Hey everyone,

I'm currently running an AoR game set in the early years of the Alliance (2-3 years BBY) when the organisation has already been formed, but it's still more a rag-tag buch of rebel cells that have just started to work together than a full blown military force.

I wanted to give an squadron of fighters to my players so they can get involved in space raids and similar. My first thought was to give them Z-95s, as this is before the rebels got their hands on X-Wings, but the standard model does not have a hyperdrive which pretty much kills it as a hit-and-run fighter. Stay on Target has the "heavy" variant, but my understanding is that this comes into existence much later when the rebellion upgrades the old Z-95s to help them keep up with newer fighters.

I'm dead sure I have read of Z-95s equipped with hyperdrives before the advent of the X-Wing somewhere in the old Legends cannon, but I'm not sure of where...

I don't know about 'canon' but it seems plausible with the SW RPG rules.

A Hyperdrive upgrade is 1 HP and our GM ruled that a full Hyperdrive takes 2 HP in space. Since the Z-95 has 2 HP it's theoretically possible . . . ?

And the best bit is that you're the GM so you get to make the final decision.

Hyperdrive Z-95s seem to be plot-expedient. The fighters were described as being easily modified which, in my opinion, just provided justification for slapping on a hyperdrive when needed. Additionally, they carried little room for cargo and expendables, which meant that even with a hyperdrive, they were only capable of short jumps anyway.

I'd be more concerned about the Z-95 being so fragile... these things are only slightly sturdier than a TIE fighter! There are sturdier options, not least of which is the trusty Y-Wing. I'm a little fuzzy on the ship timelines, but I'm sure there are others that would fit the bill.

• If you want them to have hyperdrives, you can. You're the GM and there's plenty of options. Just plain adding them, using the hyperdrive sleds in EotE, or the rings in FaD, also providing a carrier of some kind or another.
• Make sure you know what giving the players a starfighter squadron means. Starfighters are kinda tricky, and the Z-95 is especially unforgiving. If you go with Z-95s, you'll also probably going to need a lot of them with plenty of NPCs so they can use the squadron mechanics to ensure they actually survive. If that's not how you want to go, look at more forgiving craft like the Y-wing.
• The Z-95H is actually a pretty serious piece of work. Not only are it's numbers generally better, it also carries an R2 unit, which can be a big boon, especially if there's a R2 player, but also it's missile launchers aren't linked. The ability to pump out a missile a turn is kinda a big deal.

For new characters those Z-95 are little, amazing deathstraps. They are slow, so GtA is hard, they have low enough armor/ht values to explode usually when taking a single shot of a linked gun and they have low system strain and brand new player astromechs are almost required and still not enough to make them work.

You are however playing and AoR campaign, so if you have no problem with blowing a few headhunters up each session then there is no problem. Just make sure to hand out proper vacuum sealed suits out and upgrade the R2 slots with the ejection system. You don't want your players rerolling new astromech or pilots each session.

For everything else, Ghostofman has writing it all in his post already, no reason to repeat it.

I'd go with Y-Wings rather than Z-95s. While it is (slightly) less outdated than the Z-95 the Y-Wing has the advantage of having a back seat for PCs who can't fly their own ships.

41 minutes ago, Major Tom said:

I'd go with Y-Wings rather than Z-95s. While it is (slightly) less outdated than the Z-95 the Y-Wing has the advantage of having a back seat for PCs who can't fly their own ships.

While I totally agree that the Y-Wings are super nice because of the 3 crew seats, but as long as you have player astromechs you would be fine as well with them flying and the guy in the pilot seat doing the support stuff.

Either way, I would only go with fighters if the group has pilots. Fighters are death traps and TIEs, Z95, M3As, etc especially, so you really need to know your game to survive in them.

I know what you mean about fighters being death traps. I'm currently running a game with Imperial characters (the crew of a Gozanti-class assault carrier). The first time they took a /ln TIE up against some pirate Y-Wings was nearly the end of the pilots. Ys are tough enough that the PCs can screw a few rolls though.

4 hours ago, Major Tom said:

I'd go with Y-Wings rather than Z-95s. While it is (slightly) less outdated than the Z-95 the Y-Wing has the advantage of having a back seat for PCs who can't fly their own ships.

I pretty much always suggest going with Y-wings. Better staying power than most fighters, two crew (on the BTL-S3) plus an astromech, good and versatile weapons, a class 1 hyperdrive...

What's not to love? Sure, Speed 4 is on the low end for a fighter , but it still hits the minimum for all relevant actions and maneuvers. It only has 1 hard point, but most fighters are fairly limited in that area.

21 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I pretty much always suggest going with Y-wings. Better staying power than most fighters, two crew (on the BTL-S3) plus an astromech, good and versatile weapons, a class 1 hyperdrive...

What's not to love? Sure, Speed 4 is on the low end for a fighter , but it still hits the minimum for all relevant actions and maneuvers. It only has 1 hard point, but most fighters are fairly limited in that area.

Absolutely. The faster fighters are imo for more advanced pilots who have the talents and skills to take full advantage of the faster ships and not just die on a single screw up, because they have tools in their kit to compensate (like natural pilot, second chances, etc )

Still, there is alway the ejection seat method, a lost ship is not necessarily a ost pilot. Rebel pilots need to get picked up all the the time and assigned new ships. Even von Richthofen got shot down a few times before he died. It is as well a good opportunity to hand out cybernetics, pilots gonna love a +1 agi arm more than they gonna mourn their lost one. ;-)

Rule #1 should: Wear your suit, always, don't fly without a vacuum sealed suit.

I think I'm going to go with the Y-Wings suggestion, with some Z-95s as support for NPCs

In Stay on Target, you've got the Z-95 Heavy, which is the result of an Alliance project to seriously retrofit their stockpile of aging Z-95 Headhunters into something that can roughly compete with more modern fighters like the X-Wing and the TIE Interceptor.

The hyperdrive on it is not the best (a mere x2), and the strain threshold is 2 points lower than a Y-Wing, but it's a pretty solid ship with upgrade lasers (medium lasers instead of the light lasers on a stock Z-95) and a couple extra missiles, even if they're not Linked.

So in place of the stock Y-Wing, the Z-95 Heavy is a pretty nice alternate option for a Rebel fighter pilot. Not as flashy or cool as an X-Wing, but still pretty serviceable with a Pilot or Hotshot at the stick.

Those "not Linked" concussion missile launchers are also "not Slow-Firing" so this thing can fire off a missile every turn for 8 turns. And it should, since it won't likely last any longer than that.

52 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Those "not Linked" concussion missile launchers are also "not Slow-Firing" so this thing can fire off a missile every turn for 8 turns. And it should, since it won't likely last any longer than that.

It's funny cause it's true!

39 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Those "not Linked" concussion missile launchers are also "not Slow-Firing" so this thing can fire off a missile every turn for 8 turns. And it should, since it won't likely last any longer than that.

Now that depends, if you want to go with linked and spend two destiny points you might add your agility to the damage of each laser shot, which could be worth it sometimes not to fire the missiles. *g*

And naturally, as long as you can control the fight, you might last longer than 8 rounds … but to be honest, that would be a case of you attacking some capital ship, because anything else, even larger amounts of fighters should be either dead in 8 rounds or have shot you down long before, so firing those missiles each round is something useful for your astromech to do. Anything with less than 4 armor is usually not worth shooting with a single 6 damage concussion over the two hits you create with the linked 6 damage medium lasers. But as your mech can fire as well, it certainly should fire those missiles. But the missiles have more range, so there are some fun tricks to pull of with them, especially against minions who can not do two maneuvers per turn and are often in ships with only close range lasers, but not short range weapons.

Canonically, a Z-95 doesn't have a hyperdrive, but one can be retrofitted. Also, they lack navicomputers or an astromech socket because they had no hyperdrives.

9 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

In Stay on Target, you've got the Z-95 Heavy, which is the result of an Alliance project to seriously retrofit their stockpile of aging Z-95 Headhunters into something that can roughly compete with more modern fighters like the X-Wing and the TIE Interceptor.

The hyperdrive on it is not the best (a mere x2), and the strain threshold is 2 points lower than a Y-Wing, but it's a pretty solid ship with upgrade lasers (medium lasers instead of the light lasers on a stock Z-95) and a couple extra missiles, even if they're not Linked.

So in place of the stock Y-Wing, the Z-95 Heavy is a pretty nice alternate option for a Rebel fighter pilot. Not as flashy or cool as an X-Wing, but still pretty serviceable with a Pilot or Hotshot at the stick.

My original idea was to use Heavy Z-95s as my understanding is that the rebels used these before the advent of the X-Wing, but Stay on Target seems to contradict this.

1 hour ago, Obsidian Razor said:

My original idea was to use Heavy Z-95s as my understanding is that the rebels used these before the advent of the X-Wing, but Stay on Target seems to contradict this.

Yeah, Stay on Target seemed to contradict a few things from Legends, such as the E-Wings being available pre-RotJ instead of rolling off production lines about 6 years post-RotJ. Then again, Rebels is changing things up as well, what with B-Wings, A-Wings, and TIE Defenders being available before ANH when Legends had them showing up after ANH.

I think with regards to the X-Wing, while those were the superior fighter in just about every aspect save perhaps hull trauma, the Heavy Z-95s were likely used to shore up Rebel squadrons that couldn't afford the "new hotness" but didn't want to be stuck with "old and busted."

11 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Those "not Linked" concussion missile launchers are also "not Slow-Firing" so this thing can fire off a missile every turn for 8 turns. And it should, since it won't likely last any longer than that.

Well, that's largely true of all starfighters, given how lethal starship combat is and the proliferation of the Linked 1 quality in starfighter weapons load-outs.

1 success and 2 advantage with a Linked 1 medium laser cannon is pretty much all she wrote for any starfighter with a hull trauma under a 10, and even heavier fighters like the Y-Wing and Heavy Z-95 are going to pretty close to exceeding their hull trauma threshold.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Well, that's largely true of all starfighters, given how lethal starship combat is and the proliferation of the Linked 1 quality in starfighter weapons load-outs.

1 success and 2 advantage with a Linked 1 medium laser cannon is pretty much all she wrote for any starfighter with a hull trauma under a 10, and even heavier fighters like the Y-Wing and Heavy Z-95 are going to pretty close to exceeding their hull trauma threshold.

That was his point. Heavier fighters last two to three times as long, while the faster, lighter fighters are harder to hit, some of them significantly harder to hit (Sil 0 vs Sil 1 is usually one extra purple in fighter combat) higher speed means a lot easy GtA checks and hard or even daunting checks for the opponents, which translates in smaller skirmishes as well to much longer survival rates. In larger battles the squadron rules might turn turn the battle again into something controllable.

But at least the Z-95 comes with a astromech socket, so if a player astromech is avaible, the Z-95 gains significantly in all areas, especially when compared to the common TIE/LN. edit: Naturally this does not help when compared to ships which come as well with a astromech socket nor much when you fly "solo".

Hilariously, ever since I posted this, the entry for the Z-95 seems to have been updated on the Wookiepedia for "Canon" and it lists the Z-95 as having a hyperdrive (retrofit) and 1 Ion Cannon (?).

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Z-95_Headhunter

I've been looking around and there seems to be more than a few Z-95s with hyperdrives, so I imagine is a "standard" modification, perhaps you can buy a plug-in hyperdrive in the aftermarket, probably nothing fancy, but still enough. I think I'd still charge 1HP for it.

3 hours ago, Obsidian Razor said:

Hilariously, ever since I posted this, the entry for the Z-95 seems to have been updated on the Wookiepedia for "Canon" and it lists the Z-95 as having a hyperdrive (retrofit) and 1 Ion Cannon (?).

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Z-95_Headhunter

I've been looking around and there seems to be more than a few Z-95s with hyperdrives, so I imagine is a "standard" modification, perhaps you can buy a plug-in hyperdrive in the aftermarket, probably nothing fancy, but still enough. I think I'd still charge 1HP for it.

The issue comes from the weak definition of "Canon" in star wars.

LFL/TheMouse are primarily concerned with story continuity. Tachyon particles and gun barrels are of no concern as long who did what when still works.

The Otaku that run Wookieepedia on the other hand want to make canon some kind of law they hold the keys to. So when a new mobile game comes out saying x-wings all carry proton bombs because that's what the game needed, the Otaku jump on it because "all new material is canon" even though it probably isn't really...

Though the retrofitted hyperdrive was there when the topic started
And the ion cannon works just fine within AoR, as it can be added for hardpoints just fine. For the wiki entry, someone please remove the ion cannon in the right bar and add it as option for the ship in the text, it would be silly to have that cannon as new standard equipment which all previous characters just forgot to ever use.

7 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Though the retrofitted hyperdrive was there when the topic started
And the ion cannon works just fine within AoR, as it can be added for hardpoints just fine. For the wiki entry, someone please remove the ion cannon in the right bar and add it as option for the ship in the text, it would be silly to have that cannon as new standard equipment which all previous characters just forgot to ever use.

Good luck with updating Wookiepedia with that info. The site runners there refused to allow the HWK-290 page to be updated to account for the smaller size that FFG cited was direct from the Lucasfilm archives, insisting on going with WotC's exaggerated size that put the ship as being comparable size-wise to a YT-1300 instead of a Y-Wing. Haven't checked the HWK-290 page to see if they've finally relented or at still sticking to their guns.

The legends page still has it at 29m, but the canon page doesn't list a length.