On 20.8.2017 at 11:21 AM, Paris Teta said:

Well the Tie has 6 HT and 2 Armor.

X-wing Canons du 6 Damage + Success and are Linked 3.

So you just need 2 Successes and enough advantage Triumph to trigger Linked to kill four Ties (or mabye use crits to kill minions).

It is still not as much as Poe, but more then Luke, Wedge and Biggs shot down on scene.

Nitpick. You need 3 success. With 6 damage (8-2) you would reach, but not exceed the HT of the last TIE-Fighter. Crits are in this case more expensive to kill TIEs, but would be super useful with proton torpedoes which only require 2 advantages to activate. And in general it would be easier to use a proton torpedo volley to scatter a squadron of tie-fighters into small little debris clouds.

And btw, there are several astromechs with the hold together talent. The R7, the Q7 and all those PC astromech mechanics. Most likely I am forgetting some from the newer sourcebooks on top. Unfortunately mine has only Bolstered Armor, Reinforced Frame, Not Today and soon Unmatched Survivability. We feel pretty underprotected in our armor 7 Gozanti ;-)

On 21.8.2017 at 6:15 AM, HappyDaze said:

It's not really the same since the whole group often shares a single threshold and set of critical hits that determines when they are all out of the fight. In personal combat, it's not unusual to have a character or two go down (and then get brought back with stimpacks or other means) while the rest keep on acting. The default model of the whole group sharing a single ship makes this model fail when starships are concerned. It also doesn't help that single-person vehicles are proportionately much more fragile than characters. Nobody in personal combat ever has a WT of 6, but many speeders and some starfighters do.

Your kind of right and kind of wrong.
If the group decides to operate from a single ship than you are in some ways right, but at the same time nothing is stopping the group from using a ship with a hangar or even just escape pods and abandon ship in the right moment. Characters are not disabled when hull trauma exceeds hull threshold. Our group would with a 100% chance for example in that case get some EVA and try to shoot down enemy fighters with anti-vehicle infantry weapon, bombs and other explosives or downright try to capture an hostile ship, while getting cover from our light fighters (A-Wing & Miy'til) which reside in the retrofitted hangar bay together with an suborbital speeder which should be able to operate in space and survive re-entry.

You are still completely right that combat changes drastically when all characters operate under a single shared HT/SS of a singleship. BTW my pilots WT is 11 with soak 2. There are indeed single-seaters more durable and planetary scale weapons deal roughly 2/3 damage of personal scale weapons (on a different scale naturally). A medium laser cannon deals just 6 damage. While a heavy blaster rifle usually ranges in about 12 damage base damage. Which would make the 6 HT from a TIE-Fighter into 9 points when comparing to personal scale. As I said, my pilot has just WT 11 and his astromech has WT 11 as well. Now if you compare TIE-Fighters to stormtroopers ... stormtroopers have WT 5, while TIE-Fighters have HT 6. So your argument is not holding that well up in regards to WT/HT comparisons. In regards to Soak vs armor you are right, though starships have an easy time to reach a shield value of 4 on a single arc, which compensates at least a little, and armor monsters are possible. Our sil 5 ship for example has armor 7, but you can reach that iirc on sil 4 and maybe even sil 3 ships as well (rigger + armor mod on armor 5 ship (Ghtroc 720, Sentinel-Class [requires modder on top], Akaj'or-class), on top reaching 6 is actually rather easy. If damage absorption is your strategy there are several good options. Personally I prefer control and avoidance, but ironically my droid had other plans …

On 21.8.2017 at 1:26 PM, Magnus Grendel said:

A really good ace in an X-wing with an astromech can probably take on a trio of three-ship TIE fighter groups and kill the lot of them in short order.

A really good pilot astromech pair can take out 18 TIE-Fighters assigned in 3 groups without starting to sweat. Torpedos clear a whole group in one shot. The mech kills another one with his lasers (or cripples them enough to make them harmless) and the pilots from the third one scream in terror "We can't shake him" while the master pilot is gaining the advantage on them.

If you make it a large space battle and give the ace team a minion squad on top … those triumphs can be used for heavy positional advantages, out flying the enemy, gaining advantages in position and triggering extra shots left and right.

Add signature abilities and/or talents like hold together, not today, brilliant evasion, second chances, dead to rights, etc and things become pretty much a version of "Vader down" in space ;-)

5 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Because after a Medicine check and a few stims you can go into the next encounter and still contribute. If mid-encounter the party wants to run away, they can jab you with a stim to get you on your feet and you can all book it.

After patching up your leaking ship, it is reduced to speed 1, handling -3, and cannot shoot. You can't contribute again until you reach a dry-dock. If mid-encounter the party wants to run away, you have to make that Hard mechanics check all on your own or you're left behind.

"Run from combats where you're outmatched before you get crippled then!" isn't a counterargument either, as a lucky TIE fighter shot can take down a pristine X-Wing . If you roll poorly on initiative you might not even get a chance to bug out before your ship is wrecked.

Well based on the movies Starfighter combat is deadly. And it is not very deadly to PCs here. And in most cases you would likely be left for dead by the empire. So once they have moved on. you do the Mechanics check and get out. Tarkin comes to mind. I think you over estimate their chances...

The question comes to what are you trying to accomplish? as this is coming across as the only goal is to kill all the enemy. That is not Star Wars. In Episode 4 the goal wasn't kill all the ties. The goal was get a proton torpedo shot into the Death Star exhaust port... So probably one of the first things you need to establish is a clear goal. Fly in to do that goal. If you are doing a Death Star run you give each player a number of squadron mates. they are the ones that go boom so your players can be awesome. If your players are in a frieghter. What are they trying to do? smuggle onto a planet? escape from a planet? etc?

There are times when the enemies' goals will be to destroy the PCs' ship. If such opponents are not evaded, driven off, or destroyed, they will not stop shooting it until it blows up.

3 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

If the group decides to operate from a single ship than you are in some ways right, but at the same time nothing is stopping the group from using a ship with a hangar or even just escape pods and abandon ship in the right moment. Characters are not disabled when hull trauma exceeds hull threshold. Our group would with a 100% chance for example in that case get some EVA and try to shoot down enemy fighters with anti-vehicle infantry weapon, bombs and other explosives or downright try to capture an hostile ship, while getting cover from our light fighters (A-Wing & Miy'til) which reside in the retrofitted hangar bay together with an suborbital speeder which should be able to operate in space and survive re-entry.

This sounds incredibly stupid to me, but play styles vary. If my group decided to all go EVA against enemy ships, they would all die horribly. It's really not that hard for even the lightest planetary weapon to wipe out personal scale targets, and most personal scale weapons cannot hit a target at planetary Close Range (which is often outside of personal Extreme Range). You obviously go for a super over-the-top fantasy version of the game, but that wouldn't work for me.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

This sounds incredibly stupid to me, but play styles vary. If my group decided to all go EVA against enemy ships, they would all die horribly. It's really not that hard for even the lightest planetary weapon to wipe out personal scale targets, and most personal scale weapons cannot hit a target at planetary Close Range (which is often outside of personal Extreme Range). You obviously go for a super over-the-top fantasy version of the game, but that wouldn't work for me.

Jetpacks are supposed to work in space, so range is not the issue, even when it is unlikely that all hostile ships operate outside of the ~mile range you get with personal scale weapons, and while a single hit would almost certainly spell death, it's not that a sil 0 target would be easy to hit. ;- )And we have plenty of precedence in canon for attacking vehicles with personal scale weapons, including silly stuff like walkers against spaceships Star Wars itself is that much over the top, is that much space fantasy.

Sneaking into enemy ships and Boarding enemy ships would be as commonly that there is a tvtrope page for that most likely.

Lastly explosives have impressive ranges, all you need to do is lure the enemy in.

13 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Jetpacks are supposed to work in space, so range is not the issue, even when it is unlikely that all hostile ships operate outside of the ~mile range you get with personal scale weapons, and while a single hit would almost certainly spell death, it's not that a sil 0 target would be easy to hit. ;- )And we have plenty of precedence in canon for attacking vehicles with personal scale weapons, including silly stuff like walkers against spaceships Star Wars itself is that much over the top, is that much space fantasy.

Sneaking into enemy ships and Boarding enemy ships would be as commonly that there is a tvtrope page for that most likely.

Lastly explosives have impressive ranges, all you need to do is lure the enemy in.

Jetpacks most certainly do not work in space. Jets are not rockets and the default one in the EotE Core specifies that they only work in an atmosphere (and even then, likely only one with oxygen). They also (with one really stupid exception) don't shrink the user's own Silhouette, so most targets are Silhouette 1, and IME that's not really all that hard to hit with a Silhouette 3 starfighter's weapons.

Also, attacking spaceships with walkers isn't stupid--at least you have comparable weapons and armor.

Explosive ranges really aren't all that big, and if you have no way to get yourself away from the blast, then suicide away...

As for the space fantasy part, I detest the more heavily fantasy elements like TFA and much of the CW and Rebels cartoons. I like my setting a little less non-sensical and more consistent when I'm gaming in it.

In the more fantasy space heavy star wars things you have forgotten to list the OT. Space Wizards, Princesses to rescue, breathable air in absurd places and an enchanted forest (planet). Not to forget the evil wizard using magical crystals to power his doomsday weapon. No offense, but the genre itself is literally space fantasy. It clearly is not sci-fi.

Though we are getting off topic.

Jetpacks in space make imho sense, they are not fast enough to leave atmosphere, but they should be able to operate outside of one.

For explosives, ranges go up to extreme range on personal scale, so luring them in and getting them with some proton grenades or baradium charges sounds reasonable , and using cover or clever setup or flying away with a boost of your rocket boots should all work fine. Selective detonations talent is a thing too.

BTW, I fall asleep during TFA, way to close to ANH for my taste, but what parts do you consider more fantasy than the fantasy elements in the original trilogy? I am really curious, because I can't think of much right now, even when the presentation of the lost hyperspace routes was certainly odd.

I particularly hate the Starkiller weapon. It's a poorly done version of the galaxy gun from legends.

I also despise the TFA interpretations of hyperspace. Jumping into or out of gravity wells is not for me, not is "waiting" inn hyperspace.

I'm also not much a fan of Rey. She's too good at too many things without even trying. This is a much more minor point.

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Jetpacks in space make imho sense, they are not fast enough to leave atmosphere, but they should be able to operate outside of one.

Sam's talking out of his butt on that one. There is clear text in the book that says that jetpacks don't work in space, so it's not even up for interpretation. As for why, consider that jet engines have intakes. Why is that?

Also, another example of Sam talking out of his butt, is that the skill used to fly something depends wholly on the craft, not the environment where it is being flown. This is why, for example, all spacecraft use Piloting (Space) even when operating in an atmosphere. It's like the guy literally cannot even keep up with his own rules.

You do know that in the clone wars cartoon they used jet packs in space right? FYI they are called jet packs..?but a cursory look at Jangos and Bobas proves they are rockets not jets.

Just now, Daeglan said:

You do know that in the clone wars cartoon they used jet packs in space right? FYI they are called jet packs..?but a cursory look at Jangos and Bobas proves they are tickets not jets.

You do know I don't care about the CW cartoon, right?

But regardless, the rule books for the game trump other sources when playing the game.

Ok quote the text then.

Also i notice you ignored the part where he said Antivehicle weapons. Not personal weapons. You seem more interested in saying the starship rules suck than takingcany of the advice given.

JET PACK
A jet pack is ideal for fast maneuverability and surprise attacks. Most use small thrusters to blast into the air for short periods, though some augment this with anti-grav devices. Their only drawbacks are their large size and weight, limited fuel, and the not inconsiderable skill needed to pilot them safely.

The Z-6 uses an air-breathing jet turbine to propel the user, maintaining stability via directional exhaust nozzles and a gyro-stabilizer The pilot uses a verbal control interface and wrist controls to fly the jet pack A jet pack allows a person to function as a Silhouette 1, Speed 2, Handling 0, System Strain Threshold 3 vehicle that can only operate in atmosphere, and requires Piloting (Planetary) to operate.

Models Include: Mitrinomon Z-6 Jet Pack

Rules text in bold .

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

Also i notice you ignored the part where he said Antivehicle weapons. Not personal weapons. You seem more interested in saying the starship rules suck than takingcany of the advice given.

He's talking man-portable anti-vehicle weapons. These are still personal scale.

You're the one that's being deliberately obtuse.

18 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I particularly hate the Starkiller weapon. It's a poorly done version of the galaxy gun from legends.

I also despise the TFA interpretations of hyperspace. Jumping into or out of gravity wells is not for me, not is "waiting" inn hyperspace.

I'm also not much a fan of Rey. She's too good at too many things without even trying. This is a much more minor point.

Indeed it is, and the galaxy gun is a poor thing already. On top is star killer Death Star 3 turned to 11 ... from the DS2 which was already turned up to 11. Still, the fantasy elements are rather similar.
Waiting in hyperspace. Was this not a thing in RotJ? Furthermore, why is that an especially fantastic fantasy element?

Jumping out of gravity wells was odd, but actually makes sense in a sci-fi sense. The limitation of not being able to jump within a gravity well is a rather arbitrary. Especially as gravity wells are ... well. You and I are both within our sun's gravity well. Gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces, but it has the biggest range. We all are effectively within the gravitational wells of our whole galaxy cluster even when those effects are rather small. And that is good, because else there would be no solar systems, no galaxies nor galaxy clusters. And don't get me wrong, I love the EU hyperdrive rules with lanes, etc, but even there the safety systems of the hyperdrive to pull out in gravity wells can be disabled. It on of the odd thanks that interdictor cruisers work, when those are merely safety mechanics build into hyperdrives instead of rules how the hyperdrive work.

Lasty, I am somewhat a fan of Rey, I get your point, but that is criticizing the writing and not some high fantasy elements of the movie either. The whole movie is certainly aimed even more for kids than the prequels were, so the story looks like a classical fantasy story in space, but the fantasy elements themselves are not really increased at all, the writing makes those things just more obvious.

Your interpretation of jetpack is correct, it can't be used in space and Sam confirmed that, but I am sure there more expensive versions that could be designed to work in space

28 minutes ago, Rosco74 said:

Your interpretation of jetpack is correct, it can't be used in space and Sam confirmed that, but I am sure there more expensive versions that could be designed to work in space

The Mandalorians must have the upgraded ones. See Star Wars Rebels S3 Episode 21 oh and the Imperials too...

20 minutes ago, splad said:

The Mandalorians must have the upgraded ones. See Star Wars Rebels S3 Episode 21 oh and the Imperials too...

Rebels (like the rest of the Disney crap) doesn't even try to make sense.

9 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Well based on the movies Starfighter combat is deadly. And it is not very deadly to PCs here. And in most cases you would likely be left for dead by the empire. So once they have moved on. you do the Mechanics check and get out. Tarkin comes to mind. I think you over estimate their chances...

The question comes to what are you trying to accomplish? as this is coming across as the only goal is to kill all the enemy. That is not Star Wars. In Episode 4 the goal wasn't kill all the ties. The goal was get a proton torpedo shot into the Death Star exhaust port... So probably one of the first things you need to establish is a clear goal. Fly in to do that goal. If you are doing a Death Star run you give each player a number of squadron mates. they are the ones that go boom so your players can be awesome. If your players are in a frieghter. What are they trying to do? smuggle onto a planet? escape from a planet? etc?

If you read my previous post...

19 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

As it stands, this really harms any attempt to make interesting combats where the goal isn't "Kill all the bad guys" because if you get unlucky and your X-Wing is splatted in a single attack*, the party member now cannot jump to safety and is at best a prisoner of the Empire.

*X-wings have Armour 3, HT 10. Medium laser cannons have base damage 6. An attack roll with net 3 successes and 2 advantage is not hugely improbable, especially if the target isn't a great pilot.

You can't afford to ignore the enemies because your ship is so fragile. Your two fixes are:

1. When a PC is destroyed, they can just repair their ship and jump after the dust settles. This doesn't work if the PCs are planning a hit and run on an enemy base (like, for example, raiding the Death Star) and requires you to pass that Hard mechanics check. If you fail, that's it- you're lost. Unless you let the player re-roll repeatedly, but in that case the rule should be "After combat you can repair your ship with X minutes work to limp home".

2. Add enough mooks that they don't have to worry about getting hit. At this point combat survivability is now entirely up to how many books the GM decided to assign you at the start. This means that until the GM has a lot of experience balancing ablative mooks, combat is either still too lethal, or completely risk free.

If either of these are supposed to be the core balancing tools for space combat, they should really have emphasised them in the rulebooks. The squadron rules are only in a GM's kit, and the rules for repairing ships are a half-paragraph aside clearly intended to be a last-ditch temporary thing, not something for routine use. Given the sheer number of 'Space combat doesn't work' threads I really don't think it's reasonable to say the rules as written are good enough- at the very least they are not communicated well.

E: I'll be very interested to see how Genesys handles space combat. I give pretty high odds that it definitely won't be the same, regardless of how many arguments people make that as it stands the rules are perfect and everyone is just playing the game wrong.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Rebels (like the rest of the Disney crap) doesn't even try to make sense.

It's up to you to disregard Canon

39 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

at the very least they are not communicated well.

FFG has not a single game that communicates it's rules well. ;-)

20 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

*X-wings have Armour 3, HT 10. Medium laser cannons have base damage 6. An attack roll with net 3 successes and 2 advantage is not hugely improbable, especially if the target isn't a great pilot.

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=2&ability=1&challenge=2&setback=4

Actually, for a classic flight of 3 minions the chance is about zero point five percent (very dirty imprecise estimate, I am too lazy to call up the better dice calc) , assuming they are trying to evade incoming fire instead of spending a maneuver on aiming themselves. That is pretty low. Now if you have larger groups or just more flights of TIE-Fighters, chances get much better, because landing just another hit is rather easy. They have after all still roughly 30% chance to hit, it is just rather unlikely that they hit hard enough AND have enough advantages at the same time.

Feel free to check for yourself. https://github.com/bknowles/EotE-Dice-Probability
Thanks again @bradknowles for maintaining that awesome calculator which supports target values for success and advantages.

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=2&ability=1&challenge=2&setback=4

Actually, for a classic flight of 3 minions the chance is about zero point five percent (very dirty imprecise estimate, I am too lazy to call up the better dice calc) , assuming they are trying to evade incoming fire instead of spending a maneuver on aiming themselves. That is pretty low. Now if you have larger groups or just more flights of TIE-Fighters, chances get much better, because landing just another hit is rather easy. They have after all still roughly 30% chance to hit, it is just rather unlikely that they hit hard enough AND have enough advantages at the same time.

Feel free to check for yourself. https://github.com/bknowles/EotE-Dice-Probability
Thanks again @bradknowles for maintaining that awesome calculator which supports target values for success and advantages.

...4 defence, with both the attacker and the target performing evasive manoeuvres? Yes, that *is* unlikely. Not least because the minion group probably won't be performing Evasive Manoeuvres because they can't suffer strain and will almost certainly need to spend their free manoeuvre actually moving.

Against a target with 2 defence (so an X-wing with angled or boosted shields or a rank of defensive driving) who's performing Evasive Manoeuvres, 25% of shots will get enough success, and 15% will get enough advantage/15% will score a triumph. That's a 7% chance of a prepared pilot being oneshot.