The rule system is predicated on the assumption that targets are moving and actively avoiding trying to be hit. But I've seen no mention of what sort of bonus should be applied to attacks against targets that aren't moving or can't move. Things like orbital stations, or fixed gun emplacements and shield generators on the ground. Is there any RAW for this already? If not, what do you do in your games?

On a related note, it's always bothered me that a shooter gets a setback for a target that's prone, but no bonus because that same target isn't moving. IRL it's easier to hit a stationary & prone target than a moving & upright target.

The difficulty to hit at its base level is all down to range, size and personal shields/defense/cover (not generally speed or agility).

After that it is really down to you, if you think the target is so big as to be hard to miss or so stationery that getting a steady shot is easy, by all means add a couple of boost dice. At the end of the day, generally the agility of a target does not effect the chances to hit it, only talents like dodge or side-step (and their vehicle piloting equivalents), so you could rule that a fixed target cannot use those sort of talents as well (if for any reason they would otherwise seem applicable).

Depending on the feel you want, you could also add a boost die each shot, as you get the range, conditions etc sorted, up to a limit of 3 or 4.

2 minutes ago, Ferretfur said:

The difficulty at its base level is all down to range, size and personal shields the fixed target may have (not generally its speed or agility).

Well, I see that as a flaw in the game system. A jet zipping along at Mach 2 is a helluva lot harder to target than a Cessna at 200kph. But the RAW fails to consider that.

1 minute ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Well, I see that as a flaw in the game system. A jet zipping along at Mach 2 is a helluva lot harder to target than a Cessna at 200kph. But the RAW fails to consider that.

I hear you, but there are some combat actions you can pull as a pilot to increase defense or attack. A fixed turret would not get those options.

18 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Well, I see that as a flaw in the game system. A jet zipping along at Mach 2 is a helluva lot harder to target than a Cessna at 200kph. But the RAW fails to consider that.

Even then, the trick is the relative speed difference and vectors. However, this is a game, so ain't nobody got time for that!

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

However, this is a game, so ain't nobody got time for that!

The devs apparently didn't have enough time, that's true, but there are some games that actually don't have obvious holes/flaws in the rules. Alas, all the ones I know of that are more polished are also no longer in print due to their company's having gone belly up. I just wonder how holes such as this, or flaws such as the lack of balance in autofire (which is easily fixed via house rules), slip through playtest?

11 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

The devs apparently didn't have enough time, that's true, but there are some games that actually don't have obvious holes/flaws in the rules. Alas, all the ones I know of that are more polished are also no longer in print due to their company's having gone belly up. I just wonder how holes such as this, or flaws such as the lack of balance in autofire (which is easily fixed via house rules), slip through playtest?

Sometimes what appears as a bug by some (including playtesters) is seen a a feature by the writers. Good luck getting them to budge on it.

There isn't a specific rule from A to Z, but there is guidance that any specific rule causing angst should be ignored. In addition there are rules discussing Difficulty in general and a GM would be well within their right to rule a ship holding position in orbit over a planetary weapon emplacement and firing at a fixed location is a check that is "Routine, with the outcome rarely in question." and rule that the Difficulty for that instance is Simple, or only has a Setback. It's not hyper specific but there are certainly rules.

15 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

The devs apparently didn't have enough time, that's true, but there are some games that actually don't have obvious holes/flaws in the rules. Alas, all the ones I know of that are more polished are also no longer in print due to their company's having gone belly up. I just wonder how holes such as this, or flaws such as the lack of balance in autofire (which is easily fixed via house rules), slip through playtest?

You get this in many game systems. In Shadowrun for example, magic is either too powerful or too weak (depending on edition). In Fragged Empire gear is far to prohibitive and psionic powers seem to leave you at a disadvantage over just shooting the guy. Vehicle combat is also often a weak area in game systems.

If i have a complaint about the vehicle side of EotE, it's not the combat system, but the ridiculously low HT & SS and lack of balancing against other vehicles of a similar type.

My best guess is that the devs didn't want space combat to take long, hence the weak hulls and silly shield rules (where they make a ship harder to hit rather than act as another layer of 'armor'). Unfortunately, the FFG position not supported by either the old canon or the new. In RotJ and RotS, and most recently in R1, capital ships often engaged in lengthy gunnery duels not dissimilar to those of 17th and 18th century galleons.

I don't have any explanation for the lack of balancing. I see a LOT of sloppy editing in FFG's products, especially in the adventure books.

2 hours ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Well, I see that as a flaw in the game system. A jet zipping along at Mach 2 is a helluva lot harder to target than a Cessna at 200kph. But the RAW fails to consider that.

All space sims I have played suggest otherwise, especially the X-Wing games. Speed is irrelevant for difficulty to hit, target profile matters most. Now actively avoiding shots that is what evasive maneuvers are for. You might argue that those don't do enough to be considered realistic and would agree on that, but I don't think making it realistically hard to hit a target with low muzzle velocity weapons was the designers intentions. Because let's face it, avoiding incoming fire in star wars space combat is an exercise of hand-eye coordination and reflexes with a rather low skill ceiling. *g*

Imagine if you allow each pilot to nullify incoming fire by an incidental average piloting check, space combat would be rather long and dragged out.

Anyway, point is: A more or less static trajectory makes you an easy target, no matter if you're going mach 2 or 200kph, agility is it what makes you hard to hit not speed and you need to invest attention into those evasive maneuvers. If you want to make the evasive maneuvers themselves stronger than add positive handlings as setback dice to the pool. A TIE-Fighter would in this case upgrade all incoming attacks once and add 3 setback dice per evasive maneuver. TIE-Fighter become suddenly one of the supreme fighters in the game as they should be. Though I am not sure if players really gonna like this change as hitting those high agility ships is getting really though.

27 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

agility is it what makes you hard to hit not speed

Not necessarily true. German jet fighters were about 150kph faster than Allied planes, though considerably less maneuverable. Yet the Allies had to resort to shooting them down during take-offs and landings because once they were flying at speed they were so much faster that the Allied pilots had a very hard scoring hits.

Comparatively speaking, that would be the equivalent of speed 6 TIE/INs versus speed 4 Rebel fighters. Should be pretty one-sided in favor of the TIEs. But since in the game you need to burn maneuvers to take advantage of that speed, you don't see that result as often as it should occur because minion/rival pilots are rarely able to use those maneuvers to get and hold the edge. This reinforces what we see on-screen, that TIEs are fragile death traps. They're only viable in the hands of a skilled (ie, nemesis) pilot. But they should be dangerous even when used by average Imperial pilots against average Rebel pilots, as we see in Star Wars Rebels. But that's not what happens in the game. Put a minion in an X or Y-wing and a clone of that minion in a TIE/IN and the Rebel pilot usually wins. Because speed and agility don't matter remotely as much as shielding, armor, and hull.

It's true that the rules don't cover every foreseeable condition we might encounter, but I find that a boon rather than a bane. I would adjudicate situationally and add either Boost or Setback where appropriate. While a stationary target might be easier to hit in some circumstances, the same might be said for it being more difficult - factoring in the target's Silhouette and the shooter's speed would likely be my criteria here.

That is nice, but has nothing to do with space combat, nor repulsor based air combat.

Muzzle velocity during the world wars was several times higher. Dodging a bullet is hard, dodging a medium laser cannon is easy, simply based on the difference of projectile velocities. Furthermore the extra speed translated as well in better attitude at start of the engagement, energy management, retreat options and usually better climbing abilities as well.

Nearly all of this is not a thing in star wars space combat. Your do not rack up potential energy climbing, there is no "high ground" in space combat and you can not even conserve speed in a turn in space, making acceleration rates and thus agility trumping top speed. Atmospheric dogfighting is fundamentally different from the space variant, even at WW1-2 speeds, even when introducing top speeds of shops and even when we apply a lot of atmospheric principles into the way fighter handle, like preventing newton physics maneuvering on 6 dimensions of freedom, i.e stuff like controlling rotational axis independent from flight vector.

Lastly, I would guess that 7 out of 10 times a BTL-A4 Y-Wing loses against a TIE/LN if both are manned with just imperial pilot minions. The higher speed translates into gaining the advantage, which translates into denying shots. Now a Y-Wing with turret gunner might have an easier time

As there is such an attachment as the Advanced Targeting Array, I surmise all vehicles/starships have basic targeting array; to it a target with a predictable (i.e. no Evasive Manoeuvre) flight path is much the same as a stationary one, is it not?

6 minutes ago, themensch said:

It's true that the rules don't cover every foreseeable condition we might encounter, but I find that a boon rather than a bane. I would adjudicate situationally and add either Boost or Setback where appropriate. While a stationary target might be easier to hit in some circumstances, the same might be said for it being more difficult - factoring in the target's Silhouette and the shooter's speed would likely be my criteria here.

That is actually a good point, the best shot, the one you get when you succesfull negate the targets evasive maneuvers with your GtA action, the one that you boost with stay on target is a shot in which basically your ship and your target stay aligning statically in relation to each other. Now if you want to simulate this, you could hand out up to two free stay on target maneuvers for the dice pool, that would represent the advantage imho rather well.

2 minutes ago, Grimmerling said:

As there is such an attachment as the Advanced Targeting Array, I surmise all vehicles/starships have basic targeting array; to it a target with a predictable (i.e. no Evasive Manoeuvre) flight path is much the same as a stationary one, is it not?

Indeed it nearly is, though you need to adjust your own movement if you are firing fixed guns or keep leading your target. The Stay on Target maneuer seems to represents the flying part.

5 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

That is actually a good point, the best shot, the one you get when you succesfull negate the targets evasive maneuvers with your GtA action, the one that you boost with stay on target is a shot in which basically your ship and your target stay aligning statically in relation to each other. Now if you want to simulate this, you could hand out up to two free stay on target maneuvers for the dice pool, that would represent the advantage imho rather well.

I'm not sure I'd fiddle with maneuvers or anything fancy, I think the Boost/Setback use is a clear enough abstraction of the true difficulties of the task without having to break out the slide rule.

3 hours ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Well, I see that as a flaw in the game system. A jet zipping along at Mach 2 is a helluva lot harder to target than a Cessna at 200kph. But the RAW fails to consider that.

It's also harder to hit while being ON that jet zipping along at Mach 2. So if you are upset that movement isn't factored in, you should remember it's not being factored in either direction. Doesn't matter how stationary your target is, YOU are moving fast as heck, and thus it's harder for you to accurately shoot it, compared to you also being stationary. So you know, by your own example, the person should be suffering from setback dice at all times, simply because they are moving, and then another setback if their target is moving. Meaning every shot would have 2 setback dice, period, if both parties are moving. You know, to be realistic and all. And since that's a headache to track, as many other game systems have illustrated, and the FFG system was made to be mechanics light, they didn't bother with it. They left that kind of nitpicking micromanagement stuff up to the GM. If they want to have that much detail in the rules, and track lots of new positive/negative factors to the combat system, they can. But, for the GM's (like myself), who really don't give a crap about the mechanics, and see them as nothing more than a tool to try and tell a story, they can ignore the need for such extra dice rules (seeing as they don't exist in the game), and can just get on with telling the story.

59 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Lastly, I would guess that 7 out of 10 times a BTL-A4 Y-Wing loses against a TIE/LN if both are manned with just imperial pilot minions. The higher speed translates into gaining the advantage, which translates into denying shots. Now a Y-Wing with turret gunner might have an easier time

I know 7/10 is just a guess, but I think it's still pretty optimistic. When the Y-wing wins initiative, the TIE may never get a chance to try GtA. Also, the TIE may eat proton torpedoes at Short range (before it's own weapons are even in range). And then there's always the chance that the GtA attempt fails and the Y-wing takes its shot while the TIE pilot looks like a chump. Taken together, I would think that the TIE's chance of victory is closer to 50/50.

The TIE can use GTA before they are in firing range.

Now you are right about the torpedos, I kind of forgot those, I would have added the condition to rule out torpedo use for my 7/10 guess. Torpedos are indeed huge because of their extra range

GtA chance btw: http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=3&boost=3&difficulty=1 88% success rate for the TIE.

Countering GtA for the Y-Wing: http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=3&difficulty=4 37%

If the TIE has an gunner brain it gets even worse as now the pilot can focus on GtA each turn.

Chance for both to hit each other is pretty solid, but advantages spend from that GtA check can help the TIE significantly too.

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=3&challenge=1&difficulty=1
http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#ability=3&difficulty=2&setback=1

The biggest joke about the whole match up with minions is that the Y-Wing is properly crewed and flown one of the best fighters in the game, torps, extra gunner with a turret, astromech actions and all, the ship is great and makes the TIE-Defender look pathetic.

Back to the actual topic the OP asked.

A stationary ground target knows it's going to get pummeled so it's built to take hits, repair hits, spoof missiles, etc. Lotsa Armor, Lotsa HT/SS, damage control staff aplenty, ranks of Massive to make landing a crit hard, etc. So the hitting is the easy part, having that do something is where you challenge the PCs.

Being that OP, I was inquiring for the instance where an NPC Rebel pilot minion is wanting to strafe an Imperial-operated DF.11 AP gun turret. It's a man-sized target, so Hard to hit, and being a minion, the pilot only has a YGG (or if they're really good, a YYG) pool. 1-2 boost dice can make a big difference in whether the NPC hits or not. PCs called in an air strike. (Air) cavalry is on scene. Be sad if they can't hit the target.

Your ground team should use laser designators like in real to designate the target for the air support, that would give them boost dice

2 hours ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Being that OP, I was inquiring for the instance where an NPC Rebel pilot minion is wanting to strafe an Imperial-operated DF.11 AP gun turret. It's a man-sized target, so Hard to hit, and being a minion, the pilot only has a YGG (or if they're really good, a YYG) pool. 1-2 boost dice can make a big difference in whether the NPC hits or not. PCs called in an air strike. (Air) cavalry is on scene. Be sad if they can't hit the target.

Well if they are calling in an air strike, that usually conjures up images of carpet bombing entire areas with big explodey things, meaning Blast damage. So even if they don't hit dead on, a wing of bombers strafing the site would still get some splash in my book.

I would probabaly rule it like follows:

If they don't actually score enough suxx to "hit", but don't roll a lot of threat/despair, then say it hits in the area, but due to other factors (enemy cover fire, atmospheric conditions, crotch itch in the NPC pilots pants, etc), they didn't really have a good angle of attack. But if they get enough suxx to trigger blast, which I think is only like what, 2 advantage in most cases? The blast damage still happens, so the turret still gets at least SOME damage.

If they do roll enough suxx to hit, then calculate as normal, and add the blast damage on top of the direct hit damage.

But I would point out, that there is Star Wars precedent for a strafing run of bombers NOT hitting their very stationary target. You know.....the trench run....New Hope. "It's a hit?!?" "Negative....negative...just impacted on the surface!" So you know, it's not a guarantee, those NPC rebel pilots are kinda crap, based on historical data.