I've only run a couple of space combat encounters and I found it kinda confusing, to be honest.

We're almost done with Long Arm of the Hutt and haven't had any since the end of Escape from Mos Schuuta.

If we really need to have one or the players seem to want it, I'll work out how to do it better, but for now we are sticking with ground combat.

My group finished it's 20th session last weekend, and for only the second time I had them involved in space combat.

The first time was from the end of the beginner game, when the Krayt Fang was escaping from Tatooine. It was boring and lackluster, as we had 6 PC's and there was really only enough stuff for 4 of them to do under the beginner rules.

This time around, there were 6 PC's - 5 of them were on the newly christened 'Drunken Mynock' (new transponder codes) and 1 was on an old and battered Naboo N-1 Starfighter the group had just acquired. There was also a beat up Z-95 headhunter attached to the Mynock's hull with docking clamps (as it has no hyperdrive).

They came out of hyperspace near their base, which is an abandoned mining station inside an asteroid, which is of course in the middle of an asteroid belt. Their base was under attack by 5 starfighters, and they were immediately sent a message from their station crew, saying that another group of pirates had landed in the docking bay and was attempting to enter the command deck.

The pilot of the Z-95 leapt out of the airlock in his flight suit and clambered into his ship in zero-g with a successful athletics check, and the two starfighters split to engage the two groups of pirate ships, who had turned to fight the party.

What followed were a couple of minor mistakes on my end, as I didn't realize that missiles/torpedoes don't do blast damage like grenades do - basically a fantastic gunnery roll on a missile took out two of the pirates in a single pass since they were in close range to each other (which again, not how blast works on missiles, lesson learned). It did speed up the combat though!

The Drunken Mynock was out of range but closing quickly, however they almost failed their piloting check in the asteroid belt and suffered hull trauma damage and strain from a collision - and as the group was transporting a group of rescued orphans, screams and a small explosion took all the mechanics attention. The Wookie gunner, being out of range, decided to sing a Wookie opera song of courage (the star wars theme sung with a wookie voice) and succeeded on his leadership roll, giving all other players a boost die on their next turn. However, he also rolled a lot of strain and blew the communications relay on the Drunken Mynock, meaning the players on that ship couldn't communicate with anyone.

The Naboo starfighter missed one ship with her torpedo but activated the guided ability, and then took a serious hit from the second ship. Starfighters, even with shields, really can't take much damage - she was down to almost half her hull trauma in one linked fire burst!

Luckily the Drunken Mynock and the Z-95 had come back into range and opened up on one ship, while the guided torpedo successfully hit its intended target on its return pass. The remaining starfighter (which was a scout ship) immediately surrendered after a successful coercion check.

What we learned:

1. With more general experience on both sides of the table and by upping the scale and stakes, starfighter combat becomes a lot of fun. The previous game my players had run a chase on speeders and speeder bikes through a forest, so they were familiar with how to make piloting and gunnery checks and had a good idea of what they can do.

2. We played with Minis this time, including chocolate wrappers for asteroids and their base made out of Lego (I was bored the previous day). This really helps everyone keep track of their location and ranges: with 3 player ships and 5 enemies, it's a lot for everyone to hold in their mind and all end up on the same page. We're not too finicky with it, we don't use grids or anything, but everyone likes playing with the models and I found it made the whole thing much more fun and narrative. I'm even debating cutting a bunch of different coloured pipe cleaners into different shapes to show the ranges, just to keep the game flowing and reduce the amount of 'so, I'm what, at short range or long range?'.

3. Make sure all your players have something to do - while giving the players two starfighters was a bit of a gamble on my end, I think the fact that only 1 is hyperspace-capable (and the player realizes her character doesn't want to sit in the tiny cockpit for a 3 day journey, and how dangerous it is for her) will even it out in the long run. Having players who understand there are other things to do than just wait to get in range was great - the wookie song was fantastic and perfectly in character with that PC.

4. Space combat and all the mechanics are a bit complex - piloting checks in particular (silhouette divided in half, rounded up, + speed, is your roll. wtf?) are annoying to remember, but once I got the hang of it it was easy to say 'ok, you're going speed 2 and you've got a silhouette of 4, so roll 2 challenge die, plus 2 setback since you're flinging through an asteroid field'. My players also realized that putting all their XP into combat skills didn't help them this session, since it was negotiating/deceiving an imperial intelligence agent and then a bunch of space combat.

5. Blowing up starships is FUN. My group really, really loved this session. It will be a challenge to keep that many things juggling at the same time, as I can see it being boring if there isn't a lot going on and a lot at stake. The constant communications from the station begging for help, along with children's screams, clangs and explosions in the background, spurred my players to take risks and chances they may not have otherwise.

6. Pilots need more to do - luckily my players have been playing enough that they understand they can try lots of narrative maneuvers and ask things like 'if I barrel roll and come up underneath them, can I get a boost to my gunners attacks?' and I say yes and give them difficulty. They've learned not to rely on the written rules nearly as much.

Edit for 7. The space combat and flight rules are poorly written and displayed in the book. To get an accurate sense of how space works in the game you have to flip back and forth all over the place. Some things are unclear, like the fly/drive rules (only have beta book at work, will have to look up correct rules at home): "Speed 2 - 4: One starship maneuver to move within close range of a target or object, to move from close to short range, or from short to close range. Two starship maneuvers to move from close to medium, or medium to close range." Uh...ok? So what's the point in having a speed of 4 vs a speed of 3, if they move the same distance? If you just fudge it the players don't seem to care, but over the long run it will come up and be an issue, I'm sure.

I like it. On a mid size ship everyone has something to do. I think the trick to combat is to make it interesting. Asteroid fields, debris fields, ionizing gas clouds, swarms of mynocks, etc. Be creative and make everyone work for it.

Other snags such as reinforcements, smaller minion groups, star destroyers besring down, make the players panic. Fight or flight. Running really should be the first response. Damage cuts into profits.

Make sure the players have too many things to do. Jamming, repairs, firing at enemies, etc. Everytime the players don't or can't do something take advantage of it.

Haven't tried fighter combat yet however. Would be much easier to make the players have limited options and every choice matter.

I'm working on a game aid that will make combat a bit easier to manage.

This is a lot like the Star Wars d6 system...it can devolve into "Group 1 Shoot, Group 2 Shoot," very fast. I've had three bouts of starship combat with my group, and while we're gradually learning the rules, it can still be boring.

I think the best solution is to treat Starship combat like actual combat. Having two groups standing and shooting at each other is just not that exciting. Having a group of stormtroopers trying to prevent your PCs from escaping a shipping bay while the lights are flickering, the freight elevator is raising and lowering, and load lifter droids are staggering around with flammable cargo is much better.

I'd say first, make sure the goal of starship combat isn't to defeat the enemy ships. In pretty much all the Star Wars movies, one group, usually the heroes, are trying to achieve a goal. The second group, the villains, are trying to shoot them down before they do it. The Jedi & Queen Amidala are trying to escape the Trade Federation's blockade in Episode 1. Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to board General Grievous' battleship, The Invisible Hand (of the market, natch) in Episode 3. Han Solo is trying to jump to hyperspace in Episodes 4 and 5. Give your players a goal. It helps that in EotE, repairing hull points is expensive, even without having to rent a repair bay, or worse yet hire a mechanic to make the repairs. After PCs get their coffers drained a couple of times, they'll be more willing to cut and run than to say and blast it out.

Second, space can have interesting locations as well. Mostly it's in the form of obstacles, like, say, an asteroid field. However, it could also be a fleet of capital scale ships or the interior of the Death Star. Give pilots something to do.

Finally, introduce snags into the Mechanics' jobs. A threat might mean they only have enough power for the shields or the weapons! They can repair the damage done to the engines, but their sensors will be knocked out. They can repair the hyperdrive, but the ship will be defenseless while the hyperdrive is engaged.

Just some thoughts.

This is a lot like the Star Wars d6 system...it can devolve into "Group 1 Shoot, Group 2 Shoot," very fast. I've had three bouts of starship combat with my group, and while we're gradually learning the rules, it can still be boring.

I think the best solution is to treat Starship combat like actual combat. Having two groups standing and shooting at each other is just not that exciting. Having a group of stormtroopers trying to prevent your PCs from escaping a shipping bay while the lights are flickering, the freight elevator is raising and lowering, and load lifter droids are staggering around with flammable cargo is much better.

I'd say first, make sure the goal of starship combat isn't to defeat the enemy ships. In pretty much all the Star Wars movies, one group, usually the heroes, are trying to achieve a goal. The second group, the villains, are trying to shoot them down before they do it. The Jedi & Queen Amidala are trying to escape the Trade Federation's blockade in Episode 1. Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to board General Grievous' battleship, The Invisible Hand (of the market, natch) in Episode 3. Han Solo is trying to jump to hyperspace in Episodes 4 and 5. Give your players a goal. It helps that in EotE, repairing hull points is expensive, even without having to rent a repair bay, or worse yet hire a mechanic to make the repairs. After PCs get their coffers drained a couple of times, they'll be more willing to cut and run than to say and blast it out.

Second, space can have interesting locations as well. Mostly it's in the form of obstacles, like, say, an asteroid field. However, it could also be a fleet of capital scale ships or the interior of the Death Star. Give pilots something to do.

Finally, introduce snags into the Mechanics' jobs. A threat might mean they only have enough power for the shields or the weapons! They can repair the damage done to the engines, but their sensors will be knocked out. They can repair the hyperdrive, but the ship will be defenseless while the hyperdrive is engaged.

Just some thoughts.

This!

If it helps, I've run into the same thing with my group. In fact, my group doesn't step up to combat first; they normally try to find out ways out of combat before it begins.

In the previous session at my table (over a month ago now, sadly), my players talked their way into a base, landed in the docking bay, and left half the crew on board while the other half went to acquire the objective. When they were found out, they simply ran.

The did suppressive fire to keep the enemy troops pinned while someone else took potshots at the unpowered fighters that were on standby. Once everyone was on board, the group blasted out of there and ran for the asteroids to cover their escape.

There, they ran into a Skipray Blastboat, which they avoided by creative piloting (the pilot), shooting some asteroids to make it harder to be followed (the two gunners), some system slicing (the mechanic/techie), and a lot of moral support (the face of the party).

What I expected to be a boring slugfest turned into a rather elaborate chase, and it was great.

As I alluded to before, I think with the right players who are crafty, witty, and creative, this is an awesome mechanic to work with. Otherwise, it becomes that slugfest we see in other RPGs.

6. Pilots need more to do

That's more or less my issue with it.

Something I experimented with a little while ago was pulling out tokens I made for a Star Wars tactical game and rolling dice to determine combat outside the player's direct involvement. All of them were aboard their mothership Mon Calamari Light Cruiser, while the Star Destroyer chasing them launched fighters and assault gunboats to capture anyone fleeing.

I think there's merit to this idea, because it helps track the battle as it is developing while players have places to be on their motherships to somehow help the battle.

Meanwhile whenever a target wanders into player involvement range, the rules for that interaction are handled in the EotE way.

Tread lightly, this is a conversational topic that could bring in certain members of the board.

[bright red]

I honestly did not mean anything as a metaphor for anything else.

SpaaAAAAAAACEeeeee NaaaaAAAAAAzis!

Tread lightly, this is a conversational topic that could bring in certain members of the board.

[bright red]

I honestly did not mean anything as a metaphor for anything else.

SpaaAAAAAAACEeeeee NaaaaAAAAAAzis!

That's the troll equivalent of "Avengers! Assemble!"

Plucky Rebels with cobbled together gear use their skill, pluck and ingenuity to overcome a better organised and technologically superior Empire.

Tread lightly, this is a conversational topic that could bring in certain members of the board.

What? I fully agree that the Rebels superior martial skills, morale and personal initiative is what enables them to reliably best the poorly motivated, inflexible and badly led forces of the Palpatine's New Order despite being massively outnumbered in all their engagements.

sigh... there goes the neighbourhood.

One third of the galaxy's population were Imperial loyalists, one third were in the Rebellion, and one third just wanted the war to end. If only Jar-Jar Adams and his band of hotheads hadn't thrown the tea into Bespin Harbour...

I love it personally. Like everything in a narrative system, its really about the players and the GM's allowing the story to take precedence and recognizing that while their are rules, its not for the purpose of creating a tactical game, but to allow said story to exist with what really amounts to "this is what I want to do" and "here is what actually happens". If your hung up on statistical details of ships, or some sort of notion of realism, ship combat will be as problematic for you as every other aspect of the game because the difference between regular combat and space combat is negligible.

It really just comes down to whether or not you can fully embrace the heavy abstraction of this game. I found that some groups, in particular those coming from systems like Pathfinder or GURP's are looking for rules support that simply isn't there in the way they expect it. This isn't a game where you can gauge power or threat levels based on statistics. How dangerous something is often up to the narrative situation.

To give you an example, we once had a ship combat where we faced half a dozen Tie fighters. We won that fight but only because amazing piloting maneuvers and feats of engineering as well as some quick thinking gunners. I don't recall all the details but it looked something like this.

We started out with all the Tie fighters behind us. So naturally we pushed the ship to the limits of speed but we shut of the ships stabilizers and flip the ship so that it flew backwards. As the ships approached two of our grew members put together a canister full of fuel which we ejected into space. Then our gunner timed it perfect and blew the canister, blowing up three Tie fighters in one shot. Instead of facing six, we faced 3, so we hit the stabilizers and fired up the engines to go on the attack. As we flew forward we diverted all power to the guns, overloading the firing mechanism to squeeze an extra shot out of it. Our shields where down so it was up to the pilot to avoid getting shot, which he managed to do. We ended up blowing up all the Tie fighters and winning the fight. The drawback was that our fuel sells where low and our guns needed heavy repairs afterwards.

Now anyone who know the actual rules knows that most of this stuff mechanically speaking is not possible. But its a narrative system, so if you can imagine it, its by design possible. This is how space combat in Edge of the Empire is supposed to work. If your combat boils down to aiming and shooting, your doing it wrong.

THe Krayt Fang vs TIEs ended with the players having 1 hull trauma left before jumping. It was quite dramatic with my final roll.. being a miss. As a GM I roll WAY too well, and my players joke they do really well rolling failures on the purple dice.

Quite boring for the Pilot to just go evasive, And the two gunners just blasting away. Lets just say my players are not very imaginative

After that my players really want to avoid vehicle combat.

So playing by the rules is dong it wrong? I disagree.

Happy Daze, I think what the Big Kahuna meant is that for narrative combat the rules are a guide, but not a fixed path.

If you were to follow the rules by the letter, the combat he described would have been near un-doable, but between the party and the GM, it sounds like they used the rules as a back drop to facilitating an epic seen of nail-biting cinematic combat.

The rules are there to provide a framework for that, and to introduce the chance of failure and, well, chance.

Loving all of the varied responses! Just goes to show what an adaptable system FFG is putting out, especially in the hands of creative users!!

The vacuum of space being... the vacuum of space can make combat a little bland. In other games, my group has had to deal with all manner of complications that have spiced things up.

Obstacles:

Ship debris, asteroid fields, orbital traffic, cloaked objects

Conditions:

Sensor-blinding radiation, nebula, gremlins (electrical systems turning off briefly, at random), weird gravitational phenomena

Hazards:

Meteor storm, dangerous-but-neutral third parties, space-McKraken!

I found that describing what goes on inside the ship during combat helps create much more of a setting than debris and astroids ever could. Counterposing what goes on inside along what is happening outside the ship makes for great narrative play.

"The ship shakes when the enemies torpedo's impacts with its shields. You hold on for dear life while the hydraulic systems release some of their steam in the corridors behind you. A dozen or so warning lights light up on the dash in front of you while your R2 unit zips past towards the engine room already anticipating future repairs. The little bastard seems to be humming a little ditty while going there too.

You have never liked that droid.

You yell instructions over your shoulder to the guys manning the cannons, afraid to let go of the manual controls for even that one second it would take to activate the comlink. A big brown mug rolls from underneath your chair, and the thought "How did that get under there?" pops in and out of your mind during the split second before the lasers flash around your cockpit."

I think that much like the rest of the game, using the rules as guidlines more than hard and fast rules is probably the smart way to go. I don't think any of the three systems* do space combat all that well. The D20 system stank and WEG's was very fast and loose with reality. It's probably best to think of space fights here in a similar vein.

*With the caveat that FFG's engine might do space combat well, but I just dont have enough experience

Starship combat isn't handled perfectly in any system. I think perhaps the best way I've seen it done is with FFG's X-Wing game, just because having actual ship pieces to look at and actual rangefinders does add a lot of excitement. That being said, this just covers the actual fighting. I think the real trick to Starship combat is good description. The rules and maneuvers should be required reading, but after that, let your imagination run wild. Does your pilot want to spin through a TIE fighter squadron at full speed? Have him go for it! Let the copilot come up with creative ways to reduce the difficulty of the Pilot check or add Boost dice. Gunners pretty much have non-stop action themselves, so they're usually not hungry for something to do. Have your computer specialist angle deflector shields and use the sensors to avoid surprises, while Politicos encourage the team to fight on. Even scholars can roll Education checks to see what they know about the starships, planets or cosmic phenomenon in order to give Boost dice and reduce difficulty. Picture a Scholar who can help a Pilot evade asteroids because he's able to estimate the trajectories of the asteroids in his vicinity!

I think that much like the rest of the game, using the rules as guidlines more than hard and fast rules is probably the smart way to go. I don't think any of the three systems* do space combat all that well. The D20 system stank and WEG's was very fast and loose with reality. It's probably best to think of space fights here in a similar vein.

*With the caveat that FFG's engine might do space combat well, but I just dont have enough experience

Yeah - it's a narrative game, so keep the starship stuff narrative as well.

Looking at the X-Wing game, it's not "narrative," but "up and down" movement is handled in the abstract as well, and it works.

Our group has had a few small skirmishes where the goal was for the players' ship to calculate jump coordinates and get away before more than the two TIEs could engage them.

But our bigger space battle involved a chaotic field of an Imperial Customs Frigate opening fire on a cluster of freighters and other civilian vessels while the Screamin' MuMu* tried to get away.

The battle was good with all members having something to do (shoot, pilot, repair) and the threats seemed real until the gunner got a Triumph and destroyed one of the six TIEs in the conflict. The Triumph narratively triggered his friend in the Blockade Runner to show up and destroy the last TIE on the Screamin' MuMu. This allowed them to get to the jump point and into hyperspace.

We used many of the maneuvers and the Silhouette difference between the YT-1300 and the TIE Fighters set the difficulty at Average, so most pools were simple to determine. The Frigate never engaged the players' ship directly because they took cover behind the field of queued vessels standing by for inspection. The combat was narratively just to get them out of there and it worked terrifically.

I am not sure we would want more rules intensive combat or a combat that they were willing to put there dumpy old rust heap into to win.

*The players' ship is the Screamin' MuMu (homage/blatant theft to the Screaming MiMi from the 1980s adventure show Riptide). The beat up old Corellian bucket has Gamorrean nose art of a sexy sow that has made the ship unmistakable to authorities, attractive to Gamorrean tradesmen, and a little bit of a tacky embarrassment.

Yeah - it's a narrative game, so keep the starship stuff narrative as well.

Being a narrative game isn't really an excuse for having bad rules. I much prefer it if one can deviate from the RAW if one wants to, instead of having to to get the game to work anything like you want it to.

Yeah - it's a narrative game, so keep the starship stuff narrative as well.

Being a narrative game isn't really an excuse for having bad rules. I much prefer it if one can deviate from the RAW if one wants to, instead of having to to get the game to work anything like you want it to.

I agree with this 100%. The rules need to be a solid foundation, and I feel that the rules for starship combat are somewhat lacking compared with other areas of the rules. The rules are actually even worse when mixing personal combat and light/medium planetary vehicles in a scene.

I've had a load of fun with vehicular combat! Driver is looking to be a popular choice at the table with no less than three of my seven players looking into it, and the party Bounty Hunter is well-known for employing rocket boots even during indoor segments (most famously to jet over to an assassin droid and slap a restraining bolt on it).

Their ship -- the affectionately named the "Lazy Bantha" -- is a hulking Wayfarer-class medium freighter with a cargo hold large enough to hold a Y-Wing, a Headhunter, two airspeeders, two swoop bikes, and a speeder truck. They have a variety of ways of moving about both the galaxy and planetary surfaces, and they're even looking into walkers!

I've been playing Star Wars tabletop games for years, and as hard as I tried I always found it hard to get people interested in vehicular combat. Now, suddenly, no one can get enough. I'm thrilled, honestly! This plus the narrative nature of the game means it's an all-new experience, and after nearly 5 1/2 months of playing its only gotten better with time.

One note: the description for the Piloting (Space) skill says that checks can be made to see which weapons "can be been brought to bear". Thus I tend to incorporate a lot of opposed Piloting checks into combat, and depending on how we interpret the results this might mean that certain weapons can't be fired ("I can't shake em'!). I find that this makes combat much more frantic, and it gives more maneuverable craft the ability to harry opponents that would otherwise overwhelm them.