I'm a little confused about this passage from p.220:

If a ship fires multiple macrobatteries at a single target, before
rolling to hit and the determining the damage total for each
macrobattery, the character directing the firing has the option
of adding the totals together and applying the new, larger total
to the target ship once, rather than applying each damage result
separately. This represents a ship combining its weapon fire into
a single, devastating salvo. If he chooses to do this, however, he
can only inflict a maximum of one Critical Hit

Is there an example somewhere of how this works, especially with regards to void shields and armor? How do you handle different types of macrobatteries in the same salvo (potentially with differing crit rating, to hit chances, etc.)? Does a degree of success on the (single) attack roll grant another hit for EACH battery in the salvo?

It looks like combining batteries will mean shield and armor are applied just once overall instead of once per battery, so there isn't much reason not to combine when firing on a single target. Is that right?

Yeah its' a bit to powerful in my opinion as my explorers manage to just wipe the living **** out of ships this way making lances somewhat meaningless if they can get a good BS for the hit (which really given a voidsmen specializing in the ships guns and a good lock on means he's going to have nearly 100+ with a free re-roll should he just happen to fail).

Basically you roll once. Multiple degree's of success mean multiple hits from each gun respectively and only one crit is allowed in a salvo. So if you rolled 3 degree's of success and each weapon had at least 3 strength it'd be one main hit from each for just succeeding +6 hits for a total of 8 hits. You would then subtract 1 hit per void shield of the attackers choice (as it says in the rules if multiple hit at the same time the attacker in a salvo chooses which hits are negated). You then take the remaining hits and roll their damage. Once you've rolled each hits damage you combine it into one total damage then subtract armour and the remaining is dealt to hull integrity (with crew pop/morale lowered per point of hull Integrity lowered as normal).

The only way I've really learned to deal with it is via evasive manuevers for the enemy, then waiting until they can get into the players blind spots, or at least spots with less guns to stop evasive manuevering and deal heavy blows back, though this is rare to say the least.

Honestly two macrobatteries, assuming the person firing has very good BS, is better than switching out one for a lance more often than not just do to the extreme total that can get through.

Well not quite, you still roll to hit separately for each macroweapon being used in order to find the total number of hits, subtract shields, then roll all the damage together. So if a Cruiser has 3 Mars-Patterns with Line of Sight on the target and rolls hits of 2, 3, 2, it gets 7 hits, minus 1 for target void shields, then rolls all 6 damage dice, taking Armour off the result once.

It is a very powerful attack, but not that straightforward to get the most from. (i.e. Put Your Backs Into It & Lock On Target etc can produce various To Hit rolls across the different weapons).

Of course, it's mainly NPCs that struggle to get the consistent hits from multiple weapons needed to make the salvo work.

Ki_Ryn said:

Well, void shields normally only apply once per enemy ship, so it wouldn't matter whether you fire the guns as a salvo or not.

Each gun is rolled separately, with whatever bonuses and penalties apply to it, and all shots must go against the same ship if they are fired in a salvo. I'd recommend that you subtract off void shield hits in order of the guns fired. So, fire one gun, count up hits, and then reduce the void shield total appropriately. If there are hits left over then keep them counted for that gun and move on to the next. This only really matters when your macrobatteries have different damage values though. For each gun fired keep track of whether it crit or not, or until you get to your first crit (as you cant have more than one in a salvo).

When firing as a salvo armor only counts against the total damage. So, you take your total hits scored above, roll damage for each appropriate to the battery that hit, add it up, subtract off armor, and apply any result as hull damage.

I think that is everything. It isnt all that much different than firing them separately really. The big differences are that armor only counts once and you can only crit a maximum of one time. Everything else is basically the same.

Usually it is best to fire them as a salvo though, you are correct. The only time when you wouldn't do this is when you want more crits rather than straight up damage. Such as if you want to take a ship whole so you just keep critting it with minimal damage until it has no weapons, stearing, sensors, etc etc.. That should certainly help with an intimidate check to make them give up!

Thanks for the help, I think I have a solid grasp on it now. I was assuming that you just rolled to hit once and that was the source of most of my confustion (plus I wanted to check because it seemed like such a "no brainer" option).

A good amount of analysis and discussion has gone into this topic. I know that as a GM, I went ahead and decoupled the damage from multiple guns, each having to overcome the armour on it's own.