Hi,

Today during a session, one of my players decided to fire ship cannon to NPCs on ground while ship was landed.

How do you manage that? Difficulty? Damage? It is possible at all?

Thanks in advance.

I would allow it, with lots of buts. We do see such a thing in the movies.

If the weapon is not in a turret, this would be difficult to do. You would need to move the "landed" craft around or wait until someone passes by the weapon and pull the trigger so to speak. Imagine Anakin in the fighter within the Trade Federation droid ship.

If it's a turret weapon, you will still have issues. Imagine the Falcon with top and bottom guns on a landing pad. The top turret would only have line of sight to something up on a cliff or in a building above it. The lower gun would have an even more limited sight picture and some threats or a despair may have you blasting a landing gear off. I would imagine setback dice or challenge dice in any event.

Local authorities may also have laws against firing large guns meant for space battles while upon or near a planetary surface. Especially when landing at a docking pad.

You can, with common sense applied to firing arcs and such. The damage of the given weapon is multiplied by ten when used on a personal scale against NPCs.

The lower gun would have an even more limited sight picture and some threats or a despair may have you blasting a landing gear off. I would imagine setback dice or challenge dice in any event.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that mounted weapons have inhibitors that prevent them from firing when they are pointed at a part of the ship they are mounted upon. This is mentioned in the Han Solo novels, and makes good sense.

Yes, can be lots of problems with ships and ship weapons. The Star Wars MMO can give you a good "feel" for how deal with ships so your players they can't solve all their problems with big guns.

"Strafe everything" players should be separated from their ship frequently. Having to dock at orbital bases and shuttle down to the planet is one way. Having cities be massive sprawling things where everything is inside, like Nar Shadaa is another. Things get a bit more difficult to justify on something like Tatooine where a ship could easily land out in the desert, so you might want to impose Hutt laws disallowing any air traffic other than directly from orbit to landing pad.

The "problem" really comes up on uninhabited planets if you want players to explore jungles or other outdoor environments and it can take a bit of juggling to get them to start using their survival and coordination skills rather than gunnery.

The lower gun would have an even more limited sight picture and some threats or a despair may have you blasting a landing gear off. I would imagine setback dice or challenge dice in any event.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that mounted weapons have inhibitors that prevent them from firing when they are pointed at a part of the ship they are mounted upon. This is mentioned in the Han Solo novels, and makes good sense.

Not necessarily, or if they do it may not recognise un-retracted landing gear...

The bigger issue would be targeting, as we see in the films the targeting systems are rudimentary by our standards (1976 idea of future tech) and you're not going to be able to line the weapon up by eye. So sure, shoot all you want but you're more shooting "at" the target and likely killing them by a blast or by concussion than actually hitting them. I'd raise the difficulty by a couple of dice but add the blast quality to represent the shrapnel and such resulting from a large weapon striking the ground, buildings, or whatever.

I'd allow it for turreted weapons if targets are within firing arcs. Stationary weapons though I would not. Their "aiming" comes from the ship's position and a parked ship just ain't gonna be doing any advantagous maneuvering.

The lower gun would have an even more limited sight picture and some threats or a despair may have you blasting a landing gear off. I would imagine setback dice or challenge dice in any event.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that mounted weapons have inhibitors that prevent them from firing when they are pointed at a part of the ship they are mounted upon. This is mentioned in the Han Solo novels, and makes good sense.

Not necessarily, or if they do it may not recognise un-retracted landing gear...

In the 1910s, fighter aircraft could be equipped with timing devices allowing them to shoot through the propeller area without hitting the propeller. I can't believe a similar thing couldn't be applied to space opera antipersonnel turrets in Star Wars.

The lower gun would have an even more limited sight picture and some threats or a despair may have you blasting a landing gear off. I would imagine setback dice or challenge dice in any event.

I think it's fairly safe to assume that mounted weapons have inhibitors that prevent them from firing when they are pointed at a part of the ship they are mounted upon. This is mentioned in the Han Solo novels, and makes good sense.

Not necessarily, or if they do it may not recognise un-retracted landing gear...

In the 1910s, fighter aircraft could be equipped with timing devices allowing them to shoot through the propeller area without hitting the propeller. I can't believe a similar thing couldn't be applied to space opera antipersonnel turrets in Star Wars.

There is a big difference between a mechanical stop mechanism that has a regular beat to when it needs to interrupt and knowing where a gun is aimed and when it shouldn't be shot. Remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? How Henry Jones shot the tail off his own plane? That is what you're asking to stop in this.

Yeah, and to be honest I couldn't suspend disbelief that that had happened, given the technology of the time. It was a great cinema event, but still.

Thanks a lot for your answers. For me, I think I will allow it only in certain circunstances but with difficulty to hit and limited firing arcs. I don't like solving a fight just with big guns as Union mentions.

I'd allow it for turreted weapons if targets are within firing arcs. Stationary weapons though I would not. Their "aiming" comes from the ship's position and a parked ship just ain't gonna be doing any advantagous maneuvering.

That's all good until one of your players brings up the Anakin in a starfighter strafing battle droids scene.

In the 1910s, fighter aircraft could be equipped with timing devices allowing them to shoot through the propeller area without hitting the propeller. I can't believe a similar thing couldn't be applied to space opera antipersonnel turrets in Star Wars.

I completely agree. But I'm still going to allow accidental damage of ship parts since I'm playing a narrative RPG, it would be fun for such to happen, and it's another reason for the players to avoid using their ship guns on the personal scale.

I'd allow it for turreted weapons if targets are within firing arcs. Stationary weapons though I would not. Their "aiming" comes from the ship's position and a parked ship just ain't gonna be doing any advantagous maneuvering.

That's all good until one of your players brings up the Anakin in a starfighter strafing battle droids scene.

Wait. You mean the scene in The Phantom Menace where Anakin activated the fighter ship and started maneuvering it and it allowed him to shoot the droids because he wasn't stationary anymore? Yeah I look forward to that conversation.

Remember, there's no reason a ship in Star Wars has to use landing gear at all. The repulsorlifts grant it the ability to hover in a fixed position for extended periods of time, so unless those need to be serviced, there's no reason the ship needs to actually lower gear.

And yet they do use their landing gear.

as far as the landing gear, i would think of fuel savings would be reason enough but you could tell the players there is a safety mechanism that does not allow the weapon to move/fire when within X meters/feet/ect of another object (this reduces damage to the craft), and if they try to disable it have the main weapons go down (another adventure to get replacement parts)

Remember, there's no reason a ship in Star Wars has to use landing gear at all. The repulsorlifts grant it the ability to hover in a fixed position for extended periods of time, so unless those need to be serviced, there's no reason the ship needs to actually lower gear.

Except that it'd be akin to leaving your car idling for long periods of time when you're not driving it.

And yet they do use their landing gear.

There's this too.

And the reason they use landing gear is probably for the same reasons most people don't leave their vehicles to idle for several hours. Namely, it eats up fuel/energy. Nothing we've seen in Star Wars really suggests that they've cracked the mystery of perpetual energy (even lightsabers use up energy, but it's at a ridiculously slow rate so long as the blade doesn't have to cut anything). While not addressed in the movies (mostly because it'd be boring in terms of the story being told), there's enough EU material to suggest that ships need to re-fuel and re-stock supplies.

From Wookieepedia:

Repulsorlifts used minimal power and were reliable enough to be utilized continuously.

I'd allow it for turreted weapons if targets are within firing arcs. Stationary weapons though I would not. Their "aiming" comes from the ship's position and a parked ship just ain't gonna be doing any advantagous maneuvering.

That's all good until one of your players brings up the Anakin in a starfighter strafing battle droids scene.

Wait. You mean the scene in The Phantom Menace where Anakin activated the fighter ship and started maneuvering it and it allowed him to shoot the droids because he wasn't stationary anymore? Yeah I look forward to that conversation.

This was what I was suggesting. Your player is going to say, "So I start up the engines and move it around a bit like in Episode I". Your player thus will simply work around the issue by using a technique that even the movie canon allowed.

If the weapon is not in a turret, this would be difficult to do. You would need to move the "landed" craft around or wait until someone passes by the weapon and pull the trigger so to speak. Imagine Anakin in the fighter within the Trade Federation droid ship.

And yet they do use their landing gear.

Not all of them. I'm not even sure this one below has any landing gear. At least you never see such in the movies.

My point was that a stationary ship using stationary weapons would not be very useful unless your target is standing still right in front of you.

And as to your pics, yes sometimes they would use their repulsorlifts, just as a helicopter can hover as needs require. Doesn't mean that at other times they don't use them.

My point was that a stationary ship using stationary weapons would not be very useful unless your target is standing still right in front of you.

That's my point also. So we agree. In fact I said pretty much the same thing yesterday, up above in the first reply.

And as to your pics, yes sometimes they would use their repulsorlifts, just as a helicopter can hover as needs require. Doesn't mean that at other times they don't use them.

I was simply defending the notion that not all Star Wars craft are always going to use landing gear when even in the movies we see a ship that is hovering during cargo loading on two different instances and never once see it with landing gear out.

I've never seen a helicopter hover for a long period of time while it loaded cargo. It burns up way too much fuel. I used to ride around in such in the military and the only thing that came close to such was hovering off the ground while passengers jumped out quickly. The helicopter only hovered for a few seconds. Even when loading wounded quickly in a combat situation, the helicopter landed. In Star Wars, you have craft that can much more easily and efficiently hover perhaps for hours or even days? Not really compareable to a modern helicopter which could never do such. Twice we see the GR-75 / Rebel Transport in hover mode with no gear down while cargo appears to be slowly loaded or unloaded. That pretty much implies it's a common thing, the norm, not "sometimes", since we never see anything otherwise with this ship.

Unless the GR-75 has some super efficient hover mode that other Star Wars craft don't have, we can safely assume any Star Wars craft with repulsorlifts can hover for long periods of time while using a neglible amount of fuel.

Snowspeeders, Landspeeders, cargo sleds, Speeder Bikes, and Swoops in the movies are seen hovering when parked as the norm. It's the same technology used in the ships to hover yet these seem to be using such a small amount of fuel that even when left parked they are left hovering, not landed. Ships DO have landing gear so I guess you could speculate since they are much bigger, the minimal fuel consumption to hover would become somewhat costly after hours of hovering so gear are a good option for lengthy stops.