1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Thats plain false.
And it is exactly false in personal combat as well.

P.32 AoR-GM Kit
" While leading a squad or squadron, a leader may redirect any hit he or his vessel suffers to a minion in his the squad or squadron instead, which destroys, disables, or otherwise eliminates that minion from the encounter, at the GM's discretion. Additional benefits are gained by ordering squads and squadrons into the formations covered later in this section."
Each hit disables one minion. A 4 hits from a squad laser cannon would eliminate 4 minions in one go.

Okay. Fine. There are literally two different conversations going on in this thread, other than complaints that the game doesn't stick to gamers' personal head canon:

1. How to apply damage to a group of minion ships (the "informal squadron"). (Works the same as personal scale combat and is resolved in the same number of die rolls).

2. How to apply damage to a squadron. (An actual squadron, per mass combat rules).

What people aren't getting is that you use the rules for multiple ship engagements that match the scale of the conflict in order to resolve the conflict in the same amount of die rolls.

Five PCs in X-wings vs. 15 TIEs should have 8 parties; the five PCs and 3 opponent minion groups. Fifty Rebel ships vs. 150 TIEs is still run the same way but the five PCs (ideally) have their own personal squadrons which act as damage soaks. The three TIE opponents are individual squadrons lead by a Rival or Nemesis NPC, with their squadrons acting as damage soaks. Add green/yellow dice as appropriate, etc. etc. etc. But in the end the PC heroes and NPC villains are almost always the last to be destroyed because that's narrative and cinematic.

If the players spent 10 game sessions stealing or buying 10 B-wing fighters, those fighters should not be going into squadron level mass combat unless the players don't care that a single shot can wipe out 4. Squadron level combat is for players that have massive resources at their disposal: either command-staff level where significant numbers of ships and troops have been amassed "off-screen" *or* they're mid-level leaders where their higher-ups are supplying them troops and equipment.

A lot of stuff blows up in the Star Wars movies and it blows up at different scales. Unlike the WEG and WOTC takes which graft in-house existing rules sets (D6 and OGL D20 respectively) onto a licensed setting (which limits the narrative scale), the intention of the FFG game is to directly emulate the narrative and action beats of the films through the rules.

2 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

Okay. Fine. There are literally two different conversations going on in this thread, other than complaints that the game doesn't stick to gamers' personal head canon:

1. How to apply damage to a group of minion ships (the "informal squadron"). (Works the same as personal scale combat and is resolved in the same number of die rolls).

2. How to apply damage to a squadron. (An actual squadron, per mass combat rules).

What people aren't getting is that you use the rules for multiple ship engagements that match the scale of the conflict in order to resolve the conflict in the same amount of die rolls.

Five PCs in X-wings vs. 15 TIEs should have 8 parties; the five PCs and 3 opponent minion groups. Fifty Rebel ships vs. 150 TIEs is still run the same way but the five PCs (ideally) have their own personal squadrons which act as damage soaks. The three TIE opponents are individual squadrons lead by a Rival or Nemesis NPC, with their squadrons acting as damage soaks. Add green/yellow dice as appropriate, etc. etc. etc. But in the end the PC heroes and NPC villains are almost always the last to be destroyed because that's narrative and cinematic.

If the players spent 10 game sessions stealing or buying 10 B-wing fighters, those fighters should not be going into squadron level mass combat unless the players don't care that a single shot can wipe out 4. Squadron level combat is for players that have massive resources at their disposal: either command-staff level where significant numbers of ships and troops have been amassed "off-screen" *or* they're mid-level leaders where their higher-ups are supplying them troops and equipment.

A lot of stuff blows up in the Star Wars movies and it blows up at different scales. Unlike the WEG and WOTC takes which graft in-house existing rules sets (D6 and OGL D20 respectively) onto a licensed setting (which limits the narrative scale), the intention of the FFG game is to directly emulate the narrative and action beats of the films through the rules.

In order for a quad lasercannon to wipe out for minions you would need 8 advantage plus enough successes. What is more likely is 1 or 2 hits. As that is how linked works.

6 advantage, I think.

I'm not a fan of deliberately underplaying the opposition. They will make use of effective options like Linked and Auto-Fire when they can.

3 hours ago, Concise Locket said:

Five PCs in X-wings vs. 15 TIEs should have 8 parties; the five PCs and 3 opponent minion groups. Fifty Rebel ships vs. 150 TIEs is still run the same way but the five PCs (ideally) have their own personal squadrons which act as damage soaks. The three TIE opponents are individual squadrons lead by a Rival or Nemesis NPC, with their squadrons acting as damage soaks. Add green/yellow dice as appropriate, etc. etc. etc. But in the end the PC heroes and NPC villains are almost always the last to be destroyed because that's narrative and cinematic.

Very much this. Though a small nitpick which can have large impact on actual gameplay. Usually those 15 TIE-Fighters should be grouped into 5 minion groups. That is the usual recommendation for minion groups in general and makes sure that oneshots of play x-wings should be very rare as this limits the dice pool of the pilot minions. For advanced groups, you go naturally bigger, but than you might want to increase in general the amount of TIEs as well.

Outside of that, I totally agree.

I usually organize my TIEs into groups of 2 or 4 to fit previously shown organization charts.

55 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I'm not a fan of deliberately underplaying the opposition. They will make use of effective options like Linked and Auto-Fire when they can.

I am not underplaying it. I am pointing out getting enough advantage to hit 4 times is going to be rare with a quad laser cannon. in most die rolls I see you tend to get at most 2 or 3 advantage.

I think he meant my point about not using the mechanics to be as brutal as possible unless the story calls for it.

12 minutes ago, Hinklemar said:

I think he meant my point about not using the mechanics to be as brutal as possible unless the story calls for it.

I like that you feel the gm override is important over the mechanics for story necessity. Sometimes the system can be overly unrelenting when setting tone for the game.

I hate sounding neagative but I don't think this conversation is going to get very far because I'm seeing some circular logic in here.

1. I must use every option at my NPCs disposal to crush the PCs because it's what they would do.

2. Space combat is way to deadly in this game and it's no fun.

3. All of the options presented to me aren't feasible because they don't fit my style. Goto #1.

Pretty much, from my point of view, as long as you look at the game options from the NPCs point of view of "I must use everything I can to win" and not from the GMs "What makes a cool story" point of view then space combat is always going to be deadly.

Just my 2 credits.

4 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

I hate sounding neagative but I don't think this conversation is going to get very far because I'm seeing some circular logic in here.

1. I must use every option at my NPCs disposal to crush the PCs because it's what they would do.

2. Space combat is way to deadly in this game and it's no fun.

3. All of the options presented to me aren't feasible because they don't fit my style. Goto #1.

Pretty much, from my point of view, as long as you look at the game options from the NPCs point of view of "I must use everything I can to win" and not from the GMs "What makes a cool story" point of view then space combat is always going to be deadly.

Just my 2 credits.

Sure, but there's no reason it should be proportionately more deadly than personal combat.

6 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

I hate sounding neagative but I don't think this conversation is going to get very far because I'm seeing some circular logic in here.

1. I must use every option at my NPCs disposal to crush the PCs because it's what they would do.

2. Space combat is way to deadly in this game and it's no fun.

3. All of the options presented to me aren't feasible because they don't fit my style. Goto #1.

Pretty much, from my point of view, as long as you look at the game options from the NPCs point of view of "I must use everything I can to win" and not from the GMs "What makes a cool story" point of view then space combat is always going to be deadly.

Just my 2 credits.

Absolutely use an npcs full might against the party and challenge them make it exciting. Some of the complaint levied was the npc vs npc waste of time. The system is hardly perfect but bogging it down with peripheral stuff takes your party out of the action and puts them on the sidelines. Well at least that was my charge against that approach.

9 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Sure, but there's no reason it should be proportionately more deadly than personal combat.

except that it is not proportionally more deadly than personal combat. It is deadly to NPCs but to important characters like Vader, Wedge, Luke etc. They get hit and may be out of the fight but are not dead. the ship does not go boom till 140+ crit.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Sure, but there's no reason it should be proportionately more deadly than personal combat.

It's completely reasonable to for it to hold the same low level of threat, but it's also completely reasonable that it's more dangerous. What you have is a preference for one over the other. The game went the other way in their number balance but it also gave everyone the tools to make it less "*deadly". Whether you use them or not, even if they don't fit your preferred game style is up to you. But complaining that the game didn't give you exactly what you want is simply howling at the moon IMO.

* I say deadly in that ships are disabled easier than PCs are and it's more difficult to get them back into the action. Especially if it's one threshold (single ship) vs individuals (multiple PCs or ships). Whether they go boom or are simply disabled is completely in the GMs hands.

1 hour ago, Daeglan said:

except that it is not proportionally more deadly than personal combat. It is deadly to NPCs but to important characters like Vader, Wedge, Luke etc. They get hit and may be out of the fight but are not dead. the ship does not go boom till 140+ crit.

Except that unlike PCs which specifically limits death to a high crit, the rules allow for a ship to be destroyed once it's threshold is gone. It's a GM decision. Additionally, having one threshold instead of multiple means that when you are down you are pretty much done. There isn't another ship that can fly up and stimpack you back into the action. Sure you can repair the ship, but it leaves you severely crippled. So as long as the GM chooses to have opponents be bloodthirsty killers that take the time to kill off any ship they disable, there's virtually no getting back up once you are down.

This is part of the reason that I'm a fan of shield points that can be stripped off. That way the PCs and everyone else know that once their sheilds are low or even down the crap has hit the proverbial fan and they can bug out. Otherwise you rely on a very narrow band of HT that can be stripped off in less than a round before you have a chance to react. Does it lessen the threat? A bit. But it also provides the players a more dramatic choice IMO.

1 hour ago, splad said:

Absolutely use an npcs full might against the party and challenge them make it exciting. Some of the complaint levied was the npc vs npc waste of time. The system is hardly perfect but bogging it down with peripheral stuff takes your party out of the action and puts them on the sidelines. Well at least that was my charge against that approach.

I'm not going to play the NPCs stupid, but I'm also going to tell a star wars story and not a Generic NPC #23 was a deadeye hero today story. Just because a choice to spend advantage is optimal from a Kill-em-all mentality, does not mean that it's optimal for a story. It also doesn't mean that advantage is going to be spent stupidly either. Spending 2 advantage to activate linked and cripple your players is effective but can be boring. Spending two advantage to have a missed shot knock something (asteroid, ship debris, etc) into their path and forcing them to take a penalty on their next piloting roll still penalizes the players while keeping the action exciting.

NPC vs NPC is story. No dice required so on that I agree.

14 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

I'm not going to play the NPCs stupid, but I'm also going to tell a star wars story and not a Generic NPC #23 was a deadeye hero today story. Just because a choice to spend advantage is optimal from a Kill-em-all mentality, does not mean that it's optimal for a story. It also doesn't mean that advantage is going to be spent stupidly either. Spending 2 advantage to activate linked and cripple your players is effective but can be boring. Spending two advantage to have a missed shot knock something (asteroid, ship debris, etc) into their path and forcing them to take a penalty on their next piloting roll still penalizes the players while keeping the action exciting.

NPC vs NPC is story. No dice required so on that I agree.

I'm at the table to run a game, not to tell a story. There is a story that comes from the game as it's played, but that very well could be that the PCs are shot down by a pilot that (from their limited view of the universe) had no name.

I also expect my players to spend their Advantages and Triumphs to good effect. If a weapon has Disorient and Concussive, you can bet they'll always chose to activate Concussive over Disorient. Linked (and Auto-fire) are also popular because they take enemies down fast. I don't find effective to be boring, and ineffective is the antithesis of exciting to me. Despite this, I have enough experience with the system to create balanced encounters...most of the time (speeder vs speeder fights are still tough to balance because they are so fragile).

I have no problems with rolling NPC vs. NPC interactions if the outcomes directly matter to the players. If the NPC droid is sent to negotiate for something on the players' behalf, I roll it. If the NPC gunner on the players' ship is firing at the attacking pirates, I roll it. If the action is just background chatter, like two groups of enforcers having a street battle that the PCs have to dash through, I don't roll for the enforcer-on-enforcer violence as they're more of a scene hazard than NPCs at that point.

I don't want to rain into your parade, because I agree with the above.
I just wonder how this is related to the topic? Are we here completely off-topic or is this in some meaningful way related to issues with the space combat system?

LoL I don't even know what's the original question or purpose of the thread actually..

2 minutes ago, Rosco74 said:

LoL I don't even know what's the original question or purpose of the thread actually..

That's how the internet works. Well, that plus porn and clickbait, but those have their own sites.

8 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

I'm not going to play the NPCs stupid, but I'm also going to tell a star wars story and not a Generic NPC #23 was a deadeye hero today story. Just because a choice to spend advantage is optimal from a Kill-em-all mentality, does not mean that it's optimal for a story. It also doesn't mean that advantage is going to be spent stupidly either. Spending 2 advantage to activate linked and cripple your players is effective but can be boring. Spending two advantage to have a missed shot knock something (asteroid, ship debris, etc) into their path and forcing them to take a penalty on their next piloting roll still penalizes the players while keeping the action exciting.

NPC vs NPC is story. No dice required so on that I agree.

First off keep it civil. Otherwise it will degenerate into a slagging match. I am not advocating not using the system such as it is for best advantage. It was commentary because you have it you don't necessarily need to use it. That was what i was directing when i mention peripheral combats. When story and feel is lost over mechanics or they become the center of the game, you might as well give up and play spacemaster.

20 minutes ago, splad said:

When story and feel is lost over mechanics or they become the center of the game, you might as well give up and play spacemaster.

Playing this game mechanics-first still plays far differently from playing Spacemaster or any other hard Sim-style game. There are narrative mechanics in the FFG's SW system, and I advocate using them, but beyond what is required for those, I do prefer playing most of the game more Sim-style than many here advocate.

Just a small sidenote: RAW, only vehicles sil 3 or under and unimportant to the story default to exploding, with disabling being dependent on GM. Any vehicle with a PC and all vehicles of sil 4+ instead take a crit and shut down when exceeding threshold (no written in GM option to make it explode, even if it's an npc freighter). This info is in the "Hull Trauma" section (FnD 248 is what I checked) and is ofc up to the GM on how to impliment, i'm just pointing out the words in the book.

The general point many make about ships being relatively easy to put over HT threshold stands, but a PC faces a very low chance of exploding when the ship they're in goes over threshold.

4 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Playing this game mechanics-first still plays far differently from playing Spacemaster or any other hard Sim-style game. There are narrative mechanics in the FFG's SW system, and I advocate using them, but beyond what is required for those, I do prefer playing most of the game more Sim-style than many here advocate.

Style is gms personal prerogative. Every game will be different which in part is the beauty of it. But for me the Star Wars experience is more personal, from first movie i ever saw in the cinema to it shaping the mind over the years. I love it and wish to emulate that experience and deliver that to the players. So when game mechanics can't help me deliver that promise of a good game i question it. Here this goes beyond mechanics, if the style of the mechanics do not follow the flow of the genre then i will change it. I do not advocate narrative dice, for me it becomes a forced narrative which i think is clumsy exposition on the designers part. But of course each to their own:)

2 hours ago, splad said:

Style is gms personal prerogative. Every game will be different which in part is the beauty of it. But for me the Star Wars experience is more personal, from first movie i ever saw in the cinema to it shaping the mind over the years. I love it and wish to emulate that experience and deliver that to the players. So when game mechanics can't help me deliver that promise of a good game i question it. Here this goes beyond mechanics, if the style of the mechanics do not follow the flow of the genre then i will change it. I do not advocate narrative dice, for me it becomes a forced narrative which i think is clumsy exposition on the designers part. But of course each to their own:)

I have to question your motivations in coming to this forum if you so strongly disagree with the base mechanics of the entire system. It's understandable when you vent your displeasure in the 30 year anniversary forum, but if you are not interested in the core mechanics of this specific game, why bother with both it and these forums?

2 hours ago, splad said:

Style is gms personal prerogative. Every game will be different which in part is the beauty of it. But for me the Star Wars experience is more personal, from first movie i ever saw in the cinema to it shaping the mind over the years. I love it and wish to emulate that experience and deliver that to the players. So when game mechanics can't help me deliver that promise of a good game i question it. Here this goes beyond mechanics, if the style of the mechanics do not follow the flow of the genre then i will change it. I do not advocate narrative dice, for me it becomes a forced narrative which i think is clumsy exposition on the designers part. But of course each to their own:)

Where you see "forced", most of us see "encouraged".

The nice thing is, nothing is requiring you to use dice results as only narrative guidance. You can always default to Advantages/Triumphs=Boosts/Upgrades and Threat/Despair=Setbacks/Upgrades without narrative fluff and call it a day.

35 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

I have to question your motivations in coming to this forum if you so strongly disagree with the base mechanics of the entire system. It's understandable when you vent your displeasure in the 30 year anniversary forum, but if you are not interested in the core mechanics of this specific game, why bother with both it and these forums?

Quite honestly it's more passion than venom. i would like to see the problems addressed and fixed so i can use it. I Still buy the FFG line not for mechanics but because they have great source material and i like their different approach in certain aspects to the Star Wars Galaxy. I am not the only one who see the problem and a discussion has ensued and some rule issues i have seen in new light and work arounds that will shave allot of aggravation and time off using this system to emulate Star Wars as i see it.