Hello,

I was sure the squadron rules were an excellent addition to the game at first look. But more and more I think about it... There is too much flaws, it could be usefull but I think it was written in 4 minutes without any reflexion.. a shame, the creator had something but couldn't manage to achieve something consistent.

First, the increase in silhouette by 1 point. This is the major point where the rules fail badly. In a space battle, fighters joining in a squad sign is like signing his death warrant. A fighter is silhouette 3, that means every capital ships except battleships (biggest stardestroyers) will hit you more easily. What's the point then? Only silhouette 8 or more won't have their difficulty decreased by your silhouette modification... here is some exemples to show you :

Corellian corvette CR90 with their turbolasers : average difficulty like a fighter dogfight.... Frigate Nebulon B with 12 turbolasers : hard check but the 12 light laser cannons have now an average difficulty to shoot you.... Heavy cruiser Interdictor sil7 and 20 quad laser cannons : now a difficulty of hard (I consider the rules in EotE about anti fighter defenses).....

Now another concern, the evasive maneuvers formation. It does not even protect against Linked weapons, just from Blast and Auto-fire. There is maybe 2 ships in all books that use the Auto-fire property. Did they missed the Linked weapons? is this an error?

The other formations are not really usefull at all in a space battle. I don't see any reasons to use squadron rules except for shielding a Nemesis, but even then, if your Nemesis die in a single round against the players, you failed way earlier when you designed the encounter or the nemesis himself.

Did you ever use them and could you give your point of view? Thanks a lot

Consider that a typical battle has fighters vs fighters and capital ships vs capital ships except for the key moments when a few fighters break off from the rest of the battle to bombard the capital ships or do something else important. The idea that your silhouette increases because of the surrounding ships is extremely logical and accurately depicts squad formations as they are in Star Wars.

Now why would you do something like this? Consider a Rebel strike force that only has access to 2 Y-Wing Bombers and needs those to bombard an Imperial base. If they leave the bombers unprotected, they will eventually be torn to shreds by the fighter screens. However, if there is a squad with that Y-Wing, it is protected and can complete the objective.

Now yes, squad formations are not as great of a tactic against capital ships because you want to take advantage of your small size to zip past the massive vehicle's turbolasers. So... don't form up in a squad when you're up against such a thing. You are still playing a dangerous game even when you're alone against a turbolaser wielding capital ship because more likely than not a single strike will waste you. It's a bit of a trade-off and it is definitely choosing to lose some ships in favor of protecting a key ship or pilot.

Consider, too, a rescue mission, in which the heroes have stolen a slow, clunky vessel and need to make it out alive. The squadron of fighters is ordered by their leader to form up around the escaping heroes because their survival is vital (maybe they stole some plans for a new superweapon or something).

Basically if the battle is just back and forth combat with no objective, it doesn't make much sense you wouldn't just use the micro-jump rules to hyperspace out of there immediately on your first turn. If you're there because there's reasons to be and you have specific objectives, using a squadron formation starts to make much more sense.

They are very useful ... for the squad leader. Everyone else is expendable confetti. You are treated as a larger target because there are more of you. But the leader gets to pick which ship is hit and probably destroyed by capital ship fire. And unlike minion groups, it will only kill 1 target maximum. It would be foolish for a group of 5 PC fighters to form a squadron, but if each PC had 1-2 minion followers in a squadron, the PC survival rate climbs dramatically.

As shown by the Yavin 4 battle. Luke, Wedge and Biggs formed a squad. Vader + 2 TIEs formed a squad. Only Luke and Vader take actions. Luke closes on his target, Vader shoots, and Luke assigns the hit to Biggs, and he is out. Luke again closes on his target, Vader shoots, Luke assigns it to Wedge, who is injured. Luke doesn't want Wedge to die, so he detaches Wedge and tells him to run. Luke continues closing, and when Vader shoots a 3rd time, he takes out R2. Luke is almost in range, with Vader having 1 more shot before Luke gets to fire his torpedo. But Han arrives by surprise, attacks Vader, Vader assigns the hit to his wingman, who is killed, but Han has extra advantages/triumphs, causes a collision between Vader and the remaining wingman, which destroys the wingman, and sends Vader into space.

Without the Squadron rules, all 3 fighters would be flying down the trench, and Vader would pick who to target first. Since he could sense the force in Luke, he would probably start there.

On the other hand, if I was Luke, I would be tempted to order Biggs to break off out of the trench, and drop in behind Vader to take him out. But that is risky since Vader would have a much cleaner shot on me. I would have to trust that Biggs was good enough to distract Vader more effectively than his sacrifice in blocking fire was.

On 10/13/2017 at 5:11 AM, Rosco74 said:

First, the increase in silhouette by 1 point. This is the major point where the rules fail badly. In a space battle, fighters joining in a squad sign is like signing his death warrant. A fighter is silhouette 3, that means every capital ships except battleships (biggest stardestroyers) will hit you more easily. What's the point then? Only silhouette 8 or more won't have their difficulty decreased by your silhouette modification... here is some exemples to show you :

Corellian corvette CR90 with their turbolasers : average difficulty like a fighter dogfight.... Frigate Nebulon B with 12 turbolasers : hard check but the 12 light laser cannons have now an average difficulty to shoot you.... Heavy cruiser Interdictor sil7 and 20 quad laser cannons : now a difficulty of hard (I consider the rules in EotE about anti fighter defenses).....

Look at how it alters damage modeling. In a squadron it's resolved by hit, not by damage.

A minion group gets hit by a damage 50 turbolaser and is obliterated.

A Squadron gets hit by a Damage 50 turbolaser, one minion dies and the rest are good to go.

So there is a valid trade off.

On 10/13/2017 at 5:11 AM, Rosco74 said:

Now another concern, the evasive maneuvers formation. It does not even protect against Linked weapons, just from Blast and Auto-fire. There is maybe 2 ships in all books that use the Auto-fire property. Did they missed the Linked weapons? is this an error?

They didn't miss something, you did.

Normally the closest a vehicle can get to another at this scale is Close. Blast only triggers at Engaged, making it worthless against normal minion Starfighter groups.

However, a Squadron DOES count as Engaged per the Squadron assembly rules. So a blast weapon like a torpedo or flak cannon can hit the entire Squadron in one activation. Per the Damage modeling adjustment mentioned previously, this means one blast hit can totally wipe the Squadron. Which also explains why flak cannons exist.

Against Autofire it is less valuable when talking auto blasters, which are somewhat rare weapons largely offset by linked, but against small arms it may be worth discussing. Again, it's about hits, not Damage, so low Armor rating vehicles could be wiped by a repeating blater that can successfully land hits even it those hits are only strong enough to exceed the Armor rating but not enough to inflict hull trauma. Since linked is super-rare in small arms this is more of a thing. See Critting vehicles for more information.