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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:00 am Post subject: How Piloting Affects Fire Control |
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Has anyone ever done rules for allowing a good piloting roll to improve fire control for weapons? Looking at gunnery from a piloting perspective, if you are flying a craft with fixed forward weaponry, hitting a target is a mix of both the timing of firing the gun (Starship Gunnery) and of maneuvering the craft as a whole to bring the guns to bear so that they can hit the target (Starship Piloting).
I haven't made up any rules for it yet, but I am curious to hear how others have dealt with this.
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
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Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 4:14 am Post subject: |
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As I understand it, fire control is what we call a laser cannon's ability to pan left and right or up and down independent of the boresight of the fighter it's mounted on. Vader's laser cannons do this in the trench run. A piloting roll could only add a slight bonus in this instance.
Some weapons say they are fixed. They have a fire control of 0D and a note that says targets must be directly in front of this weapon to hit. I've never seen any rules on putting a target directly in front of your vehicle, but I would roll the lower of either piloting or gunnery.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 8:59 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | As I understand it, fire control is what we call a laser cannon's ability to pan left and right or up and down independent of the boresight of the fighter it's mounted on. Vader's laser cannons do this in the trench run. A piloting roll could only add a slight bonus in this instance. |
X-Wings = 4 laser cannon fixed forward. 3D fire control
Y-Wings = 2 laser cannon fixed forward. 2D fire control
I can see Vader's cannon being some sort of advanced tracking weapon (auto-blasters, perhaps?), because his TIE is an advanced prototype, but there is no indication that the cannon on X-Wings and Y-Wings swivel and track to the degree that would necessitate 2D-3D fire control. I see fire control as integrated into the gunsights, sensor lock-ons, a HUD with a predicted aiming point, etc.
| Quote: | | Some weapons say they are fixed. They have a fire control of 0D and a note that says targets must be directly in front of this weapon to hit. I've never seen any rules on putting a target directly in front of your vehicle, but I would roll the lower of either piloting or gunnery. |
Example, please? A fixed forward weapon with a 0D fire control is not a stat notation that I have ever heard of, and if it does exist, it certainly isn't as commonly applied as it should be.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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If i could see something for this i might base it on;
Piloting roll of targeting ship defeats base piloting roll of targeted ship by
0-4 = +2
5-8 = +4
9-12 = +6
13-16+ +8
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 5:57 pm Post subject: |
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No bonus to gunnery. Just the ability to get a better attack angle, which may give a bonus to hit.
0-4 still maneuvering for a shot / cannot shoot
5-8 head to head shot
9-12 flank shot
13+ tail position
Tail position gave a bonus to gunnery |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | No bonus to gunnery. Just the ability to get a better attack angle, which may give a bonus to hit.
0-4 still maneuvering for a shot / cannot shoot
5-8 head to head shot
9-12 flank shot
13+ tail position
Tail position gave a bonus to gunnery |
Hmmm. It has possibilities. I'm not sure about having flank shot come before head to head short, because deflection shooting at a target crossing your plane's nose is one of the things that separates good pilots from great pilots.
I wonder what a Dueling Blades-style result chart for starfighter piloting would look like...
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
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Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | I'm not sure about having flank shot come before head to head short, because deflection shooting at a target crossing your plane's nose is one of the things that separates good pilots from great pilots. |
A head-to-head shot means that the other ship can also shoot you. A flank or deflection shot means that the other ship cannot unless it has side firing weapons. Since we mostly used this for starfighters, the bad guys in the TIE fighters and the good guys in the X-wings cannot shoot to their sides. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | A head-to-head shot means that the other ship can also shoot you. A flank or deflection shot means that the other ship cannot unless it has side firing weapons. Since we mostly used this for starfighters, the bad guys in the TIE fighters and the good guys in the X-wings cannot shoot to their sides. |
True. I'm just looking at it from a gunnery difficulty perspective, in that in a head-to-head situation, the target starfighter is exhibiting very little lateral or vertical movement, making it a pretty stationary target. With deflection shooting, the target starfighter moving at speed across the opposing starfighter's bow is moving very, very fast, which makes it a very challenging shot.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: | | As I understand it, fire control is what we call a laser cannon's ability to pan left and right or up and down independent of the boresight of the fighter it's mounted on. Vader's laser cannons do this in the trench run. A piloting roll could only add a slight bonus in this instance. |
X-Wings = 4 laser cannon fixed forward. 3D fire control
Y-Wings = 2 laser cannon fixed forward. 2D fire control
I can see Vader's cannon being some sort of advanced tracking weapon (auto-blasters, perhaps?), because his TIE is an advanced prototype, but there is no indication that the cannon on X-Wings and Y-Wings swivel and track to the degree that would necessitate 2D-3D fire control. I see fire control as integrated into the gunsights, sensor lock-ons, a HUD with a predicted aiming point, etc.
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The dice aren't a representation of the range of motion, those are for the aim-assist algorithms and stuff in the software. How they are employed, though, is with the swivel mounts. | crmcneill wrote: |
| Quote: | | Some weapons say they are fixed. They have a fire control of 0D and a note that says targets must be directly in front of this weapon to hit. I've never seen any rules on putting a target directly in front of your vehicle, but I would roll the lower of either piloting or gunnery. |
Example, please? A fixed forward weapon with a 0D fire control is not a stat notation that I have ever heard of, and if it does exist, it certainly isn't as commonly applied as it should be. |
I've seen a few, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is an imperial landspeeder from the introductory adventure.
(By the way, as a clarification, this would be 0D fire control because it can't swivel, so it couldn't take advantage of any aim-assist software. There could be guns with 0D fire control because they have no fire control software, despite having a swivel mount.)
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:58 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | The dice aren't a representation of the range of motion, those are for the aim-assist algorithms and stuff in the software. How they are employed, though, is with the swivel mounts. |
What swivel mounts? There are no swivel mounts on an X-Wing. I can't think of a single instance in the films where X-Wing weaponry did anything other than fire directly ahead. Even non-prototype TIEs don't have swivel-mounted cannon, just Vader's.
| Quote: | I've seen a few, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is an imperial landspeeder from the introductory adventure.
(By the way, as a clarification, this would be 0D fire control because it can't swivel, so it couldn't take advantage of any aim-assist software. There could be guns with 0D fire control because they have no fire control software, despite having a swivel mount.) |
I return to my point that aim assisted software does not require a swiveling gun mount. Modern fighter craft use HUDs and predictive data to help a pilot line up a shot, even though their weapons are fixed forward. Even a set of fixed crosshairs, ala WWII, would count as fire control, so long as you were trained to use it.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | No bonus to gunnery. Just the ability to get a better attack angle, which may give a bonus to hit.
0-4 still maneuvering for a shot / cannot shoot
5-8 head to head shot
9-12 flank shot
13+ tail position
Tail position gave a bonus to gunnery |
Which my chart shows.. The better "angle" is just descriptive"..
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Bren
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:36 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Which my chart shows.. The better "angle" is just descriptive".. |
I think we are talking at cross purposes. My original comment was not in reply to your chart, but to crmcneil's top post. It just happened to list after your post. Your chart provides a bonus for better piloting, but no specific angle of attack. We are approaching this from different angles. Pun intended. You chose a increasing bonus for better piloting.
My chart determines the relative position of two starfighters. For say a TIE and an X-wing, those positions determine who can shoot and if there is a bonus.
Simple Dogfighting Chart
Beat
opponent's
piloting
roll by ... Dogfighting Result
0-4 ........ still maneuvering, no shot this round (neither can fire)
5-8 ........ head-to-head, both ships can shoot (both can fire)
9-12 ....... flank or deflection shot (only winner can fire unless target has side firing wpns)
13+ ........ tail position, +10 bonus on attacks (only winner can fire unless target has rear firing weapons) |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16281
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:44 pm Post subject: |
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I would include a -5 penalty on the deflection shot, since it is one of the more difficult shooting actions in existence.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Bren
Vice Admiral
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | I would include a -5 penalty on the deflection shot, since it is one of the more difficult shooting actions in existence. |
For non turreted weapons, there are only three shots.
Head-to-head where the other guy is shooting back at you.
Side (or deflection if you will) - this would also include a top down or bottom up shot.
On his six, shooting at his tail. For this I gave a bonus.
Perhaps the side shot should have a minus, but I just figure the shot difficulty is balanced out by the fact that you are not worrying about getting shot. So you can better focus on the task at hand. Cancelling out the bonus as it were. If you prefer, and want to use the table, just add a penalty to the side shot. |
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
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Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2011 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: | | The dice aren't a representation of the range of motion, those are for the aim-assist algorithms and stuff in the software. How they are employed, though, is with the swivel mounts. |
What swivel mounts? There are no swivel mounts on an X-Wing. I can't think of a single instance in the films where X-Wing weaponry did anything other than fire directly ahead. Even non-prototype TIEs don't have swivel-mounted cannon, just Vader's.
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The lack of explicitly stated swivel mounts doesn't preclude their existence. There are several things on an X-wing laser cannon that could be swivel mounts, or they could just be hidden, or they could be non-mechanical and directly bend the beam. They never did shoot at anything except what was in front of them, which makes sense since you generally fly towards what you attack. If the X-wings were behind the TIEs during the trench run, we may have seen their guns swivel. | crmcneill wrote: |
| Quote: | I've seen a few, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is an imperial landspeeder from the introductory adventure.
(By the way, as a clarification, this would be 0D fire control because it can't swivel, so it couldn't take advantage of any aim-assist software. There could be guns with 0D fire control because they have no fire control software, despite having a swivel mount.) |
I return to my point that aim assisted software does not require a swiveling gun mount. Modern fighter craft use HUDs and predictive data to help a pilot line up a shot, even though their weapons are fixed forward. Even a set of fixed crosshairs, ala WWII, would count as fire control, so long as you were trained to use it. |
Modern fighter gunsights are very difficult to use without training, but fire control needs no training to use in the SW RPG. Also, the very definition of fire control implies the direction of the weapon by the system. I'd put modern fighter gunsights in a different category.
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