Also, I'm impressed that your combats are shorter than an hour. D&D takes a lot of dice rolls, but there are a lot of decisions to make every turn in this system compared with D&D. Not just what's your action, but how are you spending your advantage and triumph, how are you spending your enemy's threat and despair, are you dodging, are you parrying/reflecting... a turn can take a long time.

2 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Seems like easy arithmetic to me, the same as the arithmetic one does whenever someone gets hit in combat.

Anyway, this isn't really a game balance issue. I don't think there's any balance reason not to go with my modification of the squadron rules.

Collectively FFG needs to look at your and other player mods to seriously iron out the grinding gears in the mechanics of this game. I am not being a debbie downer on this system unnecessarily i feel my job is the gad flys job to spur the horse into motion. So DaverWattra while i may have a very different course of action from you i find your and others very rule based comments invaluable as i hope FFG does.

Just now, DaverWattra said:

Seems like easy arithmetic to me, the same as the arithmetic one does whenever someone gets hit in combat.

Anyway, this isn't really a game balance issue. I don't think there's any balance reason not to go with my modification of the squadron rules.

it is. but each time takes time. That adds up fast. if each die roll takes a minute to resolve. that becomes 12 minutes per round of combat that adds up fast.

2 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

Also, I'm impressed that your combats are shorter than an hour. D&D takes a lot of dice rolls, but there are a lot of decisions to make every turn in this system compared with D&D. Not just what's your action, but how are you spending your advantage and triumph, how are you spending your enemy's threat and despair, are you dodging, are you parrying/reflecting... a turn can take a long time.

To spend over an hour just die rolling and sacrificing story progression to that labour i find very counter productive and out and out boring for the players.

But on the plus side, you won't get a squadron of four B-wings exterminated by a single quad laser shot.

Just now, splad said:

To spend over an hour just die rolling and sacrificing story progression to that labour i find very counter productive and out and out boring for the players.

exactly. which is why the squad rules just are a sacrifice. a minion

2 minutes ago, splad said:

To spend over an hour just die rolling and sacrificing story progression to that labour i find very counter productive and out and out boring for the players.

Hopefully it will speed up as my players learn the system better. Anyway, the plus side is that the advantage/threat mechanics leads to some very Star Wars-feeling scenes where luck enters into the combat in a story-driven way.

1 minute ago, DaverWattra said:

But on the plus side, you won't get a squadron of four B-wings exterminated by a single quad laser shot.

That is not how the squad rules work. It is 1 minion goes away and that is all the die roll does.

1 minute ago, DaverWattra said:

But on the plus side, you won't get a squadron of four B-wings exterminated by a single quad laser shot.

Try as a gm to do a number of takes on a space battle using critical challenges to pcs as a barometer to the outcome of the battle!

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

That is not how the squad rules work. It is 1 minion goes away and that is all the die roll does.

Oops, my bad, I thought it was one minion dead per hit.

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

That is not how the squad rules work. It is 1 minion goes away and that is all the die roll does.

I think its going to be a culmination of both, more oration and streamlining broken rules.

Does that mean if the attack rolled threat/advantage, you don't get to spend that? Seems a little limiting narratively.

1 minute ago, DaverWattra said:

Oops, my bad, I thought it was one minion dead per hit.

No its damage bleed over rounded down to the nearest minion. A minion say has 5 health their are 10 of them a damage of 12 would take out 2 and do some damage to a third. No im not including damage mitigation and all that good stuff just trying to make basic case and point

Just now, splad said:

No its damage bleed over rounded down to the nearest minion. A minion say has 5 health their are 10 of them a damage of 12 would take out 2 and do some damage to a third. No im not including damage mitigation and all that good stuff just trying to make basic case and point

We're talking about squadrons, not regular hits against minions.

43 minutes ago, splad said:

I feel it is most important for the greater good of the story to keep a flow on peripheral story and orate and spin the yarn of the battle.

I've never ascribed to the belief that a "greater good of the story" exists beyond what the game-generated outcomes indicate, but I consider myself a GM that allows the story to build from these results, rather than a storyteller that makes sure the results fit the story.

26 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I've never ascribed to the belief that a "greater good of the story" exists beyond what the game-generated outcomes indicate, but I consider myself a GM that allows the story to build from these results, rather than a storyteller that makes sure the results fit the story.

You are what generates the game, the dice roll being a secondary to resolve actions in a random way. Of course it should be story first and that it be a resultant of player interaction die rolls are not the be all end all of the players choices but I think you are on the wrong page from me to prescribe my point of view of being that of a story dictator not at all. A story is a living thing changing with the ebb and flow as the players navigate treacherous waters. No story of mine has ever had a predetermined course of fate their would be no fun to be had for anyone if that were the case. The stories greater good for me is that it stays at the forefront never secondary to an hour of rolling dice to determine npc actions.

As I said earlier you are more a story teller than a GM, why do you bother bringing a Corerulebook and dice then ?

3 minutes ago, splad said:

The stories greater good for me is that it stays at the forefront never secondary to an hour of rolling dice to determine npc actions.

I don't necessarily think that's "the story"--for me the players' activities, whatever they may be, need to stay in the forefront. However, I do roll for significant NPC-on-NPC actions, such as an allied bodyguard trying to help stop an assassin.

If you don't like near-pointless dice rolling, stay away from the Mass Combat rules, especially as they pertain to published adventures like Onslaught at Arda and Friends Like These .

4 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I don't necessarily think that's "the story"--for me the players' activities, whatever they may be, need to stay in the forefront. However, I do roll for significant NPC-on-NPC actions, such as an allied bodyguard trying to help stop an assassin.

If you don't like near-pointless dice rolling, stay away from the Mass Combat rules, especially as they pertain to published adventures like Onslaught at Arda and Friends Like These .

I think you may have misread what I said as your have repeated what I said in your first paragraph. Significant npcs do factor in but my meaning was directed at someone's comment about rolling for all the npcs in a squadron.

No I won't be doing mass combat as a rolled system I leave that for the war games. For me that kind of rules system is not what produces good narrative. I have many more tools in my kit for those occasions.

On 23.8.2017 at 10:46 PM, Rosco74 said:

Squadron rules are good for Nemesis and important Npc, not for players. Each Rebel is way more valuable than a TIE pilot, who is just canon fodder, unlimited. Rebels are few, they are more skilled and it would be a shame to use them as squad member, killing one of them each time your player should be hit. The Rebel starfighters are even more rare and valuable, they shouldn't pop on each hit their squad leader suffer. That's why I never use squad rules for Rebels

This guys are very thankful for your compliments.

But their stats in the game are actually worse than those of stormtroopers.

And screw that rebel scum propaganda in regards to the imperial starfighter corp

Complete Rebel and Imperial Fighter Forces at the Battle of Yavin:

vs

Black Squadron was outnumbered basically 4 to 1 at the battle of yavin. They still managed to neutralize all Y-Wings and all but one X-Wing in that battle. Only the jedi ace managed to evade them till the end and if it would not have been for the millennium falcon interfering and launching a surprise attack, they would have dealt with that last X-Wing as well. The imperial academy and the imperial starfighter corp managed to train some of the best starfighter pilots in the galaxy.

Meanwhile the Rebel Alliance is a ragtag organisation which can recruit new pilots from the discontent masses of thousands of worlds, whole species joined the Rebellion. They don't lack manpower, they lack equipment and training. That is the reason why the imperial forces dominated any major battle up until the battle of Endor.

Another example would be the battle of Scarif. The alliance was sending in at least 36 X-Wings, three whole squadrons, 22 Gold Squadron Y-Wings, at least 6 CR-90, 3 Hammerheads, at least 3 Nebulon-B frigates, several Braha'tok-class gunships, 10 armed GR-75 medium transports, several U-Wings and a heavily armed VCX-100 with dual-proton torpedo launchers. Oh and one MC75 cruiser. Meanwhile the imperial forces consisted for just 2 Imperial-Class star destroyers, their TIE-Fighters and TIE-Strikers build for atmospheric duty. No bombers, no support capital ships, just fighters which were not launched against the alliance surprise attack.
The rebels still managed to lose or cripple most of their forces against those meager star destroyers, so the arriving Devastator had only cleanup duty on the fleeing rebel forces.

Rebels are mostly just cannon fodder and the imperials have indeed the superior training.

Man in both exemples you can see Vador himself in charge of the situation... even with PCs they would be all dead...

The wingmen of Vador are certainly not basic TIE pilots minions, probably DS-61-2 and DS-61-3 are the best pilots the Empire has during the galactic civil war, according records you can read.

This is the whole Rebel fleet you see at the Yavin battle, the Empire underestimated their chances and certainly didn't launch 5% of the fighters they had.. Plus George Lucas didn't have enough money so he couldn't afford to create anti-fighter escort for the deathstar lol. If this is all the Rebels have then yes they are valuable and rare

Nah, the 61st is overrated. The 181st more than match for them, it does help that the 181st has Interceptors while the 61st relies on outdated TIE/LN.

And Vader was not in charge at the battle of Scarif, when he joins the battle, the battle was already over and the rebels in full retreat, crashing into his Devastator as he comes out of hyperspace on the same hyperlane the rebels try to use for their escape.
Vader was not doing the assault on the Tantive IV either, he joins after the ship has been secured already.

And whole fleet is funny, first off anything bigger than a fighter was sent away from Yavin 4 before the Death Star could arrive in the system. Secondly, the rebels just lost dozens of capital ships in the battle of Scarif. A mind you, the battle of Scarif is fleet engagement the rebels allow themselves. They are still at that point just a Alliance of small rebel cells across the galaxy. This changes significantly during the galactic civil war. The destruction of Alderaan and of the Death Star brings whole worlds into the alliance and creates open rebellion against the empire. How capable star wars production is, we have seen in the prequels.

Speaking of rare and valuable rebels. Clearly not those

14 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

We're talking about squadrons, not regular hits against minions.

Squadron minions behave the same as NPC minions. Thus, it's the same principle of applying damage after armor soak and removing 1 minion from the group once the hull trauma threshold or system strain threshold is exceeded. Leftover damage applies to the next individual minion.

It's the exact same as personal scale combat.

16 minutes ago, Concise Locket said:

Squadron minions behave the same as NPC minions. Thus, it's the same principle of applying damage after armor soak and removing 1 minion from the group once the hull trauma threshold or system strain threshold is exceeded. Leftover damage applies to the next individual minion.

It's the exact same as personal scale combat.

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.

What I’m seeing in this thread is a bit of player vs GM mentality coming out in some posts. If I’m a GM and I know unrestricted space combat can be very tough to keep PCs in the action, why would I actively try to make that situation worse? The game gives plenty of dials to turn to adjust the difficulty/experience of space combat. If a GM is out for blood then of course they will crush the PCs, but GMs can do that regardless of rules/setting/enemies. IMO, the trick is matching which rules you’re using to which story beats you want to hit.

It’s up to the GM on how to spend the enemy's results, so if I have a player in an x-wing and I roll 3 success, 2 advantage against him in the opening exchange you can bet linked isn’t going to get activated and instead he’ll get an extra setback or whatever. If the PCs are attacking a capital ship, the capital ship will simply be doing blanket barrages instead of attacking with its guns. Think of it this way, IMO it seems there is a consensus to not use autofire on a group of PCs in ground combat except for when GMs want enemies who are particularly deadly. Why would a GM use a better version of autofire on their PCs in space combat simply because it is more common? Wouldn’t it stand to show the same restraint in space as on the ground? The system might have failures in places, but it is up to the GM on whether to make those possible failures stick out like sore thumbs.

Changing gears, I do want to mention the squad/squadron rules. Firstly, it is every hit can be redirected so if linked is triggered then that’s 2 hits the squadron leader can chose to reassign.

Secondly, a redirected hit, “destroys, disables, or otherwise eliminates that minion from the encounter, at the GM’s discretion.” IMO, this very much means the story and context of the hit & redirection matter. Just because the minion isn’t following around a PC anymore doesn’t mean something terrible happened. Sure, if the GM is ruthless he can declare every redirected hit a kill. A better approach, IMO, is a redirect could be a kill if it was high damage or a crit or something, but if the redirect was low damage the squadmate might flee after being hit, be disabled, forced to eject, make the decision to withdraw, surrender (?!), go on a lone rampage of attempted vengeance against his attacker (being useless to unit cohesion in the process), gotten lost trying to evade the attack, or anything else you can come up with where the pilot and/or ship is still intact after the redirection. Saying the redirect results in a kill is simply the easiest and quickest way to deal with it, but it is (likely) by far the least interesting.

I’ll also mention that though it’s the player’s choice on whether a hit is redirected, the narrative can be the NPCs intervening on the player’s behalf (though I wouldn’t use this all the time), or it can be simply the result of the din of battle with the narrative being the PC witnessing an attack on his squadmate (the attack is targeting the squadron after all, and it could be closer to the squadron leader deciding, “should I take this hit for my teammate?” from a certain point of view).

Finally, these are the dials I can list off the top of my head on how to adjust the difficulty of space combat:

Number of enemies (duh)

Type of enemies (duh)

Starting range of enemies (impacts how long PCs have to prepare)

Arrangement of enemies (how many minion groups and what size, use squadron rules or not)

Timing of enemies (everything at the start vs reinforcements, reinforcements: trickle vs wave)

Defense arrangements (bunching defense is harder to hit, except when gain the advantage used)

Do the enemies/allies use gain the advantage (if they do they eat a turn, if they don’t they could attack)

Do the enemies activate linked (effectively doubling or more their action economy)

How do the enemies use triumphs (crits or use for upgrades/narrative)

How do capital ships behave (barrage vs direct attacks, which is worse depends on several things)

What formation are the squadrons in, if any (the extra defense or other bonuses could be relevant)

What weapons are the enemies using (missiles of any kind will ruin a PCs day, are ion cannons available)

How does the enemy use its maneuvers (aim vs stay on target vs evasive maneuvers)