To me it doesn't make much sense that using a ships weapons requires a Ballistic Skill Test.

Shooting a personal weapon is a matter of hand eye co-ordination and similar related skills. But using ship weapons does not use those skills.

When a ship shoots isn't it more a matter of judgement, using the ships sensors to determine predict the targets location, and then choosing the right fire pattern with this information.

With this reasoning wouldn't a Challenging (+0) Scrutiny+Detection Test be more appropriate.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Everyone can shoot. Not everyone can take Scrutiny.

Ballistic skill also in include movement prediction, and munition trajection like when shooting a grenade launcher at a moving target, while i agree that players might be needing ship weapons (las, sp, lances, missils, torpedos or nova cannons) talents, to use them properly.

tygre said:

Completely agree with this.

Ship-based weapons are a completely different beast from hand-helds. Just because you're great at firing a pistol doesn't mean you'd do well at firing a broadside macrobattery.

Believe it or not, I actually play using the exact rules that you mention and it seems to work a lot better. Also frees up arch-militant types to get their hands dirty by repelling boarding parties/conduct hit-and-runs or generally just command the troops.

As a work around to the problem of not everyone being able to take scrutiny, I allow people who don't have the skill to either buy it as an elite advance or use the skill untrained.

-Thulis

The point was to keep it simple.

Yet scrutiny woudl be more about locating a weak spot for a call shot, etc. I played another Scify game where moslty everythign had a skill you needed. Makes the game heavy. IMO.

Anyway, if you feel that the missionary or the asthropath shoud be as good as the archmilitant on te ship weapon it's also your game.

I can see what you are going for but it seems like a lot of groups would be down to having a PC tell a random crew member fire the guns.

Looking at my own group we dont have an astropath or a senechal and the voidmaster is at the helm. So, until rank 3 when the rogue trader was able to pick up scrutiny we'd be sol.. except that our rogue trader has a pretty low perception such that the random crew member is about as good (best quality crew improvements + having a boson on board + normal starting crew = crew rating 40). Sure, we'd be ok after rank 6 when the navigator takes over the position but until then?

I like the general idea behind it, I'm just thinking it'll change a lot more than it might seem at first glance.

It is too bad there isn't play room with the numbers enough to say something like half ballistic skill, cheap talent to make it full, then a +10 for each level of scrutiny trained (+10 for base, +20 for scrutiny +10, etc.. +10 for talented in scrutiny as well) or something like that. That is making it pretty complicated though.

Thulis said:

Another reason for this change not working well in my group (which I realize may not represent a larger faction). Our arch militant is good at firing guns but very, very bad at commanding the troops. Which means that their roll in space combat would go from shooting the ships guns (which she enjoys and is good at) to... what? There is nothing left. I suppose that they could go watch tv or something during space battles.

it also makes command, scrutiny, tech-use, pilote the only two skils used in starship action...

So any class not social or high perception is off the grid.