SMUGGLING: This technically belongs in the Equipment chapter but I felt like it was more relavent here. I really like that prices and container sizes for Spice and other illegal goods was included, and I believe that this is the main use of the abstract Encumbrance mechanic for ships. However, receiving shipping Encumbrance and price values for other goods would really help flesh out the smuggling/pirating economy that will surely play a large part in most people's campaigns.

For example, as is we only have shipping prices and encumbrance for a few spices. While the variety there is great, having values for other goods that smugglers would use as cover items, such as totally legal comlinks or datapads or holovids or even food items would be a huge plus. Weapons also need shipping values, as I'm almost certainly going to have at least one gunrunning scenarios set for my players. Another illegal item to consider would be rare animals or animal products, just like ivory and rhino tusks are a major real world smuggled item.

STARTING SHIPS: I feel like some guidelines for setting Group Obligation for the starting ships might be a good touch. How much Obligation should be placed upon the ship? Should it vary with the value of the ship? Is it removed from each character's individual obligation, or added on top? If a group obligation comes up, does every character take double strain, or just one? Also, some more options for freighters would be great. Obviously, I'm expecting the whole section of statblocks, both ship and character, to expand in the final version.

I have a problem. I was running my players through the module, and we reached the segment where the cloakshape star fighters pursue the party. The fighters engage at medium range, but begin at long. They have a speed of 4 whereas my party chose the Ghtroc 720 with a speed of 3. If the pilot expends strain to use the maneuver "Fly/Drive" and the star fighters do the same, they will never catch up, and no combat or interference will occur. Are we missing a ruling somewhere? I am using the stats straight out of the book, and the pilot in my party has Agility 2 and Pilot-Space of 1. Any assistance would be appreciated.

First - let the cloakshapes start closer "next time" it was what I did after reading about similar instances on these boards.

Second, until the last update there was no good rule for this exact problem, but now they have introduced the chase rules in the week 6 update, its pretty nifty - although I haven't tested it myself yet.

Third - which is related, I'd like to see some rules for moving longer distances with slower ships, without having to use the chase rules…

jdmc91 said:

Until the fighters get within weapon range, I'd run it as a chase, per the new rules in the week 6 update.

-EF

A few points of feedback with regard to vehicles…

I'd like to see a guideline on how many maneuvers it takes for a PC to go from entering a starship of the size available to starting groups of PCs, to being seated in the cockpit. Related to that, how long does it take to get a starship ready to fly from a cold start? Is it instantaneous?

Also, what happens when a player fails an Astrogation check to plot a course to a planet? There should be some consequence short of "You can't go to that planet" because obvioulsy, that will derail adventures.

jdmc91 said:

When i ran this I kept it to pilot checks and didn't bother checking the speed simply said that because the pilot passed her pilot checks so well that she managed to keep them at extreme range so they couldn't get close enough to open fire.

Didn't even consider it important that those fighters didn't get a chance to shoot only that a far as my players were concerned those fighters was still a definite threat…

Regarding ship attachments and mods.

The sidebar on p.172 clearly states these mods should cost x10 that of personal gear. So 1st mod would cost 1000cr, second mod 2000cr, etc.

What about the time needed to instal attachments and then modify them? Personal gear attachments take one minute to instal (as per the update) and further mods take 2 hours. Obviously thinkering on a spaceship will take way longer than that! Is it also x10? If so, I think it should be mentioned in the sidebar.

Regarding the Encumbrance statistic of starships, I've also noticed that the numbers presented in the book (or the errata) don't seem to mesh with the established numbers.

I understand that there's some interplay between mass and volume which feels like it should make this estimate tricky, but it really shouldn't. Standard practice when calculating a ship's cargo capacity in tons, is 1 ton = 100 cubic feet. This practice goes back to the original method which was to measure a ship's cargo capacity in tuns (a container commonly used to transport large volumes of liquids, such as wine). With that in mind, the encumbrance rating of a ship should be calculated by it's volume capacity, not it's mass capacity. Cargoes which are more dense than 'standard' should simply get a higher Encumbrance rating of their own to compensate for the difference.

I ran some numbers with the Week 8 updates to the ships' Encumbrance limits, and couldn't make heads or tails out of any sort of conversion ratio. The Action IV, for example, is essentially a container ship (big, slow, and it hold a *lot*). Prior numbers give the ship a 90,000 ton cargo capacity, but the errata gives it just 10,000 Encumbrance (an 11% ratio). The YT-1300, on the other hand has a cargo capacity of 100 tons, and gets an Encumbrance rating of 165 (for an easy-to-calculate 165% ratio), and the Lambda has a 250% ratio between it's accepted capacity and the value given in the book.

In the common case, a ship's cargo capacity is limited by its internal volume, so a fixed (or reasonably so) ratio between the currently known tonnage values and the Encumbrance rating should be sufficient, when offset by certain cargoes getting a higher value due to their exceptional density. (And it'll make it easier for players and GMs to 'port' ships from older systems, too.

Voice said:

Just for clarity, when you are looking at conversion ratios, you're comparing pre- and post- week 8 Errata values, correct? I just want to be sure that I understand that you are not pulling from sources external to EotE.

-WJL

Voice said:

I don't think you're going to be able to get things to 'match up' as FFG has pretty much taken the pre-existing system (listing capacity in metric tons as has been done since WEG days) and thrown it out in favor if a much more nebulous and hard-to-define "encumbrance" method. Even after the Week 8 Update which increased the Encumbrance listing for most ships, cargo capacity simply isn't going to map over to the "established" values, most of which came from WEG & WotC RPGs.

Personally, I'd much rather FFG simply go back to "metric tons" for starship carrying capacities, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen in any of their official products.

LethalDose said:

Yes, I'm looking at the post-week 8 Errata data for ships that have updated Encumbrance values.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I don't necessarily expect a 1:1 mapping, but at this point it's all over the map (11%-250% just from the few ships I've checked). The thing with the Encumbrance system is that it doesn't actually have to account for things being overly larger, or overly heavy on both sides. It can be done just on the side of the things being carried.

For example, someone wants to load their ship's cargo space full of oil, gold, or packing peanuts. You don't need imagine ahead of time that the ship will be used to carry those and try to account for it then. You just need to realize that gold is much denser than normal, and should therefore be given a higher Encumbrance cost due to their mass, and that packing peanuts are much bulkier by weight, and should therefore be given a higher Encumbrance cost due to their bulk, while oil is fairly well in line with the 'norm', and should probably fall into the normal Encumbrance cost range.

Metric tons wouldn't be a bad starting point, but if they want to use the same Encumbrance system from character scale to starship scale, some rough conversion factor would make things cleaner. Right now, if I wanted to load up a YT-1300 with blasters, it could only carry 165 of them unless there's already a conversion factor I'm not seeing between ship Encumbrance and character Encumbrance.

LethalDose said:

Sorry, I think I misunderstood your question originally. I'm using the week 8 Errata numbers compared to the generally accepted cargo capacities based on various prior sources, which can be found referenced in places such as Wookiepedia.

Voice said:

I get this idea about the encumbrance stat - but some guidelines as to how to convert from tons to enc would be nice - perhaps size (old WotC or just plain meters or silhouette) and ton capacity comes into account?

Or, as you say, some conversion guide for weapons/armour/gear packed into crates - how many blaster pistols in a "standard" sized crate? What would the encumbrance of this be? If a "standard" crate measures 1,5 x 1,5 x 1,5 meters, how many blaster would fit? 20? 15? 30? 40? Would the encumbrance for starship storage equal to the sum of these blasters? or less? I mean, the crate in and of itself would probably have an encumbrance of 15 or so… should it then increase this by number of blasters? or could it hold x amount before encumbrance changes?

Lets say a standard storage crate has the above measurements (approx 3,4 cubic meters and an encumbrance of 15), a standard ranged heavy weapons crate - for light repeaters and heavy repeaters and the like, is 1m wide, 2m long and 0,5 tall - encumbrance of 20?

Should weapons encumbrance be halved when considered how many can fit into the box (is the box encumbrance the limit to how much it can contain too?)? and how much does the encumbrance for the crate increase after being filled with item? 1 quarter of the total encumbrance of the items on top of the crates inherent encumbrance?

Are these ideas at all useful?

How would you guys handle small vehicle/beast mounted combat? Firing a blaster from a speeder bike/landspeeder? Ramming another small vehicle or a walking target? Firing or making a melee attack from a beast?

From memory and a quick perusal at the Beta Softcover, I did not find specifics on these topics. Since all these seem like action-packed potential scenes, I would think having rules are guidelines on how to use the existing rules would be helpfull.

Anyone has suggestions?

How would you guys handle small vehicle/beast mounted combat? Firing a blaster from a speeder bike/landspeeder? Ramming another small vehicle or a walking target? Firing or making a melee attack from a beast?

From memory and a quick perusal at the Beta Softcover, I did not find specifics on these topics. Since all these seem like action-packed potential scenes, I would think having rules are guidelines on how to use the existing rules would be helpfull.

Anyone has suggestions?

I view this more as a circumstance that can modify the regular combat rules, than a unique situation that reuires rules of its own.

If a character is firing from a vehicle, then consider the difference in speed and direction between the firer and target. If you think it would be a tough shot to make because the PC is in a speeder that's going flat-out and trying to shoot at an enemy in another speeder that's going fast in the opposite direction, throw in a difficulty or setback die, whatever seems appropriate.

One of the nice things about this system is that it's really good at handling stuff like this on the fly by just changing the dice pool.

I see what you mean. I havent actually sat down and tried the system for real yet. My gaming group and I are all in our mid-thirties and all have kids so we dont have much gaming time available…..

Ahhhh I miss my teen years for that [and only for that lol!]. Boy it was though by at least I had so much more free time lol!

While doing my cheat sheets (my method of learning rules, so no snark about the duplication of effort)…

I realized that the damage colors have different meanings in terms of difficulty between People and Vehicles.

Green: Both ◊
Yellow: Both ◊◊
Orange: People ◊◊◊ Vehicle not used
Red: People ◊◊◊◊ Vehicle ◊◊◊

It would be really nice if the color code was consistent.

Question regarding Starships, vehicles, and minion. When combining multiple starships into a minion group, how do you figure out how much hull trauma each minion has ?

I've tried to reverse engineer a rule by looking at at the minions in the adversary sections, but wound thresholds appear totally random without any link to Brawn or Species.

Example:

Spaceport Security Detail [minion] (i.e., combat trained adults); Brawn 2; Wound Threshold 4
Spaceport Urchin [minion] (i.e., 10 year old kids); Brawn 1; Wound Threshold 5

Consider me confused

The best I can come up wth is: Minions have a litlle less than half the wound threshold of a full fledged character.

Should a minion version of Cloakshape starfighter have a hull trauma threshold of about 4? (10 hull trauma for a normal Cloakshape).

Question regarding the "Linked" weapon quality in combination with the "Limited ammo" weapon quality:

Let's say a gunner is firing his ship's Light Concussion Missile Launchers (Linked 1; Limited Ammo 6). Does the gunner have to expand 2 of his 6 concussion missiles payload before performing the combat check to see if the "linked" quality activates? I would assume that yes.

Questiron regarding the "Boost Shields" starship action.

How long does the defense rating upgrade last? Until the crewmember's next action or until the end of the encounter? (I'd go with next action.)

I also assume that the ship cannot benefit from more than one use of this action at any given time.

Aazlain said:

I'd say that the Linked quality operates separately from the Limited Ammo quality.

So for your example, the ship would have six "attacks" using its missiles, which are fired in pairs of two.

Aazlain said:

Yeah, probably safe to say it only lasts until the crewmember's next action, as well it only being usable once at a time, otherwise it'd be far too open to abuse.

How compatible is the X-Wing miniature game and the RPG? Will I be able to transfer a pilot's skills and talents over to a miniature and go to town in a big epic fight? If I can't do this, then I have to ask why this wasn't impemented.