3 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

EotE Core p26. Sub Heading: Assistance And Timing.

That section only says that to assist in combat is a maneuver. Whether the droids get maneuvers hasn't been answered yet, but you can always trade your action for a maneuver. So even if the droids don't get a maneuver on their turn, they can use their action to do the assist maneuver.

And the Assist Manoeuvre is a very specific thing covered on page 201 of the EotE core book. It allows an acting character (the one having their turn) to spend a Manoeuvre to grant a single Boost dice to the target characters action this round or the next. It also needs to be a plausible explanation as to how they are assisting.

It would perhaps be nice to be clearer, but it's probably pretty balanced that the Droid Brain can only do:

• Fire a weapon system using 2-4 green dice only (no aiming unless done instead of an action) if no character is using it.
• Give a boost dice to a character using that weapon system.
• Out of combat allow an untrained character to take their time and get a really accurate shot.

7200 Cr and 0 HP would be pretty cheap to give an untrained character 4 ranks in gunnery.

1 hour ago, Darzil said:

It would perhaps be nice to be clearer, but it's probably pretty balanced that the Droid Brain can only do:

• Fire a weapon system using 2-4 green dice only (no aiming unless done instead of an action) if no character is using it.
• Give a boost dice to a character using that weapon system.
• Out of combat allow an untrained character to take their time and get a really accurate shot.

7200 Cr and 0 HP would be pretty cheap to give an untrained character 4 ranks in gunnery.

To me, the first option seems the most useful by far, as you can basically cram a gunner into your single-seat ship, doubling it's actions. Add a targeting array and/or a pilot fluent in binary and it'll be pretty accurate as well. The downside would be that any talents relevant to gunnery or vehicle mounted weapons the pilot would have wouldn't apply.

Also, the cost would be 9000, Starship attachments mods cost 10x (EotE p.269)

3 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

And the Assist Maneuver is a very specific thing covered on page 201 of the EotE core book. It allows an acting character (the one having their turn) to spend a Maneuver to grant a single Boost dice to the target characters action this round or the next. It also needs to be a plausible explanation as to how they are assisting.

I see now. It's the usual, half the rules in one place the other half in another. Each in a section where they are most prevalent. Essentially there are three types of assist. Trained (skill or ability higher), untrained (skill and ability lower), and in-combat (maneuver for a boost). I appreciate the clarification.

3 hours ago, penpenpen said:

Having a gunner droid brain providing an extra action is a huge boon for single seat fighter. I'd almost call it game breaking if the system already didn't favor ships with separate gunners already.

Granted, a simple unmodified GDB has fairly unspectacular accuracy and the price tag might not be warranted for the cheapest fighters, but i cant for the life of me understand why it wouldn't be standard issue on a fighter costing 70K+ or so.

I'd guess its a social reason... there is probably still a lot of apprehension about giving droids gun every since the clone wars

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I'd guess its a social reason... there is probably still a lot of apprehension about giving droids gun every since the clone wars

True, but then again astromechs can both fly the ships and control the guns, if I'm not mistaken, and that doesnt seem too controversial.

Then again, again, this might be what put the kibosh on x-wings in imperial service. After all, one man's multirole strike fighter is another man's heavily armed, hyperspace capable murder droid.

6 hours ago, penpenpen said:

True, but then again astromechs can both fly the ships and control the guns, if I'm not mistaken, and that doesnt seem too controversial.

Then again, again, this might be what put the kibosh on x-wings in imperial service. After all, one man's multirole strike fighter is another man's heavily armed, hyperspace capable murder droid.

Rebellion sucede in remnants of the CIS, who had the Droid armies, I expect that they were a bit more comfortable with giving guns to the Droids that served them

43 minutes ago, EliasWindrider said:

Rebellion sucede in remnants of the CIS, who had the Droid armies, I expect that they were a bit more comfortable with giving guns to the Droids that served them

Then again, again, again, the Grand Army of the Republic, who actually fought the droid armies, didn't seem to have a problem using astromech droid-equipped fighters (ARC-170 and Nimbus V-wing) up until the very end of the war. Doesn't break the theory, but worth remembering.

I have another question about it. Can one brain take multiple actions to fire each weapon once or would you have install multiple brains? Normally I would say 1 brain =1 weapon but the flavor text is a bit ambiguous and Oggdudes character generator only allows it to be installed once. I can chalk up the character generator to an oversight on the developers part, but it did make me stop and wonder.

I would allow a Gunner brain access to multiple weapons systems, but it could only ever fire a single system in a round. No character can ever perform 2 Actions in the same round, I don't see why these would be able to either.

They are explicitly limited to one action per turn, and allowed to access multiple systems, but no mention of whether you can have more than one in a vehicle (I'd allow it).

2 hours ago, Darzil said:

They are explicitly limited to one action per turn, and allowed to access multiple systems, but no mention of whether you can have more than one in a vehicle (I'd allow it).

While I would also allow having multiple gunnery Droid brains on a ship, I specifically ask the devs and the answer I got back, I think from Sam stewart, was that you can only have 1 copy of mod on a ship, and Droid brains are not excluded from that rule.

On 4/29/2017 at 1:15 PM, penpenpen said:

True, but then again astromechs can both fly the ships and control the guns, if I'm not mistaken, and that doesnt seem too controversial.

Then again, again, this might be what put the kibosh on x-wings in imperial service. After all, one man's multirole strike fighter is another man's heavily armed, hyperspace capable murder droid.

The old West End Games version of Star Wars gave the reason as the cost of the Fighters. The Empire can buy a squadron of TIE Fighters for what a X-Wing costs. There is dinfentaly a phlophify shift what kind of fighters should be bought for the navy between the old republic of the clone wars and the Empire.

The same thing happens in the real world. Nations go buy a whole Squadron of new Russian fighters for what they can buy a new F-16 for.

6 hours ago, Tanis Frey said:

The old West End Games version of Star Wars gave the reason as the cost of the Fighters. The Empire can buy a squadron of TIE Fighters for what a X-Wing costs. There is dinfentaly a phlophify shift what kind of fighters should be bought for the navy between the old republic of the clone wars and the Empire.

The same thing happens in the real world. Nations go buy a whole Squadron of new Russian fighters for what they can buy a new F-16 for.

That explanation never sat right with me. The Empire, backed by a galactic economy skimps on fighters and goes for the low-budget option, while the scrappy, hard pressed rebellion fighters pay top dollar for the crème de la crème option? Thats like guerilla fighters getting F-22s while the US Air Force goes rummaging through the bargain bin.

No, what is more likely is difference in combat doctrine and specialist vs generalist view.
The TIEs are highly specialized for their role as interceptors and space superiority fighters. They are meant to deal with other fighters and do that exceptionally well. The TIE interceptor even more so. The TIE bomber, in contrast, has exceptional strike capabilities but is somewhat lacking in a dog fight.
In contrast, the X-wing (and to lesser extent the Y-wing) are great generalists, which is a great thing for a group of irregulars like the rebels. They can't always depend on having the right type of fighter for the job, or even a carrier to get them there, so having ships that, in a pinch, can do any job is a great boon to them. Also, the fact that they aren't carrier dependent might even result in lower operational costs overall in the long run.

I posit that the empire uses TIEs not because they are cheaper (and as they are dependent on cap ships to carry them, they might not be), but because they are better suited to their needs and doctrine.

16 hours ago, Darzil said:

They are explicitly limited to one action per turn, and allowed to access multiple systems, but no mention of whether you can have more than one in a vehicle (I'd allow it).

You can not have the same attachment twice, which is a general rule and would apply to gunner brains as well. Else I would have a gozanti with armor 9 and triple armor attachment.
Though we have assassin droids (and Alliance personnel) as gunners on that ship, so there are other ways around that limitation and rolling 4 yellow instead of 4 greens is certainly an advantage.

BTW, for initiative slots I would follow the suggestion for NPC astromechs and just attach the gunner brain to the pilot it assists, this should go best with the slow and allow for GtA + shot in single seaters even when no Master Pilot has been aquired.

2 hours ago, penpenpen said:

That explanation never sat right with me. The Empire, backed by a galactic economy skimps on fighters and goes for the low-budget option, while the scrappy, hard pressed rebellion fighters pay top dollar for the crème de la crème option? Thats like guerilla fighters getting F-22s while the US Air Force goes rummaging through the bargain bin.

No, what is more likely is difference in combat doctrine and specialist vs generalist view.

Indeed, fleet doctrine and the ability to actually build ships. The alliance has the credits, some of the richest core worlds are behind the alliance, they have a decent amount of credit income. What they don't have are a giant amount of shipyards, those X-Wings can be build in a garage when you have the knowledge and some basic technical equipment, they are less like F-22s and more like militarized racing cars.

Meanwhile capital ships take much longer to be build, require complex manufacturing equipment, extreme large resource amounts and founding. The alliance lacks the infrastructure to actually build capital ships on larger scales, they lack as well the man power and numbers for a ground war, so their doctrine is building onto torpedo equipped multi-purpose fighters to basically bring down those imperial capital ships and get enough rookie pilots up to aces, because combat experience in fighter combat assures space superiority. It is a direct counter to the absolute dominating firepower of the imperial navy which basically wins any engagement against ground and other capital ships by sheer size and firepower and thus makes holding a larger base with infrastructure for mass production rather unrealistic.