(SW) So That's Space Combat
So, I dabbled in our first bit of vehicle-based combat in my Star Wars game last night. The end result involved a crash landing I really hadn't foreseen. Heh. Go figure.
- The different "position" in Saga Edition help, though still don't necessarily make everyone feel equally contributing. It's not hard to have four or five characters making rolls in a combat turn, though some of them are going to be checks to "aid another" for someone else making a main roll. We had someone assisting the pilot, the pilot flying, someone assisting the gunner, the gunner shooting, and a couple people uninvolved. Technically, they probably could have been assisting, too.
- Connected to that, some modifications that include a second gunner station would include another person or two.
- The size modifier to Pilot checks hurts. I really didn't realize that before last night, but a Colossal ship (including small freighters) gets a -10 modifer. That makes it really hard to outmaneuver smaller craft or make the DC 20 for increased speed.
- A freighter isn't getting away from fighters in sublight unless they let it. Even though the freighter has a dedicated pilot that can do a full-round action to move at 4x speed constantly, the fighters tend to be fast enough to catch up, fire, then catch up again. The one-man craft can only move 1x speed while attacking, but can still catch up in bursts.
- The damage/repair rules for starships are very... basic. Condition damage? That can actually be repaired one step per turn by someone taking the engineer position (which I only realized after the fact, and maybe the droid should have done). HP damage? There's really no hinderance (as with players) as long as the ship is above 1 HP, and it seems to fall under the Mechanics ability Repair Object that fixes 1d8 points an hour with a successful check.
- And most importantly: sucky rolls suck. ;)
- The different "position" in Saga Edition help, though still don't necessarily make everyone feel equally contributing. It's not hard to have four or five characters making rolls in a combat turn, though some of them are going to be checks to "aid another" for someone else making a main roll. We had someone assisting the pilot, the pilot flying, someone assisting the gunner, the gunner shooting, and a couple people uninvolved. Technically, they probably could have been assisting, too.
- Connected to that, some modifications that include a second gunner station would include another person or two.
- The size modifier to Pilot checks hurts. I really didn't realize that before last night, but a Colossal ship (including small freighters) gets a -10 modifer. That makes it really hard to outmaneuver smaller craft or make the DC 20 for increased speed.
- A freighter isn't getting away from fighters in sublight unless they let it. Even though the freighter has a dedicated pilot that can do a full-round action to move at 4x speed constantly, the fighters tend to be fast enough to catch up, fire, then catch up again. The one-man craft can only move 1x speed while attacking, but can still catch up in bursts.
- The damage/repair rules for starships are very... basic. Condition damage? That can actually be repaired one step per turn by someone taking the engineer position (which I only realized after the fact, and maybe the droid should have done). HP damage? There's really no hinderance (as with players) as long as the ship is above 1 HP, and it seems to fall under the Mechanics ability Repair Object that fixes 1d8 points an hour with a successful check.
- And most importantly: sucky rolls suck. ;)
Comments
Post a Comment