I get Happy's angle, but it's just a weird setting issue.

Fighters act like something outta WWII, Korea, or Vietnam, but the big ships seem to be more like something out of the Age of Sail. Combined with the lore that loads some of the big ships with dozens and dozens of guns, it just doesn't add up.

So, if you wanted to bump up damage to get a more modern feel where a couple good hits from an anti-ship missile is all it takes... ok.

But you'll still be left with an odd inconsistency of 1 gun crew = 1 Minion group, as that feels more like assists over a grouping. You could just as easily arbitrarily GM fiat the gunner skill and ignore the minion angle all together, seeing as how the actual Minion rules would, other than the grouping to get skill, not even need apply.

At the end of the day you'll always have "bad" rules at this scale. When dealing with dozens of cannons there's only so much control and granularity worth investing in. Things must be cut. WEG tried to go all in and if run 100% pretty much any vessel can obliterate any comparable vessel on Turn 1. WotC boiled it down, but then got fussed at for not counting every cannon individually and instead just rounding off to "what a ship could reasonable be expected to bring to bear at a given moment." Now here we've got FFG trying to meet in the middle and getting flak over that.

Figure out what works for you and go with it.

9 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

But you'll still be left with an odd inconsistency of 1 gun crew = 1 Minion group, as that feels more like assists over a grouping. You could just as easily arbitrarily GM fiat the gunner skill and ignore the minion angle all together, seeing as how the actual Minion rules would, other than the grouping to get skill, not even need apply.

That's true, but it's really the same thing (offensively) as a multi-minion group crewing the heavy repeating blaster. Of course, the defensive side of it is another story, as turbolaser crew are not generally targeted directly in capital ship combat. In truth, just assigning Gunnery skill levels (and Agility) for capital ships would be fine.

Of course, there's still the stupidity of targeting based on the Silhouette of the firing ship rather than the firing weapon. A quad laser cannon intended for point defense is somehow useless on an ISD but great on a CR90. Actually, even the medium turbolasers on the CR90 are more effective against starfighters than quad laser cannons on an ISD, and that's idiotic. In reality, a CIWS mounted on an aircraft carrier is no less useful than one mounted on a frigate.

I think it's generally agreed ship combat could use a reset in the system.

There's a lot of band aid fixes to get to the cap ship slug fest mechanically, but the question is why in my mind. I don't want any drawn out long random number generator parties for any elements in the game.

Cap ship fights are best left to mass combat I think.

Ok so now let me explain how I believe you should be applying weapons at this scale using the actual numbers. Yes 1 gun crew for 1 gun works for Sil 5 and lower as soon as you get to full on capital ship vs capital ship this no longer works even something like a Nebulon B frigate can near alpha 1 shot a Victory class star destroyer, and easily destroys anything Sil 5 in the first action of the first round if you count a single minion group for a single gun and just multiply the attack, but treating each group of guns as a single group of that many minions DOES work. For example a CR 90 would have a 2 groups of 1 for their main guns and 2 groups of 2 for their small guns, while the Nebulon B would have 2 groups of 6 for their main guns and 4 groups of 3 for their minor guns. These ships are comparable enough in size that they should be able engage one another and in canon as far as I know they did with the Nebulon B having the clear advantage and that is also the case here, as the more upgrades caused by the larger crew means more chance at success, but this also means the players have time to DO something.

Let us apply this to the next scale up Nebulon B vs Victory Class, Nebulon still has 2 groups of 6 for main guns and 4 groups of 3 for minor guns, while the victory has 2 groups of 5 for their quads, and a group of 10 for their forward guns (or 2 groups of 5 if you want) a group of 10 for their dorsal, and a group of 20 for concussion missiles (or 2 groups of 10, or 4 groups of 5). Again the victory has the clear advantage here, but you are still only having to deal with 6 turns on one end and at most 8 turns on the other combat does not get bogged down and neither group is getting blown up in the first round of combat. The system is fine, capital ship combat is still boring if you are just doing a slug fest, but that is true of combat in general in this game. Environmental stuff and other narrative things make it more fun.

Edit: if anyone is wondering what the die check looks like for a group of 10, it is 6 yellows and a green. Chances of hitting are pretty solid, the chance of triggering linked is even better and the chance of critical is also solid, BUT those are things that make the fight more exciting as they are things that a mechanic player can try to deal with and other narrative things can happen like this.

Edit 2: also using this method also partially solves the difficulty problem with Bigger ships and Silhouettes while also not risking 1 shotting your pilots or you can always take the capital ship action of blanket barrage.

Edit 3: found a thing in the book that actually covers my entire method much easier, and gives insight into how combat like this is supposed to be handled. Check page 248 of the age of rebellion core rule book. Overwhelming Barrage, capital ship action in which a single player can attack with an entire array of guns facing the same direction and of the same caliber. Given this is possible, then it is also possible a single gunnery crew is manning all of a particular facing of guns and again solves the whole capital ship combat problem.

15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Of course, there's still the stupidity of targeting based on the Silhouette of the firing ship rather than the firing weapon. A quad laser cannon intended for point defense is somehow useless on an ISD but great on a CR90. Actually, even the medium turbolasers on the CR90 are more effective against starfighters than quad laser cannons on an ISD, and that's idiotic. In reality, a CIWS mounted on an aircraft carrier is no less useful than one mounted on a frigate.

This irked me too, which is why I house-ruled that any weapon that isn't fixed has an 'effective silhouette' equal to the silhouette of the smallest craft it could be installed in. It's worked out pretty well for me so far.