Okay. This is somewhere between looking for rules references and seeking advice.

On a narrative scale, for a single PC, launching a fighter involves getting on board (a personal scale manoeuvre unless you have Let's Ride!) and powering it up (probably a second manoeuvre), and then on a ship scale, accelerating (a manoeuvre to speed up) and moving from the area of the launch bay to 'free space' (a fly manoeuvre).

That's a total of four manoeuvres - so 2 turns for a generic minion, or 1 turn for a PC with Let's Ride! who's prepared to burn some strain.

For a group of minions - or multiple groups of minions - this becomes a little more....abstract.

A militarised Gozanti carries 4 TIE fighters on external racks. Launching all four at once is not especially unrealistic (although doing it in pairs seems safer to avoid the possibility of collisions).

A proper Imperial navy Carrier or Destroyer carries well over a hundred fighters. Launching all of them through a single bay in one round seems a little over the top.

Is there some advice on this in Stay On Target or Lead By Example that I've missed? How long would you expect a Destroyer at Battle Stations to take to clear the decks?

It would likely take a few rounds to get that many TIEs out of the ISD. Understanding that a ship at Battle Stations wasn't expecting it for most of the time, and crew and pilots would be going about their business all over the ship. However, they would be trained to get to their stations fairly quickly. I'd say if a round is about 6 seconds, I'm using Pathfinder time here, than probably close to 5 rounds and the ISD could get out a single flight or two out, due to pilots being near their ships doing maintenance or something. Within 10 rounds you'd start seeing more coming out, as pilots and crew get to their stations quickly. But still no where near it's full TIE compliment. We're probably thinking no more than 20 fighters out by this point. It would likely take between 2 and 5 minutes to start seeing closer to a hundred TIE's.

I think thats pushing it, as starting up an aircraft, fixed wing or rotary takes time. I know on the Kiowa's that I flew there was a 2 minute engine run up that had to be done before we could even lift off. Now that was under normal, peaceful flight. Under duress you could conceivably get the aircraft in the air within a minute, just depends on how quickly the crew can get rotors turning. Fighters are different, I'm not sure how long it would take to get one started and rolling. With that I think it would be safe to say, it'd be closer to 5 to 10 minutes before you start seeing the bulk of the fighters out there.

Now with that said, if you look at Rogue One, during the battle of Scarrif when the TIEs are launched, we see tens of them launching at once. I didn't count but you could guess that they numbered between 30 and 50 all launching at one time. What we don't know, is the time it took to get those fighters spun up and off the racks after the launch order was given.

They don't have advice, but a rule of thumb I have used is that a ship carrying fighters can launch half its fighters (though no more than 4) the round after combat begins, and then up to 4 every other round after that. If the PCs catch the ship flat footed (or someone gets a triumph on Initiative) this may take an additional round per triumph.

For Imperial ships, if they are already in system, they usually have half of their fighters (up to 6) in a patrol pattern, though only a pair are likely to be close enough to engage a PC ship. For larger installations or around a Star Destroyer, these routine patrols may contain twice the number of TIEs.

That is all assuming the carrier isn't the one starting the battle. In that case, I have them launch 4 fighters each round until they have deployed whatever they want for the coming engagement.

1 hour ago, Kiowa706 said:

Now with that said, if you look at Rogue One, during the battle of Scarrif when the TIEs are launched, we see tens of them launching at once. I didn't count but you could guess that they numbered between 30 and 50 all launching at one time. What we don't know, is the time it took to get those fighters spun up and off the racks after the launch order was given.

True - they came out in a tidal wave - but some time after the battle actually started. Good point - I'll have to look on a DVD clock to see how long.

A round of combat is rather more than a six second 'snap', as I understand it.

Agreed that this is very much a case for "what the?" moments - if a ship moves to engage the enemy knowing it's about to do so, its response time (barring any combat space patrol or reserve wing sat hot in the hangar) will be far different to a ship 'jumped' without warning.

I don't have a particular system for it, but I've had a couple instances where an ISD has jumped in knowing that they're going to be fighting Our Heroes. When the Imps are extremely well-prepared I've had them drop two squadrons right out the gate, and another 1 or 2 squadrons every three or so rounds after that. That's with me assuming that everyone is powered up and ready to go since they know it's going to be a hot exit from hyperspace, and them just needing the time for the racks to move over the hangar opening.

The few times the Imps don't really know they're going to be in a fight right away but are prepared, a squadron will drop after a few rounds, assuming that they had one prepped and hadn't set up a patrol like JRRP suggested. When they're straight up ambushed or surprised . . . honestly I'm not sure, the players have so far either laid them to waste or scarpered off into hyper space before any TIEs could launch.

I can't imagine a time an ISD in action (not at dock) wouldn't have a flight (4 fighters) ready for immediate launch or already on CAP and the rest of the squadron (8 more fighters) on standby to launch within a few rounds.

Being a vet deployed in both air wings and ship's company, I can probably share some insight IRT TO and then relate it to Star Wars.

First and ISD only carries 72 craft on its wing with 12 (one squadron) being bombers and 12 being a recon squadron (usually two flights of TIE/rc and one TIE/fc fire control flight to act as the ISDs gunnery spotters). So, 48 fighters with 12 to 24 of those being TIE interceptors.

If the ISD is in a routine patrol it'd have at least a recon flight (4 TIE/rc) out backed by two flights of TIE/in. It would also have an Alert Alfa flight launched within one minute or less. The ISDs Captain or Wing Commander would then have to determine whether the threat warrants further air support or not and launch fighters accordingly.

The base on Eadu in R1 got its fighters in the air pretty quickly for not being prepared for a Rebel attack as well.

15 hours ago, AdarTallon said:

If the ISD is in a routine patrol it'd have at least a recon flight (4 TIE/rc) out backed by two flights of TIE/in. It would also have an Alert Alfa flight launched within one minute or less. The ISDs Captain or Wing Commander would then have to determine whether the threat warrants further air support or not and launch fighters accordingly.

The base on Eadu in R1 got its fighters in the air pretty quickly for not being prepared for a Rebel attack as well.

I didn't even think of patrolling craft. You're right. There would be a small number of them. However, they may not be necessarily close to the ISD when they are needed. They could be further afield and take a number of rounds to get back towards the ISD to support it. Thats probably why you'd have your Alert Alpha flight ready to launch within a minute. With that, you could see about getting the first flight our within 5 rounds maybe? And the patrol flights within 5 to 7 rounds. All others scrambled if need be, closer to 15 to 20 rounds.

This, of course, depends on how it works within the narrative of what you're trying to do with the space combat.

7 hours ago, Kiowa706 said:

I didn't even think of patrolling craft. You're right. There would be a small number of them. However, they may not be necessarily close to the ISD when they are needed. They could be further afield and take a number of rounds to get back towards the ISD to support it. Thats probably why you'd have your Alert Alpha flight ready to launch within a minute. With that, you could see about getting the first flight our within 5 rounds maybe? And the patrol flights within 5 to 7 rounds. All others scrambled if need be, closer to 15 to 20 rounds.

This, of course, depends on how it works within the narrative of what you're trying to do with the space combat.

Actually, the point of the patrol craft is to be ready to respond to a threat to the ISD. If a long range patrol, or some sort of inspection group is required, a separate group would be launched. So an ISD might have a 4 TIE CAP patrol nearby, send 2-8 TIEs on other long range missions (inspecting cargo ships, responding to distress calls, etc), and still have 4-8 ready to launch immediately. Plus more not long after.

You can find good rules to launch ships here : Check page 8

On 9/27/2017 at 5:09 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

A proper Imperial navy Carrier or Destroyer carries well over a hundred fighters. Launching all of them through a single bay in one round seems a little over the top.

Why would they only have 1 launch bay? For ships that big, it would be far more realistic for them to have multiple launch bays, so they can quickly deploy their wings when needed. Now I doubt they would have enough bays to launch everything at once, but hey, a ship 5 kilometers long, I guess they could have them evenly dispersed like that, but I doubt it. I would more likely say they have enough launch bays to deploy say...25% of their compliment of fighters at any given time.

On 9/27/2017 at 5:09 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

Is there some advice on this in Stay On Target or Lead By Example that I've missed? How long would you expect a Destroyer at Battle Stations to take to clear the decks?

I would say "very quickly" is the only real answer you need. It's a military vessel, and they train and drill for this type of stuff all the time, so they would be good at it. But the bottom line is, hundreds of fighters at once is a bit excessive. What I would do though, is allow for leadership checks for the various officers and wing leads, to speed up the process.

Any action that big, involving potentially hundreds of people, has a lot of room for things to go wrong. Which would add time to how quickly everything gets deployed. So having competent officers, directing everything would help make sure it all goes smoothly, allowing ships to launch as quickly as possible.

If I were the GM, and this was a bunch of NPC opponents, I wouldn't even really worry about how quickly this happens, at least not to the detail you are worrying about. I would just say "it's going to take them 2 rounds to get out and to you, you have until then to act without any opposition", and be done with it. However if you must crunch it down that finely. Assign some number that could be launched any given turn, some % of the total compliment like I said above. Then have some Leadership roll to effect how effectively that happens. If they roll really well, they are able to get the max % out for that turn. If they roll poorly, then the amount launched that turn is less than the max %.

So, let's say that the absolute best scenario, is 25% of the ships launched. Well, everything doesn't always go perfectly, so let's say the average, typical deployment rate, when they are not scrambling like madmen, is 15% of total compliment per turn. Then you do your Leadership roll. If they succeed at the roll, they will at least deploy the 15% average, but this number will be adjusted based on the results. For Advantage/Triumph, you can increase this %. Perhaps assign +5%/Advantage and +10%/Triumph. And on the flip side -5%/Threat and -10%/Despair. This can account for mixed orders, panicked crew members doing things wrong. Launching the squadron with the wrong flight path, so they go flying in the wrong direction and have to be turned around (this actually happened on 9/11 with 2 fighter jets launched, they were sent in the wrong direction, seriously delaying any action they could take). Etc.

So yeah, that's my thoughts on how to give this some kind of mechanic, if you must. Personally, I'd rather not even worry about it, and just say large numbers of ships launch as part of the narrative, and go from there.

Now, talking about small scale launches, of say only a handful of ships, a dozen at the most, I would probably still say only a certain number of them can launch at any time, and again use the % of total fleet as a rule of thumb.