In the Genesys core rule book, vehicles have only a Defense rating. However, the Star Wars line has multiple defensive 'zones' for vehicles. Fore/aft for small craft (sil 2–4) and fore/port/starboard/aft for large craft (sil 5+).

What are your thoughts for Genesys vehicles?

I see three options:

• Keep to just one Defense score
• Go with the 2/4 SWRPG split
• Do something in the middle (IE small craft have one zone while large craft have 2)

I can see arguments for all three options (having had this discussion with myself), but I want to see what the community thinks.

We mentioned this in our vehicles episode of Finding the Narrative where we would do the 2/4 SWRPG split. 1 Defense zone on sihouette 0 and 1. 2 Defense zones (aft / fore) on silhouette 2 - 4, and 4 Defense zones (aft/fore/port/starboard) on silhouette 5+. That's how I would do it.

I would even give a setback die and allow a gun to fire at a target that is just in the adjacent "zone" too.

So, i does depend on how tactical and detailed you want your vehicle combat to do. Meaning, does it matter whether they are behind or to the side of the target or in a position to fire on their target?

Z

Depends on the setting, sometimes you could split Armour into zones, sometimes Defence could be split, sometimes I wouldn’t bother. In Star Wars there’s a solid narrative reason for multiple defence zones: defence is a representation of electronic shields that can be redirected.

But in other settings it could be that Defence is determined by a vehicles ability to deflect a hot, perhaps by having smooth steel plate on the outside, or by having redundant ropes to hold up rigging. For Age of Sail I would probably stick to a single defence zone, otherwise I would split it either Rigging/Hull or Ballistic/Raming

For something like Mechs I would probably split it into Ranged and Melee defence instead. The way they are designed and operated is very similar to personal combat, so why not keep that same system. It’s one setting where having a melee fight in a vehicle is expected so using those defences will help highlight that.

Modern again has minimal reason to split the defence, most vehicles either have no defence or the same defence in every meaningful direction, I guess you could perhaps split armour for tanks. Since there’s nothing a player can do to change the numbers on the fly then the character instead needs to focus on the direction the vehicle is facing.

Modern aircraft are another can of worms. With the extensive physical and electronic efforts put into avoiding guided weapons I could definitely see those aircraft having a different selection of values: Passive Defence (Eg low heat Signature, Radar diffusing paint, and the basic shape of airframe) and Active Defence (Eg jamming, spoofing, anti Radar) would be a possible way to split things up.