Hello there,

So I've been looking over Space Combat again and something that always struck me as weird was that "Evasive Maneuvers" upgrades attacks from and at you.

This feels strange for me because: How / why does making Evasive Maneuvers make Attacks inherently more risky to the Attacker? Why can something go more wrong than normal?
I'd understand upgrades in relation with Piloting checks, but not in relation to attacks.

Upgrading would make sense to me when the fight is happening in terrain (which it should mostly do, but not always), but not in open space. And even then I would rather upgrade necessary piloting checks than upgrade the attacks.
For example, why should a Turret Gunner's attack be upgraded ?

I thought of maybe increasing the difficulty instead, but that would probably make it impossible for Capital or larger ship to hit starfighters making evasive maneuvers.

Or maybe adding a couple of setback dice instead of upgrading.

Am I the only one finding this somehow weird? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

I'd be interested in your thoughts and insights on this 😃

My read has always been that, since you're focusing so much on evading, you're not focusing on targeting.

Imagine you're flying an X-wing, and you're worried about a swarm of TIE fighters that's somewhere on your six. You start pulling evasive maneuvers—weaving between obstacles, spinning to make your silhouette harder to hit, and varying your speed all the while. If a TIE happens to fly past ahead of you, with all the maneuvering you're doing, it'll be that much harder to get a bead on it and hit it. And even if you do, maybe you're not paying attention to what's around that TIE, like your wingman or a building full of non-combatants.

And thus, a Despair could be very important.

It's no different if you're a gunner in a turret. If the pilot is focusing on dodging, they're not spending any time trying to line you up for a good shot. You have to wait for the right opportunity, if you get one at all. And if you do get that opportunity, the same perils apply.

Think about the "Stay On Target" maneuver. It works in reverse: you're so focused on being able to hit the target that it leaves you open to being hit yourself. It's a constant trade-off.

Yeah the "Stay on Target" maneuver makes alot of sense.

But on the point of it getting more "difficult" to hit something by making evasive maneuvers. Its my understanding that Challenge Dice make it only marginally more difficult / only make failure more probable by a small amount, while providing the chance of a despair.

I think this is where my perception of this being weird comes from.

58 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

How / why does making Evasive Maneuvers make Attacks inherently more risky to the Attacker? Why can something go more wrong than normal?

I suspect the idea is that if you're focused on making a shot, AND evading, you're also not focused on everything else. In a simple "duel" in open space... yeah kinda weird. Move that to a bigger fight or into complex terrain and you'll start to be able to generate more interesting narratives from those dice. Also remember that you're allowed to incorporate piloting narratives into gunnery, seeing as how the roll would have to represent not just a trigger pull, but usually will also have a factor of maneuvering the ship to get/keep the target in the crosshairs.

58 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

For example, why should a Turret Gunner's attack be upgraded ?

Probably because the system is illustrating a larger back and forth. It's not YOU are having something more dangerous happen, it's that the entire scene is having something more dangerous happen. After all, in this case the pilot is still maneuvering the ship in a fashion to allow your turret to hit the target. Seriously, try some multi-player space sim sometime and man a turret. If you and the pilot aren't working together, you're just spraying and praying. So yeah, if the pilot's worried about the turret gunners angles, and avoiding incoming fire, and trying not to crash... I can see it.

58 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

I thought of maybe increasing the difficulty instead, but that would probably make it impossible for Capital or larger ship to hit starfighters making evasive man  euvers.

This is probably a viable option, as it's really not much different from the RAW, just exchanging the Despair probability for Failure.

As you say, this would make Capships targeting fighters harder, but would also pair up with Barrages and the Starfighter Defense Special Rule to make them more applicable. So not a huge issue as long as the GM stages his encounter to factor that in.

Also you may wan to mix and match, making it Upgrade in terrain or complex environments and large battles, but increase in simple open-space situations with only a couple craft involved.

58 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

Am I the only one finding this somehow weird? Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Yes? No? Maybe?

FFG's system is kinda weird, so there's often more than one way to look at how they possibly approached a situation. From perspective one something makes perfect sense, from another, it's totally kooky.

Thanks for your insights and idea's. Seeing different perspectives really helps sometimes