Afb, for starship combat, what is the sil for planetary ion cannon?

I don't recall seeing stats for it. Are you asking for targeting purposes? The ion cannon itself probably clocks in around a Silhouette 5, if you're attacking it directly. But it probably operates on a profile of being attached to a Silhouette 10 "vehicle." Off the cuff, that's probably how I'd run it.

Sounds good. I'll go with that.

I'm intrigued and would love to know more about what is behind this question.

The ion cannon is stationary so I'm not sure what the RAW rules are. It's like targeting a building.

7 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

I'm intrigued and would love to know more about what is behind this question.

The ion cannon is stationary so I'm not sure what the RAW rules are. It's like targeting a building.

The other way around is more interesting. What dice pool you roll FOR the ion cannon against a sil 8 star destroyer or sil 5 raider.
Sil 9 or even 10 sounds btw like a good choice for this ultra heavy ion cannon. It would be even over-sized on a ssd, the ion equivalent to the eclipse superlaser ;-)

Well, players are entering hostile territory that is defended by a cannon. Players ship is Sil 4 (3 factoring in one of the pilot's talents). I was going to roll to hit rather than just saying boom, youve been hit by an ion cannon; let the dice fall where they may.

So for this exercise: assume Gunnery 3, Agility 2, Sil 3(PC) vs. Sil8? (Cannon)= GYYPPPPP

For the cannon, I don't remember where I found it, but I'm using Damage 9, Crit 4, Range Medium, Breach 2, Ion, Slow Firing 2

The damage looks definitely too low for that ion cannon. We see SDs taken out easily by the ion cannon, damage 8 breach 2 would not even make a dent in an Amor 8, defense 4, 100 system strain vessel like an ISD.

I think you are not aiming for a planetary defense style ion cannon, but instead to something like ship based cannon. In that case, you could for example just use an orbital defense platform or a big walker equipped with ion cannons. Pick whatever size you want and take note of the size limitations. The heavy ion cannons go for example with damage 7, crit 2, slow firing 1 and medium range, ideal to place a few of those on a orbital defense platform with sil 6 or or as over-sized weapon on some sil 4 walker or sil 5 tank.

With something like the hoth canon you take about enough ion damage to fry sil 5 and most likely sil 6 ships for sure in a single hit. Most likely that thing does take out even an ISD in a single volley like shown in the movies.

I'm with SEApocalyps; the KDY v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon would have stats far in excess of what you need for a Silhouette 4 ship. It's meant for defeating or deterring capital ships.

2 hours ago, bsmith23 said:

For the cannon, I don't remember where I found it, but I'm using Damage 9, Crit 4, Range Medium, Breach 2, Ion, Slow Firing 2

That sounds like the stats for the battleship version of the ion cannon from Age of Rebellion.

Instead of giving the gun enough firepower to strain out a SD with a single shot, why not Concussive & Ensnare?

11 minutes ago, Grimmerling said:

Instead of giving the gun enough firepower to strain out a SD with a single shot, why not Concussive & Ensnare?

Because per RAW a ship that exceeds the system strain threshold is exactly what we see on screen. It can't move, can't fire, can't do anything.

1 hour ago, Grimmerling said:

Instead of giving the gun enough firepower to strain out a SD with a single shot, why not Concussive & Ensnare?

1 hour ago, Kallabecca said:

Because per RAW a ship that exceeds the system strain threshold is exactly what we see on screen. It can't move, can't fire, can't do anything.

But Grimmerling's suggestion does represent what we see in the shows without giving the gun an insane damage rating. I'd suggest maybe combining them into a single keyword like "disrupt #" or "disable #" that is 3 advantage and inflicts staggered and immobilized to a vehicle for the "#" rounds. I'd also maybe move the range up to either long or extreme, if its meant to hold off capital ships it should have an equal to longer range then the turbo laser batteries on those capital ship.

PS for the #, I'd personally make it one less then the slow-fire value and make that the primary "flaw" in the weapons design.

I would list it as a sil 7 emplacement (in the movies it's gigantic!) that is not targetable until the shield generator falls. As an actual, state of the art Ion cannon I would make it's damage really high. Autofire that can "stagger" a ship it hits. It would explain why the empire was so reluctant to engage that potion directly without the shield generator being removed.

Basically, this ion cannon is as significant as the death star beam in terms of power scale, it can short out a star destroyer in a single barrage, without the support of a shield generator a full bombardment would have taken it out, but the imperial cost for engaging it directly would have been much greater then it was actually worth.

My DM once employed a modifed ventor class that had a mass driver that could deal 60 damage on a single hit, it was designed to hunt gigantic space dragons in wild space. Super weapons are the flavour of star wars, while these weapons are typically are rare on star ship scale, there are clearly weapons that exist outside the norm. Planetary ion canon was the latest in design that accomplished what it set out to do, it gave the alliance an exit strategy.

I don't know how "correct" this image is.

It seems to show that it really isn't that large. The indicated kilometer-long gap between the weapon system and power supply is there, I'm assuming, to provide safety and security. I always wanted to try to mount one of these into a GR-75, using the ship's engines as a power source (presumably, hyperspace travel consumes a lot of energy so there should be enough for a small salvo).

At any rate, Silhouette 7 seems overlarge to me.

Looking at Snufy's pic, if the humans in the control room and the r2 in int bottom left are to scale, I personally would call the exposed sphere a Sil4, 5 tops.

How many time did the Ion cannon fire of the SD when Luke was in a speeder?

My point that star destroyer most likely took a bunch of hits before it appears on screen.

2 hours ago, Tanis Frey said:

How many time did the Ion cannon fire of the SD when Luke was in a speeder?

My point that star destroyer most likely took a bunch of hits before it appears on screen.

IIRC both the movie and the novelization lined up. 2, maybe 3 hits, and down went the SD systems.

5 hours ago, Kallabecca said:

IIRC both the movie and the novelization lined up. 2, maybe 3 hits, and down went the SD systems.

The sheer size of the canon speaks as well for that, the canons we see on even the death star are around sil 3, while this ion cannon is super massive.

I found the Hoth's Ion cannon specs from the old D6 Rebel Alliance Sourcebook. I'm posting them here to see if they can be converted to something usable.

It has a crew of 27, it costs 500k credits new (100k used) it has a range up to High Orbit (3 units from the planets in d6 system) and it does 12D of ionization damage. Fire rate 1. Body 5D

39 minutes ago, Lareg said:

I found the Hoth's Ion cannon specs from the old D6 Rebel Alliance Sourcebook. I'm posting them here to see if they can be converted to something usable.

It has a crew of 27, it costs 500k credits new (100k used) it has a range up to High Orbit (3 units from the planets in d6 system) and it does 12D of ionization damage. Fire rate 1. Body 5D

Sounds comparable to a Sil 5 ship with crew and cost at least

1 hour ago, Lareg said:

I found the Hoth's Ion cannon specs from the old D6 Rebel Alliance Sourcebook. I'm posting them here to see if they can be converted to something usable.

It has a crew of 27, it costs 500k credits new (100k used) it has a range up to High Orbit (3 units from the planets in d6 system) and it does 12D of ionization damage. Fire rate 1. Body 5D

And to finish off the stats and a comparison. It is scale Capital (which means it has penalties trying to hit smaller than capital scale things).

An Imperial II Star Destroyer is also scale Capital and has a hull of 7D+1. Shields aren't allowed against Ion guns in D6.

So, 12D gives an expected value of 42. 7D+1 gives an expected value of 25/26. This means an average result on both rolls results in 4 controls ionized, just short of the maximum result of controls dead. So, 2 or 3 hits and even an SD goes dead in space.

How would those 12d damge values translate in the FFG system?

12D is a lot of damage for the old D6 system. A regular Star Destroyer had a hull code of 7D (plus 3D worth of shields), and its turbolasers did 5D damage while its ion cannons did 4D damage. So the planetary ion cannon hit very, very hard.

1 hour ago, Krieger22 said:

12D is a lot of damage for the old D6 system. A regular Star Destroyer had a hull code of 7D (plus 3D worth of shields), and its turbolasers did 5D damage while its ion cannons did 4D damage. So the planetary ion cannon hit very, very hard.

And the 12D from the ion gun ignored any and all of the 3D of shields when resisting the attack. So, even if all 3D of shields was facing the ion gun, you'd still roll 7D and not 10D to defend against the 12D damage.

As for the other question, 12D would translate to about 75% of the max strain on an ISD, so probably in the 45+ damage category.

On 6/6/2017 at 10:33 PM, Ahrimon said:

I'm intrigued and would love to know more about what is behind this question.

The ion cannon is stationary so I'm not sure what the RAW rules are. It's like targeting a building.

A large sil plus several blues for stationary, and maybe even a free upgrade... it's almost impossible to miss a planet, and hitting a large target on a planet should also be almost automatic.

For some people, tho', the chance of missing is less important than "how much damage did I do to that sucker?"

I'd put it as a Sil 5, WT25, ST25, Def 4, Spd 0, AV 10. It's a bloody hard nut to crack. Not really all that tough, but hard to crack. The weapon is probably a Heavy Ion Cannons Dm 7, CR 4, Range M, Ion, Linked 1. Drop some proton torps on it, tho'... A TIE/sa dumping protons on it is putting at least 5 in per hit. The AT-AT needs 5 successes to put damage in... unless it's been modded with proton torps....