Starfighters Vs Capships

[Kytross]

I want to run this by you guys, get some feedback.

For the most part Fighters can't destroy cap ships any more than the Spitfires damaged the Bismark. What I do is have them attack specific targets on the Star Destroyer, like a turbolaser battery. I also figure cannons and certain systems, like individual shield generators or tractor beams, as one class size smaller for defensive purposes. (Damage resist and difficulty to hit) They still do capital scale damage for offensive purposes.

This accomplishes two things:

1) Fighters can now do damage to Cap ships without destroying them creating the need for cap ships to have fighter screens.

2) It makes the tubolaser batteries harder to hit. Since they're the same scale as the starfighters they are no longer as easy to hit as the entire capital ship, and they no longer get the damage resistance bonus that capital ships get.

It's still fairly useless to do an attack on a Impstar, taking out 120 cannons is going to take some time, though taking out their shield generators would be key. However, going up against a Corellian Corvette, Starfighters can render it weaponless in a few rounds.


The other major change I make is that torpedoes are capital scale and missiles are fighter scale. This means that hitting another starfighter with a proton torpedo is next to impossible, but you can do a world of damage against capital ships. On the other hand, if you're going up against other starfighter scale vehicles, missiles would make you devastating. Knowing what your projected mission is should change how you loadout your hardpoints.

I think I explained it fairly well but I may not have. If you have questions please ask.

And as always, let me know what you think.

[garhkal]

So what 'resistance' value do you assign to any of those emplacements? How do they dodge (since they can't move)? IMo shifting them all down to SF scale makes it TOO easy to dismember a cap ship of weaponry.
Take a Rendill stardrive dreadnought, one of the more common cap ships out there.

It has a total of 40 weapons
10 Turbolaser Cannons
Fire Arc: 5 left, 5 right

20 Quad Turbolaser Cannons
Fire Arc: 6 front, 7 left, 7 right

10 Turbolaser Batteries
Fire Arc: 5 front, 5 back

Since none can dodge (they are static placements, therefore the difficulty to shoot them should be just the range diff (moderate for medium range, easy for short), Half a squadron of fighters can easily neuter one side of firepower in 2 rounds.
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[entropy]

I haven't posted much here lately, but this question intrigues me. I'm puzzled by reversing the rules on torpedoes and missiles. Did you reverse the ranges as well?

Starfighter vs. capital battles have been a staple of our campaigns for as long as I can remember. I personally find it more exciting to take out a corvette with a tramp freighter's well-placed torpedo than to defeat a swarm of tie fighters. As a GM, I find that the battles where the PCs manage to take out something they shouldn't with a lucky shot, particularly multiple sixes on the wild die for damage, are the battles they remember the best, and continue talking about years later.

The rules make it fairly easy for this to occur. The damage die cap is only 3, and torpedoes pack quite a punch if you can fly in close enough. The book lists their range as 1/3/7, which means flying through several rounds of turbolaser fire. This gives you a reasonable chance against a damaged Corvette, but an ISD is unlikely to be hurt.

The capital ships need their fighter escort to prevent this from happening, or at least make it painful. A decent pilot in a ship with a few dice maneuverability can dodge turbolaser fire all day, but with enough starfighter scale lasers coming at you, one of those TIEs is bound to get a lucky shot in.

The other equalizer is the command skill. A couple bonus dice to hit and damage can overcome a scale gap and turn a long shot into a 50/50 chance. Be careful when using this as GM, though. If your ISD commander orders 15 turbolaser emplacements to combine fire on the PCs ship, their pilot is going to run out of force points trying to dodge 4D+2 skill plus 4D fire control plus 5D command bonus, even from a capital ship. It may be realistic, but it's not much fun.

This turned out longer than I thought it would, but I guess my thought is that it's more fun to get a lucky shot every once in a while that takes down the big bad guy than spend a bunch of rounds grinding down its weapons so it can escape and get repaired for the next battle. Be prepared with an exciting, and just barely plausible, description of the torpedo flying up the exhaust port and the huge explosion seconds later as the corvette splits apart.

[Kytross]

A few good points Garhkal. Multiple-Action Penalties stack up on starfighters, and stack up quickly.

The dreadnaught will be firing. The Starfighters have to dodge.

The Starfighters need to maneuver themselves to get their forward arc to bear before they can take a shot.

The dreadnaught is moving while all this is going on, so their targets are not stationary. They still need to beat the pilot's dodge roll to hit.

When dealing with a capital ship you need to get through, or under, their shields. If they don't take out the shield generators first they're just putting on a light show. Unless they have ion weapons.

Anything else they want to do, like angle the deflectors, jam communications, get a sensor read on the ship, all of these things add up.

I generally assign a value of 4D damage resist for cannon emplacements. I know most weapons have a body of 2D but I figure emplacements have some armor to them as their designers, hopefully, knew they were going to be shot at.

[Kytross]

Entropy, I didn't reverse the rules on torpedoes and missiles, I changed them.

RAW there are capital scale missiles and capital scale torpedoes as well as starfighter scale versions of the same. As it stands here the difference between missiles and torpedoes is that missiles are called missiles while torpedoes are called torpedoes. They are effectively the same thing.

My change is that torpedoes are all capital scale and missiles are all starfighter scale. So under my change, in your scenario, the starship would use missiles, which still pack a wallop (8-9D starfighter scale)

What this also allows is for ships to carry different loads. On the deathstar run all the fighters were armed with torpedoes so if they got the chance they could try to destroy it. On a normal run I would assume Y & B-Wings would load torpedoes while A & X-Wings load missiles.

I haven't worked out the exact ratio, but a starfighter can load less torpedoes than missiles.

The other thing to consider with this change is that torpedoes are now larger, making them easier for other starfighters to shoot down.

[Kytross]

I almost forgot one of the key points here: angling deflector shields.

Starfighters force Capital ships to keep a few pips on each quadrant of their shields. Otherwise they'd be able to stack their shields between themselves and the other capital ship. This change gives them a reason to do that. Without their shields up starfighters will eat away at their weapons on the exposed side.

[jmanski]

I know I'm late to the conversation, but there's advanced targeting rules in the Rules Companion and Pirates and Privateers, IIRC.

The way they read damage is worked out normally while the shooter takes a penalty to hit.

I would reduce the resistance roll but not to starship scale; perhaps -1d to -3d or so (depending on the location).
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[garhkal]

[DougRed4]

Just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying this discussion and will consider this as a possible house rule down the road.


garhkal, what did you mean by the cap ship's dice being capped?
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Kytross]

[Darth Ginzain]

Couple quick questions first. Which version of scaling do you use, because it sounds like 2E and not 2E R&E. There's a HUGE difference in them. Also it sounds like you're using 2E R&E for command?? WHich does prevent massive combinations of fighters/weapons.

I like the idea of dropping emplacements to starfighter scale and allowing snub fighters to take apart a capital ship without actually structually damaging it significantly. Moving torpedoes to capital ship scale is dangerous. Those things still doing 9d? The hull on an ISD is only 7d and torps ignore shields. Which means every hit will do some hull damage to the ISD. Do you intend for capital ships to be destroyed by snub fighters?

Also with regards to shields, if I'm shooting my 6d quad lasers at the turbolaser, do I have to shoot through the capital ship scale shields first?

[garhkal]

[Kytross]

Darth Ginzain, I'm using 2E R&E. I may need to get a copy of 2E and read through it.

[Kytross]

[Kytross]

The other thing this allows is to face the same Cap ship over and over.

The first time they face the ISD Decimation they barely escape with their lives.

The second time they're able to do serious damage to the Decimation's fighter wing.

The third time they manage to drop its shields and force it to retreat.

When they finally destroy the Decimation they have a long fought victory.