Hear me out. In the star wars universe the main weapons are laser based (primary weapons, turrets, cannons, baster pistols / rifles and even light sabers are laser). But flechettes are needles and/or razor sharp barbs. Every pilot should be terrified when their cockpit is punctured and that precious breathable air escapes into the vacume of space. I don't believe ray shields can stop metal shrapnel since battle droids can walk through ray shields.

For these reasons the flechette cannon and torpedo should double the stress, where as tactians and the like are just very keen crew members that help pilots get the most advantageous spot making their target stress having to outmanuver someone who's whole job is to give their pilot the upper hand.

Gunboats break flechettes if you can stack them infinately so I wouldn't like that.

I like the idea, and it would have been balanced before the GUNBOAT, but there is one little problem with it:

“My flechette torpedo makes the atmosphere rush out of your ship. Take a stress!”

“No, my pilot is a Gand. He doesn’t need air to live.”

”Oh yeah? Then I’ll flechette your other pilot!”

“He’s a Kel Dor.”

”So?”

“Also note that by your reasoning of how flechette induces stress, Kel Dors should be immune to flechette stress because they have rebreather packs.”

”$#!¥!!!”

And... we’re playing Edge of the Empire now. This is why game mechanics > fluff!

20 minutes ago, rafcpl6868 said:

Gunboats break flechettes if you can stack them infinately so I wouldn't like that.

Flechettes have the clause, "if the defender is not stressed", I imagine this change would say, "if the defender has fewer than 2 stress tokens, assign stress tokens until he has 2 stress tokens" à la Epic ship jams.

And I think this would be a good change, flechettes are underpowered.

I was under the impression that the shields had a kind of non-Newtonian property in that it was less about what was impacting it, and more about it's force/energy. That's why you can walk through shields/land with shields on, but high energy shots or impacts from debris caused damage to the shields itself.

I mean, I could be way off. This is just my own supposition based on how things appear to have worked in the movies. Especially with capital ships.

1 hour ago, Kieransi said:

I like the idea, and it would have been balanced before the GUNBOAT, but there is one little problem with it:

“My flechette torpedo makes the atmosphere rush out of your ship. Take a stress!”

“No, my pilot is a Gand. He doesn’t need air to live.”

”Oh yeah? Then I’ll flechette your other pilot!”

“He’s a Kel Dor.”

”So?”

“Also note that by your reasoning of how flechette induces stress, Kel Dors should be immune to flechette stress because they have rebreather packs.”

”$#!¥!!!”

And... we’re playing Edge of the Empire now. This is why game mechanics > fluff!

Oh how I forgot about the Kel Dors...

I don't think the gunnoat breaks this. If anything it makes a nice response to Sabine k wings and scurggs in my oppinion

eh, this is why we abstract fluff

personally, I always thought the "stress" here would be from the pilot freaking out. That's why flechette torps always stressed (scared the pants off of) pilots flying little crappy ships that were vulnerable to space shrapnel, regardless of whether or not they hit their target

not sure about flechette cannon, as its cap is clearly intended for gameplay balance purposes.