Don't know if this has been mentioned (didn't find it after searching through forums).

They changed a few things on vehicle combat, but to me this seemed most significant.

In the Genesys System corebook publication, the "Gain the Advantage" action now states (p.229) that "While a pilot has the advantage, upgrade the ability of all combat checks made from the pilot’s vehicle against the target vehicle twice, and upgrade the difficulty of all combat checks made by the target vehicle against the pilot’s vehicle twice." (emphasis from the book itself). No more mentions of ignoring Evade actions penalties, or choosing defensive zone.

This is a significant change from the rules in all three SW corebooks, making GtA much more useful. As there has been numerous discussions around this in the past, it does seem like a nice modification (suprised it didn't make the Errata/FAQ). IMHO could very well be considered "official modification" from now on (will be in my games).

Indeed. I am porting over the entire Genesys Vehicle rules for my Star Wars games.

Not only that, but the added "Brace for Impact" maneuver makes vehicle combat more survivable.

I ran a game this weekend using the new vehicle rules from Genesys, and liked how they work quite a bit. In short: vehicle silhouette is the difficulty for dangerous driving, modified by speed (a little more difficult at speed 3-4, even more at speed 5+). Given that the session involved a pod race, we got to see how this played very well.

This is the system my group is going to use moving forward, as we all agreed they fit the tone of our game better.

13 hours ago, LexMajor said:

This is a significant change from the rules in all three SW corebooks, making GtA much more useful. As there has been numerous discussions around this in the past, it does seem like a nice modification (suprised it didn't make the Errata/FAQ). IMHO could very well be considered "official modification" from now on (will be in my games).

Actually I find it makes GtA even less useful. Previously GtA protected you from enemy fire, as they could only target you with weapons in the arc that you are hitting. That is, if you are hitting their rear arc they can only use rear firing weapons. Two upgrades is generally not worth giving up one attack.

1 hour ago, Magnus Arcanus said:

Actually I find it makes GtA even less useful. Previously GtA protected you from enemy fire, as they could only target you with weapons in the arc that you are hitting. That is, if you are hitting their rear arc they can only use rear firing weapons. Two upgrades is generally not worth giving up one attack.

It was never all that clear (but more power to you if your group used it like this). Unofficial rulings on podcasts seem to suggest that it did NOT prevent attacking, only to choose which arc you were fired upon (on your best defensive side, presumably). I find the new version clearer... in my opinion (and this too was never too clear), once you "Get the Advantage", you keep it over the next rounds, having gained significant positioning over your opponent. This means the "double upgrade" is likely to pay up over the next few rounds if you can keep it, making your shots hit much harder...

But JRRP's right that the "Brace for Impact" maneuver is probably the main improvement for survivability over the previous versions of the rules.

3 hours ago, LexMajor said:

It was never all that clear (but more power to you if your group used it like this). Unofficial rulings on podcasts seem to suggest that it did NOT prevent attacking, only to choose which arc you were fired upon (on your best defensive side, presumably). I find the new version clearer... in my opinion (and this too was never too clear), once you "Get the Advantage", you keep it over the next rounds, having gained significant positioning over your opponent. This means the "double upgrade" is likely to pay up over the next few rounds if you can keep it, making your shots hit much harder...

But JRRP's right that the "Brace for Impact" maneuver is probably the main improvement for survivability over the previous versions of the rules.

It's from the Developers (and posted in the Developer answered questions) that GtA, as written for the Star Wars RPG, does limit the affected target to using weapons only from the targeted firing arc. I would say I am not clear whether or not GtA lasts until the next round or until removed by the target in Genesys (I lean towards "until removed" because the rule is otherwise silent as written). In SW, it lasts until the end of the next round.

I will agree that adding Brace for Impact and other "survivability" talents are improvements.

You still can get the effect of the old "lock fire arcs" from GtA via Dangerous driving, meanwhile the new GtA lasts until broken, so it is a no brainer to start combat with it imho.
The main issue with the new vehicle rules is the absurde speed you are going for. Mandatory movement of X range bands where X is your speed. That part is … not getting into my head.

Brace for Impact is a little bit broken in SW too, large armor values, easy regeneration of system strain, low vehicle weapon damage; All this leads to rather solid bullet sponge vehicles.

But everything in the best FFG tradition when the left brain half of a designer does not not what the right one is doing. Same as with the different GtA rulings which have being able to dodge arcs or not depending if you asking on monday or tuesday.

Either way:
The New GtA would work rather well together with Dangerous Driving (basically what chapter 3 calls a piloting check), the speed rules are best ignored (or better yet interpreted as a free move maneuver instead) and with Brace for Impact your mileage may vary. On principle it is a good idea, in practise it might become a little silly. Port it over if you think your space combat needs some sturdiness and a little bit of bullet sponginess.

With that said: The same procedure next week? "Indeed. I am porting over the entire Genesys Vehicle rules for my Star Wars games." never gets old nor do my ramblings about Brace for Impact.

What exactly does Brace for Impact do? I keep seeing people talking about it, but the book hasn't made its way to my FLG yet.

Brace for Impact is a maneuver. If you perform it, you can convert hull trauma to system strain. The limit is your silhouette (so silhouette 3 can do this for 3 HT). It also reduces any critical hit by 10% per silhouette until the pilot's next turn.

The trade off is that it's a pilot-only maneuver, so it limits what else you can do. For situations where all the PCs are in a freighter that is trying to escape, it's pretty great. If you're running a game where your PCs try to attack a silhouette 6 capital ship, it's going to make your life immensely more difficult.

And when your PCs are in a massive armor 7, sil 5 ship and have the ability to use unmatched survivability … yeah, 5 advantages to actually do a critical hit with a turbolaser (forget smaller weapons, they are not gonna get pass the 13 damage absorption ) and than still have only a 30% chance to actually get a critical hit onto that monster. You might literally need a deathstar to stop a C-Roc … actually nah, not even a death star would help, because unmatched survivability allows you to ignore your HT and even with with a base crit-rating of 1, it would still need 3 advantages to actually crit you. Not gonna happen with that size difference.

Whoah.

But doesn’t that inflict System Strain?

It clearly changes up encounter design, but I think it also allows for some very cinematic options. For instance, the C-Roc above would not be instantly vaporized by a Star Destroyer, but would instead have several tense rounds of trying to get out of range before they ran out of System Strain and were then obliterated.

The knocks against Brace for Impact are valid. That being said, I like the idea that it's very difficult to take a ship down before exhausting its ST unless you do so much damage that it's clearly a mismatched fight.

Also, this can shift some of the focus to other non-combat options. The slicer could be furiously attacking the other ship's computers in an attempt to cause enough strain that the PCs have a better chance to damage their opponent. Other characters with Computer are similarly encouraged to keep the ST of their own vessel high enough that it's not taking the full wollup from whatever is attacking them. PCs could also think about adding Ion weapons in order to soften up opponents, a thing that we see in the movies, comics, and books fairly regularly.

On 2.2.2018 at 1:17 AM, LexMajor said:

Whoah.

But doesn’t that inflict System Strain?

Sure and the astromech can reliable remove 5 to 10 of that per turn and you only need to take it when can prevent a crit. Add brilliant evasion and you get basically ~150 system strain to work with.

Furthermore the C-Roc would only needs a few rounds to destroy a star destroyer anyway. Easy rolls, huge dice pools. Applying crits is reasonable easy and they stack up quickly. At least if you have torpedos to get past the insane damage soak based on the star destroyers own brace for impact. Even turbolaser would have trouble to put a dent into a star destroyer. ;-)
Star Destroyer basically get immune to their own weapon system until they run out of system strain strain. Damage control applies here as well.

Lastly, with the movement rules from genesys you can escape anyway in one turn, because that C-Roc gets up to speed 5 (full throttle talents) and thus would move up to 6 range bands per turn.

If I recall correctly, Damage Control as an action can only be performed once per character per combat, so no, you cannot just constantly refresh Strain to make a vehicle immune to damage. It makes them more survivable, not infinitely so.

21 hours ago, JRRP said:

If I recall correctly, Damage Control as an action can only be performed once per character per combat,

You are not recalling correct.
Damage control to repair HT is a once per encounter once per vehicle check. Not per character, but overall.
Damage control to repair SS is unrestricted. Though most GMs would only allow it once per round.

On 2/6/2018 at 6:58 AM, SEApocalypse said:

You are not recalling correct.
Damage control to repair HT is a once per encounter once per vehicle check. Not per character, but overall.
Damage control to repair SS is unrestricted. Though most GMs would only allow it once per round.

Damage control to repair a critical hit is also unrestricted. It's only to repair hull trauma that it becomes restricted in the RAW.