I'm sure that this topic has been brought up before, but my searching has only been able to turn up this Reddit post:

The suggestions offered there are somewhat helpful at a surface level, but no one really gets into specifics.

First, the problem. Every time I run a space combat, it goes something like this (simplified a bit for brevity):

GM (Me): Okay, it's a PC slot, who's going?
Pilot: I guess I'll go. Uh, I'll take Evasive Maneuvers and Gain the Advantage again.
(Resolve)
GM: Another PC slot.
Gunner: I shoot. Again.
(Resolve)
GM: NPC slot. They maneuver in and shoot.
(Resolve)
GM:Last PC. What are you doing?
Mechanic: I'll do Damage Control.
(Resolve)
(Repeat ad nauseum)

Now, this is obviously the most basic that you can get. We could frame it slightly differently, like suggested in the link above. For example, we could be protecting another ship or we have a specific target to destroy in a larger battle. On the surface, it sounds more interesting, but how does it change my combat example above? I guess the pilot might take a different maneuver since positioning is more important, but everything else will be the same.

Okay, that didn't work, so what about the suggestion of a cool environment like an asteroid field or a nebula? Again, it spices it up on a surface level, but how does it change the example? What new options have we provided the players?

So, with all that in mind, how can we make space combat more interesting from an individual player choice perspective? How do we make the encounter interesting and tense and varied?

I mean you could frame your problem with ground combat too. "Everytime my party fights it's always pc1 does hawkbat swoop, pc2 aims and double blasts, pc3 throws a grenade".

The problem lies with their mindset. Space combat can be quite interesting and fun and yeah, has only a number of mechanical actions to take. The mindset as in all things with this game should be focused on the narrative. What does it look, sound, feel like?

If you want to create tension then challenge them every time. A time limit before reinforcements arrive that is tracked on a phone alarm set in the middle of the table. The enemy begins targeting their systems to prevent escape. Etc...

2 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

I mean you could frame your problem with ground combat too. "Everytime my party fights it's always pc1 does hawkbat swoop, pc2 aims and double blasts, pc3 throws a grenade".

I disagree. To quote HappyDaze from a different post:

Quote

It's not really the same since the whole group often shares a single threshold and set of critical hits that determines when they  are all out of the fight. In personal combat, it's not unusual to have a character or two go down (and then get brought back with stimpacks or other means) while the rest keep on acting. The default model of the whole group sharing a single ship makes this model fail when starships are concerned. It also doesn't help that single-person vehicles are proportionately much more fragile than characters. Nobody in personal combat ever has a WT of 6, but many speeders and some starfighters do. ..

...The dice rolling mechanics are the same, but it doesn't actually play the same way. If all the PCs shared a common WT and ST and only one of them could move (but the rest got dragged along) it might play out like a fight with the players in a light freighter...

Even ignoring everything mentioned there (specifically shared WT and lack of movement), personal scale combat lets you do much more because not everything has to be about combat. There can be other things going on that PCs can be dealing with, like trying to slice a computer or open a door as super basic examples.

Without even setting up an interesting scenario, here's a quick list of options in personal combat:

- Attack with primary weapon
- Stimpack
- Use an AOE weapon like a grenade
- Move from cover to cover to close on the enemy
- Heal an ally
- Run away to get help while the rest of the party fights
- Stay and defend while the rest of the party flees
- Distract the enemies while an ally sneaks around behind them
- Shoot/knock a weapon out of an enemy's hand
- Knock an enemy down
- Grapple an enemy
- And on and on...

I added options for players to pass Boosts, plus a more defined spend-store mechanic with System Strain. Lots of other simplifications that work with my table like splitting movement and attacks to broaden choices, no Speed, one-sentence descriptions, decoupling from talents, so YMMV.

PDF here. (Obligatory props to Whafrog for inspiration.)

Players have enjoyed it so far. It hasn't solved the problem of a natural, mechanical ebb and flow of dogfighting. I suspect a trio of positions/modes that trade superiority with instability are the answer, but that's a big thing to tackle, and potentially too much for players who just want to line up a shot for their gunners, jump out and get on with the adventure.

2 hours ago, ddbrown30 said:

Okay, that didn't work, so what about the suggestion of a cool environment like an asteroid field or a nebula? Again, it spices it up on a surface level, but how does it change the example? What new options have we provided the players?

Wilsch's PDF is a good change. The only quibble I have is that in my games, Never Tell Me the Odds allows the PC to set the difficulty rather than a fixed RRR difficulty, it gives the player a chance to really ramp up the risks and payoff.

In general though I play space combat a lot more free-form than the normal rules would allow. The first main change is that all space combat is a chase, and there is always terrain. The PCs are presumably trying to get from point A to point B (or survive for C turns) in order to accomplish X before Y can happen. If those story elements aren't in place, then space combat is a grind, a simple mechanical exercise, and players aren't generally as invested.

If you turn it into a chase, then a lot more abilities can be brought to bear, including social abilities like Deception and Charm. I'd even allow Scathing Tirade to be used once against a minion group...I say "once" because it wears thin and stretches credulity after a time. Some additional options:

Social skill to buy time: fool, coerce, bribe or flatter buys a turn of fleeing or fixing or targeting or astrogating, etc

Jamming: success buys "cover" for the ship, perhaps "hard cover" on 3A or T in addition to the other possibilities.

42 minutes ago, whafrog said:

The only quibble I have is that in my games, Never Tell Me the Odds allows the PC to set the difficulty rather than a fixed RRR difficulty, it gives the player a chance to really ramp up the risks and payoff.

I like this and may change it back.

I have really struggled with running space combat in my Edge game. It showed up less and less as time went on, because I felt I couldn't make it interesting enough for the players. Fortunately, we did not have a Pilot in our group. I think @whafrog has a good idea, there, viewing it as a chase instead of as normal combat. I've recently been experimenting with different ways to handle chase scenes, and now I'm tempted to try them in space, as well.

On 7/3/2019 at 1:55 PM, whafrog said:

Wilsch's PDF is a good change. The only quibble I have is that in my games, Never Tell Me the Odds allows the PC to set the difficulty rather than a fixed RRR difficulty, it gives the player a chance to really ramp up the risks and payoff.

In general though I play space combat a lot more free-form than the normal rules would allow. The first main change is that all space combat is a chase, and there is always terrain. The PCs are presumably trying to get from point A to point B (or survive for C turns) in order to accomplish X before Y can happen. If those story elements aren't in place, then space combat is a grind, a simple mechanical exercise, and players aren't generally as invested.

If you turn it into a chase, then a lot more abilities can be brought to bear, including social abilities like Deception and Charm. I'd even allow Scathing Tirade to be used once against a minion group...I say "once" because it wears thin and stretches credulity after a time. Some additional options:

Social skill to buy time: fool, coerce, bribe or flatter buys a turn of fleeing or fixing or targeting or astrogating, etc

Jamming: success buys "cover" for the ship, perhaps "hard cover" on 3A or T in addition to the other possibilities.

I really like the idea of the chase or other structured fight. I agree that it would make it much more interesting. Do you have an example of a fight that you ran that went well? How did it play out?

1 hour ago, ddbrown30 said:

I really like the idea of the chase or other structured fight. I agree that it would make it much more interesting. Do you have an example of a fight that you ran that went well? How did it play out?

Been pondering how to respond, but the problem is at the mechanical level I don't generally plan these things out, nor do I make notes afterwards. My plans and post-notes are just story-based. I might toss in a note like "don't forget to add a Coordination check if possible, because that's PC-A's thing...", but otherwise I tend to wing it.

However, probably the most memorable for me was one of the first times I made the chase thing work and tried out some of the new mechanics, like removing Speed and using Never Tell Me the Odds, so I'll try to reconstruct it.

Background: each player was separated from the others (one across a city, another on a different continent of the local planet) as each had a specific part of their plan to enact. Most of this description centres around the Ace:Engineer in the group, but between his turns I was switching to the other PCs. Anyway, it had been his job to infiltrate a local Imperial base and make sure the TIEs were shooting squibs on [insert local celebration day]. Through good rolling he also managed to "break" the Inquisitor's TIE Advanced (making it look like someone else messed up) so it would be grounded, and the party decided to take advantage of this to change the plan so they could steal it. So there he is with the Inquisitor tapping his foot impatiently while the celebration carries on without him. Then the Engineer crawls in to fire things up to "test the systems", and just takes off.

First roll in the "chase": Deception vs Vigilance. The Engineer tries to take off while looking like he's not trying to. "I don't know what's going on, the systems are going haywire!" Well, he's an Engineer with minimal Cunning, so this fails, the Inquisitor doesn't buy it, and alerts the Imperial patrols. Not sure why the player thought it would work, but hey, I'm not going to second-guess it. A leap and a lightsaber flash, and the TIE A takes 1 Hull damage, but no systems are compromised.

Second roll of the chase: Piloting vs Leadership. The Engineer figures, screw this, I'm outta here, clears the hangar and heads for open waters (they are in a major sea-port city, but their hideout is across a narrow sea on a different continent). He's keeping as low as possible...he can't go to space because there's a blockade and if he breaks orbit his lifespan will be short...so the terrain is "choppy" due to rough seas and possible rogue waves: RRPS difficulty. He gets a couple boost because his friend is already hacked into the Imperial communication system, and is messing with static and other things. Meanwhile, the Inquisitor is trying to get Imperial Command's attention (Leadership), but there's a parade going on and all the "good" Imperials are humming along to the martial music, so a couple of setback for him. The Engineer succeeds and gets enough Advantages to get another maneuver of flying, and clears the celebration area. A couple TIEs turn in his direction, but their guns don't fire (due to earlier efforts) and they turn back. I just hand-waved this part due to the general confusion, and the PC completely outclasses the celebration pilots. The Engineer keeps crossing the ocean.

Sometimes NPCs get to "fail forward" too, and eventually the Inquisitor makes it clear something is up, and the hunt is on. I don't recall this part too clearly, but I do recall a Despair and some Threat, probably because the Engineer tried to take an aggressive approach in the "chase". This ended up with the other PC's comm hack being neutralized and a couple of TIEs coming in from the blockade above to find him scooting over the waves. There was a brief dogfight (using my dogfight rules, he beat the other pilots and so his attacks were upgraded) in structured time where the Engineer rolled something ridiculous after a couple turns and pasted the two TIEs, but his position was compromised, so another couple of wings were incoming, and I strongly hinted that more were on the way.

At this point the Engineer decides to try and flee. This chase roll is a simple Piloting vs Piloting as he tries to outrun the TIE groups to the other continent, but there's minimal success and they keep up (assisted by the scanning efforts above). However, they do arrive at the other continent and the Engineer decides to use "Never Tell Me the Odds" and fly into the canyon-lands (long established geography from earlier sessions). He sets the difficulty to 4 reds (RRRR). His own pool is YYYGG, but the Imperials are YYG. He got something ridiculous again (at least one Triumph and lots of Advantages). One of the TIE groups pasted themselves on the canyon walls (Despair and enough failures to cause terrible hull damage), and I let him use his own Advantages to "crit" one of the last two TIES into oblivion. Meanwhile he used the Triumph to "hide" from the remaining TIE and the scanners in the overhead blockade, and get to a nearby cave to park the stolen TIE A.

I probably remember that scene most because it was the first time space combat wasn't a grind, the player was thrilled with how his PC performed, and the pacing also finally felt true to the media. But I will offer a couple of caveats:

First, in order to make it work you have to be flexible with switching between "narrative" time and "structured" time in the same chase. Sometimes one chase roll can account for many minutes, whereas a dogfight can last 30 seconds.

Second, it requires balancing the NCP actions and events so it feels real and not arbitrary. If we'd used the standard mechanics, by the time the PC was scanned by the blockade I'd have to calculate how many range bands the new TIEs were, spend Strain to "Punch It", have them "Fly" twice each turn until they closed, but meanwhile the PC (whether or not he knows they're coming) just does Fly twice and they never meet...and meanwhile we just churned through several turns of structured time to no purpose. This is BS on so many levels, starting with, I never saw a scene in Star Wars that played out that way. When the enemy finds you, they find you and you maybe have a turn to decide to engage, flee to hide, or flee to hyperspace. So in this case the narrative of the Engineer being "found" includes the TIEs bearing down on him (subject to narrative dice results of course). Way more cinematic, but again, requires caution.

Not sure if any of that was helpful.

That's great. This is a really interesting way of handling it. I hope to be able to accomplish something like this in the future.

I have found that using multiple ships on the PC side really helps space combat to feel more like personal combat.I was running two Y-wings for four PCs (and a pair of astromech NPCs) in a short game and space combat felt more interesting than the typical "four folks in a light freighter" game.

Space combat in open space tends to be very dull. If your pilot isn't making piloting checks every round to avoid smashing into a ship/asteroid/other fighter/satellite/fragments of ancient space station/purgill, there's no tension. This is especially true if you're running an Edge of the Empire game, where your crew should be engaging in reckless antics in order to get away with the score.

If you're going to have space combat in open space, reduce it to a couple of checks and weigh the difficulty, advantage, and disadvantages accordingly.

I'm yet to run this, in fact yet to run my first session, but here is what I came up with for a chase between 2 skiffs. Bad guys had a 2 range band lead at the start.

The skiffs will start the encounter at Long range. Each turn the 2 pilots take a competitive Piloting test, followed by a difficulty 3 piloting test to manoeuvre through the Jungle Canopy.
Competitive:
Result Effect
2 net success Close/Extend range by 1
1 advantage 1 crewman or Mob can fire
1 Triumph Can Sideswipe or ram if Engaged:
Causing 1 upgraded die on next test vs Jungle Canopy, and +1 to target vehicle Strain.
2 Triumph 1 Crewman or mob can attempt to board if engaged.

Vs Jungle Canopy:
Result Effect
2 net success +1 Blue die on next Competitive
1 advantage +1 Blue die on next Vs Jungle Canopy
2 advantage Regain 1 Vehicle Strain
1 Triumph Close/Extend range by 1
1 Triumph 1 crew can fire
1 net failure Lose 1 Vehicle SS
x Threats All Crew take difficulty x Coordination check or fall off. Pilot and Gunner gain 1 blue die for test.
1 Despair Opponent may extend or close range, or all opponent’s crew can shoot.

Falling Off: Base damage of 10 wounds, and 10 Strain. Difficulty 2 Athletics or Coordination check. Each success reduces the damage suffered by one, while each Advantage reduces the strain suffered by one.

Apologies for the dodgy formatting, tables don't copy well into forum posts.

@ddbrown30

So the question is laced with a statement that the Space Combat mechanics are boring, and that description and all that is not what the question is about. So what does mechanically fun combat look like to you?

What are some examples of combat mechanics that you enjoyed? How were those bottles resolved? Maybe those methods could be adapted to SWRPG vehicle combat.

In all fairness, we found one of the most satisfying uses of Starship combat was actually capital ship combat, provided some ground rules are established first. E.g. How many times can a ship fire? How many ships are involved? What can non-combative PC's do in this situation?

In our case we were engaged in the Battle of Jakku within atmosphere crewing an Stealth Star Destroyer called the Carrion Spike, our fighter escort had been wiped out in a prior engagement and we were confronted with 2 dreadnorts and an assertor class Star Destroyer. The context? We were supporting the landing of the Republic army and these ships were looking to stop the landing of ground forces. Renforcements was on our way but until then; we had to hold off 3 full strength ships in one that had been fairly battered without fighter support. The deck was stacked against us and the consequence would've been the complete rout of this portion of the army. The play by play would be too complicated but I will describe how it broadly played out.

First of all our ship cloaked, allowing us to disengage from the closing blockade and making them think we had chosen to abandon the ground forces. Rather we circled around the back navigating around the flanking asserter and our Ace Pilot, manning a turbolasor battery opened up with a targeted shot on the engines to open the engagement; the engines were completely shreadded in the opening engagement and it was at that point we rolled initiative. In the engine room master machanic piped up to the bridge that he had "a very risky plan, I'm sending up the coordinates to you now." and the commander, seeing what was the coordinates for a very short term hyperspace jump assisted on the check; using Wardes Foresight to maximise the chances of success and initiated the jump; going from immediately behind one crashing ship in the path of the dreadnorts guns, to being right behind them. The gunner ace, having sprinted over to the second battery as the ship rocked into hyperspace opened up with the next salvo,, the explosion addicted Gand following suit to cripple the both dreadnorts (speed 1) and it too began to plummet as the frantic retaliation came back, disabling our bridge.

At this point a venator had descended immediately behind our ship opening up; but we had expected the empire to reinforce in a flanking attack and as it attempted to deaccelerate from terminal velocity had momentarily descended below our vessel as it fought against gravity; our crazy driver and mercenary buddy lead a tank of charge right out of the tank doors, landing on the ship immediately behind and opening up on the bridge of the other ship, enduring that the bridge crew would never complete their recovery menvour, pile driving into the planet a turn later after the LAATS (Yeah, we had a lot of clone wars tech) had managed to extract most of the tanks before contact with the increasingly yielding ground. At this point (due to several T's) the renforcements arrived a turn early and the bridge had recovered enough to display that the remains of the taskforce were routing.

I've always struggled with space combat, I've found it uninteresting for both players and the GM. I believe that it is actually easier to run space "combat" in EotE rather than in AoR because:
1) there is less of it. A good smuggler will never have to fire his weapons.
2) there are more ways to avoid it. "Alright officer, we'll come peacefully, this is all a big misunderstanding" works better with a smuggler in a YT than with a rebel in a X-Wing.
3) most of the structured space stuff will/can be a chase rather than straight combat. Bounty hunters chasing prey, prey being chased by bounty hunters, etc.
4) there are less targets to keep track of. In the previous example of a bounty hunter chasing a quarry, he will likely have only one target.

Maybe this is just me being a cowardly GM, but I find it very difficult to handle multiple spaceship targets and their relative positioning. For ground combat, it is easier to keep track of because you have a much, much smaller area that you often have a map for (and if you don't, you probably have a mental map). I think that the main difference between the two is terrain.

I think that I can handle 1-on-1 combat okay, and better with sil 4-6 (but not really any bigger) (because there is more margin for error/success than "oh, that's unfortunate, you just rolled well on your first shot. Your opponent is dead now"), but once you add in a couple extra targets on both sides (a couple enemy starfighters I can handle, 2 extra targets on each side and I have a problem) I start to loose track and it starts to slow down.

I believe that one of the most important things for keeping space combat interesting is to make it go as quickly as possible and not spend a lot of time looking over the rules for whatever special actions.

I think the key thing with space combat is three fold.

1) How invested are the characters in their resources? The requirements of a smuggler crew is very different to a flight team of rebels, or a capital ship Captain in a Battle Star glactica/Star Trek style campaign in a fleet of ships. That would also dictate the stakes of the encounter, simply escaping, a mission with an objective or the campaign heavily involving the maintain of this large capital ship. If it's the former then you never really need to go too deep into space combat, beyond chases and what have you. If it's the latter two; then the GM needs to start treating space encounters like traditional ground encounters, and it isn't entirely unreasonable to have at least half the party teched to fill those roles. If you don't, then space combat isn't for them, though it's a nice slice of ginger to remind them how out of depth they are in that particular theatre.

2) What is the objective? Like actual encounters I firmly believe that most encounters should have a clear objective that doesn't involve wiping out the other side. Searching a mansion to find a prisoner before overwhelming imperial force overwhelms the hastily erected parameter? Are you looking to dock aggressively to conduct a boarding action? Or is it to simply escape, or reach a location so it can be properly defended? Or is the objective to destroy a singular target?

I consider point 2 super important. Almost no battle in history rotated around killing everyone down to the last man; usually the battle ended before that when an objective was achieved. Likewise we never really see many encounters where the alliance simply fought an encounter and breathed a sigh of relief, they were always moving with purpose and victory was determined by making that objective, whether it was getting to the Flacon, securing a particular location or by completing some goal.

I think the same can easily be achieved in space combat; in capital ship style combat even a small imperial fleet might hesitate twice about attacking a rebel stronghold if the Rebels are able to position their capital ship between them and the location; giving ample time for evacuation before the Empire arrive in force. It might be gaining access to a location first, at which point the resulting space combat becomes unimportant to the narrative, or that once the objective is achieved the imperials break off to lick their wounds. I am not a huge fan of simply "destroy all those guys" encounters, they don't provide any entertainment for me or flexibility.

Our objective in the battle of Jakku was to defend the ground forces, with a secondary objective of waiting until reinforcements arrived. On the face of it was a space combat we weren't fated to win as although we had access to a Stealth Star Destroyer, the collective imperial task force simply outnumbered too much to stand a reasonable chance to simply win the battle. But ensuring that the taskforce wasn't able to take a position of superiority over the fighters? That was reasonable. There was one more ingredient that made the battle noteworthy.

3) Location. Places aren't fought over for no reason. It's either of some importance, others an advantage to one side or the other or is potentially hazardous.

In our particular case, we were fighting within the atmosphere of the planet, which reduced our mobility and introduced gravity as a major force. It also enabled us to enact a plan that both enabled us to defeat a force that greatly outnumbered us and made us think of a solution to the puzzle placed before us. The GM gave us a problem but not the solution; that was for the players to provide. If the objective isn't necessarily to fight, then the location is an obstacle course or a hazard for the PC's (and anyone else!) to navigate or avoid.

Do you know what the best space encounter is? Star Trek 2 the Wrath of Khan. The Star Ship Enterprise was damaged in a prior engagement and lacks shields, it is no match for Khan's ship on open ground but Khan, while he is a tactical genius, isn't overly familiar with space combat. Kirk used this to his advantage and used the environment to his advantage, luring the superior capital ship into the Nebula where it's superior shields and sensor's were rendered inert. What happened next could be described as a skill challenge, as both captains and their respective crew try to narrow down the locations of eachother. Whoever fired first would win, while Khan was a keen mind, Kirk had spend a solid decade commanding star ships and was intimately familiar with both his ship and was highly experienced, so he was able to outwit Khan and deal a decisive blow. That only involved two ships and worked because it was highly personal, the stakes were high and ultimately the players had to use their own knowledge to defeat Khan in a cunning way.


And for all things holy; use groups in star ship combat. Micromanaging an entire battle with 20 odd tie fighters would be crazy. XD

55 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Do you know what the best space encounter is? Star Trek 2 the Wrath of Khan. The Star Ship Enterprise was damaged in a prior engagement and lacks shields, it is no match for Khan's ship on open ground but Khan, while he is a tactical genius, isn't overly familiar with space combat. Kirk used this to his advantage and used the environment to his advantage, luring the superior capital ship into the Nebula where it's superior shields and sensor's were rendered inert. What happened next could be described as a skill challenge, as both captains and their respective crew try to narrow down the locations of eachother. Whoever fired first would win, while Khan was a keen mind, Kirk had spend a solid decade commanding star ships and was intimately familiar with both his ship and was highly experienced, so he was able to outwit Khan and deal a decisive blow. That only involved two ships and worked because it was highly personal, the stakes were high and ultimately the players had to use their own knowledge to defeat Khan in a cunning way.

You heretic! How dare you bring up Star Trek on a Star Wars forum! Burn him at the stake! 😜

4 hours ago, LordBritish said:

I consider point 2 super important. Almost no battle in history rotated around killing everyone down to the last man; usually the battle ended before that when an objective was achieved.

General Melchett would disagree most strongly, and order the doors locked, and large pieces of irregular sized wood put over the windows if word got out of the battle plan.

Space combat was a really big thing earlier in my Star Wars RPG, mainly because the Spec Ops characters kept agitating their Imperial targets.

We've had some good exciting space battles, but they involved the players all investing in the game mechanics and staying involved with the game.

But that's still a rare thing for my group and space battles do tend to devolve into a mechanical grinds that are uninteresting for the Players and GM alike.

So with the player characters getting better at their job and pulling off missions without . . . "Imperial Entanglements" the space combat has become infrequent for me too.

However, space battles are going to happen in the future so here are some of the things that I do to help speed things along and keep things interesting.

• I play X-Wing too! So I have a bunch of mini's that I can use to help frame the battle. I roll out the official Star Wars star map and position the mini's on the table so that everyone knows where things are. Since the PC's are on a single ship (usually) that mini get's plopped onto the middle of the table and the rest of the ships are positioned in relation to the PC's ship. And with a VCX-100 two of the weapons have specific arcs . . . Mind you, the crew have an attack shuttle, so even when that detaches (and the player characters have done so in the past) the smaller attack shuttle's position is still used in relation to the mother ship. But still, every other ship also changes relative location with each other too. And since I've studied aerial combat (and SJ Game's Car Wars ) I'm not breaking anyone's suspenders of disbelief.
• (Maybe too obvious but) Even though there is a combat involving space ships, the action revolves around the player characters. Part of that action is the characters moving TO locations within the ship. Especially to repair damage. Having a layout of the VCX-100 is handy so when the mechanic needs to repair engine damage, they need to go to the engine room before doing a repair action. Or if the galley then suddenly explodes, then it's requisite for the repair crew to race from engineering to the galley before conducting emergency repairs on the djaric table. (No. NO! NOT the Djaric table)!
• Keep narrating actions and things. I think as GM's and Players we can get lazy in the interest of advancing the plot, but remember to describe the action with a bit of color and details. It'll help keep things interesting. (I obviously struggle with this too).
• To echo Whafrog: Set deadlines. Usually it's been "X number of turns until we can leap to hyperspace" as my intrepid band of soldiers are usually fleeing overwhelming numbers of Imperial troopers as their mission goes pear shaped . . .
• Combat starts outside of weapons range. You shouldn't start combat with "Roll Initiative." Events lead to combat and sensor ranges definitely exceed weapons ranges. Describe what leads to the conflict.

On 9/23/2019 at 10:41 AM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I've always struggled with space combat, I've found it uninteresting for both players and the GM. I believe that it is actually easier to run space "combat" in EotE rather than in AoR because:
1) there is less of it. A good smuggler will never have to fire his weapons.
2) there are more ways to avoid it. "Alright officer, we'll come peacefully, this is all a big misunderstanding" works better with a smuggler in a YT than with a rebel in a X-Wing.
3) most of the structured space stuff will/can be a chase rather than straight combat. Bounty hunters chasing prey, prey being chased by bounty hunters, etc.
4) there are less targets to keep track of. In the previous example of a bounty hunter chasing a quarry, he will likely have only one target.

Maybe this is just me being a cowardly GM, but I find it very difficult to handle multiple spaceship targets and their relative positioning. For ground combat, it is easier to keep track of because you have a much, much smaller area that you often have a map for (and if you don't, you probably have a mental map). I think that the main difference between the two is terrain.

I think that I can handle 1-on-1 combat okay, and better with sil 4-6 (but not really any bigger) (because there is more margin for error/success than "oh, that's unfortunate, you just rolled well on your first shot. Your opponent is dead now"), but once you add in a couple extra targets on both sides (a couple enemy starfighters I can handle, 2 extra targets on each side and I have a problem) I start to loose track and it starts to slow down.

I believe that one of the most important things for keeping space combat interesting is to make it go as quickly as possible and not spend a lot of time looking over the rules for whatever special actions.

What I like about SWRPG space combat is that it is not tactical starship combat simulator. Rules get heavier and description tends to get lighter as everyone is trying to angle minis for better shots and keeping ranges optimal. I feel like a rules heavy combat system that quantified all movement and maneuvers would have made the tabletop war gamers happy because they could come to life an get out their tape measures and explosion templates. I don't think Role-playing or description would have been enhanced by that though, so I am happy with what they designed for the most part.

Even in AoR I am not so in love with the TIEs and other ships I am controlling that I need a tactical fair playing field. It's Star Wars, it's supposed to be exciting in a cinematic way imo.

On 9/25/2019 at 1:40 AM, LordBritish said:

And for all things holy; use groups in star ship combat. Micromanaging an entire battle with 20 odd tie fighters would be crazy. XD

Got it. Minion Group - Death Squadron - 4 Imperial Class Star Destroyers.

On 9/23/2019 at 6:41 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Maybe this is just me being a cowardly GM, but I find it very difficult to handle multiple spaceship targets and their relative positioning. For ground combat, it is easier to keep track of because you have a much, much smaller area that you often have a map for (and if you don't, you probably have a mental map). I think that the main difference between the two is terrain.

I think that I can handle 1-on-1 combat okay, and better with sil 4-6 (but not really any bigger) (because there is more margin for error/success than "oh, that's unfortunate, you just rolled well on your first shot. Your opponent is dead now"), but once you add in a couple extra targets on both sides (a couple enemy starfighters I can handle, 2 extra targets on each side and I have a problem) I start to loose track and it starts to slow down.

My first AoR game was based on a Megagame I ran, so I let the players port their characters over, and one of them was an Ace Pilot, so I dived right into the deep end of including Dogfights and Fighter Combat from the get go.

I initially was a little underwhelmed compared to how neat I found WEG's Ship Combat, but it has grown on me. I think the trick is to pair off foes pretty quickly like in a Dogfighting movie - so the Ace locks onto the Ace, the Minions lock onto the lesser pilots, or the opposite to shake things up. This makes each action easier to follow.

However I did end up switching to these Houserules, as they enable Star Fighter Combat a bit more:

Mostly I have found my issues may be tied to the fact my Pilot's signature ship that she is unlikely to change is an A-Wing. Space combat has worked much better in recent sessions.

Mechanics isn’t the inherent problem.

I’m about to say something that might not be too popular, but hear me out completely with this:

Space combat, even fictionalized and based on WWII physics, is NOT interesting.

I would also make the argument that to non-aviation enthusiasts, even air to air combat is boring (please know that I possess a private pilot’s license and a master’s in history, I love the stuff). That’s why even movies have to add character drama to it. Think I’m wrong? Let’s analyze the ending of everyone’s standard for dogfighting in a movie: Top Gun. Take out the drama surrounding Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, add in real world technology, and what happens in that end scene? The F-14s engage those MiGs from far enough out that the other side never has a chance. Maverick sits on the carrier deck through the whole thing and has to watch Iceman celebrate.

So what has to happen for anyone to care about any of this? A HEALTHY injection of drama. The other F-14s need to be limited to getting into close range and being engaged before they can fight back. Maverick needs to overcome his own personal demons before he engages. Iceman needs to show... something at least once in the movie.

Is this the same for Star Wars? Definitely. I can think of only one example from the original trilogy where space combat plays out without an overdose of character drama: the escape from the Death Star. It looks like a straightforward combat scene from EotE. The rest of it either has goals other than “shoot down all the TIEs” or it switches scenes between space and the ground action.

This is what you HAVE to add as the GM. Space combat is only going to be inherently interesting to the pilot characters, and even then the same goals can easily get played out quick.

The characters need to be engaged on a personal level for space combat, or it just doesn’t work. There needs to be a threat in addition to the combat itself: an npc being killed, pertinent resources being lost, giving up something personal, etc. Also, every PC needs to be involved.

Easy enough, right? *Fart noise.

I put a ton of effort into making space combat interesting for everyone, and it SUCKS to do, so I do it sparingly. An example is I had the PCs for an EotE campaign hired for the rescue of a young woman and her bodyguard. This young woman was a noble believed dead and in hiding (became knowledge to the PCs after the rescue) and trying to get back to her home world to support the Rebellion. When the PCs hyperspaced into the space around her planet, they were engaged by a mix of Imperial TIEs and ships from the homeworld. The pilot PC had to keep up the maneuvers, our usual heavy gunner was on the guns but instructed not to shoot the homeworld ships, so he and the pilot were trying to coordinate ways to shoot down the TIEs and use the debris as a buffer between themselves and the homeplanet ships.

Meanwhile, inside the ship the bodyguard had been gravely injured from an opening shot, so the PC medic is working to save his life. While he’s unconscious, the “face” PC is trying to convince the noble woman to get on the radio and tell the homeworld pilots who she is so they’ll help. The engineer is working to jam the Imperial radio so that the noble woman’s message won’t be heard by those who believe she’s dead.

This was a pain to work out, but it kept all the players engaged and let them do what they do best. But unfortunately it’s a one-off. I’ve had to readjust this concept multiple times and wrack my brain to keep it fresh and original, and it’s all used sparingly (I let the pilot PC do things like roll to put the group into position for missions for advantages, stuff like that. Also a pain to come up with things other than combat to keep that player interested).

The result? Tons of stress on myself, but I’ve had zero complaints about the mechanics of space combat being dull and repetitive. Just remember narrative first.

That example is one of the reasons that I like EotE space combat more than AoR, because you are more likely to be able to focus on the characters since the ship does less in the round. You are going to typically have less weapons and the pilot just flies, so the PC passengers can do more. In a YT for example, with a party of 6 (plus 2 NPC passengers or additional sentient "cargo," be that stowaways, boarders, what have you) you have 3 turns that involve a ship: the pilot, gunner 1, and gunner 2. The rest of the PCs may work on damage control (which I think is more interesting to narrate than gunnery) or interacting with passengers, unwilling "escorted subjects" be they bounties or unwilling rescue-ees. And in a bigger ship, the idea of "one of the prisoners has escaped and is trying to sabotage the ship! Find him!" can be a lot of fun. I find fighter combat very uninspiring because of the many moving parts and the fact that the PCs become "one with the ship" so to speak, and don't do anything other than fly and shoot.