So, I'll start by saying that I rarely get to play but I really like this system so I read the forums a lot and think of fun characters to play. I've always had a soft spot for vehicles and I've followed a lot of the discussions about concerns with how fragile ships are, etc. I had an idea for a small tweak to the vehicle rules and I was currious if it was balanced or if there was something I may be missing that makes it not a good idea.

Effective Silhouette or Handling modifications to targeting .
The more maneuverable a ship the better off it is at dodging incoming fire. Additionally the better it is at lining up a good shot. To effectively capture this, when determining the dice pool you calculate the effective silhouettes by subtracting the handling from the regular silhouette. So, for example, a YT 2400 is sil 4 with a handling of 0, so it's effective silhouette to target and be targeted is 4. A YT-1300 is sil 4 with a handling of -1 making it's effective silhouette 5 (4 - -1 = 5). A Z-95 Headhunter would have an effective silhouette of 2 (sil 3, handling +1). A tie fighter would have an effective silhouette of 0 (Sil 3, handling +3) making it more difficult to target and better reflecting what we see in the movies.

Turrets: A turreted weapon is not as completely at the mercy of the ships handling as a fixed weapon. So a turreted weapon reduced the handling penalty by 1 when calculating effective silhouette. So, Our YT-1300 above, firing it's medium laser cannon would have an effective silhouette of 4 to fire but 5 when being fired upon. The YT-2400, since it did not have a handling penalty remains at an effective silhouette of 4.

Does it work? Is there something I am missing (talent, ship, etc) that blows this whole idea out of the water?

Play it and find out. Gotta test a rule to see if it really sux or not.

I like how Genesys did away with the silhouette for determining Difficulty and set it like personal combat based on range. It also introduced some Maneuvers, and made ship facing matter. I am adding to that a bit for a planned upcoming campaign and seeing how it goes in making ship combat more party inclusive.

21 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Play it and find out. Gotta test a rule to see if it really sux or not.

I like how Genesys did away with the silhouette for determining Difficulty and set it like personal combat based on range. It also introduced some Maneuvers, and made ship facing matter. I am adding to that a bit for a planned upcoming campaign and seeing how it goes in making ship combat more party inclusive.

The problem is I really don't get to play. I've tried a few play by posts and they either died off or the GM was a little too controlling of the players contributions to the story so I bowed out. Someday maybe.

I had heard that about Genesys being a little different and picked up the rules to see if I could walk through them in my head and I saw that silhouette was still a thing. Page 230 under performing a combat check. "Also, vehicles have wide variance in silhouettes, so you should be sure to use the Size Differences (Silhouettes) rules on page 109." I do like how Genesys starts with range and then modifies by silhouette though. Much closer to what feels right to me. I'm looking forward to reading more about it.

Silhouette is just factored in using the personal combat rule which was always the case even in SW, it just doesn't determine the base Difficulty anymore.

So who all is switching to the Genesys starship combat model? Think we might try it on our New Years Day session.

5 minutes ago, bsmith23 said:

So who all is switching to the Genesys starship combat model? Think we might try it on our New Years Day session.

I need to go over it myself.

At first glance Genesys doesn't really look like it solves the 'Cap ships can swat entire fighter squadrons from the sky with turbolaser fire' problem. There really needs to be a 'tracking' weapon quality or something. Can't attack targets with speed > tracking.

1 minute ago, Talkie Toaster said:

At first glance Genesys doesn't really look like it solves the 'Cap ships can swat entire fighter squadrons from the sky with turbolaser fire' problem. There really needs to be a 'tracking' weapon quality or something. Can't attack targets with speed > tracking.

I'm hoping my idea can help solve that. Fighters would be relatively safe until they get into close range and even then still harder to hit than the current rules.

11 hours ago, Ahrimon said:

I'm hoping my idea can help solve that. Fighters would be relatively safe until they get into close range and even then still harder to hit than the current rules.

Penalties cap out at a silhouette difference of 4, so a sil 3 fighter is already at difficulty 5 against anything bigger than sil 6. For a silhouette 8/maneuverability -3 Star Destroyer, a turbolaser battery of 6 guns fired by minions is attacking with 3g2y, and will probably hit and easily take out a few fighters. In the mean time, as maneuverability basically just trends down the bigger ships get, that same S8/Mv-3 SD vs a S6/Mv-1 Nebulon-B frigate is difficulty 5 instead of 3. Maybe escort vessels do need a buff against cap ships but I'm not sure that's the intended goal?

Another problem is that small ships tend to be where the greatest variation in handling is. A YT-1300 turret vs a TIE fighter is now difficulty 5 (M4 +1 maneuverability -1 turret vs S3 -3 maneuverability), just as hard as a star destroyer firing on those same TIEs. That doesn't reflect what we see in the movies. I think any fix for small-ship combat has to work differently for aces and minions; mook ships die horribly to anyone in roughly the same silhouette class in the films but aces survive for ages, and that's what you want for RPG gameplay as well.

On 30.12.2017 at 1:41 AM, Ahrimon said:

I'm hoping my idea can help solve that. Fighters would be relatively safe until they get into close range and even then still harder to hit than the current rules.

The current rules allow already for fighters to go down to sil zero.
Tricky target + ECM + nightshadow coating and bam, an Sil 3 A-Wing is down to sil zero. Protectorate fighter/Miy'til + nightshadow + tricky target down to sil zero, etc … which means 5 purples for anything with sil 4 or above.

And btw, when adding four setbacks from shields and maybe upgrade the check once or four times that star destroyers starts to get into trouble even at maximum minion group size, which are in general not always recommend to use.
http://game2.ca/eote/?montecarlo=100000#proficiency=3&ability=2&boost=1&challenge=2&difficulty=3&setback=4

If you add some more defensive tools from your own check and increase the amount of setbacks, stuff gets into a downward spiral for the capital ship and that star destroyer gets a strong case of trench disease. Still, lucky hits happen even with just 10 or 20% to hit, but at the other hand it would be wise to have a squadron with you and not attack an ISD alone in your X-Wing without being an ace with tools like brilliant evasion or unmatched survivability to get even more control over the fight.

Anyway, getting more into the problem at hand, the new GtA offers a solid defensive and offensive boost and lasts now apparently until broken. A decent boost for fighters against sil 5+.
Dangerous Driving at the other hand can no easily used as tool for taking control over a battle and avoiding fire arcs altogether UNLESS your target can follow you with a dangerous driving action on their own ... which would still mean in minion cases that they lose their action.

Now the genesys vehicle rules are still super problematic, because the ease to hit is so low, which means you should increase armor significantly create more glancing hits instead of one shot wonders. That's fine for a generic system with little to no stats for vehicles, but does not work for SW because we already have this huge collection of ships which is balanced around the idea of getting shot down pretty easily when hit.

Now those ne damage mitigation abilities in genesys, especially brace for impact .... might break some sil 5 monsters, but would for sure make space combat last a lot longer.
A LOT.