I just read the rule of the Guided item quality and gave it a bit more though. On the surface it seems legit, but when I read it carefully, it began to feel a bit weird.
The rule states
“…if Guided is activated, [character] may make an attack check at the end of the round. The difficulty of the check is calculated by comparing the weapon’s silhouette of 0 to the silhouette of the target (see page [FAD] 242);”
So the guided weapon has SIL 0 and that is compared against the vehicle SIL to determine the difficulty of the attack check.
On page 242 of FAD the table giving check difficulties has the following entry:
“Firing vessel has a silhouette 2 or more points smaller than the target vessel”
giving difficulty of Easy (1 diff).
Considering that all vehicles have SIL at least 2, the check can never have difficulty higher than Easy. That also makes guided weapons extremely accurate when the guided activates as they usually have Guided 2 or 3 as their rating. Granted, it requires 3 advantages to trigger it in the first place, but still.
There’s nothing inherently wrong in this, but I’m just wondering why to bother with SIL comparison as it could be just static Easy check. Also I think that this does not capture the Star Wars feeling we get concerning missiles from the movies, where the missile follows the target a long time and is quite bad at actually hitting the target (Clone Wars movie for example).
This rule more likely has the missiles hit immediately the target (character firing it succeeds in the test) or if the missile misses in the first place, it probably is pretty dumb (guided is hard to activate), but when they do get a lock, they are extremely accurate at hitting the target.
I wonder if I have missed something obvious, or if anyone has come up with a more cinematic solution for Guided quality?
First of all, you can always shoot a rocket to a person too, so here’s your average check
Jokes aside, guided is supposed to be precise that’s the point. Battle over Coruscant, Anakin and Obiwan desperately trying to shake the Tri-fighter’s rockets.
About the cinemativ feeling. PCs and NPCs (adversary!) have tons of talents making it difficult to hit them, as the guided attack is an attack check, dont forget to add modifiers to the check. Spending talents to upgrade the attack which then misses is exactly how Anakin blew those rockets behind him.
I do think Guided is one of the more complicated item qualities. I get the “Roll again as the missile chases” thing but it’s just extra rolls and makes them far, far too good against fast fighters- too many fighter combats end on round 1 as a linked concussion missile or proton torpedo annihilates the other ship in a single shot.
I’d propose it be changed to:
Guided
Some weapons have their own engines and flight control- adjusting to their targets’ flight paths, and homing in on them.
The Guided rating of a weapon represents the speed of the projectile it fires. When attacking a target with a current speed lower than the Guided rating, reduce the difficulty by 1 per point of speed difference. When attacking a target with a current speed higher than the Guided rating, increase the difficulty by 1 per point of speed difference.
So now, if you want to avoid a Guided weapon you need to go as fast as possible- which ties in with the films. They’re more effective against slower targets, which makes more sense- we don’t see anyone fire proton torpedoes at starfighters, only star destroyers and other large targets, which they’re now excellent against.
Actually Concussion Missiles are especially there for annihilating small fighters. That’s their only purpose. Proton torpedoes are more like anti-ship weapon, sure they can be used against TIE-fighters (I recommend the X-Wing novels, they are constantly using rockets to gain upperhand) but resupply shouldn’t be infinite and the price also limits it. Or just give them bigger targets so they won’t waste APT on fighters else they won’t have anything against that destroyer
Sure, but you can get that effect from the Blast quality too which still deals damage on a miss. Plus most fighters are only maximum speed 4-5, so for Guided 3 missiles that’s only +1 or +2 difficulty, and that gives PCs a reason to use maneuvers like Aim and Stay On Target to line up a good shot to avoid wasting the ammo.
Otherwise, either every encounter needs enough large targets to go through the whole 6-missile clip to make it worth not using them as your primary weapon. Cost isn’t really a limiting factor, as missiles are much cheaper than hull trauma- 1 HT costs 500 credits to repair. If one-shotting that TIE fighter saves you even a single point of damage, it’s worth a concussion missile. 2 points of HT, it was worth a proton torpedo. You can GM fiat it, and just say the rebel fleet only has enough torpedoes for 2/mission, but that’s a bit unsatisfying.
Also, you can maybe try the Genesys version of the Guided rule, which sets the difficulty of the check to average rather than being based on the relative silhouettes.
I get that, though the game setting is based on the “Keep your crew hungry” method. If you gave them everything, credits, items, rarity is no longer problem, you have that much less type of obbstacle you can put before your players.
Yes it’s cheaper to buy missiles than to repair Hull Trauma, but it’s also much harder to replace missiles.
If you give your PCs a full rack of missiles, and then restock them fully every time they use them, then there’s no real cost to use them.
But if the alliance is really strapped for credits, and missiles are hard to collect, they may only get a pair or two of torpedoes and be ordered to only use them against the capital ship target, as they just don’t have the ordnance to spare against less valuable targets.
This also gives you a nice story hook. “If you collect this shipment of missiles, you’ll get an extra pair next time!” This can give the PCs a tangible reward for completing a resource acquisition mission, a sort of mission that often doesn’t directly benefit the PCs when they’re part of a larger organization.
Blast: Blast requires 3 Advantage or a Triumph to trigger on a miss, same as Guided. With a Concussion Missile, that’s just 4 damage, not enough to take out a TIE unless it’s already limping.
I think Guided is fine as-is. With a Proton Torpedo, that’s just 2 ability dice. The chance of hitting is only something like 60%, and the chance of getting a second attempt on a miss is extremely small.
With a Concussion Missile (an anti-fighter missile), 3 ability dice is a much better roll and will likely hit. That’s what it’s supposed to do. And if it misses, it probably won’t get a second attempt.
As for the time involved, a round is roughly a minute. That means if a missile fired near the top of the round misses and triggers Guided, it’s flying around until it gets a shot at the end of the round. Most missile chase sequences probably aren’t much longer than a minute (and the chase sequence begins when the missile is fired, so even if it hits “immediately,” it can take a short time of ducking and weaving in the narrative).
