I only have the beginner box, but the space combat doesn't seem to incorporate shields. Have they got rid of it entirely? Is everything just "soak"?

whafrog said:

Rather than outright absorbing damage (as they did in prior Star Wars RPGS), shields in EotE instead apply Setback dice to the attacker's roll equal to the ship's Defense value, which can vary depending on what angle you're attacking the ship from.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you'll find that shields are represented in the Defense value of the starship.

So in the Beginner Box, the Krayt Fang has Defense 1 which will add a setback die to any attack roll against the ship (representing deflector shields). Although they appear to have done away with shield zones in the beginner box, probably for simplicity.

Compare to the YT-1300 in the beta book which (from memory) has defense 1/1, which means that it has 1 defense fore and 1 defense aft. A player can spend a maneuver (i think?) to angle deflector shields to a particular zone, buffing it to 2/0 or 0/2 for the whole "put your deflectors on double front" thing.

Larger ships can have entries, such as the Nebulon-B's 2/2/2 which give defense zone of Fore/Starboard and Port/Aft.

Donovan Morningfire said:

The beginners box rules have no shield angle rules, so it's just a straight 1 setback to shoot at the Krayt Fang (until the shields go down from a crit).

Donovan Morningfire said:

They only did that in the D20 renditions of Star Wars. In ALL the versions of D6, they just added to the "soak" of the vessel.

WEG wrote their version based on the movies. WotC wrote theirs based on the various X-wing games and such.

Well… Shields in d20, at least as far as I can remember, both acted as DR and could be worn down. The shield rating reduced damage by a set amount, but if damage still got by the shields they were reduced (by 5 I think) and so worked less effectively the next time.

Shields in d6 operate nothing like the shields in the film (not that we get that much technical description). You sort of reflexively channel the shields towards where the enemy is, so they can help out against that direction. Then if someone shoots from somewhere else you can choose to switch your shields to that direction. It is an active thing that a character does (and it makes being a pilot of a single seat fighter punishing, as there are so many things you have to do at once. Fire weapons, pilot and whip your shields all around to deal with all the fighters coming along, with multiple action penalties all mounting up. Multi-crew ships were able to do such more with lower skill levels). X-Wing's can't do "double front" for example, as they only have 1 dice of shields.

Doesn't stop d6 being a much better system for Star Wars than d20 was.

Even then both were essentially damage reduction mechanics (unlike FFG's system, which turns shields into a sort of dodge mechanic, a bit like AC in d20, where armour reduced your chance of being hit, rather than the damage you receive afterwards), it is just that d6 didn't use a hit point mechanic, unlike d20. instead the closer your soak roll was to the damage total the less severe the consequences would be.

Jshock said:

Thanks, I missed that completely. No wonder they were so easy to shoot down over Ryloth