Ship Location Targetting

[Alastor04]

Does targeting a specific location change the scale of the target? For example a starfighter attacking a shield generator (subsection +4D) would it still be capital scale (+6D) or would it be less?

[MrNexx]

Seems like it should... targeting a turbolaser to destroy it, rather than targeting the whole ship. However, I'd lean towards "This makes the individual piece harder to target, but not much easier to destroy." It's still protected by capital-scale shields, after all... I'd just drop the effective scale for the Hull down to the appropriate scale.
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[Savar]

[Kytross]

Officially? Pirates & Privateers page 19. I don't like it though. It adds +2D damage resist dice to the target. That's a mistake. Cannons should take less damage to destroy than hull plating, not more. Also, the individual targeting intervals is a bit more complicated than I like.

My homebrew is simple. Weapons and emplacements are one scale size smaller than the ship they are attached to. Generally, weapons and emplacements resist damage at 4D.

So if you're in a starfighter and want to target a Cap Ship turbolaser you roll your starship gunnery against their cap ship piloting with no scale modifiers, because the turbolaser is the same scale as the starfighter. If you hit then you roll your damage against 4D. UNLESS there are ray shields involved. You have to roll against cap ship shields with the standard +6D modifier if their shields are angled to cover that part of the ship. Luckily, Ion Cannon and Torpedoes ignore shields. So you only have to worry about shields if you're using lasers/blasters.

Also, if the starfighter is beneath the cap ship shields, effectively in the same space/hex/block as the cap ship, then they can completely ignore the cap ship's ray shields.

This works well for targeting specific subsystems of ships in the same scale. You are in a starfighter and want to take out another starfighter's torpedo launcher. You roll your starship gunnery against their starship piloting, but they get a +2D bonus to their piloting because the torpedo launcher is one scale size lower, walker scale. You roll your damage against 4D walker scale, or 2D starfighter scale. You still have to be concerned about ray shields, but only if their angled over that section of the ship.

Does that make sense?

[garhkal]

How though does one 'get under their shields'?
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[Kytross]

They're ray shields. Ships will pass right through them. The trick is getting in the same space/hex/block as the cap ship, matching speeds and whatnot.

The scenes from RotJ where the fighters are flying along the superstructures of the star destroyers, taking pot shots at weapons and assorted subsystems; those are the scenes I try to recreate for my players when they're under cap ship shields.

[MrNexx]

[garhkal]

[Naaman]

Honestly, I dont think a reaction rol is even appropriate on the part of the capitol ship. Instead, the FIGHTER should have to male a successful approach to the capitol ship (dodging its battery of defensive guns) and IF successful, it gets to male relatively easy shots to take out individual weapons systems. Those systems may still attack where appropriate, but are otherwise sitting ducks to any starfighter that gets under the shields.

The is to make GETTING under the shields a significant feat, and the reward is basically shooting fish in a barrel.

[garhkal]

How would you 'rate' that difficulty of getting under the shields though? Even combining fire, you need a dozen or so batteries working together to overcome the 6d scale difference..
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[Kytross]

[Naaman]

[CRMcNeill]

Realistically, once a small ship gets close enough to a larger ship, it will limit the number of weapons that can be brought to bear, regardless of what the WEG coordination rules say.
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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.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

Some things to consider...

Whether or not a ship can get under the shields is dependent on what version of the shields rules you use. If, you stick to the WEG rules, then the trick would be forcing the targeted ship to split its shield dice between the four fire arcs. If we are talking about starfighters vs. capital ships, then even if the ship leaves even +1 of shield dice in a given arc, that's going to count as a Shield of 6D+1 once you factor in Scale (depending on what scale method you use).

Again, per the WEG rules, the more fire arcs a ship's shields cover, the higher the Difficulty to keep them all up, so the more you can force the target ship to cover, the greater the likelihood that the target's shield operator will screw up and somehow create an opening.

This is why the most effective attack will be combining starfighters with capital ships. The capital ship acts as a primary threat, forcing the target ship to focus its defenses on that axis. This, in turn, frees the starfighters to maneuver and attack from the sides and the rear, in the hope of forcing an opening.

If, however, you don't use the WEG shield RAW (which I don't), whatever system you use needs to take this into account. Speaking for myself, I use a system where shields provide full cover in all direction, and shield operators can "tweak" the shields to provide better protection (as well as being able to redirect auxiliary power into shield arcs if needed). At first blush, I'd allow a starfighter to slip through a gap in a ship's shields by making an opposed dice roll: Starfighter Piloting vs. the target's Capital Ship Shields.

So, once the starfighters are "under the shields", the closest thing we have to a rule for that would be increased terrain difficulty. At an absolute minimum, for Capital Ships, I would place that at Difficult (for larger craft like ISDs); smaller craft, in the cruiser-frigate range would be more in the Very Difficult to Heroic range.

Then, we have to take into account speed. However big a capital ship is, it's unlikely to occupy more than a single Space Unit, which means a starfighter traveling at speeds measured in multiple SUs is going to have a very difficult time traveling slow enough to stay under the shields. The only plausible solution I can see at the moment is to treat the capital ship as a planetoid, and use the starfighter's Atmosphere speed (measured in meters per round) as a baseline.

And that's all before you consider the question of damage...
_________________
"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.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Kytross]