I have so far only used freighters not starfighters and squadron rules.

@Rakaydos is there still room?

Go ahead and roll up a set of characters. No guarentee you get in, but variety is good.

I'm almost done with mine should be done by monday!

13 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

Looks like we've got six player so far?

How familiar is everyone with starship combat?

I never ran two character starship action economy game however, I've ran a AoR campaign using most of the space maneuvers/actions before. I believe I "get-it" however I'm sure GM/Player dynamics will arise that will just need general rulings through play.

Are we going to use emperor Norton's house rules because those fix alot of broken mechanics and makes snubfighters actually useable in large combat encounters with capital ships. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLEUG156sZeTGFTblMzYWVlVVU/view

8 minutes ago, Samuel Richard said:

Are we going to use emperor Norton's house rules because those fix alot of broken mechanics and makes snubfighters actually useable in large combat encounters with capital ships. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzLEUG156sZeTGFTblMzYWVlVVU/view

I'm not really familiar with them. What does everyone else think?

33 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

I'm not really familiar with them. What does everyone else think?

Well, it's harder to just try and proton torp fast groups of fighters outright due to the active lock system, it combines movement and speed into one single maneuver, changes Gain the Advantage so that it's easier for slightly slower fighters to actually gain the advantage, makes it impossible to snipe snubfighters at long range with a Star Destroyer, and has the sensors do something. There are also minor vehicles changes.

The thing I'm not fond of are the shields incidental, since system strain is tough to use with a lot of linked weaponry on fighters, but that's not a dealbreaker.

There are three other houserule sets I've seen for defense: one where the shields are actually deflectors and have a set amount of damage they take before failing, as well as some fixes to that. Does add math, though.

Here it is: Deflector Shields

The other one is also more math, but gives ships some more hull and system strain threshold and doesn't stray too much from the rules. (Forgive the name, this was from 4chan's /tg/ board): Other ship fixes

There was one more that I saw that combined Emperor Norton's with the Deflector Shield rules, as well as having a Dogfighting pilot only maneuver that does rely on the piloting skill. However, I'd recommend not taking the B-wing and X-wing buffs: I love X-wings myself and think those are too much: Starfighters of the Adumar

Personally, I'm fine with either Norton's or the regular rules. Just wanted people to know there are other options, too.

Happy Star Wars Day!

& @TheShard after watching Star Wars tonight you better get your pilot ready for Action ASAP, cadet!

I only know the regular rules but I’m open to the other player systems. Whatever best fits the campaign.

1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

I'm not really familiar with them. What does everyone else think?

Haven't used them before and just read through them. The changes seem fine to me although they invalidate at least 1 talent (Full Stop).

5 minutes ago, Sterf said:

Haven't used them before and just read through them. The changes seem fine to me although they invalidate at least 1 talent (Full Stop).

For Norton's? Seems like when you get it, it's now an incidental that takes the speed down to 0 while you suffer system strain equivalent to Silhouette. But I'm not too familiar with the original talent.

2 minutes ago, satkaz said:

For Norton's? Seems like when you get it, it's now an incidental that takes the speed down to 0 while you suffer system strain equivalent to Silhouette. But I'm not too familiar with the original talent.

Ah I forgot that the talent was revised as well. I just read the Fly/Drive maneuver and thought about the talent, forgetting that I just read that it was revised.

Hmm, maybe I should run a quick scenario: a Y-Wing with pilot and astromech vs. a group of TIE Fighters, with all of those rules.

well remember I'm trying to balance things out so a single Y-wing can just launch some torps and kill a squadron of ties or knock a corvette down 1/3 of its health with a lucky roll without even trying, remember we can always tweak some rules to fit the game. Im just trying to balance the game.

Does the 2 seater y wing still have an astromech slot?

13 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Does the 2 seater y wing still have an astromech slot?

yes, though each player only has 2 PCs. I suppose you could purchace an NPC droid, though...

Well, just ran a sample scenario by myself with the normal rules, so I can get a feel for it. Gonna try the other rules later.

Y-Wing: Sil 3, 4 Speed, 0 Handling, 1 defense in rear, 1 defense in front, 3 Armor, 12 HT, 10 SS

-Have Rebel Starfighter Ace and Astromech Droid as paired unit.

Agi 4, 2 Pres, Cool 3, Gunnery 2, Piloting Space 3

2 Intellect, 1 Pres, Cool 2, Computers 3, Mechanics 2, Piloting Space 2

TIE Fighter: Sil 3, 5 Speed, +3 Handling, 0 defense, 2 Armor, 6 HT, 8 SS

-Have TIE Pilots on them.

Agility 3, Pres 2, Gunnery, Piloting: 3 in a squadron.

Open area, no setbacks, Medium Range, people are at Speed 2 at beginning.

Initiative
-Pilot: 3s2a
-Droid: 0s2a
-TIEs: 3s

PC
NPC
PC

First Turn: Pilot changes speed from 3, uses Stay on Target (Upgrade all combat checks until next turn)

TIEs: Take speed up to 3, move to short range

Unit: Angles shields to front, takes Target Lock check, add setback (Boost for round + additional for each 2 success for one turn or more with 2 advantage each)
-Computer check, average difficulty. Got 3 success, 2 Threat
-Gives 2 Boost die, cannot use Target Lock for 2 Turns

Next Round

First turn: Pilot fires proton torp: 5 success, 2 threat, 1 Triumph.

Pilot crits one fighter with the torp, killing him outright: From 18 to 11 threshold. Proton damage is 8 + 5 for a total of 13, breach takes out soak from TIE fighter. All TIEs are dead. Even if armor was applicable, the TIEs are still dead.

Bagged and tagged, but the controls got shook up from the explosion. Time for a setback on an astrogation check to get out...

I've got my concepts mostly ironed out, and will have swsheets posted by Monday. Explorer Fringer/Scout Droid. Astromech with probe droid legs (when folded, fits standard socket). Human Bounty Hunter Operator. Investigative journalist/ war correspondent turned reconaissance pilot.

Same as before, but used Emperor Norton's Rules.

Norton's Rules

Initiative
-Pilot: 3s0a
-Droid: 1s3a
-TIEs: 1s1a

PC
PC
NPC

1st Turn

PC - Droid:
Sensors indicate there's 3 TIE fighters, Sil 3.

Droid Angle shields so that there's 3 points of shields on the front, 1 in the back. It does an Active Targeting Action against the target. 1 Success, 1 Triumph, 1 Threat.

It takes 1 Strain to set up a nice lock on proton missiles, calculating the distance and timing needed to fire.

PC - Pilot: Increaes speed to 1, moves to short range. Now knows much about the TIE fighters, TIEs know much about Y-wing. Fires missile, upgrades check by 1. 1 Success, 4 Advantage.

2 Advantages are spent to knock out 1 TIE outright. TIE Group HT: 18 to 11. The actual hit is a 9, breach nullifies armor. The TIE group is down to 2 HT. That TIE isn't looking good, and as a result, it's gonna be hard to maneuver(setback)

NPC - TIE: The TIE puts its speed to 3 and moves to close. It decides to go Get the Advantage (Norton's TIEs have +2 to Handling than the +3 it usually has.)

3 Success, 2 Threat. It maneuvers right to the side of the Y-Wing, but the TIE's controls make it so that it has to maneuver wide, giving the Y-Wing a Bonus.

2nd Turn:

PC - Pilot: The pilot jacks up the Y-Wing's speed to 4, and decides it's time to bounce on the stricken TIE.

(Side note: not sure if Gain the Advantage would count as a combat check, assuming it doesn't because it's a maneuver.)

3 Success, 2 Advantage. The pilot breaks the TIE's Gain the Advantage, and forces the TIE to come at him, head on.

PC - Droid: The Droid puts all shields to the front as a maneuver, and that's all it does.

TIE: At this point, the TIE fires its guns head on. 1 success, 1 threat. It fires at the Y-wing and scores some hits, but it has to stay wide in order to not crash, giving the Y-Wing pilot more time to hit (boost die). For the Y-Wing, it takes 3 System strain to perform the Shields incidental. Since it had all of its shields in the front, it soaks up 6 damage from the shot. The armor blocks it by an additional 2.

The focused shielding and armor prevents the Y-Wing from taking damage.

3rd Turn:

PC - Droid: The droid assists the pilot's Gunnery check at the target and uses the Target Lock Action. 0 success. Dunno what the Droid is doing.

PC - Pilot: The Pilot aims and takes a shot. 2 Success and 3 Advantage. Well, it just blasts the TIE into space dust. And now, the pilot or droid is free to have 3 dice on the astrogation check out of the area.

The TIEs survived and managed to get a hit in, but the fact that the droid vented shields helped the Y-Wing stay pristine. Otherwise, that would have been quite the nasty hit on the Y-Wing.

So, it still depends on luck of the draw, but Norton's rules help even the odds.

But it is one test run for each, so can't say with certainty.

- - -

I also did an opposed piloting check for dogfighting according to the Starfighter of the Adumar rules, assuming same speed and the Y-Wing pilot has no astromech. Got 1 advantage on the Y-wing, giving the TIE fighters a setback. Next round is 1 failure.

In both of their rolls, the TIE fighter squadron and a lone Y-Wing without an astromech couldn't get behind each other's tail. Next turn, the Y-wing gets 3 success, 1 advantage. With that, the Y-Wing has a shot on the tail of the TIEs and gives himself a boost.

0 success, 6 advantages. Well, that'll be massive setback to the TIE pilots as they try to fly out.

1 failure, 1 Despair. Guess the TIE's crash by flying into each other, killing one. And they still aren't out of the woods.

Y-Wing gets 2 success, 4 threat. The TIEs aren't going down so easily and give 2 setbacks to the shot....

Anyway, the Starfighter of the Adumar houserule document's use of opposed checks does make handling and pilot skill matter, but makes battles a series of checks that have the potential to drag on and on, with Nemesis enemies being worse.

I'll have to do the homebrew rule where the HT and SS are increased, setbacks are increased through piloting skill, and using dice as a way to decrease damage. I'll also have to do the deflector shields one.

So someone came up with snap roll its a parry like action based on ranks in piloting where you take strain to decrease damage

Or you can play with wingmen so your like a minion group

The Snap Roll rule is also an option, and I believe it went into Genesys, too, under a different name.

Again, the Squadron rules are fine, just gotta get used to the fact that they can take hits for you. Also, for around 6-7 of us, I wonder how many wingmen are we going to get? If we get around 3 per person, that's a total of 24-28 craft flying about, which is a little bit more than a modern day squadron at most.

Edit: Oh, tried the Deflector Shield and HT/SS/Setback changes.

For the Deflector Shields, it helped survivabilty a lot, and having Defensive Driving work as a refreshable shield of sorts on all arcs helps justify the cost for it. Having the limit at 4 defense total helps. Also, it's nice being able to boost the shields, too.

However, it takes a bit of conversion to figure out how much damage the shields take (for a Sil 3, 1 point of shielding takes 6 damage. For a Sil 4-5 ship, 1 point of shielding takes 10 damage). It's nice that if you go through the shields, they need to be repaired in order to come up again and takes system strain to do so. And yes, technically once can grab 4 points of Defensive Driving and make it so that they are extremely difficult to hit on all arcs (yes, I could have a pilot that take 24 points of damage and refresh on his next turn). A sustained barrage can take that down easily, and it doesn't prevent crits from going through.

The HT/SS/Setback changes do help survivability by virtue of being able to take one more hit in: a proton torp that hit a Y-Wing hit for only half its health rather than nearly taking it out. And more system strain means that you have more to play with. Everyone gets Setback die Equal to ranks in Piloting + 1/2 of the ship's Handling rounded up, so a skilled pilot can make a Y-Wing dance as well as a TIE Fighter (and a good TIE pilot means that he'll breakdance all around people). Also nice that once someone hits 5 setbacks, you start adding difficulty die up to impossible. Makes Piloting important (but fighter choice also matters).

It does mean that there's going to be dicepools that can get hefty, but an automatic roller like Orokos mitigates that.

The thing I don't like much is that shields are usually used as sort of opposed die decreasing 1 point of damage for every point of shields in an arc. Unless you get lucky, you are probably going to shave off 1 point of damage anyway, which doesn't do much.

- - -

So for homebrew, I'd suggest if you are going to use it, @Rakaydos , Emperor Norton's is your best bet, followed by either the Snap Roll incidental rule or Deflector Shield rules. The HT/SS/Setback rules start making big dicepools that can be used, plus you have to start converting every ship's HT and SS, which can be a pain in the butt. The Starfighters of the Adumar document may be nice if you were playing in person, but good pilots are likely to keep outflying each other in a dogfight, which leads to fights dragging on and on.

But if you don't want to use homebrew, the Squadron rules are still good for helping everyone get more of a chance to keep on flying.

Also, @Rakaydos , for movement and gunnery difficulty, are we using the Star Wars rules or the Genesys rules?

Given that everyone is going to have a second crew who can theoretically repair system strain, I'm leaning toward "Shields as Reflect."

However, that means I need to come up with a streamlined way to handle Mauler Mithal, Backstabber, Wedge and Biggs your minions. Perhaps assume 1 SS recovered per combat round, without rolling?

Overall, Norton's houserules look good.

36 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Given that everyone is going to have a second crew who can theoretically repair system strain, I'm leaning toward "Shields as Reflect."

However, that means I need to come up with a streamlined way to handle Mauler Mithal, Backstabber, Wedge and Biggs your minions. Perhaps assume 1 SS recovered per combat round, without rolling?

Overall, Norton's houserules look good.

For known aces and stuff, that'd be fine having them recover system strain on their own would be fine for me. Again, helps them keep up the shields, but doesn't necessarily mean they'll be invincible doing that.

And it's a good thing that Norton's rules have shields as a reflect.