listed as firing in all directions that aren't visible anywhere in any of the pictures of the vessel I can find.

"In Addition, PC astromechs are allowed to make Gunnery checks if a weapon system is avaible", p73, Stay on Target.

I have the stay on target book handy, and it clearly states that a pc astromech can take complete control of the ship, fire the guns, pilot the ship, and do a few things more that only astromechs can do like use the sensors of the ships to mark every potential threat or any potential target to hand out huge defense or small, but constant offensive boni. On top of that can the pc astromech make the ship faster as a maneuver (Increase Power) and has access to the following actions from his socket. "Damage control, Plot Course, Copilot, Boost Shields, Scan the Enemy and Spoof Missiles, plus the already mentioned astromech only actions Watch my Back and Target Lock.

Astromec PC's are awesome!

4 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

"In Addition, PC astromechs are allowed to make Gunnery checks if a weapon system is avaible", p73, Stay on Target.

I have the stay on target book handy, it and clearly states that a pc astromech can take complete control of the ship, fire the guns, pilot the ship, and do a few things more that only astromechs can do like use the sensors of the ships to mark every potential threat or any potential target to hand out huge defense or small, but constant offensive boni. On top of that can the pc astromech make the ship faster as a maneuver (Increase Power) and has access to the following actions from his socket. "Damage control, Plot Course, Copilot, Boost Shields, Scan the Enemy and Spoof Missiles, plus the already mentioned astromech only actions Watch my Back and Target Lock.

Well, if it's in the rules for Astromechs I don't have a problem with it. I think you do have to spend advantage to activate the Astromech's action if it's an NPC that you own though. I've had some issues with players putting all their money into building custom droids to do everything their character couldn't do, and even start rendering other players useless. If an actual player is the droid then of course it should get a full turn.

At any rate, you could always use these rules as "One facing at 0 additional cost, every extra facing at +1" and just ignore the difference between fixed weapon and forward facing emplaced weapons.

This is after all just a giant houserule suggestion, so no need to stick to what I'm saying.

Correct. npc astromechs are pretty gimmicky, not completely useless, but pretty close. PC astromechs are actually better than a second pilot in the group, technical they are even better than a first pilot. If you have to choice between a pc astromech and a npc pilot or the opposite, the pc astromech is the better choice.

And indeed, houserule topic, as always major changes to a system take some time, tinkering and playtesting.