I ran our first serious spaceship combat session today. The PCs were dropping off some ryll to some Geonosian buyers when four of Teemo the Hutt's cloakshape fighters dropped in. The deal was happening atop on column of a "forest" of limestone columns, similar to Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Cue a dogfight between the crew of the Krayt Fang and a minion pair of cloakshapes, while dodging around the scenery!

To help things along, I made a couple of changes while merging the combat and chase rules.

Positioning, not speed

First of all, since everyone's dodging terrain, absolute speed isn't that important. What's important is how fast you're going for the conditions, and I use the ship's Speed rating to represent acceleration and power.

At the start of every round, all pilots make a Positioning check as per pp. 240-1. This doesn't use up the pilot's Action for the round. Pilots declare their chosen speeds in turn, and then get a chance to increase (but not decrease) their speed once they've heard what their opponents are doing. High speed is good, because all pilot- and gunnery-related checks for the rest of the round get an extra boost die for every point of speed they're faster.

Once you've bid, roll the Positioning check as per p. 240 and compare results with your opponent. You're after how many net successes and advantages each side gets when compared to the other.

Edit: The faster side can change the range of the ships for the rest of the round. Two points of speed difference change the range between close and short. Four points change the range between medium and short.

Net successes can be used to change the range of the encounter for the rest of the round add to your effective speed for the purposes of changing range. You can also spend a success to either upgrade or downgrade something in a test in the rest of the round. Advantages and disadvantages get spent as per p. 236. A Despair means you crash into something (p. 242). A Triumph means you can ignore the Navigation Hazard when rolling positioning in the next round.

This change also means that the Accelerate/Declerate, Fly/Drive, and Punch It manoeuvres don't make any sense.

Example:

The Krayt Fang is being chased by two cloakshape fighters. The Krayt's pilot calls speed 2, the fighters call speed 4. The Krayt's pilot rolls GGY (skill) + K (handling) + RR (speed & silhouette) + KK (terrain), getting two failures and an advantage. The fighters roll GGY (skill) + RRPP (speed & silhouette) + KK (terrain), getting three failures and a disadvantage.

The fighters are two speed faster to change the range from short to close.

Both sides are fairly inept, but the Krayt slightly less so. The Krayt's pilot can either change the range by one band move to effective speed 3 (cancelling the range change), or apply an upgrade or downgrade to any one test this round. In addition, the Krayt's pilot spends effectively two advantages to impose a setback die on the fighters' next action.

Because the fighters were faster, they get two boost dice to all pilot and gunnery checks for the rest of the round.

The other change was to that perennial favourite, Gain the Advantage.

The idea is to make it more useful, treating the action as getting a missile lock, lining up a shot, or whatever. Each net success on a Gain the Advantage check turns into an automatic Advantage added to the result of a subsequent gunnery check. This allows pilots to guarantee criticals, or activate a missile's Guided quality. Also, the difficulty is based on the opponent's Pilot skill + ship handling.

For example, the cloakshapes try to Gain the Advantage on the Krayt fang. They'd roll GGY (skill) + BB (positioning speed advantage) + PPR (Krayt's pilot's skill) + B (Krayt's bad handling), getting three success, two advantages, and a despair. That'll give them an automatic three additional success to their gunnery check next round (enough for the missile's guidance systems to kick in), an immediate Evasive Manoeuvres, and a collision with the scenery.

Thoughts?

(Edited after feedback below.)

Why not just fly above the terrain?

I'm not sure these changes are necessary really - by which I mean I see no real gain in playability, speed of play or anything else.

Gaining boost dice for being faster than the target, while flying through such a hazardous terrain seems off to me. I mean, to use the chase rules for positioning and all is a cool tweak - but I don't really see it as necessary, and the boost dice ... why? Going fast in dangerous terrain is a bad idea and the rules already provide ample opportunity to add boost dice, upgrades and the like.

Thoughts?

2) using the chase mechanic for this encounter can work, I hope that works out because it could end up being something really memorable.

3) I don't think your changes to the rules are really needed, they already pretty much generate the effects you describe if used as written in the core book.

Why not just fly above the terrain?

Why did the Falcon go into the astroid field?

Cool concept and picture, I may, uh, have to, uh, borrow this. I will give it when I'm done, I promise.

As to why not fly above. Well, I'm pretty sure four cloak shapes could out run and outgun a freighter. So the best chance would be to try to loose the fighters in these columns, and hope they crash into them before you do.

So I think it works.

Plus checkers? Really? Checkers? Uh, backgammon all the way man! It's got dice!!

Thanks for the comments.

Why not fly above the columns? Well, there's the boring reason that the fighters would have a field day. But the most important reason is that it's Star Wars! Dogfighting at high speed in dangerous terrain is mandatory!

Some reasons for the rules changes. I wanted the terrain to be a factor every round, and I wanted the pilot skill to be a factor in the combat. Hence, a positioning test every round and the effects of the positioning test. The bonus dice for high speed are to reward people choosing something above speed 1. (An alternative would be for people to bid up the terrain difficulty which is applied to all positioning tests.)

And yes, it was a fun dogfight. It ended with one fighter smashed into a column, the Krayt Fang on its last legs, and the last fighter closing for the kill. The Krayt Fang sideswiped a column and stove in half its side, taking out its navcomp. The fighter clipped another column which flung it into an uncontrolled flat spin. As the pilot struggled to regain control, the Krayt's gunner lined up an easy shot and destroyed it.

I see your point, but after reading up on the navigational hazards page I think it's safe to interpret that pilot checks as part of manoeuvres isn't outside the intentions of the rules, without "upgrading" the manoeuvre to an action.

Blerg. Misread the post (better than what I was aiming for). Going back to sleep now.

Cool stuff, NeilNjae.

I see your point, but after reading up on the navigational hazards page I think it's safe to interpret that pilot checks as part of manoeuvres isn't outside the intentions of the rules, without "upgrading" the manoeuvre to an action.

That's a perfectly fine alternative way to do things, and works well for some situations. For instance, the Taming the Dragon modular encounter is portrayed as a series of terrain hazards, and that works fine. I don't think it has the right feel for dogfighting in tight terrain, though, which is why I posted this proposal.

Edited to add: a general comment is on the use of boost dice to reward driving at high speed. No-one likes it, including me. When I do this again, I'll pay more attention to the ranges of combatants and use the Fly/Drive manoeuvre costings to adjust range bands between the vehicles. I've put a revised version on my website.

I definitely like your alternate suggestion of bidding up the terrain hazards. It makes sense in-character ("Fly closer to the canyon walls!" or "Scrape off those icicles to deter our pursuers!"), it adds a greater sense of risk, and it makes better use of some of the Pilot Talents.

Thanks, Redford. How about that pilots set their own speed independently (used for range setting), then there's a bidding process for extra setback dice. Everyone must take extra setback dice equal to the highest bid.

Edit to add: what I'd really like to see is people bidding for difficulty upgrades, as that increases the chance of a collision. But you're right, adding setback dice fits in with Talents. I'll need to think on that a bit more.

Flying closer to the canyon wall could force an opponent to follow you, so by taking on setback dice you could also force the opponent to take on the same amount of setback dice, good results on your part can cause more setback dice to his check, or even an upgrade. This is already covered by the rules, and creative narration