So something like:

Quad Laser Cannon 3

Light Laser Cannon 3

Medium Laser Cannon 3

Heavy Laser Cannon 4

Concussion Missiles 4

Proton Torpedoes 5

Light Turbolaser 5

Medium Turbolaser 6

Heavy Turbolaser 6

Use the Silhouette listed for the weapon regardless of the Silhouette of the firing vessel. Use the target vessel's Silhouette normally.

Yeah, the space combat rules are a little whacked. I've been using a homebrewed weapon property for some of my own starships (e.g. Carrack-class cruiser) called "Point-Defense:"

Point-Defense: May add 1 Setback die to one warhead attack instead of attacking; treats weapon as being fired from Silhouette 4 vessel

So something like:

Quad Laser Cannon 3

Light Laser Cannon 3

Medium Laser Cannon 3

Heavy Laser Cannon 4

Concussion Missiles 4

Proton Torpedoes 5

Light Turbolaser 5

Medium Turbolaser 6

Heavy Turbolaser 6

Use the Silhouette listed for the weapon regardless of the Silhouette of the firing vessel. Use the target vessel's Silhouette normally.

I will play with such rules, although I will reduce the silhouette for concussion and proton since they can be mounted on star fighters. If you play also with similar rules, let me know your experience.

Cheers,

Yepes

So something like:

Quad Laser Cannon 3

Light Laser Cannon 3

Medium Laser Cannon 3

Heavy Laser Cannon 4

Concussion Missiles 4

Proton Torpedoes 5

Light Turbolaser 5

Medium Turbolaser 6

Heavy Turbolaser 6

Use the Silhouette listed for the weapon regardless of the Silhouette of the firing vessel. Use the target vessel's Silhouette normally.

I will play with such rules, although I will reduce the silhouette for concussion and proton since they can be mounted on star fighters. If you play also with similar rules, let me know your experience.

Cheers,

Yepes

The missiles and torpedoes can still be mounted on fighhters, but the higher Silhouette indicates that they are generally employed against larger targets. You'll note that only the proton torpedoes have any added difficulty targeting fighters (at Difficulty 3, but the higher Silhouette also means that they only get reduced Difficulty against taergets with Silhouette 7+).

what's the crew stats on a captial ship's guns?

By EOTE RAW the gunnery crews are just minions who probably have Gunnery as a group skill, with group size (for the purposes of determining the number of skill ranks) depending on the number of guns that were grouped together up to a maximum of five ranks (six weapons' worth)... so by RAW, with regards to the case of the DP20 "Corellian Gunship" frigate's eight light twin turbolaser batteries (turret-mounted, meaning Fire Arc All), even if all eight were grouped together they'd only have Gunnery 5, but you'd have to take out three of the batteries (or have the batteries be divided into multiple groups so that they could attack different targets) before the Gunnery skill would fall below that.

that's still pretty nasty.

I'd love to see the outcome of one of these large battles, using the RAW and using your modification.

I'd love to see the outcome of one of these large battles, using the RAW and using your modification.

I may do so soon.

The first battle will be an ISD vs. a number of DP20 Corellian Gunships. How many should I go with? I think that eight of them might be sufficient to take down the ISD.

I'll use the assumption that all gunners have Agility 2 and act as minions with Gunnery as a skill (rank determined by how many guns beyond the first are in the battery to a maximum skill rank of 5). Since they have nothing better to do with their maneuver each turn, they will always aim for a Boost die.

I'd love to see the outcome of one of these large battles, using the RAW and using your modification.

I may do so soon.

The first battle will be an ISD vs. a number of DP20 Corellian Gunships. How many should I go with? I think that eight of them might be sufficient to take down the ISD.

I'll use the assumption that all gunners have Agility 2 and act as minions with Gunnery as a skill (rank determined by how many guns beyond the first are in the battery to a maximum skill rank of 5). Since they have nothing better to do with their maneuver each turn, they will always aim for a Boost die.

That's how I was going to run it. I was going to start with just 1 corvette, then see where that got me.

You guys have put together some good ideas here, and now it's time to see how it shakes out when the dice hit the table. Rolling those ISD guns 50 times a turn is going to be a good way to spend the afternoon.

Ok, take this with what you will as I have yet to get my hands on the AoR beta. I think a couple of things may alleviate some issues. One is adding a weapon quality called Point Defense.

Point Defense: For each rank of Point Defense reduce the silhouette of the ship that this weapon is fired from. For example, point defense laser cannons fired from a silhouette 8 capitol ship with Point Defense 3 are considered to be fired from a silhouette 5 ship.

The other thing is treating large ships as having a quality of Redundant Systems. Large ships can rarely be taken out with one shot. Therefore any ship with a silhouette 5 or larger subtracts their silhouette x10 from all critical rolls against it. A spectacular critical roll or continous critical hits (building up the critical roll) can take them out, but a single hit is less likely.

Anyways, seems these ideas are already being batted around so there you go.

Something to consider when it comes to larger vessels, is that with all their crew, they will be able to do every conceivable option at the same time. Need help aiming, while the captain does fire control, etc. Also, to reduce rolls - if you really need to hit something I see it going like this:

Say you have a heavy turbolaser, the crewman firing that will have 2 agility, they're a minion. So, each additional increases, so to keep it easy, 5 heavy turbo lasers on one Star Destroyer will be yygg. Now, with a silhouette that is smaller, say pppp and with shields, your dice roll is yygg pppp ss (setback). Add the aim action. for a b (Boost). Now if you really have to hit something, every other gunner could do the aid action. So, rather than that star destroyer making lots of different hits, it makes one with huge roll like this: yygg pppp ss bbbbbbbbbb. That pppp doesn't seem so bad now.

it makes one with huge roll like this: yygg pppp ss bbbbbbbbbb. That pppp doesn't seem so bad now.

It's times like this when you want the dice app.

Page 267 of EotE, the green box talks specifically about starfighter defense and says in the last paragraph:

"When firing auto-blasters, blaster cannons, laser cannons, and quad laser cannons, capital ships (and only capital ships!) count their silhouette as one less."

Not entirely what you all were proposing, but similar.

it makes one with huge roll like this: yygg pppp ss bbbbbbbbbb. That pppp doesn't seem so bad now.

It's times like this when you want the dice app.

I've got my own so that I don't have to use a phone to roll dice.

Something to consider when it comes to larger vessels, is that with all their crew, they will be able to do every conceivable option at the same time. Need help aiming, while the captain does fire control, etc. Also, to reduce rolls - if you really need to hit something I see it going like this:

Say you have a heavy turbolaser, the crewman firing that will have 2 agility, they're a minion. So, each additional increases, so to keep it easy, 5 heavy turbo lasers on one Star Destroyer will be yygg. Now, with a silhouette that is smaller, say pppp and with shields, your dice roll is yygg pppp ss (setback). Add the aim action. for a b (Boost). Now if you really have to hit something, every other gunner could do the aid action. So, rather than that star destroyer making lots of different hits, it makes one with huge roll like this: yygg pppp ss bbbbbbbbbb. That pppp doesn't seem so bad now.

Something to consider when it comes to larger vessels, is that with all their crew, they will be able to do every conceivable option at the same time. Need help aiming, while the captain does fire control, etc. Also, to reduce rolls - if you really need to hit something I see it going like this:

Say you have a heavy turbolaser, the crewman firing that will have 2 agility, they're a minion. So, each additional increases, so to keep it easy, 5 heavy turbo lasers on one Star Destroyer will be yygg. Now, with a silhouette that is smaller, say pppp and with shields, your dice roll is yygg pppp ss (setback). Add the aim action. for a b (Boost). Now if you really have to hit something, every other gunner could do the aid action. So, rather than that star destroyer making lots of different hits, it makes one with huge roll like this: yygg pppp ss bbbbbbbbbb. That pppp doesn't seem so bad now.

Do the rules allow more than one additional assistant on a skill roll? I seem to remember that they say something against it, but I'm away from book at the moment.

I found it. It says: "Generally, only one character can provide assistance at a time. However, the GM may decide that certain situations accommodate more people." - EotE, page 26.

The Assist action, OTOH, implies that multiple assistants are a common thing on page 201.

Turbolaser batteries would be manned by crews, so having a boost die or two would well be warranted. It also wouldn't be far-fetched to say that they are led by a navel officer, thus gaining a boost die. Taking a maneuver to aim, another boost die. Many of these batteries also have access to Targeting Arrays, giving an upgrade to the dice pool. Starfighters might be hard to hit, but not impossible, as it should be. Turbolasers are much like the large guns used by battleships and such. Meant for use against other ships or land-based targets.

Again, though, having not seen the stats for a star destroyer its hard to judge anything. According to wookiepedia they have more than 70 heavy turbolasers in different forms, that's a lot of firepower. That may have been adjusted for gameplay, though.

The idea of an Imperial Navy Officer overseeing each battery (minion group) of gunners to provide a Boost die makes perfect sense. OTOH, I don't think that the Assist maneuver is meant to cover hundreds of men working in gun crews, so I'm going to cry foul on this one. Besides, the minion rules already make firing teams more effective if they fire in batteries.

I think one of the big problems for capitol ships is that we don't have any guidelines for crew stats. Smaller ships we can make the assumption that players or npcs will be manning the guns as individuals. A capitol ship not so. I imagine each turbolaser on a star destroyer has at least a crew of 3-5.

What we need is a crew rating to determine skill values for piloting and attacking.

The idea behind the assist action was to reduce the rolls if a ship was trying to destroy another vessel. While odd, not to mention needing lots of boost dice, it does offer an advantage to ships with more firepower as they could all fire at the same target. It is a loophole in the rules, designed to speed up large scsle combat in my opinion.

Also remember the Fire Discipline option. This gives a boost die to the next gunner, can extend it to other gunners as well and can add system strain damage to the shot.

I don't know if this was brought up but in almost all star wars games I have played a couple of rebel carriers packed full will take out most any empire fleet. Use A wings to take out ties and then squads of y, x, or b wings will waste all empire capital ships except the ones dedicated to taking out fighters. It was the best strategy in rebellion, in any of the flight sims once you cleared out the fighters you could always mop up the capitals. I am not saying star fighters should have to work for it. You need to take out the shield generators and then spend the time further crippling the ship but large targets are meant to take out large targets. The benefits of capital ships is they can bombard the planet, carry large amounts of cargo, starfighters or personel. and they are better at taking out star bases or ship yards.

Imperial star destroyers were meant as a show of force for subjugation.

The problem is, the Empire could afford the loss of an SSD here and there. The Rebels could not. So, those kinds of slugfests were not good. Plus the video games had to be "fair" to the player. Just look at the various assaults the Rebels did do in the movies. There were hundreds of fighters and quite a lot were taken out in each of the major engagements we see.

There's also the Death Star novel where a few hundred X-wings get fried trying to take out the Death Star a few weks prior to the Battle of Yavin.

I've decided to forego posting in this thread from now on in favour of posting in the Age of Rebellion beta as that is the most likely place that the large ships can get some love.

My current suggestion is that there should be a paragraph of sidebar explaining HOW exactly to group up the weapons, roll initiative (as it is, you COULD roll for each weapon), make the 30+ attacks every turn, have a generic crew skill rating, etc.