I have a player with a Starfighter with twin medium laser cannons and twin auto-blasters.

He'd like to know how he can fire all weapons in a single round (other than having the piloting talents necessary to take 2 actions).

It seems a reasonable request (I would expect fighters to have a "fire everything" option). I'm considering adding a difficulty die per Two-Weapon fighting rules and requiring 2 advantage to activate the additional hits.

So for this fighter against another fighter he'd have PP base difficulty (based on silhouette), add P for firing lasers and auto-blasters (as both use Gunnery Skill), and another P if he chose to auto-fire the auto-blasters.

He could spend 2 advantage to activate linked on his lasers, then two more to activate a hit with the auto blasters (2 more for linked on them) and if autofiring every additional 2 for additional hits with the autoblasters (though this would be crazy to even try).

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Finarin

Interesting house rule. This system can handle stuff like this a lot better than the earlier d20 editions. Even so, though, this house rule might make things a bit unbalanced in starfighter combat. If it were my table, I think I'd keep it to one action per weapon system...but you could always try it out and see how it goes for a few encounters!

Suggestion: increase the Difficulty +1, due to the inherent difficulty of switching between weapons systems, in addition to the +1 Difficulty increase for the additional hit attempt. This mirrors the two weapon combat rules in personal scale...using dissimilar weapons (melee & ranged) increases your difficulty.

Yeah basically treat it like 2 weapon fighting.

I'd just treat all fixed weapons as linked in a starfighter, or treat it as fighting with multiple weapons. From my perspective if it's bolted to the hull of a ship so it only ever points where the ship is pointing then it's all one weapon system.

Maybe try using the Barrage rules?

I would simply allow to link different weapons together, like a pair of ions with a pair of medium lasers, it adds a little complication as the player has to say which type of hit each hit is, etc … but overall the rules for work fine such a scenario.

If you do this, keep in mind that the whole thing counts as single weapon and thus crew, astromechs, gunner brains or whatever can not use them if the pilot has used them already this round. So it might be in many cases not really advantageous to handle it this way, but certainly it sounds plausible to do so.

Away From My Books ,But I just read last Night, The New Lancer class Patrol Craft has a special firing control computer that allows this or something similiar to happen. The Lancer is found in the new "No Disintergration " book. Will Check it when I get home from work

@XGrifterX you may not want to tell people you have No Disintegrations, you will get bombarded with questions!

i was going to suggest using the astromec rules from Stay on Target. With 3 Advantage or a Triumph on your check the astromec can succeed with a single success on any action they are able to perform, including a combat check.

Do you know what "rocket tag" is, and why it's bad? Why your player's request seems reasonable enough on its face, I think I'd stick to one weapons system per operator.

The old X-Wing and Tie Fighter games for PC only allowed you to select a weapons system and link like cannons. They did not allow you to fire every available system as once. This can be easily explained by a starfighter only having a finite amount of power available at any given time. Larger ships (Sil 5+) have better power generation and are allowed to use Barrage actions.

I'm not sure which fighter you're referring to so I'll ask: do the "twin" lasers have the Linked quality? If so, they're already connected, and you fire them as a single system with a single roll, using advantages to activate the second laser. Likewise with the auto-blasters if they're Linked. In this case you can only fire one of those two systems (the lasers or the auto-blasters); my guess is that the auto-blasters are thematically a backup weapon (unless they have a totally different firing arc) though; you're meant to use the lasers unless something has knocked them offline.

1 hour ago, Garran said:

I'm not sure which fighter you're referring to so I'll ask: do the "twin" lasers have the Linked quality? If so, they're already connected, and you fire them as a single system with a single roll, using advantages to activate the second laser. Likewise with the auto-blasters if they're Linked. In this case you can only fire one of those two systems (the lasers or the auto-blasters); my guess is that the auto-blasters are thematically a backup weapon (unless they have a totally different firing arc) though; you're meant to use the lasers unless something has knocked them offline.

The OP is asking about firing ALL of the weapons on a Starfighter at the same time.

This is something that really bothered me when I was running the AoR beginner scenario. A Lambda-class shuttle has four separate forward-facing weapon systems. The pilot can't fire them all, so I ended up having all of the crew positions in the cockpit being able to serve as gunnery stations. I can see the logic behind having heavy forward firepower if the Lambda is intended to be able to serve as a assault ship, which would also explain why the shields are stronger at the front by default., but I can't help feeling that the reason there are four sets of guns is purely to make the stats match the visuals. Perhaps it would be better if the all the forward lasers were one system, with Linked 4, and the blasters were another. Alternatively, each of the "twin" mounts could be a single gun in game terms, with the barrels firing alternately, and the two mounts could be a single system with Linked 2.

Install 5 gunnery brains and the problem with the lambda solves itself.

My brain rebels at the thought of installing large-scale modifications just to make use of stock hardware.

We are not talking about large scale modifications, we are talking about a rather standard component which is the starship equivalent to attaching an laser-sight or silencer to a hand weapon or adding aftermarket gps to your car or bicycle.

Attachments are not large scale modifications. You want to full package for your Lambda Shuttle Bus? Order the astrogation assistant brain, the autopilot droid brain and 5 gunner-brains for full protection. And you can get the shuttle even in the sports edition with the high-output ion turbine for just 5,300 credits extra.

As a very common example, there will be pilots of BTL-A4 Y-wing starfighters that would probably want to be able to fire the medium laser cannons and light ion cannons together with one trigger pull (as a single Action).

28 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

As a very common example, there will be pilots of BTL-A4 Y-wing starfighters that would probably want to be able to fire the medium laser cannons and light ion cannons together with one trigger pull (as a single Action).

Or B-Wing pilots who would like to be able to fire their Heavy Lasers, Autoblasters and Ion Cannons. Seriously, what is even the point of the autoblaster on that thing? I know it has Autofire, but the damage is so piddly you would likely need to hit 3 or 4 times to match the damage of the Heavy Laser. I can think of much better things to do with 6-8 Advantage.

8 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

Or B-Wing pilots who would like to be able to fire their Heavy Lasers, Autoblasters and Ion Cannons. Seriously, what is even the point of the autoblaster on that thing? I know it has Autofire, but the damage is so piddly you would likely need to hit 3 or 4 times to match the damage of the Heavy Laser. I can think of much better things to do with 6-8 Advantage.

The Auto-Blaster's only possible purpose is for strafing infantry on the ground or otherwise chewing up unarmored targets. It's not a really a role where I'd expect to see a B-wing.

On 1/31/2017 at 9:09 PM, The Grand Falloon said:

Or B-Wing pilots who would like to be able to fire their Heavy Lasers, Autoblasters and Ion Cannons. Seriously, what is even the point of the autoblaster on that thing? I know it has Autofire, but the damage is so piddly you would likely need to hit 3 or 4 times to match the damage of the Heavy Laser. I can think of much better things to do with 6-8 Advantage.

It's mentioned in the very old fluff that the auto-blasters were installed because the B-Wing's original targeting system was temperamental and hard to use - the pilots would use the autoblasters to walk their fire onto the targets and then fire the heavier guns similar to how many WW2 fighters would use .30 caliber machine guns until they'd start hitting then switch to their 20 mm cannon. (The original system, which only worked half the time, involved using one of the laser cannons as a rangefinder IIRC.)

I think I'd treat that as something along the lines of "if you attack using the auto-blasters, get one boost die for each success or two advantage scored when firing the ion- or laser cannons at the same target next round".

Talking about "No Disintegration" and the Lancer ship. You need to activate the fire control'system with a single maneuver. When activated you link your dorsal light laser turret (linked 2) with your fixed forward dual light laser cannons (linked 1) and your ventral light tractor beam projector.

Now you fire your forward light laser cannons, they gain the linked 4 quality and Tractor 2 quality. The problem according the book is that if you Fire Control'System is knocked offline by damages or ion damages, all your weapons are offline at the same time...

that's what the book'says

Odd that a combo with dorsal and ventral mountings can focus on the same target at the same time.

50 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Odd that a combo with dorsal and ventral mountings can focus on the same target at the same time.

What so odd about it? As long as the arc is not dorsal or ventral, they cover forward, port, starboard and aft usually just fine and have the height to focus something that is some meters out and not to far off the x-axis of the ship. Once something approaches from dorsal or ventral the ability to focus it with ventral and dorsal turrets at the same time is naturally gone.

I forgot to mention that "new" weapon is only firing forward off course.