The rules suggest that we can use minion-piloted ships in minion groups, but the details of how to do this are sparse. It's pretty straightforward how to handle HT: just create a combined HT for the minion-ship group, the way you do for ordinary minion groups.

But what about system strain? Should we count system strain against HT the way we count ordinary minion strain as wounds? Or should you use a separate ST for the ships? Should you create a combined ST, keep track of individual STs, or have the total ST be the ordinary amount for one ship?

Here is a proposal:

--In addition to a combined HT, create a combined ST for the minion-ship group. So for regular TIEs with HT 6 and ST 8, a group of three would have HT 18 and ST 24.

--A minion-ship is eliminated whenever either a ship's HT is exceeded, or a ship's ST is exceeded. So if that group of three TIEs had 7 hull damage and 9 system strain, two TIEs would be eliminated and one TIE would remain operational. 13 hull damage and 9 system strain would be sufficient to eliminate the whole group; so would 7 hull damage and 17 system strain. (In effect, this rule assumes that system strain is inflicted on the most undamaged ship in the group.)

--Whenever system strain is inflicted on the group in a way where it would make sense for every ship to be strained (eg, involuntary strain from maneuvering through "rough space terrain" or something) multiply the strain by the number of ships in the group. (This is the rule I'm least sure of...)

Thoughts?

Minions can not talk voluntary strain (iirc), thus their ships can not take strain from maneuvers, thus just applying strain damage directly to hull damage seems the most reasonable approach. Basically: Just use the minion rules.

4 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Minions can not talk voluntary strain (iirc), thus their ships can not take strain from maneuvers, thus just applying strain damage directly to hull damage seems the most reasonable approach. Basically: Just use the minion rules.

Which also allows you to pull off Poe stuff

17 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Minions can not talk voluntary strain (iirc), thus their ships can not take strain from maneuvers, thus just applying strain damage directly to hull damage seems the most reasonable approach. Basically: Just use the minion rules.

They can't voluntarily take pilot strain, but can they voluntarily take system strain? The brief sidebar on "Vehicles and Minions" doesn't say either way.

Another closely related question this brings up: can minions in squadrons take strain/system strain voluntarily? Or is it impossible for a squadron to take an extra maneuver in a turn, for example?

Anyway, I can see the merits of your approach on the grounds of pure simplicity.

Ok, so minions can't take voluntary personal strain, restricting them to 1 maneuver 1 action, or two maneuvers (unless acted upon by an outside force).

However if they can't take system Strain voluntarily they are stuck with 1 pilot only maneuver per turn, really limiting what they can do.

Additionally, this would also mean certain basic maneuvers, like "Punch It" are totally out, which complicates matters further when doing things like launching a new wave.

So, that in mind you kinda need to allow voluntary system Strain as an option.

That said, for single crewed vehicles I would probably still allow Crits to remove one from play per regular minioning. That way things like TIEs don't cling to life and can be downed with MANPADS but heavier stuff still needs to either be taken on with equal force, or worn down.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

That said, for single crewed vehicles I would probably still allow Crits to remove one from play per regular minioning

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Great points about Punch It and allowing them to convert an action to a pilot-only maneuver. If they can't do that, their movement options will be insanely limited.

On 1/15/2018 at 7:25 PM, DaverWattra said:

--Whenever system strain is inflicted on the group in a way where it would make sense for every ship to be strained (eg, involuntary strain from maneuvering through "rough space terrain" or something) multiply the strain by the number of ships in the group. (This is the rule I'm least sure of...)

Thoughts?

3 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Great points about Punch It and allowing them to convert an action to a pilot-only maneuver. If they can't do that, their movement options will be insanely limited.

The problem with this is a wing of 5 TIEs using Punch It will lose 3 ships! Combining a minion group's SST for managing ion weaponry and other involuntary SS (e.g. from Threat on piloting checks) makes sense, but I think it's reasonable that they can't voluntarily suffer strain- so for minions to keep up with aces, they need to be led by one in a squadron. What we see in the films is that nameless mook fighters are pretty much cannon fodder for anyone important enough to have a line of dialogue.

11 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

So, that in mind you kinda need to allow voluntary system Strain as an option.

They are minions, they are supposed to suck. We have plenty of non-minion adversaries which have access to more maneuvers, etc