Something that has become a popular thing to do in recent games I've played is using proton torpedos against enemy fighters in fighter to fighter combat, because they are pretty much a guaranteed one shot kill, and it's not all that difficult to score a hit since all combat difficulty is calculated by ship size, not by weapon type. The 750 credit cost of torpedos is easy to justify when you consider a single point of hull damage that couldn't be fixed by your mechanics check is supposed to cost in the neighborhood of 2000 credits to patch up, and if you take down an enemy ship worth 100k credits in one shot that's a bargain.

I feel like this is kind of a flaw in the system. Am I overlooking something in the rules that speaks against using capital ship busters against fighters for convenient one shot kills? Do I just need to replace all TIE fighters with TIE bombers in fighter battles because they are actually much scarier when everyone just fires torpedoes?

I haven't had this come up yet, but I expect it to, when it does I plan to throw a couple of setback dice at them. Personally I think its up to the GM how hard it is to use torpedoes on fighters.

If the characters in your game are quite good at gunnery, then thrown in a upgrade or two to the dice pool (in addition to the setback), then despair can jam the launcher (or some similar effect), making them think twice about using it on a fighter, when a bigger ship might show up.

There is custom rules somewhere very nice that add the "Slow Tracking" quality to torpedoes and missiles. You need to spend a maneuver to "Aim" with those weapons otherwise you increase your difficulty by two. If you spend a maneuver to "Aim" then you increase your difficulty only by one.

This is because in those custom rules, as soon as you shoot a target in close range moving at speed 4+ you always increase your difficulty by. And now shooting at fighters moving at speed 4+ becomes way more difficult.

If you want to reduce missile and torpedo use than just require a missile/torpedo target lock action first before firing weapons and allow the spoof missile action to break that lock. You can remove the slow-firing from the weapon. Outside of fighting minion groups players should stop using torpedos against other fighters while still use them against high armor targets.

edit: Though as A-Wings and X-Wings can fire 3 volleys of missiles/torpedos, I doubt that player will spam them against fighters usually, simply because they run out of their high-armor breaker and are in big trouble if even just a armored gozanti jumps in as reinforcement.

And note than the "Target Lock" action in those custom rules is similar to the aim maneuver, so you just increase the difficulty by one instead of two.

Edit : sensors on active mode allow you to fire those missiles/torpedoes at short range, in those cases I allow the ennemy to use the "Spoof missile" action to evade them if you are in a Sil 3 ship

3 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Something that has become a popular thing to do in recent games I've played is using proton torpedos against enemy fighters in fighter to fighter combat, because they are pretty much a guaranteed one shot kill, and it's not all that difficult to score a hit since all combat difficulty is calculated by ship size, not by weapon type. The 750 credit cost of torpedos is easy to justify when you consider a single point of hull damage that couldn't be fixed by your mechanics check is supposed to cost in the neighborhood of 2000 credits to patch up, and if you take down an enemy ship worth 100k credits in one shot that's a bargain.

I feel like this is kind of a flaw in the system. Am I overlooking something in the rules that speaks against using capital ship busters against fighters for convenient one shot kills? Do I just need to replace all TIE fighters with TIE bombers in fighter battles because they are actually much scarier when everyone just fires torpedoes?

Sounds like it is working like the X-wing and Tie Fighter games... so I am not seeing the issue. Let your players be awesome. It is ok.

You could add in the difference in Handling of Setbacks to the combat check to reflect the constant maneuvering to acquire a target lock. The X-Wing has a Handling of 1 and the TIE Bomber has a handling of 0. If the bomber were to try to fire torpedoes or missiles at the X-wing it would add an additional Setback to the Setback from Defense.

Vice versa with the Xwing (+1 Handling) targeting a TIE Fighter (+3 Handling) would have two Setback to the check.

1 hour ago, Daeglan said:

Sounds like it is working like the X-wing and Tie Fighter games... so I am not seeing the issue. Let your players be awesome. It is ok.

It's not that I resent the players being awesome, it's that I don't like situations where if the enemies ever started doing the same thing players would get annihilated left and right. If we simply count photon torpedoes vs. fighters to be a smart move then all enemies have to act dumb to stop the game from turning into literal rocket tag.

It also kind of invalidates a ton of vehicles, in a universe where proton torpedoes are a valid anti fighter weapon nobody would designate laser cannons as the mainstay armament for fighters/interceptors. Just like in real life, air to air missiles completely displaced on-board cannons and dogfighting.

1 hour ago, Oden Gebhac said:

You could add in the difference in Handling of Setbacks to the combat check to reflect the constant maneuvering to acquire a target lock. The X-Wing has a Handling of 1 and the TIE Bomber has a handling of 0. If the bomber were to try to fire torpedoes or missiles at the X-wing it would add an additional Setback to the Setback from Defense.

Vice versa with the Xwing (+1 Handling) targeting a TIE Fighter (+3 Handling) would have two Setback to the check.

This seems like a decent enough houserule, though it would still mean that if I invoke weapon swap rules to simply put a torpedo-tube on a TIE fighter it suddenly went from being a nuisance to being a threat that needs to be defeated in the initiative rolls, because it having a turn at all is disastrously lethal.

The Empire treats tie pilots like Doritos... they'll make more. They just throw volume. If the Empire was smart they would throw missiles. But they do not care about their people. Oh and missiles have not displaced guns... all modern fightercraft have guns. only the F-4 phantom dropped them and that was universally called a mistake.

The Tie Fighter is a Zero from WWII. all you had to do was hit one with anything and they would burst into flames and go down. All they had going for them was their maneuverability.

2 hours ago, Aetrion said:

It's not that I resent the players being awesome, it's that I don't like situations where if the enemies ever started doing the same thing players would get annihilated left and right. If we simply count photon torpedoes vs. fighters to be a smart move then all enemies have to act dumb to stop the game from turning into literal rocket tag.

It also kind of invalidates a ton of vehicles, in a universe where proton torpedoes are a valid anti fighter weapon nobody would designate laser cannons as the mainstay armament for fighters/interceptors. Just like in real life, air to air missiles completely displaced on-board cannons and dogfighting.

This seems like a decent enough houserule, though it would still mean that if I invoke weapon swap rules to simply put a torpedo-tube on a TIE fighter it suddenly went from being a nuisance to being a threat that needs to be defeated in the initiative rolls, because it having a turn at all is disastrously lethal.

There are lots of ways to make torpedoes less attractive to use against fighters.

The first is to make them rarer. The players are shooting down lots of fighters with torpedoes? The Empire has noticed, and is clamping down on the sale of torpedoes in the region and are actively looking for anyone who's buying them. Asking the wrong person for where to get more torpedoes risks alerting the ISB.

The second is to introduce countermeasures. The local imperials have been chosen to test out a new countermeasure system devised by the egg-heads at Sienar Fleet Systems, the effect of which is to add a red die to all missile attacks against them. Or worse, they've come up with a wide-beam weapon that risks detonating the torpedoes in the magazines. Better unload the torps until the phenomenon can be studied and the missiles fixed.

The third is to add more enemies that require torpedoes to defeat. Oh crap, the Imperials have started to reinforce their fighter patrols with Silhouette 4 or 5 ships like the Decimator or (shudder) the Raider. All of a sudden you don't have the torpedoes to spare on fighters, because that Raider needs to die ASAP *and it outranges all your weapons*...

Proton Torpedos are restricted anyway, missiles are intended as anti-fighter weapon. And firing a torpedo against a TIE-Fighter is about as effective as firing a twin-medium laser against a TIE-fighter.

Let go of your mindset that your fighter needs to survive a hit and focus more on the mindset that you never should be taken a hit in a small scale skirmish in the first place. And arrange yourself with the squadron rules for larger engagements, which ironically strengthens the idea for laser over torpedos against fighters. If all you need is a hit to destroy a fighter than quad medium lasers look a lot more attractive than torpedos.

Lastly, if a bounty hunter is behind your groups tail, feel free to use those torpedos and missiles against the group, but the empire simply does not use torpedoes against enemy fighters for practicality reasons. Sending out a squadron or six seems to be more their style to handle things and in that case your players looking forward to more than enough sources of damage. So why bother with missiles in top? If you want to use an ace in a defender or gunboat, go for the missile hits, but your players should aware what is coming and try to prevent that shot in the first place.

And if it is a squadron defenders or gunboats? Time to run, unless you have your own squadron of fighters or a at least a heavy cruiser.

I had the same problem with my players.

I'm just forbidding to use Torpedoes on target with Sil of 3 or smaller. I just said:" It's simply not possible to lock on such targets with torpedoes standard targetting system."

Also, with torpedoes and missiles, the PCs shouldn't always assume they'll be able to get a full restock on every mission. Remember that the Alliance is often strapped for resources, especially if the PCs are part of one of the smaller cells.

Take for instance the Ghost crew from Rebels. For quite a while, they were running short on pretty much everything, and only recently had major stockpiles of munitions due to saving them up over a long period of time for a big planned attack on Lothal.

In a (sadly short-lived) starfighter campaign I was playing in, the station's commander made it very clear that proton torpedoes were a very rare commodity, and to save their usage for high-value, high-armor targets, where they'd do the most good. The one PC that opted to fire off the two torps he had loaded at a minion group of TIEs (and completely miss) got a rather epic-chewing out for wasting valuable munitions on inconsequential targets, as opposed to using the torps on the processing installation that was our squad's target, and thus putting the entire mission in jeopardy. PC was denied the opportunity to have any torps loaded to his fighter for what turned out to be the rest of the campaign.

So one way to curtail players spamming torpedoes against enemy fighters is simply supply shortage. If they get too trigger-happy with the torps, have them run out for a few sessions until the Alliance can manage to acquire more, leaving them to have either get really inventive with taking out bigger targets like well-armored capital ships, or simply to cut and run the moment said ships show up.

17 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Something that has become a popular thing to do in recent games I've played is using proton torpedos against enemy fighters in fighter to fighter combat, because they are pretty much a guaranteed one shot kill, and it's not all that difficult to score a hit since all combat difficulty is calculated by ship size, not by weapon type. The 750 credit cost of torpedos is easy to justify when you consider a single point of hull damage that couldn't be fixed by your mechanics check is supposed to cost in the neighborhood of 2000 credits to patch up, and if you take down an enemy ship worth 100k credits in one shot that's a bargain.

I feel like this is kind of a flaw in the system. Am I overlooking something in the rules that speaks against using capital ship busters against fighters for convenient one shot kills? Do I just need to replace all TIE fighters with TIE bombers in fighter battles because they are actually much scarier when everyone just fires torpedoes?

To answer your question, yes, proton torpedoes are working as intended. The real question here, is what exactly is the situation in which players are launching something as powerful as a proton torpedo at a target that can be eliminated just as effectively with far less firepower and cost? That is, are the players showing up every week to a new episode of X-wing or TIE Fighter the video game with all munitions restocked and a mission goal of 'kill the enemy until they are dead' or is there more going on with the story?

As it has been said before, torpedoes are restricted, so as such getting a hold of more can be a relevant plot point. Further, the Alliance is strapped for hard currency, so a base commander will take a very hard view of his pilots using such powerful weapons against something like a TIE fighter that is just as easily destroyed with medium laser cannons plus a single application of linked, or even just a single hit with three successes.

All that said, I certainly find it completely reasonable to add setback dice to torpedo shots against smaller nimble fighters like TIES or X-wings, or even Y-wings for that matter.

Even if you play with severely limited supplies, spending 750 credits on a torpedo that practically guarantees the enemy doesn't get a turn is preferable to being hit and taking damage, in the minds of those players. You have to run a campaign where you're counting down to the individual warhead on the base to really make conserving them a big deal.

Do torpedoes list a rarity anywhere? It just says they are restricted in the section on buying reloads.

27 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

Even if you play with severely limited supplies, spending 750 credits on a torpedo that practically guarantees the enemy doesn't get a turn is preferable to being hit and taking damage, in the minds of those players. You have to run a campaign where you're counting down to the individual warhead on the base to really make conserving them a big deal.

Do torpedoes list a rarity anywhere? It just says they are restricted in the section on buying reloads.

You can safely assume that the (R)7 of the launcher comes from the torpedos itself.

39 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

Even if you play with severely limited supplies, spending 750 credits on a torpedo that practically guarantees the enemy doesn't get a turn is preferable to being hit and taking damage, in the minds of those players. You have to run a campaign where you're counting down to the individual warhead on the base to really make conserving them a big deal.

Just a thought... If the players are ok using torpedoes on fighters....Why not lob more fighters at them?

It's still slow-firing. The launchers still run out of ammo after like 3-4 shots most of the time. If they are blowing their load on TIEs all the time just give em more TIEs to blow on. They feel like bad-mules, you feel like you are challenging them... Win-win...

1 hour ago, Aetrion said:

Even if you play with severely limited supplies, spending 750 credits on a torpedo that practically guarantees the enemy doesn't get a turn is preferable to being hit and taking damage, in the minds of those players. You have to run a campaign where you're counting down to the individual warhead on the base to really make conserving them a big deal.

Do torpedoes list a rarity anywhere? It just says they are restricted in the section on buying reloads.

I will admit, spending 750 credits for a proton torpedo, when you have to spend, what, like 1000 cr for a blaster rifle does sound a little wonky. But then the cost of many of the items in the books rarely make any sense on any level.

Maybe add a 0? Make em 7,500?

Kinda pricey, but still less than the cost of a starfighter. And for that much the players will have to think about it before they launch one....

I've already responded but I feel I should point out that houseruling to discourage your players from using torpedoes against fighters (among other things) can come across mean spirited and adversarial. There are several instances in the Rogue Squadron novels where using torpedoes over lasers were accepted and considered tactically smart because of damage potential and range. Then during the events of the Bacta War, they limited their usage against fighters to a few shots, saving the rest for capital ships, because obtaining new supplies were temporarily difficult. Several others have pointed out that making new supplies of torpedoes difficult and expensive to obtain may be easier to do without mangling your players' sense of accomplishment.

The credit scale gets a bit odd when it comes to starships and ordnance.

In real life 1,000 dollars for a rifle is about right. But a man-portable guided missile costs about 100,000, and a fighter plane at least 10,000,000.

In WW2 a Torpedo cost around 15000 dollars to manufacture, which would be roughly the equivalent of 250,000 dollars today.

A thermal detonator costs 2000 credits, and an anti vehicle mine which has a fraction of the power of a proton torpedo costs 1400 credits.

So, the price of torpedoes is definitely pretty far on the low side, even when you factor in that vehicles in this system are exceptionally cheap as well when compared to real life price dimensions. A cost of 7,500 credits would probably be much more appropriate than their listed price of 750.

I mean I understand why they set the price for starships the way they did, because anything in the realm of 100-200k credits is a reasonable monetary goal to shoot for for a party, and if the cost of ships was more comparable to real life ships and airplanes you'd be dealing in the millions of credits to buy even a modest vessel. But I guess ordnance does need to be a bit more expensive.

1 minute ago, Aetrion said:

The credit scale gets a bit odd when it comes to starships and ordnance.

In real life 1,000 dollars for a rifle is about right. But a man-portable guided missile costs about 100,000, and a fighter plane at least 10,000,000.

In WW2 a Torpedo cost around 15000 dollars to manufacture, which would be roughly the equivalent of 250,000 dollars today.

A thermal detonator costs 2000 credits, and an anti vehicle mine which has a fraction of the power of a proton torpedo costs 1400 credits.

So, the price of torpedoes is definitely pretty far on the low side, even when you factor in that vehicles in this system are exceptionally cheap as well when compared to real life price dimensions. A cost of 7,500 credits would probably be much more appropriate than their listed price of 750.

I mean I understand why they set the price for starships the way they did, because anything in the realm of 100-200k credits is a reasonable monetary goal to shoot for for a party, and if the cost of ships was more comparable to real life ships and airplanes you'd be dealing in the millions of credits to buy even a modest vessel. But I guess ordnance does need to be a bit more expensive.

Yes, I wouldn't have any issues charging more for torpedoes in the situation you have described in your games. Even if that 750 cr price was 'reasonable' (and it really isn't), that would be more like the price the Empire* can buy them for from it's preferred vendors. That rogue arms merchant who is selling arms to the Rebellion? Yeah, he is going to need a little bit more of a mark-up to account for the risk of illegally dealing in restricted heavy armor piercing weapons.

*Then again, with the Empire being a bureaucratic mess of a monstrosity, it probably grossly overpays its Military-Industrial complex just as badly as the US government does, and as such pays about 75K cr per torpedo!

My question is why are you making it so easy to replenish them? I mean sure they are 750 credits... But 750 credits will only get them if the merchant has them. And typically buying restricted items requires going to a sketchy guy is is just as likely to shoot you and take your credits. Give WEG Criminals Organizations a read. Some real good info on arms dealers and the troubles with working with them... Seems like you are making it way to easy to buy them. Consider the real world trouble with buying a sidewinder missile.

Well, the Rebellion has the shipyards of Dac that manufacture entire battleships, and X-wings are manufactures specifically on their order, so it's not like they have no heavy industry backing their cause. Maybe if you're playing a campaign set before the battle of Yavin where you're just part of a small rebel cell that has to scrounge for everything in a heavily controlled sector the idea of not being able to come up with torpedoes makes sense, but if you're playing at the height of the galactic civil war where the rebels had entire shipyards it's kind of silly to say they can't make munitions.

Are your players on DAC? Have you ever tried to smuggle weapons around the galaxy? Just because they make the weapons in one place does not mean it is easy to get those weapons where they are needed. The Rebellion does not have an easy time running their supply line. The best advice I have seen in this thread so far is Don't make resupply so easy. Make the players have to work to reload those proton torperdoes. DO that and they won't casually use them on everything and instead focus them on targets that make more sense for them. Your players are not fighting for the US Airforce. Don't treat them like they can just go down to the local walmart and get more missiles.