Starship and vehicle feedback

By usgrandprix, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Beta

I've played a few sessions and I have some feedback about starships and vehicles:

Problem : The pilot should matter . Right now it's just as easy to hit Han Solo flying the Falcon as it would be to hit a completely untrained pilot. Both can use evasive maneuvers and it does not scale. The pilot talents are not enough. In particular I'm concerned that very experienced characters wil aoid starship adventure becasue they can easily be defeated in them no matter how skilled they are. The gunnery of their adversaries will be like 4/4.

Solution 1 : Upgrade attack difficulty by pilot skill (modified by handling)

Solution 2 : Make Evasive maneuvers a pilot check. Degrees of success upgrade difficulty of attack (and attacks). Also keeps untrained pilots from this valuable maneuver.

Problem : Hyperspace plotting time is unclear. How long does it take to plot a course and make a jump? If it takes a round (which is way to quick IMHO) what does in mean where the skill says extra success allows you to do it quicker?

Solution : It takes a 4 rounds. Make your roll and each extra advantage can lower this by 1 round to a minimum of 2 rounds. Threats add a round. Triumph allowsyou to do it in one round.

Problem : What is the penalty for failure to plot a course? Does the jump happen or do you know you made a mistake? If it happens what is the mishap?

Solution : On a failure you do not make the jump and have to try again (4 more rounds). Threat adds more rounds to the retry. Despair could be a jump with mishap, drive failure, etc.

Problem : Accelerating should not take away from movement. It is odd to require two maneuvers to accelerate and move. If you are going faster you should move more in a round not less. You can accelerate and not move? The extra maneuver for strain favors ships with copilots and those should be slower ships (with the way Star Wars works anyway).

Solution : Make accelerating/decelerating by 1 a free part of the move maneuver and then add a pilot only maneuver that let's the pilot make a regular check (modified by handling) to use successes to accelerate/decelerate that number. Only on silhouette 4 or lower ships.

Problem : Turbolasers are to easy to hit smaller ships with. This does not reflect anything we see in the movies.

Solution : Firing a turbolaser at a ship of silhouette 4 or smaller should be upgraded by 2. Or make it simple and just say turbolasers can't fire at silhouette 4 or smaller. Makes the action go quicker.

Problem : The rule to lower the silhouette by 1 for a capital ship firing smaller weapons is cumbersome for the purpose of not favoring the PCs.

Solution : Get rid of the rule. The strength of these point defense is numbers over accuracy.

Problem : The character scale rules for vehicles are cumbersome at best. There is too much room for inconsistency here.

Solution : For vehicles that are walker/airspeeder size or smaller (basically planetary vehicles) integrate their rules (defense, body, speed. etc.) with the regular character-scale combat rules. These types of vehicles will be much more commonly going against characters than starship scale threats and right now it is very unclear how you would run something like an AT-ST chasing a group of smugglers. At best there are a lot of conversions and at worst a lot of questions as is.

I love the game. I'll be there with it on day one. But the starship and vehicle rules concern me a great deal and seem very inconsistent with the other well-thought-out aspects of the game.

Ugh… stupid, stupid forum software.

What I wanted to say was:

Our group's pilot also commented that the pilot should matter… he said it seemed like he was the least important member of the crew during starship combat, and that it felt like he didn't really have anything to do. I like the sound of solution 2.

We also noticed the lack of guidance about what to do for a failed astrogation check. I just shrugged and said that they got there eventually, but look longer than expected.

We didn't really note the acceleration thing, but now you point it out I agree it should be sorted. The other items I'm not too concerned about, but do think the "jump" between character/vehicle scale is too steep and think a 1:5 conversion would be better (I understand why they would want to go with 1:10, but it does result in some weird anomolies).

I like both the options equally. Option 1 is very quick and straightforward. Option 2 requires more rolls and is more random, but takes more time. Still I don't mind it becasue there are pretty much no Pilot rolls mentioned in the starship combat at all. The thing about option 2 is that manuevers don't usually (ever?) require checks, but it's really a general suggestion to get some pilot rolls in there to impact defense as a function of their skill.

BTW, excellent resources in your sig. Good work. (And I struggle with this forum ware too. It has odd behaviour at times. Seems to work best in IE.)

usgrandprix said:

Still I don't mind it becasue there are pretty much no Pilot rolls mentioned in the starship combat at all. The thing about option 2 is that manuevers don't usually (ever?) require checks

Correct - if it requires a roll it should be an action. I wouldn't mind making it one though, as one of the complaints our pilot had was that it seemed like all he was doing was using maneuvers and never actions, and as you point out never rolling his Pilot skill.

I think the way the rules are written, the pilot is supposed to take the evasive maneuver and then the take advantage (or sometihng like that, I don't have the rules with me) which allows an opposed pilot check to cancel the setback penalty from both your ship and your target to the attack roll making you harder to hit but also allows you to target your enemy more efficiently.

It is fine when you have a crew but when you're the only pilot of a starfighter, you cannot shoot if you take your actions to take the advantage all the time. The quicky way to solve this is to allow one free take the advantage action or make it a maneuver for silhouette 3 or less ships as a houserule.

Is the advantage of 1 setback or two really gonna make a difference, I was wondering the same thing and was looking for ways to improve the system. Your suggestions were quite good and I quite like the option 1 but upgrading difficulties by 2-3 for each attack is gonna stretch space fights a lot.

I think option 1 and 2 could be combined by allowing the evasive maneuver to add 1 or more setback dies depending on the difference of skill of the pilots, the handling and the speed of the craft. I will have to think on that and come back to you.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. We add the same discussion in our group and you provided great insight.