More weapons than gunners

I’m just planning my next session and was looking at Nu Class Shuttle from Rise of the Separatists (pg. 73).
The Nu class has crew of 2 (pilot and co-pilot/gunner). It has three weapon systems:
2 x forward-mounted twin light laser cannons
1 x forward-mounted twin heavy laser cannons

Unless I’m missing something, according to the structured time rules, the shuttle could never fire all the three weapons during the same turn as both crew members could only activate max one weapon. None of the weapons have slow-firing or prepare -qualities to justify alternate fire between weapons. They also have the same fire-arcs (forward).

I realize that the vehicle profile is probably based on the visual outlook of the thing. “It’s Star Wars” or “for redundancy in case one weapon is disabled” is enough explanation, but still… Can anyone justify this setup or point me to some rule that would make this setup sensible in rules-wise too?

There is a talent that allows a pilot character to take two Actions, which would allow the two crew to fire three weapons, however that is fairly irrelevant. Three weapons gives options. In the case of the RPG, there is rarely a reason why you would forego firing the bigger gun in favor of the smaller gun, but there are reasons in the “real world.”

Something else to keep in mind is, as you mention, redundancy.

If you really want to, you could fire-link the twin lights so it’s one weapon with Linked 3 rather than two weapons with Linked 1.

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Fire-linking the light lasers is a good idea. Something to use computers skill if the situation demands some skill variation.

Thanks for the heads up of the talent. None of my player’s have ever played such a dedicated pilot that this would have come up.

It’s good to have something other than the afore mentioned “real world” reasons in case the players ask about the third gun and its usability :)

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Master Pilot:
Once per round when driving a starship (a vehicle piloted using the Piloting [Space] skill), the character may voluntarily suffer 2 Strain to perform any Action as a Maneuver instead.

From the Pilot tree, which falls into an interesting niche of being a very strong tree with little of interest narratively.

Personally, for fire-linking, that’s just a stats decision I’d make on the front end. I’ve done that with RAW vehicles a couple times before when I thought their stats didn’t make sense. You may also want to take a look at how the Lancer-class Pursuit Craft from No Disintegrations does it. It has a special ability that allows it to fire-link all of its weapons.

Thanks, I’ll have a look.

It could be an either-or thing. Many combat vehicles have multiple weapons depending on the situation. I once road in a “gunner’s” station where I had three weapons to choose from depending on the situation: area effect, longer-ranged full auto, and something for if someone got up close and personal.

That’s a good point in general and I considered also that, but what threw me questioning my logic was that in this case all the three weapons available were basically identical (heavies have +1 dmg) so there’s no situation-specific options there or no qualities to gain or lose due to decision making.

But good thing that this came up: makes more sense with the Master Pilot talent.

Does that actually let you attack twice in the round? I thought you could only do an action while in a ship once per turn. I guess it works since Attack is an normal action that isn’t specifically a ship action, even though you’re doing it IN the ship?

There are no “ship Actions,” only Actions performed while in a ship. There are “ship Maneuvers,” but that’s something different.

In the case of weapons, you can only fire each weapon once per turn. But think about it like this: You’re in a two-seat fighter with a pilot and a dedicated gunner (Y-wing). Can you not both fire the forward guns and the turret? Or are you only able to use one at a time? If the pilot fires the forward guns, what does the turret gunner do?

The only restriction on the number of Actions that can be performed in a ship per turn is the number of actions a character can perform, usually one, in this (rare) case, two.