I'm wondering how does gunnery teams apply to a ship such that it can fire on 2 separate targets from the same arc at full strength against each, while not being able to do so twice on the same target. I'm wondering what does the "gunnery teams" represent. Ability of the crew to reroute more power to the guns of the arc currently being used? Higher accuracy? Faster reloading? Faster re-targeting and calculations? The Adv. Gunnery rule for the 1st player seems to make more sense, able to fire on the same target but on diff hull zones(maybe explained by the target and attacker constantly moving)

What do y'all think? Aside from the "coz game balance" answer, any real world or lore to substantiate the GT? 😁

Hmmm, well, I would assume that the lore reason you arnt firing at the same target, is movement. These are gun teams who are firing rapidly at moving targets, and skilled gunnery teams would be able to fire at multiple targets in their field of fire. An example is the Matilda Infantry Fighting Vehicle (WW2 tank), which with a skilled gunner, could fire a round out of its 2 pounder cannon, every 2.8 seconds.

On the rebel side, you might not have gun teams who are terribly skilled at this, as they are rebels. Which is also why we see a lot of strong one arc ships from the rebels (or broad side ships)... because its easier to just mount guns that fire one way and tell gun teams to shoot what they can.

On the imperial side, we have gun teams who before the battle of scarif didnt see combat. And regardless of how well you train and how ready you are, someones first combat changes everything. Even then, we know that not every ship in the Empire was in combat, so veteran gun teams were likely rare, though thats true on both sides, the empire has the ability to train more openly as a plus.

My headcanon is it's about the efficient coordination of weapons, rather than the use of them. For contrast, Veteran Gunners increases the reliability of your guns; they're experienced with hitting their target. With gunnery team, I've always imagined it to be them re-targeting turbolaser batteries even as they recharge, or prioritizing fire with batteries that won't have a clear shot soon. Optimization of a mile-long ship's firing patterns seems like a very specialized task.

They are skilled at bouncing the laser blasts off of one target and onto another that's close by. It's all richochets. With frikin lazers.