Questions about guided missiles in space combat

By Chimpy, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

I wondered if someone could clarify a couple of things for me:

Take for example Concussion Missile Launcher attacks

1. Does the "guided" keyword mean that the missile acts as a separate entity each round until it hits?

2. Because these missiles have "blast" does that mean that PCs in the ship take the blast damage?

Guided has to be activated on an unsuccessful attack by spending advantage (3, IIRC). If you don't have it to spend, then that missile is done.

I should have said - if it keeps missing but the guided triggers again from 3 adv., does it keep going?

Yes, but I'm not sure if there's a limit to how many times it can keep trying.

For simplicity's sake I'd say you get one try at triggering the Guided effect. But if you want to give your players more chances, you can always introduce different qualities of guided missiles. The base model can only try once, but a superior (and more expensive/harder to obtain) model can try two or three times. It just depends on how much work you, as a GM, is willing to put into the system.

Yes, but I'm not sure if there's a limit to how many times it can keep trying.

There is no set limit. That being said, concussion missiles have only 3 ability dice for making subsequence attacks, so I doubt you'll get 3A twice or thrice in a row all that often.

-EF

Guided has to be activated on an unsuccessful attack by spending advantage (3, IIRC). If you don't have it to spend, then that missile is done.

I could see a Despair result reactivating a missile. :ph34r:

I could see a Despair result reactivating a missile. :ph34r:

Evil, but cool

Let me resurrect this thread to ask how the Blast quality works in space combat?

Typically weapons with the Blast quality, on a successful hit, inflict damage equal to their Blast rating to all character engaged with the original target. How this applies to space combat (i.e. missiles and torpedoes)? There is no engaged range band, only Close.

Edited by Yepesnopes

Let me resurrect this thread to ask how the Blast quality works in space combat?

Typically weapons with the Blast quality, on a successful hit, inflict damage equal to their Blast rating to all character engaged with the original target. How this applies to space combat (i.e. missiles and torpedoes)? There is no engaged range band, only Close.

The blast quality in warheads aren't used for the "hit engaged targets" because even close range for starships is beyond extreme range for personal-scale combat (page 239).

Instead, the blast quality for starship-scale combat is useful because of the "hit on a miss" part. If you miss your attack, you can spend 3 advantage to still do damage equal to the blast rating (page 155). Since the blast rating of both concussion missiles and proton torpedoes are 2 less than their damage rating, it's pretty much a toss-up as to wether you want to have the warhead explode and do slightly less damage or activate the guided quality (which also costs 3 advantage).

Against targets with low armour, it might be worth it to catch them in the blast, and severely damage or even destroy them. A TIE has armour 2 and HTT of 6, and a proton torpedo does blast 6. If you activate the blast quality, it'd do 6 damage, enough to let the next hit take it down.

However, successful attack rolls also gain the net successes as bonus to the damage done, so even a basic success (1) would allow for a proton torp to do 9 damage (8 base +1 for success). So that's at a minimum 3 more damage then if you activated the blast quality.

-EF

So no area effect. Only at personal range scale. Thanks

As a side question, does blast benefit from breach?

Umm…good question! The rues are a bit ambiguous on that point. Personally, I'd say no. The breach quality, in my opinion, is based on a solid hit. If the blast quality is used to cause damage, it wasn't a direct hit, right?

Honestly, I'd talk it over with your group, and come to a consensus that way.

-EF