I'm kicking around the idea of starting an "X-Wing" style campaign, where the PCs spend a good bit of each session up in space, raiding things, defending things, investigating things. All sorts of fun space shenanigans. Anybody done this before and have advice?

Questions:

• Advice for differentiating PCs? Seems like everybody would be locked into 2 or 3 different Specs (Pilot, Hotshot, and the F&D pilot) at least for the first hundred XP.
• From what I've gathered, actual Pilot skill plays a fairly low role in space combat. I understand how it works in chases (and will definitely incorporate a good number of those) but in a straight furball what meaning do ship speed and Pilot skill have? And how can I make them more important? I want the better pilots to feel better.
• Related to that, people are always saying that it's the Talents that make Pilots awesome in combat? What talents are those? Looking at the Pilot and Hotshot trees, I don't see much, but maybe I'm just misunderstanding them.
• What's a good match up for a trio of starting PC pilots in X-Wings, in a straight up dogfight (maybe during a bigger capital ship battle, etc, not just deep space)? A group of two minion TIEs per?

Thanks!

I have done this. And the one big mistake I made was making a rule that everyone had to start as some type of Ace specialization. If you plan on having this campaign grow and last, I strongly caution against doing what I did. Instead, ask the players what they were BEFORE joining the Rebel alliance. Have them start there. Then grow into Aces/pilots/Operators etc. (Also dont forget the universal specializations such as Ship Captain, Academy graduate from Dawn of Rebellion) Personally I would even give the PCs 20-30 free starting XP to be used on a second specialization that encompasses their new role in the Rebel Alliance.

Mainly you dont want to railroad your players into all being expert pilots only. A couple ranks and a 3 agility is pretty good even without all the talents. The problem my group had was that they were all essentially the same. Nobody was the best at anything. And nobody had any flaws when it came to the space scenarios. But they all SUCKED anytime they were caught outside the cockpit.

By doing something like I suggest above, your characters will already have a good idea of their backgrounds. They will at their core be different because of their prior life history. This will help them and you in coming up with awesome adventure ideas. Remember the movie "Saving Private Ryan"? The character played by Tom Hanks is a bad *** Captain. He seems born to do what he is doing in the war. None of his guys can imagine him being anything else. Later he finally reveals that he was in fact a school teacher (Colonist-Schoolar). That tiny bit of information tells us soooo much more about that character. Giving him depth and relateability. And a wealth of RP opportunity.

In combat, ship speed is important because it allows you to do certain maneuvers like Evasive action and stay on target.

I also have to agree with @zsavk with those points: you don't want everyone to be all aces. I'd suggest going on a Wraith Squadron style game where some of their objectives are on the ground and can't be shot at by an X-Wing or Y-Wing.

For speed: certain maneuvers do require a certain amount of speed. It's also helpful for Gaining the Advantage, as the higher speed you are, the easier it is to gain an edge. A little known-use of Piloting on the book is to determine which angle you want to shoot with with an opposed Piloting check, so you can bypass defender shields if you don't think Gain the Advantage will help. And remember, a lot of combat in Star Wars has obstacles and such: you can have them roll for terrain obstacles ever so often. ****, sometimes the journey is important. Who knows how well the pilots will do flying through a canyon underneath radar coverage before they strike their targets?

The talents definitely help. Skilled Jockey is very useful when you're zipping through obstacles as it gets rid of Setback on Piloting checks, allowing your pilots to breeze through them. Defensive Driving combined with Evasive Maneuvers can make shots harder to land, especially on capital ships. Tricky Target makes your ship appear smaller, and since Silhouette determines difficulty checks, a small target is a harder target to hit. And then there's the "you can't hit me for X turns" Brilliant Evasion talent. Hotshots use their own strain in place of system strain, which lets them do crazy things, since Personal Strain is easier to recover from. Plus, making people crash is fun. Riggers can mod their fighters and light freighters to be tougher than usual. And when you're trying to hit a capital ship, the Gunner's ability to ignore Massive penalties means you're scoring critical hits on those big guys much better as long as you can beat their armor. And critical hits are what kills capital ships.

As for minions, two per X-Wing is fine if they don't have backup. Three if they do. Any more, and those pilots better be both lucky and skilled.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yeah definitely gonna go with a more Wraith Squadron type game if this campaign ever gets started.

One more question, does Gain the Advantage mean the target can only fire back from the chosen arc? So if you have only forward facing weapons and someone gets Advantage on you and declares they're attacking from behind then you can't fire back until either the next turn ends or you GtA? I've seen people say they've asked Devs and been told that was correct, but it doesn't show in the Dev question thread or in the Errata, and by the book I don't think it's true. I'd say that or at minimum a Setback die is reasonable, but I'd love others opinions.

39 minutes ago, swammeyjoe said:

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yeah definitely gonna go with a more Wraith Squadron type game if this campaign ever gets started.

One more question, does Gain the Advantage mean the target can only fire back from the chosen   arc? So if you have only forward facing weapons and someone gets Advantage on you and declares they're attacking from behind then you can't fire back until either the next turn ends or  you GtA? I've seen people  say they've asked Devs and  been told that was correct, but it doesn't show in the Dev question thread or in the Errata, and by the book I don't think it's true. I'd say that or at minimum a Setback die is reasonable, but I'd love others opinions    .          

That's how I've treated Gain the Advantage whenever I've played it. If you don't have a weapon that can fire on all arcs, the enemy can focus on the parts that won't be shot at. Again, you can either GtA back or if you're fine with it, can make the opposed Piloting check to force the angle if they can't GtA it.

Try it out, and if there's stuff you don't like, there's a couple of homebrew rules around. The most popular is Emperor Norton's rules.

Yeah I'm probably gonna mock up a couple of pilot type characters, break out my X-Wing minis and a concentric circle map and go to town on it, one night once my toddler goes to sleep. I tend to overthink these things before I actually see them in play, so hopefully this works out well.

I GM'd a short, couple session mini-campaign before TLJ came out and thought it went 'ok'. The players loved it and were willing to play more, but I wasn't totally sold. I've recently gotten a couple chances to be a player, with a few different groups (some with friends, and then two different groups at a con) and my god the system just sings . It's fast, intuitive, and I'm suddenly eager to play more. Hoping that awesomeness translates to starship action, since that's so iconic to SW.

Just now, swammeyjoe said:

Yeah I'm probably gonna mock up a couple of pilot type characters, break out my X-Wing minis and a concentric circle map and go to town on it, one night once my toddler goes to sleep. I tend to overthink these things before I actually see them in play, so hopefully this works out well.

 I GM'd a short, couple session mini-campaign before TLJ came out and thought it went 'ok'. The players loved it and were willing to play more, but I wasn't totally sold. I've recently gotten a couple chances to be a player, with a few different groups (some with friends, and then two different groups at a con) and my god the system  just sings . It's fast, intuitive, and I'm suddenly eager to play more. Hoping that awesomeness translates to starship action, since that's so iconic to SW.       

One thing that could trip up people is the fact that ship speeds determine how far ships move. Don't have the book, but I know those at Speed 5-6 move much farther than ships that are moving at Speed 3-4.

Having a concentric map will help a lot with the range banding.

1 hour ago, swammeyjoe said:

Thanks for the feedback guys. Yeah definitely gonna go with a more Wraith Squadron type game if this campaign ever gets started.

One more question, does Gain the Advantage mean the target can only fire back from the chosen arc? So if you have only forward facing weapons and someone gets Advantage on you and declares they're attacking from behind then you can't fire back until either the next turn ends or you GtA? I've seen people say they've asked Devs and been told that was correct, but it doesn't show in the Dev question thread or in the Errata, and by the book I don't think it's true. I'd say that or at minimum a Setback die is reasonable, but I'd love others opinions.

Yes, this is correct, and yes the Devs have also confirmed this is correct. Pretty sure its posted in the Developer answered questions as well (and if not let me know!)

I'm actually playing in a PbP with a similar premise. The GM gave each player a second specialization, suggesting we use it to broaden our range beyond simple space combat, and also gave us some XP after char-gen to make the characters a little more interesting. He also introduced some house-rules. If you want to check out the game it's hosted here . Note that OOC and banter, as well as all dice rolling, is done on a Discord channel so the forum is only for IC and similar stuff.

The fact that the Piloting skills doesn't play a dominant role in space combat bothered me a lot when I started playing and GMing, but my perspective has changed recently. The way I see it now, it's the difference between being an airline pilot and a combat pilot. Piloting skill represents the shiphandling ability - can you take-off and land safely, follow directions from traffic control, avoid other craft and terrain, deal with bad weather, plot and follow a good course to your destination. Any pilot needs that to some degree. What a combat pilot needs, and a civilian pilot doesn't, is another layer of skills on top of that - the situational awareness to track multiple friendly and enemy craft, bring their own weapons to bear while avoiding enemy fire etc. That's the difference between someone with Piloting (Space) 5 and someone with the Pilot or Hotshot talent.

If you're going with a kind of Wraith Squadron campaign, I'd second the idea of giving each PC a second specialisation at charater generation (personally, I'd give them 30XP that they had to use to get a specialisation, and if they took a career spec let them spend the other 10XP on skills or talents from that spec). Both the groups I play with have 6 players (not including the GM); you could break that down as two fighters like X-Wings, A-Wings or Z-95s with hyperdrives, a bomber like a Y-Wing (the two-seat version) or Tempest with a pilot and gunner, and a light freighter carrying spares, munitions and fuel so they can operate away from a fixed base and crewed by a pilot and a mechanic. The primary specs could be a couple of Pilots, a Hotshot, an Operator, a Gunner and a Mechanic, with the secondaries including things like Driver, Medic, Gunslinger, Thief etc.

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 2:58 PM, swammeyjoe said:

Advice for differentiating PCs? Seems like everybody would be locked into 2 or 3 different Specs (Pilot, Hotshot, and the F&D pilot) at least for the first hundred XP.

It's surprising how differently the different specialisations within Ace do play. We have a multiplayer TIE squadron campaign and you really do see the different aptitudes of the players. There are no shortage of useful specs for a starfighter campaign, by the way:

• Warrior
  • Starfighter Ace
    • Access to Inuitive Evasion (one of the few ways for a player to get an equivalent of the Adversary talent) and the very flexible Touch Of Fate along with Solid Repairs and Exhaust Port to help a Gunner blow up capital ships. Can more or less handle any ship, but will prefer the tougher ones with torpedoes and missiles to something light and flimsy.
• Commander
  • Squadron Leader
    • Easy access to Situational Awareness, Defensive Driving and Quick Strike to boost up people's initiative and get early kills to even up numbers. Probably best in an X-wing or 'Heavy Z'.
• Ace
  • Pilot
    • Easy access to Full Throttle and Dead To Rights. Balanced but not especially great at anything - probably suits an X-wing or 'Heavy Z'.
  • Gunner
    • Easy access to True Aim, Debilitating Shot and Overwhelm Defenses for all-out assault. Best for a BTL-A4 Y-wing or B-wing.
  • Driver
    • Easy access to Full Throttle for speed, Defensive Driving and Tricky Target for defence. Makes for an awesome A-wing pilot.
  • Hotshot
    • Easy access to High-G training and Second Chances for strain-heavy, dice-heavy flying. Also probably good in an A-wing.
  • Rigger
    • Improves handling, armour, ammo capacity and mechanics checks of signature vehicle. Wants something tough and loaded with ordnance - go for a BTL-A4 Y-wing or B-wing

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 2:58 PM, swammeyjoe said:

From what I've gathered, actual Pilot skill plays a fairly low role in space combat. I understand how it works in chases (and will definitely incorporate a good number of those) but in a straight furball what meaning do ship speed and Pilot skill have? And how can I make them more important? I want the better pilots to feel better.

Two things to suggest:

• You wouldn't have a shootout between rebel commandoes and stormtroopers in an empty white room for no good reason. So don't have a dogfight between rebel pilots and TIE fighters in an empty volume of space for no reason.
  • Make sure there's a reason for the fight - either you're attacking and you're on the clock before reinforcements turn up, or else you're fleeing and trying to evade. In either case you'll be needing to use Fly/Drive a lot to move to a given target, or else making regular piloting rolls as part of a chase.
  • Make sure there's terrain around. Asteroids. Orbital dockyards. Commercial shipping. A major naval battle. Whatever it is, it exists and means that making pilot checks will require you to roll the speed/silhouette difficulty rolls on a regular basis, and will apply setback dice.
  • This has three effects:
    • Making regular non-easy piloting checks means weak pilots (like, say, minions in TIE fighters) should be failing checks regularly, which will mean PCs not having to deal with the entire enemy force at once when a Fly/Drive action fails, or applying setback dice to the enemy's checks, or taking strain (damage, since they're minions!) or even (minion-fatal!) collisions.
    • Those same piloting checks for a good pilot remain pretty trivial are essentially a source of advantage and triumph results to spend upgrading their other checks and getting strain-free extra manoeuvres.
    • A lot of 'pilot' specialisations have one or more ranks of the Skilled Jockey talent. If you're not presenting anyone with pilot checks with default setback dice on a semi-regular basis, they're going to feel a bit cheated.
• Have enemy pilots behave in a sensible fashion. Evasive Manoeuvres is pretty much the default choice for a shield-less TIE pilot. Which, assuming your PC is evading as well, means the minion is dealing with two difficulty upgrades - and so is the PC. Add in the 'you can't shoot me unless you shake me' rule previously mentioned, makes Gain The Advantage a good idea - which in turn makes piloting checks and speed in combat really important.

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 2:58 PM, swammeyjoe said:

Related to that, people are always saying that it's the Talents that make Pilots awesome in combat? What talents are those? Looking at the Pilot and Hotshot trees, I don't see much, but maybe I'm just misunderstanding them.

• Pilot (person who flys snubfighter) rather than necessarily Pilot (the spec).
• The main way to make a ship tougher is by talents.
  • Evasive manoeuvres can turn one purple dice red, and angle deflectors can generally give you two defence dice (assuming no-one's gained the advantage on you). Obviously, any player can do these, but multiple manoeuvres cost you strain. A Hotshot's High-G training gives you your personal strain pool to draw on as well as the system strain pool.
  • As a bit of an extreme chain of abilities, an R7 Astromech on an E-wing gains the Hold Together ability. This lets you turn damage into system strain. A hotshot in an E-wing can then use High-G training to turn that system strain into personal strain, effectively 'smearing out' the impact of a chunk of damage into a small amount of hull trauma, a small amount of system strain and a small amount of personal strain.
  • Defensive Driving adds an extra black die. Setbacks aren't great at cancelling incoming damage, but have a 2/3 chance of either generating a failure (reducing damage by one) or generating a threat which cancels an advantage, which prevents you suffering extra hits from Linked - probably both the most common and the most lethal trait in starfighter combat.
  • Tricky Target reduces your silhouette by one. This is not always useful (because a ship needs a 2 silhouette difference to matter), but against a larger ship like a shuttle or small freighter, or in a ship with a Silouhette-reducing Jammer (like an A-wing), it's significantly more likely to throw up a failure (75% of the time instead of 50%) and there's that Despair result lurking in there too.

On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 2:58 PM, swammeyjoe said:

What's a good match up for a trio of starting PC pilots in X-Wings, in a straight up dogfight (maybe during a bigger capital ship battle, etc, not just deep space)? A group of two minion TIEs per?

To start with, probably three groups of two, maybe four groups if the PCs have NPC astromech droids on their fighters.

Note that an X-wing with a decent gunnery roll can chop suey a minion group in one burst from multiple linked hits, so there's a good chance those four will become three or two before they get to act.

Said TIE fighters can then evade and gain the advantage (better handling and the same speed) at which point, the X-wings reeeeeaallly need to reverse the advantage back or there'll be trouble.