Hello, I have some doubts concerning small craft and capital ship combat, could you please help me interpret the rules? I have also postes this in General Topics. I will erase one of the topics when I am sure where this belongs.

Let’s assume the players (3) are aboard the Shell Cracker, which has a pílot, a gunner and a co-pilot position. That ship is in combat with two Rival Fighter Pilots, each maning a single fighter.

Since the players’ ship is silhouette 4, the rules applied are from the small craft rules and it could benefit from up to two Starship maneuvers per turn, correct?

1. How do we handle initiative?

As I understood from the rules, initiative is player based and not ship based. Am I correct? So, there would be Five slots in that combat... three for the PCs and two for the NPCs....

2. How do we handle maneuvers and actions?

This is where it all gets fuzzy....

Let’s suppose the pilot is the first player to fill a initiative slot... He uses “Fly” as a maneuver and as converts his action into a second maneuver.... The ship has commited two Starship maneuvers in its first turn, right?

Now it’s the gunner’s turn. Can He also make a Starship maneuver and a Starship action or must his actions and maneuvers be at personal level?

I understand that pilot only maneuvers are Starship maneuvers that only pilots can accomplish. Personal maneuvers are those in the combat section of the book.

Given that, If a silhouette 1-4 ship has more than one crew member, would all these crew members get one Starship action and one Starship maneuver in their respective turns?

S o, If the Shell Cracker has two kinds of weapons and its co-pilot and gunner each spend a Starship action to fire one of these, it would attack twice a round, correct?

3. How do these rules differ from capital ship combat?

In my perception they only differ in the quantity of Starship Maneuvers per turn (or is it per round)

Let’s assume we are with the same players, in a silhouette 5 ship, how would the rules differ in that same example as above? Would only the pilot be able to make Starship maneuvers or would it all work as per the above example?

1) Yep

2) yes, the gunner, not being the pilot, can't perform pilot only maneuvers and actions, so they can fire weapons, or do other things like say damage control, manual repairs, fire discipline ect...

3) Right, basically the same, though the pilot only maneuvers a sil 5 ship can make is a pretty short list.

1. Yes

2. Pretty much. The ship can only maneuver twice per round and suffers strain if it uses that second maneuver. Only the pilot can move the ship. On a player vessel pretty much anyone can fire guns. You can assume that PCs are smart and would make it so that the Pilot can fire. A ship can attack as many times as it has guns and people to use them – within reason.

So in your example all the crew could use weapons, but it would be fair for you as the GM to say a forth person couldn't even if there was a forth weapon system available as there is no control station for that person. If the party was four people large it would be fair to say that they install a forth control console for a forth gunner. No one wants to sit on their hands doing nothing during a fight.

3. NPCs are a different matter. It is rare in a naval situation that a pilot has access to gunnery. So in the case of capitol ships don't assume that a pilot can fire with his action even if he doesn't want to take a second maneuver. It's not normally an issue as capitol ships have more than enough gunners to man all their guns.

Big ships and PCs are problematic at best. They generally work best at a narrative level rather than at a dice rolling level. PCs are more likely to be attacking Capitol ships in bombers than they are to be crewing them. In that case just assume that anything in the right arc wants to shoot some PC. Movement is pretty much irrelevant for Cap ships. They are too slow compared to snub fighters.