If I've got a capital ship bristling with firepower; a full battery unlinked of many turbo-lasers for example, how do I roll that out? You can't expect someone to roll out all of them individually. So... how does it work? Obviously more weapons means more of a chance to hit. Have these mechanics not been released yet? When you buy these heavier weapons on these capital ships, does it assume a large battery and it's assumed then that a single roll includes all of them?

Thanks in advance.

Well, there's always the Linked option; give a Turbolaser battery the Linked 3-5 quality rather than the Linked 1 you see on a two-gun turret. Also, I vaguely recall the EoTE rulebook suggests treating large collections of capital ship weapons as minion groups, so that instead of rolling 4 or 5 mediocre dice pools during combat each battery would take one massive shot. This is just going on Edge of the Empire, mind. Age of Rebellion would probably be a better place to look, since it's supposed to be the book that introduces the 800-pound gorillas of space combat.

Thanks! I like the minion group option. I would love to have some help finding the RAW if it can be found.

Core Rulebook pg. 238 about making batteries into minion groups.

I would break the batteries down into groups of 2-4, so they can become minion groups, which should cut your rolls down significantly.

You also need to come up with what the gunners skill is going to be and if you are going to allow them to aim/double aim.

Then you need go in and figure which of the guns are 'anti-starfighter battery' (should be pretty much any autoblaster, blaster & laser canons) and they count as 1 silhouette smaller when shooting at fighters.

This has been a thought experiment i have been working on during my time doing mindless labor.

If I was doing it, the weapons would act as minion groups. even could have a commander using leadership to coordinate the attacks and defense.

the only issue that has really come up is the problem of silhouette disparities. Not really fair to have an ISD with a silhouette of 8, having no real chance of hitting a silhouette 4 fighter (5 Purple), unless you could say the Turbolaser battery has a lower silhouette. or you are focusing an entire array of batteries on ONE fighter. There has to be a limit on how many batteries tou can group together. my thought was when facing snub fighters the turbo laser batteries would have to go to local control and use their new silhouette against fighters. (maybe 4 or 5) but the skill would be the skill level of some Low level Naval officer (Midshipman, Ensign, yoman, or Lt. jg) 'Rival' in charge of the battery.

For most of the largest ships as seen in the AoR Beta, groups of 5 weapons seem to work out most easily.

I'll be honest, I haven't had to use capital ships yet, but I have given it some thought.

Minion rules for capital ship batteries are presented on page 238. Basically, you upgrade the check once per emplacement. So say we got a Nebulon-B with six turbolasers on each side. I'd break them up into four minion groups of three and upgrade the Gunnery check to something like [Y][Y], down from [G][G]. I'd do the same thing for the three laser cannons in each firing arc. That means I'm making five rolls tops for the Nebulon-B if it is only engaged in one firing arc. More likely, the opposing ship or ships will try to restrict themselves to one side instead of aft or forward, so I'll only have to roll three times.

Though there is some confusion in some of the ships though. Some list their turbolasers as batteries, while others just list them as turbolasers. Some do both, like the CR90 which lists its medium dorsal and ventral turbolasers as "batteries", but its light port and starboard turbolasers are without the battery label. Reading up on the CR90 via Wookieepedia, it looks like the standard load out has only one turret on top and bottom, so I'm just dropping the battery label where it appears in stat blocks.

You also need to come up with what the gunners skill is going to be and if you are going to allow them to aim/double aim.

I would suggest porting the Imperial Gunnery Corps stats from pg 214 in AoR Beta. These dudes have 2 Agility and the Gunnery skill, so when used as minions they start with base [G][G] and move up with more [Y] and, eventually, add more [G], which then switch to [Y] and so on.

As for aiming, pg 231-232 of EotE seems to imply that characters in capital ships cannot spend more than one maneuver per turn, regardless of whether they want to spend strain to do so. Anyways, with minion gunners, spending strain to double aim would kill them off pretty quick, so it doesn't seem reasonable. I would allow single aiming, but in reality I would probably just make my rolls and be done with it.

Another thing to consider when using capital ships and batteries in EotE is the context in which you're using them. Unless there's a capital ship vs. capital ship or capital ship vs. a dozen or more fighters situation, a capital ship would be unlikely to bring all of its weapons to bear on a single fleeing frigate. That's a huge energy and manpower investment from a fluff perspective, so feel free to only use a couple of their weapons at a time.

heres a mock up I just did

Nebulon-B Escort Frigate

Silhouette 6

· Six Port & Six Starboard Turret Mounted Retractable Medium Turbolasers

o Fire Arc: Forward, aft and Starbard or Port

o Damage 10; Crit 3; Range [Long]; Breach 3; Slow Firing 1

· Three Port, Starboard, Aft & Forward Turret Mounted Light Laser Cannons

o Fire Arc: Port or Starboard or Aft or Forward

o Damage 5; Crit 3; Range [Close]

o Capital Ship Defense: Counts as silhouette 5

· Three Forward Moutned Heavy Tractor Beam Emitters

o Fire Arc: Forward

o Range [medium]; Tractor 6

Break it down so 3 guns per battery.

· Port Turbo Battery Alpha [Minion]x3

· Port Turbo Battery Bravo [Minion]x3

· Starboard Turbo Battery Charlie [Minion]x3

· Starboard Turbo Battery Delta [Minion]x3

· Port Light Laser Battery [Minion]x3

· Starboard Light Laser Battery [Minion]x3

· Aft Light Laser Battery [Minion]x3

· Forward Light Laser Battery [Minion]x3

· Forward Tractor Beam [Minion]X3

So using my base of an Imperial Gunner using 3.2 (3 dice, 2 proficiency) in a minion group they would become 4.3

Turbolaser Battery vs Light Freighter

Silhouette 6 vs 4; Hard difficulty

Turbolaser Battery vs Starfighters

Silhouette 6 vs 3; Daunting difficulty

Laser Battery vs Light Frighter

Silhouette 5 vs 4; Average difficulty

Laser Battery vs Starfighter

Silhouette 5 vs 3; Hard difficulty

I don’t think its going to be that hard to hit enemies with 4.3 roll + aiming + possibility of targeting computer that would upgrade the roll to 4 yellow proficiency dice. There are typically a minimum of 3 batteries able to bear in any facing.

This is also kinda generous as it doesnt let the Laser canons attack multiple facings like the Turbolasers can.

2 agility for a gunner? Thats pretty terrible and makes no sense. When I was running my beta games, specialized institution trained troopers have 3.2 stats. 3 is a little better, but I felt that anyone who trained to do a single specific task would at least have 1-2 ranks in it, if not more. I felt 3.2 was pretty reasonable.

I was surprised to see only 2 agility for the gunner too. They have 2's in all abilities. However, you have to remember that minions don't have skill ranks, they only gain them through additional members of their groups. So your base, 3 agility gunner should start at 3.0 and move up to 3.3 after grouping into a 3 gun battery.

If we stick with 2 agility, they start at 2.0 and move up to 3.2 after grouping.

ya good calls I suppose. In that case, I would definitely give them some sort of bonus like targeting computer or visors heh

yeah, thanks everybody! I don't mind a 2 agility. Your group skills could, for example, earn up to 3 green and 2 yellow for a firing dice pool. That's formidable enough. I mean you're talking about faceless gunner crews; the mookiest mooks you can think of. A fighter jock operating a TIE might have a 3 agility easily since they're out there with a much better chance of taking a snub fighter down, but a gunner who is one of a huge team of gunners doesn't need that. Take this into account when, in the films, star destroyer guns don't typically take fighters out; that's done ship to ship. That's my take.