So to start, I have not yet run a fight between two capital ships in this system before, but looking at the massive stat blocks for weapons made me dread the prospect of rolling dozens of attacks every turn... additionally, the rules do not give you any details on how to assemble the attacking ships dice pool (besides using minions as gunners, but without specifying how many), so I thought about this system, which has not been properly playtested and might totally suck, so i am looking for constructive criticism

So the idea is essentially that each ship has a Crew Rating equal to it's Silhouette, starting at ships with at least Silhouette 5 (so a corellian corvette would have a Crew Rating of 5, an ISD one of 8 etc). Each ship also needs one captain, who is at least a rival and who should have a Leadership skill of at least 1. Capital Ships have their captain roll their Initiative and take all actions on the captains Initiative slot. When a ship performs an action, the captain can declare how many points of Crew she wants to use for that action. This number would then equal the amount of green dice the ship could use for the action, to a maximum of 5. The captain then upgrades the check with her Leadership skill (important: even if the leadership skill is higher than the amount of green dice generated by the crew, it still only upgrades similar to how upgrading difficulty works, so if all green crew dice are already upgraded, then a new green is added if there would still be upgrades left from the leadership skill). Each Crew Dice used to perform actions with the ship reduces the ship's crew rating by one for the remainder of the round. So if a Corellian Corvette used three Crew to gain three green dice to perform an action, it only has two Crew left for the rest of the turn to perform an action. If it performs another action that turn and uses one Crew, than the rating drops to one etc. If a ship has no crew dice left, it cannot perform any more actions (except a PC uses a ship weapon for example, than the PC just rolls their action as per RAW). If the Captain is incapacitated, cannot communicate with her crew or performs an action that requires her complete concentration like firing a ship weapon herself, she cannot upgrade the checks of her crew. Crew rating can also be used to aid a characters action. In this case, 1 point of used Crew adds 1 blue die to the acting character's roll. Example: A Nebulon B is starting an attack on a Dreadnought Cruiser. The captains roll Initiative, and the Nebulon goes first. The Captain of the Nebulon declares an attack on the dreadnought with the six port turbolasers, concentrated barrage, with three of the six crew. That gives her 3 green dice for her attack pool, and she upgrades two of them with her leadership of two. She rolls YYG and resolves the attack per RAW. Now she has used three of her six Crew, so she only has Three Crew left for this turn. She uses the remaining three to perform another concentrated barrage with the sic starboard turbolasers (again she roll YYG). Then, the ship has used all of it's crew. The captain could still perform an action to use one of her talents for example, but she has to stay on the bridge if she wants to upgrade her crew in the next turn.

So what's the point of this? First of all, it adds some strategy to the captains role, since the player has to decide how to use their crew points this turn. Flying through an asteroid field with a Nebulon B? Better use the max. of 5 out of the 6 crew for the piloting check, even if that only leaves one crew dice for the rest of the ships turn. Then, it puts a hard cap on the amount of actions a ship can perform. So an ISD would not roll 20 attacks for each of it's turbolasers, because it has a Crew rating of 8 and therefore could perform 8 attacks at most. Still a lot, but at least better. It would also make the concentrated barrage a lot more useful, because the crew limit makes the option to fire a whole battery of guns in the same attack roll a lot more useful suddenly. It also makes the Captain (wo should be a PC) and other PCs more valuable, because they can still operate single guns, or pilot the ship without needing crew dice, so the PCs are actually useful on a larger ship and aren't outshined by some faceless minion crew. Admittedly, the chance of success is pretty high if the captain decides to use 4 or 5 crew for an action, but a minion crew operating a turbolaser (which are operated by crews of 20 or 30 or even more people in the lore) could also easily roll YYYGG, and that for every weapon, so I don't think it is overpowered.

If I explained something unclearly or if there are talents or other stuff that this rule would break, please let me know

2 hours ago, Han-Shot-First said:

the rules do not give you any details on how to assemble the attacking ships dice pool (besides using minions as gunners, but without specifying how many)

1 Gun = 1 Minion, so a weapons bank makes a single attack with the Gunner Minion's Agility and Gunnery Skill = Number of Guns firing -1.

If you stagger firing to compensate for Slow-Firing, which most heavy weapons have, you'll only be rolling a few of attacks per ship per turn.

Also Barrages = 1 Attack per Weapon system most of the time. (AoR and FaD Cores for Barrage Rules)

Finally... If you've got a lot of big ships, try Mass Combat (Lead by Example) to narrate the battle instead of trying to track every gun and hull point.

27 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

1 Gun = 1 Minion, so a weapons bank makes a single attack with the Gunner Minion's Agility and Gunnery Skill = Number of Guns firing -1.

ah, ok, that makes a lot more sense

39 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

Finally... If you've got a lot of big ships, try Mass Combat (Lead by Example) to narrate the battle instead of trying to track every gun and hull point.

Yeah, I was aware of these, but I have one player who is really looking forward to commanding a capital ship in our upcomming rise of the separatists campaign, so I didn't want to handwave the capital ship battles to much... but I can see how my idea is a bit redundant if minions are used like you suggested, thanks

1 hour ago, Han-Shot-First said:

Yeah, I was aware of these, but I have one player who is really looking forward to commanding a capital ship in our upcomming rise of the separatists campaign, so I didn't want to handwave the capital ship battles to much... but I can see how my idea is a bit redundant if minions are used like you suggested, thanks

Ok, so here's how that works.

Break the battle down into segments, and find a specific goal for your player/s to execute. Essentially the battle will be composed of individual small manageable encounters and large fast Mass Combat checks. Both will build off of each other and provide flavor and context to the next.

So like...

OK Big fight, your Heroic Seppie Players vs. the Evil Oppressive Republic.

The Battle is a Sep Blockade with Reps trying to thunder-run a convoy through. Battle will be Sep Victory, but the players will decide by how mow much.

Encounter 1: Players ship encounters a recon force of ARC-170s

Goals:

Rep: the ARC-170s have orders to scan this section of the Blockade and confirm it's composition before the Convoy arrives.

Sep: Defend the point, engage but don't pursue.

Victory Conditions:

Rep: Successfully scan the Players ship (get into active sensor range and perform an Average Computers or Perception Check that generates at least 1 success) and withdraw with at least 50% strength.

Sep: Prevent the Fighters from penetrating the blockade, destroy >50% of them.

Play this one conventionally, should take only a couple turns. Victor determines if the Players get 2 Boost or Setback added to the next Mass combat check.

Mass Combat 1:

The Republic Convoy Arrives (exact composition will have to be matched to the players capability; we'll say 2 corvettes, a frigate and 4 unarmed transports for the sake of this example)

Success/Failure: The Republic arrives in/out of position. If failure, they all arrive in Close to each other and whatever the most reasonable Distance from the players is (probably max weapons rage for the players, any further and you spend turns waiting to get in range.) If success, the republic arrives out of formation, 1 light Escort and 1 transport arrives in player's weapons range, the rest are out of weapons range.

Advantage/Threat: Advantage The convoy has no deployed Starfighters upon arrival, Threat there's a group of 6 V-19s that jumped in with the main group

Triumph: The player's have a flight of 8 Vultures on standby they can deploy immediately that start the next encounter anywhere Short or less to their capship and at max Speed.

Despair: There's a Jedi Starfighter leading the V-19's (use Squadron Rules) If the V-19's don't arrive, add 2 as an escort to the Jedi.

Encounter 2: The Republic attempts to push through the blockade position.

Goals:

Rep: The Convoy must move within Short of the Players Ship

Sep: Hold the Line, let nothing get through

Victory Conditions:

Rep: All convoy get within Close to each other and Short of the Player's Ship, all Transports must survive

Sep: Destroy at least 1 Transport.

Victor get's an upgrade to the next Mass Combat check. Again, this should be 2-5 Turns in length.

Mass Combat 2:

Success/Failure: Success the players continue pounding the republic ship and destroy or disable one corvette and all but one transport. Failure: The surviving Transports weather the storm and will be available next encounter

Advantage/Threat: Advantage, an additional flight of Hyena Bombers arrives from the planet below to support you. Threat: A flight group of 4 Y-wings arrive late to the party at Short Range to support the Republic.

Triumph: A/The Transport is disabled, but not destroyed, and could be captured if the players move fast.

Despair: A/the Jedi is able to penetrate the shields and boards you with the intent of disabling your flight deck.

And so on...

Thanks, that does indeed sound like a lot more interesting and engaging time for the players and the GM... I kinda got stuck up in the stat blocks that I forgot that that is not really what the game is about

3 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

1 Gun = 1 Minion, so a weapons bank makes a single attack with the Gunner Minion's Agility and Gunnery Skill = Number of Guns firing -1.

Optionally, 1 gun = one minion group (size determined by what makes sense for the weapon). Turbolasers generally have multiple crewmen operating them. Then roll one attack per 5 or 10 weapons of that type and multiply the end result of the check by that multiplier.

If you have 10 twin light turbolasers (Damage 9, Breach 2) making an attack against a target with Armor 8 and the attack generates 2 success and 2 advantages, you can have that be 20 hits each for 5 points of damage. And then you discover why capital ships are made of paper compared to their weapon complements.

4 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Optionally, 1 gun = one minion group (size determined by what makes sense for the weapon). Turbolasers generally have multiple crewmen operating them. Then roll one attack per 5 or 10 weapons of that type and multiply the end result of the check by that multiplier.

If you have 10 twin light turbolasers (Damage 9, Breach 2) making an attack against a target with Armor 8 and the attack generates 2 success and 2 advantages, you can have that be 20 hits each for 5 points of damage. And then you discover why capital ships are made of paper compared to their weapon complements.

O_o

Yes... you could do that... I wouldn't, but you could...

8 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

O_o

Yes... you could do that... I wouldn't, but you could...

It's a galaxy where everything is made of tissue paper. A single ISD has enough firepower to take out three other ISDs in an opening salvo (assuming one forward, one to port, and one starboard). That level of alpha strike might fit the feel of modern warships, but it seems really silly in Star Wars.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Optionally, 1 gun = one minion group (size determined by what makes sense for the weapon). Turbolasers generally have multiple crewmen operating them. Then roll one attack per 5 or 10 weapons of that type and multiply the end result of the check by that multiplier.

If you have 10 twin light turbolasers (Damage 9, Breach 2) making an attack against a target with Armor 8 and the attack generates 2 success and 2 advantages, you can have that be 20 hits each for 5 points of damage. And then you discover why capital ships are made of paper compared to their weapon complements.

I do not know about multiplying the damage, you do not multiply it when a group of stormtrooper minions are all firing blaster rifles at you, because they are acting as a group. In this case I do not see why it would not be a similar situation, they are all firing turbo's at you but a success means that as a group the minions have managed to hit you with a turbo laser not that all of the minions hit you with all the guns.


Edit: to be clear I use minion groups in space the same way I do on ground. To speed up combat by not bogging down the game with to many actions AND to make my players feel like big **** action heroes. In this case I MAY put minion groups in charge of turbo lasers, but this will essentially be a way for me to allow my big **** heroes take on a ship slightly bigger than them and have ship combat not take ages to complete as multiple turbos will be handled by one minion group and one hit will count as one hit. Meanwhile my players guns will be handled by individuals meaning my players actually get more turns then the villains and can have more hits, so even though the bad guys a bigger ship and more cumulative health, their lower competency with the guns allows my plucky group of heroes to pull out a win with their greater "skill" and plucky attitude.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Optionally, 1 gun = one minion group (size determined by what makes sense for the weapon). Turbolasers generally have multiple crewmen operating them.

That doesn't make sense to me. Each of these crewmen has a specific role in operating the turbolaser. You are basically saying that a single stormtrooper is a minion groupe because he uses several fingers to shoot with his gun.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Then roll one attack per 5 or 10 weapons of that type and multiply the end result of the check by that multiplier.

If you have 10 twin light turbolasers (Damage 9, Breach 2) making an attack against a target with Armor 8 and the attack generates 2 success and 2 advantages, you can have that be 20 hits each for 5 points of damage. And then you discover why capital ships are made of paper compared to their weapon complements.

No. This situation is what the minion's rules are made for. You can't just ignore them and say that the system is broken

With your approach, bringing a capital ship in the game isn't even an option, because they would blow anything to space dust in one salvo.

That is not what we see in the films, and that is not how you should handle it.

40 minutes ago, AbsatSolo said:

That doesn't make sense to me. Each of these crewmen has a specific role in operating the turbolaser. You are basically saying that a single stormtrooper is a minion groupe because he uses several fingers to shoot with his gun.

No. This situation is what the minion's rules are made for. You can't just ignore them and say that the system is broken

With your approach, bringing a capital ship in the game isn't even an option, QQ because they would blow anything to space dust in one salvo.

That is not what we see in the films, and that is not how you should handle it.

The rules are crap. Minions never have to be grouped, but if you do so, then minions can certainly work together on a crew-served weapon. You can pad them and turn it into space pillow fights or play it straight and watch everything die. Either way, the game rules do a piss-poor job for anything bigger than a CR90 corvette.

13 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The rules are crap. Minions never have to be grouped, but if you do so, then minions can certainly work together on a crew-served weapon. You can pad them and turn it into space pillow fights or play it straight and watch everything die. Either way, the game rules do a piss-poor job for anything bigger than a CR90 corvette.

They do not have to be grouped, but if they are not you do not use the group skills and you use them as each individual which basically treats them as rivals with no skills. Which completely defeats the purpose of minions. You can apply everything you are saying to ground combat and the same problem would occur. If you set out to break the system you can absolutely do so, but that does not mean the system itself can not handle these things as long as you remember to use the system as it is intended to be used and don't set out to break the game by ignoring key points that it specifically makes like a minion group hitting with a weapon counts as all of them having fired all of their individual weapons and one of them having hit.

17 minutes ago, tunewalker said:

They do not have to be grouped, but if they are not you do not use the group skills and you use them as each individual which basically treats them as rivals with no skills. Which completely defeats the purpose of minions. You can apply everything you are saying to ground combat and the same problem would occur. If you set out to break the system you can absolutely do so, but that does not mean the system itself can not handle these things as long as you remember to use the system as it is intended to be used and don't set out to break the game by ignoring key points that it specifically makes like a minion group hitting with a weapon counts as all of them having fired all of their individual weapons and one of them having hit.

Don't lecture me on the purpose of minions or the rules. I know both far better than you. And I'll be ignoring you from here on because I feel that you having nothing of worth to add to my games.

HD's read of the rules is correct and hardly a wild read either. Assigning a minion crew to each turbo laser, and rolling the weapons as they are on a ISD, staggered in salvos to account for Slow, and you have a withering amount of damage potential, every round.

22 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

The rules are crap. Minions never have to be grouped, but if you do so, then minions can certainly work together on a crew-served weapon. You can pad them and turn it into space pillow fights or play it straight and watch everything die.

No they're not. I know you love proving and repeating ad nauseam that the system is broken, but you are being irrelevant.

To quote someone on another thread, this game is not meant to be an accurate combat simulator, it is a star wars movie generator. You burn through minions, and you struggle against dangerous Nemeses

Now if you want more difficulty, just do what has been said a billion times on this forum, change the number and size of the minion's groupes, until you find balance.

3 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Don't lecture me on the purpose of minions or the rules. I know both far better than you. And I'll be ignoring you from here on because you having nothing of worth to add to my games.

Wow...really ? Well, I guess I'll be next, then

1 minute ago, AbsatSolo said:

Wow...really ? Well, I guess I'll be next, then

Is that a request?

13 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

HD's read of the rules is correct and hardly a wild read either. Assigning a minion crew to each turbo laser, and rolling the weapons as they are on a ISD, staggered in salvos to account for Slow, and you have a withering amount of damage potential, every round.

if you did so you would still have to treat each one as a single shot action though, and roll for each "minion group" individually. Just like in ground rules if you are firing multiple weapons with a single action a single success does not treat it like you were hit with multiple weapons only 1. I have no problem with the idea that a minion group is handling the batteries I have an issue with the idea that all the minion groups as a single Mega minion group within the same action and all of their weapons can all hit at the exact same time with a single roll. That is not how minions are meant to be used. I mean when you put them in TIEs, you have a group of TIEs but you do not triple the damage when one attacks because their are three TIEs or have 12 storm troopers and have them all fire at the same time and count it as 12 hits of a blaster rifle to the same person. Using a group for a single battery is fine but each group would still have to be separate and rolled for separately.

All he proposed with the multiplier was to speed things up reduce dice rolling, which is one of the main points of the minion rules. You also seem to forget he's suggesting rolling weapons in groups of 5 or 10, so if it's a miss, it's ten misses.

25 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

All he proposed with the multiplier was to speed things up reduce dice rolling, which is one of the main points of the minion ru  les. You also seem to forget he's suggesting rolling weapons in groups of 5 or 10, so if it's a miss, it's ten misses.

correct, but that misses the OTHER point of minion rules. Which is to allow the players to fight against a bigger group then themselves. In this case they all roll at the same time because they are all acting as a SINGLE entity which is also why the group upgrades their check for the number of members within the group. If you are both getting the upgrade AND hitting with multiple things then the minion rules are not being used as they are written nor as they are intended. He may have stated that I have nothing to add to his game, but this single change in understanding of the rules could have opened an entire genre of capital ship combat up to him instead of continually thinking it is broken.

Edit: again this is no different than throwing 4 storm troopers at someone and having them roll 1 check with 3 yellows and a green and having a single success count as 4 hits and calling it broken, that is not how minions work.

Edit 2: essentially it is meant for a group of minions all firing multiple weapons to be able to accomplish the same level of competence as a single rival firing 1 weapon.

Edit 3: applying it one more time, compare those 4 storm troopers to a Rival with Agility 4 and 3 ranged heavy with a blaster rifle, 20 health 5 soak. Using the same method HD is suggesting for space combat and applying it to ground, these 2 have the exact same roll. If they miss there is no difference, if they hit the 4 stormtroopers just did a minimum of 20 damage to a person with 5 soak and the rival just did 5 damage to a person with 5 soak. If their is a crit the stormtroopers just hit for 20 damage to a person with 5 soak, probably dropped them and essentially did 5 crits, while the rival did 5 damage and 1 crit. The rival is supposed to be much more dangerous than the minions, but in this example the minions far exceed him. This is the method HD is using for capital ship combat. This is why you do not do this, this is why this is not the way it is meant to be used. This is why that interpretation is wrong. Any time there is an issue apply the same reasoning else where and you will see why it does or does not work.

6 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

All he proposed with the multiplier was to speed things up reduce dice rolling, which is one of the main points of the minion rules. You also seem to forget he's suggesting rolling weapons in groups of 5 or 10, so if it's a miss, it's ten misses.

Well, it will indeed speed things up as everything will dead after round 2.

Actually I could use this in some specific situation, such as an ambush, or a raid. For exemple, the Vader's arrival in Rogue One's space battle, jumping out of hyperspace and immediatly destroying several ship. On this context, your approach would be the best.

But in the context of a long-lasting battle, such as Endor, it is completely inadapted

31 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

HD's read of the rules is correct and hardly a wild read either. Assigning a minion crew to each turbo laser, and rolling the weapons as they are on a ISD, staggered in salvos to account for Slow, and you have a withering amount of damage potential, every round.

Sadly, there is nothing that requires them to be staggered. If the ship had a restriction that only 1/3 of each the weapons could be fired, this would reduce the alpha strike abuse. As is, it can often be more advantageous to fire everything in one turn because killing three targets in turn 1 and just sitting there looking cool for the next two turns is almost always better than killing one target each turn for three turns.

1 hour ago, AbsatSolo said:

That doesn't make sense to me. Each of these crewmen has a specific role in operating the turbolaser. You are basically saying that a single stormtrooper is a minion groupe because he uses several fingers to shoot with his gun.

To be clear, each finger doesn't have a profile as a minion. Each gunner does. If a group of gunners (Imperial Gunnery Corp, AoR Core, p. 418) man one turbolaser, they fire it together just as they all do the single heavy repeating blaster listed in that minion's entry; each of the gunners does not carry a HRB.

For my purposes, a light turbolaser has a crew of 2, a medium turbolaser has a crew of 3, and a heavy turbolaser has a crew of 4. Those are the sizes of the minion groups I use with each weapon. I also have them Aim during the turn(s) of Slow-Firing, but they could also do Damage Control (note that Mechanics is not a group skill for them) if their ship took hits from ion weaponry. Thus, each turbolaser usually has the following "good" dice:

• Light: YGBB
• Medium: YYBB
• Heavy: YYGBB

11 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

To be clear, each finger doesn't have a profile as a minion. Each gunner does. If a group of gunners (Imperial Gunnery Corp, AoR Core, p. 418) man one turbolaser, they fire it together just as they all do the single heavy repeating blaster listed in that minion's entry; each of the gunners does not carry a HRB.

For my purposes, a light turbolaser has a crew of 2, a medium turbolaser has a crew of 3, and a heavy turbolaser has a crew of 4. Those are the sizes of the minion groups I use with each weapon. I also have them Aim during the turn(s) of Slow-Firing, but they could also do Damage Control (note that Mechanics is not a group skill for them) if their ship took hits from ion weaponry. Thus, each turbolaser usually has the following "good" dice:

• Light: YGBB
• Medium: YYBB
• Heavy: YYGBB

This is FINE as long as you attack with each weapon separately. The problem with firing them all at the same time and multiplying it is just as I illustrated up above with the storm trooper vs bounty hunter analogy. There is to large a consequence for a single successful roll and the system is not meant to work that way. Either you will have to roll initiative for each individual group for each individual turbo laser or at scale like this you will have to treat a group of turbo lasers as a single minion group and have a single success count as a single of those turbo lasers hitting. The other option is to give it the linked quality and force advantages to be used to make subsequent attacks hit like you would with two weapon fighting. Just multiplying this is exactly why the system is "broken", there is nothing in minion rules ever about multiplying a hit, none of the rules account for that and adding it simply breaks a system that was not broken.

37 minutes ago, AbsatSolo said:

Well, it will indeed speed things up as everything will dead after round 2.

Actually I could use this in some specific situation, such as an ambush, or a raid. For exemple, the Vader's arrival in Rogue One's space battle, jumping out of hyperspace and immediatly destroying several ship. On this context, your approach would be the best.

But in the context of a long-lasting battle, such as Endor, it is completely inadapted

Whether you group them or not they would fire in salvos. A half dozen gunnery minions in a heavy turbo laser is completely fine imo. That dice pool even against a 4 silhouette difference and PPPPP is going to be a 38% success rate, so 3 or 4 hits every round. PCs in a sil 4 ship are going to be dust.

A larger cap ship size and the success rate goes up with even money difficulty you're at 87% success rates. The ISD on ISD fight is determined by initiative and over in the first round using an alpha strike.

The point here has nothing to do with minion rules, which I'm aware how they work, playtested about 90% of the materials. It's about the game didn't set itself up for capital ships to get in crunchy drawn out fights with the mechanics. It's not Armada or X-wing.

20 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Whether you group them or not they would fire in salvos. A half dozen gunnery minions in a heavy turbo laser is completely fine imo. That dice pool even against a 4 silhouette difference and PPPPP is going to be a 38% success rate, so 3 or 4 hits every round. PCs in a sil 4 ship are going to be dust.

A larger cap ship size and the success rate goes up with even money difficulty you're at 87% success rates. The ISD on ISD fight is determined by initiative and over in the first round using an alpha strike.

The point here has nothing to do with minion rules, which I'm aware how they work, playtested about 90% of the materials. It's about the game didn't set itself up for capital ships to get in crunchy drawn out fights with the mechanics. It's not Armada or X-wing.

It would have been better if they hadn't even bothered to stat out all of the weapons emplacements on Sil 6+ ships and instead would have just given Barrage ratings for each fire arc that it could allocate among targets. They tried to do this with the actions in AoR, but those tend to be so sub-optimal that any naval commander ordering their use should be drummed out for incompetence.