Author Topic: Question Regarding Starships  (Read 295 times)

PaddyValdyr

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Question Regarding Starships
« on: August 11, 2016, 12:09:31 pm »
So it's been mentioned to me in the past by several people (and I tend to agree) that SWSE is written from the perspective of extremely "heroic" paladin-type "good guys" who are saving the galaxy and doing things that no one else can. However, this seems to lead to some very broken mechanics, some of which revolve around space battles.


I've noticed that a single fighter can destroy a capital ship, if these rules are taken literally. The capital ship will never (and I mean NEVER) hit the fighter craft due to a -20 on its chance to hit, allowing the fighter to essentially buzz around a capital ship all day long.

If that were the only problem, I'd say maybe I could live with that. But worse yet, that fighter's weapons do the same amount of damage to a capital ship with advanced shielding and weaponry, as it does to an archaic fighter. And if you're in a freighter and a single fighter comes in with a proton torpedo? Bye bye freighter.


So really I have to ask: does anyone have any alternative rules handy for space combat?

I had a GM once that had no clue what he was doing and sent an entire squadron of advanced fighters after our Gozanti freighter. In the first hit from a single fighter we nearly lost the ship (despite the description of the Gozanti marking it as an armored military transport). I know heroes are supposed to be flying around in fighter craft feeling fabulous like a shampoo commercial, but let's be honest: some of us want a more strategic experience. What is the point of having capital ships in space at all?
« Last Edit: August 11, 2016, 12:11:02 pm by PaddyValdyr »

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StevenO

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Re: Question Regarding Starships
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2016, 01:05:44 pm »
I think many will agree that how starship combat is handled in SAGA may be one of the weaker point in the game but it is relatively fast a simple.  Some alternative space combat games turn it into something that is a LOT more complex than SAGA is overall and while some wargamers may enjoy that style of play it doesn't work will for the RPG setting.  In those regards SAGA's starship combat isn't the greatest if you are trying to replicate fleet level engagements and other larger fights but then again most RPG systems are not going to do a great job replicating any "big" combat where individual performance is generally less important than overall performance.

With all of that said I believe you have a couple errors in your preception of SAGA and Space combats.

A single fighter is generally going to have a VERY DIFFICULT time destroying even smaller capital ships unless you are looking at a very specialized pilot (who is probably trying to abuse the Starship Tactics feat from SotG) as the SR 100 you commonly see on capital ships almost completely shuts down the damage potential of starfighters.  Your standard proton torpedo does 9d10x2 damage which average 99 points of damage which is NOT enough to even overcome a ship's SR much less penetrate it's DR so it can eat into the ship's hitpoints and have a chance at overcoming its Damage Threshold.  Now if those shields can be completely ignored then those torps become a bit more dangerous but just overcoming the SR will only cause the SR to fall slowly.  You fighter may be able to eventually knock down a Corellian Corvette (SR 100, DR 15, hp 1200, DT 138) but taking out an ISD (SR 150, DR 20, hp 2100, DT 256) is going to be nearly impossible.

As for that hero in a fighter never getting hit by a capital ship's weapons that is probably a good thing but it can happen.  Don't forget that a natural 20 by that capital ship will still hit that starfighter regardless of what it's relative defense score is.  Although it may not be common batteries can be broken up to fire as individual weapons giving capital ships even more chances at scoring that critical hit.  Maybe you'll say that Vehicular Combat can just roll away that hit and it may but only ONCE per round so a second crit can come through and make the fighter go splat.  Get hit with a crit and suffering the double damage that comes along with it is usually enough to one-shot any starfighter if the weapon system is suffering that -20 on the attack as 3d10x5 average 165 damage with a crit.  You may also want to take a look at the Proximity Spread option for weapon batteries listed on pg 31 of the SotG which allows for a starship scale area attack which can devastate starfighter even if they only suffer half of the battery's damage.

As for you complaint about your GM not having a clue I may agree.  I don't know the exact stats you were using for the Gozanti Cruiser but the base stats from the SotG aren't all that impressive being little more than a heavily armed transport ship listed at CL 8.  I have no idea what the "advanced starfighters" were but I suspect that each should have been CL 10 or higher (perhaps CL 6 after adjusting for your ship) and depending on how many he sent after you it certainly could have been an overwhelming situation.  The Gozanti "Cruiser" is NOT a "Capital Ship" in any real sense of the word but rather a glorified space transport so seeing it destroyed quickly should not come as a surprise.  It would be helpful to know the stats of the ships and parties involved but it seems you may have been overmatched which certainly could leave a bad taste in your mouth.
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fairytalejedi

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Re: Question Regarding Starships
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2016, 05:38:22 pm »
There's a reason why capital ships have point-defense weapons that don't suffer the -20 to hit starfighters, not to mention their own fighter squads. :)
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PaddyValdyr

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Re: Question Regarding Starships
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2016, 05:41:17 pm »
Hey thanks Steven!

You're probably right about the fighter having a hard time taking out a destroyer, that said though, I have to ask about maybe 3 fighters doing the same thing. In the movies, games, etc. each ISD is a colossus in space. Laser blasts from fighters looks insignificant to such a ship, even proton torps. Yet by what you just said, there seems that 3 proton torps a round from regular fighters is going to drop the thing within about...say... 10 rounds or less? I'm just wondering if there is a defense against such abuse and if shields regenerate every round or if a shield is hit multiple times does it suffer that damage cumulatively?

I'm going to take a look at Proximity Spread, I had no idea that was a thing and does make more sense as the blasts themselves would seem to be wider. Maybe this is all just my flawed perception, it just seems like odd math that doesn't fit with what fans have been shown about ships from the Star Wars universe.


@fairytalejedi
Yeah, I know about those I just find it strange that even ships without hangar bays suffer the same penalties for shooting fighters. In fact, on certain ones, due to their low weapon count, it seems that hey have to make a choice between shooting fighters, or being able to shoot back at other large ships.  Again, maybe it's just nit-picky and maybe I've just had some bad experience with people that don't really know how to use the system.



Thank you both for your responses!

StevenO

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Re: Question Regarding Starships
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2016, 12:04:52 am »
Hey thanks Steven!

You're probably right about the fighter having a hard time taking out a destroyer, that said though, I have to ask about maybe 3 fighters doing the same thing. In the movies, games, etc. each ISD is a colossus in space. Laser blasts from fighters looks insignificant to such a ship, even proton torps. Yet by what you just said, there seems that 3 proton torps a round from regular fighters is going to drop the thing within about...say... 10 rounds or less? I'm just wondering if there is a defense against such abuse and if shields regenerate every round or if a shield is hit multiple times does it suffer that damage cumulatively?
...

Let's just look at three Fighters vs. an ISD.  For simplicity we will take three X-Wing and the ISD from the SECR.  First the basics:

X-Wing:  +5 attack, 6d10x2 (laser) or 9d10x2 (torps - 6 max), REF 18, hp 120m, DR 10, SR 15, DT 46, Pilot @ +7
ISD:  REF 18, hp 2100, DR 20, SR 150, DT 256, Pilot @ -2,  5x 6gun TL batteries -3 attack 5d10x5, 5x 6gun Ion batteries -3 attack 3d10x5 ion, 10x 4gun PD batteries +13 attack 2d10x2, 10x tractor beams -13 attack +68 grapple.

As I mentioned before Proton Torpedoes average 99 points of damage each.  Your three X-Wings carry a total of 18 and while half will miss/be ineffective (+7 attack misses REF 18 at PB range half the time) that would look like nearly 1800 damage if all would hit.  You should note that this isn't enough to reduce an ISD to zero hitpoint.  This is also ignoring the ISD's DR (often figured as part of hits hull strength and including various other factors) which reduces damage 20 points EACH TIME lowering the average damage to just 79 points which would mean having 27 torpedoes hitting the ISD just to disable it by dropping it to zero hitpoint.  In this situation all of this is highly irrelavent because the ISD shield rating of SR 150 is basically going to stop most any fighter attack cold and would require more than 10 critical hits to possibly lower the SR enough that normal hits could start getting a little bit of damage over the SR.  With a standard crew I highly suspect that System Operator will have plenty of time to work on that DC 20 Mechanics check to boost the shields back up 5 points nearly every round once they start going down.

I hope you see that your standard X-Wings have little chance against an ISD and while there are things that a high level (I say 10+ is high level) hero could do to help it is still an uphill battle.  I'd say that the way you "win" a battle vs. an ISD in game is typically by simply surviving it.

Now to look at the ISD's counter attack I can see that -3 doesn't have much chance at hitting REF 18 without the critical hit so I'll just tell all the gunners to fire at will (break the battery bonus and firing as singles) giving the ISD 30 attacks at -13.  Vehicular Combat can easily roll away one critical hit which has a roll of 7 but if two come in that second would deal 5d10x10 (after doubling for the critical) which is 275 damage which completely blows over the SR+DR+hitpoints of the X-Wing.  The Ion Cannons would do the same thing although they only deal a base of 3d10x5 ion damage that's 165 ion damage which lets 140 through after SR+DR which easily overcomes the DT dropping the ship -2 steps down the condition track while causing the X-Wing to lose 70 hitpoints leaving it with 50.  The point defense guns may not be so lethal as 2d10x2 (22 point average damage) can be absorbed by DR and Shields for a while it does lower SR each time AND it is also ignoring the effectiveness of battery fire which could boost the damage to 5d10x2.

All of those numbers were ignoring range which is something the ISD and its turbolasers (long range is 21-40 while point blank reachs out 4) has over the X-Wing whose torpedoes may reach 16-30 at long range (3 point blank) but has lasers that only reach 6-10 at long range with a point blank distance of just 1 square in starship scale.  When it comes to starship combat the big capital ships really should be taking advantage of their much longer range weapons and combat should begin at maximum weapon range.  An X-Wing would be subject to one attack by the ISD's turbolasers before getting close enough to launch torpedoes.  By making "Attack Runs" an X-Wing could move 8 squares and then attack which means 3 torpedo attacks (2 at long range and 1 at medium range) before an X-Wing could close to a distance of 1 square to let the lasers work at point blank range.  This may be assuming the ISD doesn't want to alter the range itself because with it's Speed 3 it can cover 6 squares of space each round without harming it's attacks or defense at all.

Sorry for the long explainations but Shields can be recharged every round assuming the System Operator can spend 3 swift actions and make a DC 20 Mechanics check to restory 5 points of SR.  EACH attack that overcomes a ship's SR will lower it 5 points; if you can overcome the target's SR three times in a round it's SR will drop a total of 15 points that round.  IF you are ever fighting capital ships or something else with a high SR and you start to see it's SR dropping to a point you can overcome it KEEP FIRING and see if others will join you; SR can increase +5 (or +10 in some cases) each round but each attack that overcomes the SR lowers it 5 points and it is cumulative.

To give you an idea of what I think of shields I see the SR 5 and SR 10 options for droids as usually being little more than 5 or 15 "bonus hitpoints" as expect most attacks will deal enough damage to overcome the SR and lower it 5 points.  When I look at SR 15 or SR 20 I'm seeing something that is far more resistant to standard hand held weapons although some good shots getting through can lower than enabling more to get through.  The SR range from say 25-70 or so I see more as bonus hitpoints for vehicle scale attacks but the higher a weapons's damage the higher the SR needs to be to consistently resist it and not act like bonus hitpoints but as a hard stop against attacks.
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