P-47's Fix-It Shop

Homebrew & House Rules
#46

In my games as GM, I settled on a “soft” approach to dealing with these kinds of weapons, making it more about target selection and “component destruction” or weak-point targeting than about straight damage.

Things with low armor and HTT can be fairly easily dealt with by moderately heavy weapons or even lighter weapons that can beat the armor (e.g., a blaster rifle vs. an armor 1 speeder), but if you’re going against an AT-TE or something of that nature, it takes a more specialized approach.

For one thing, larger vehicles will be of much less “universal durability.” While some may have extremely heavy armor in certain areas, others will remain vulnerable. For the AT-TE, this would be the articulated segment between hulls. In these situations, I simply change the armor and would usually require a “Called Shot” Aim Maneuver. I might, instead of reducing armor, name an “automatic” or “minimum” crit that would be generated if a crit is triggered.

I sometimes abstract this with an appropriate Knowledge (usually Warfare) check, but just as often make it an RP thing.

The larger the vehicle, the more distinct and individually targetable its components are. While it would be quite difficult to target the steering vanes of a speeder bike, you could target the leg of an AT-AT with much less difficulty (though a rocket launcher’s efficacy there is questionable to say the least).

As far as adapting or creating personal anti-vehicle weapons, I once toyed with the idea of a missile launcher that dealt planetary scale damage, but was inaccurate against smaller targets and took more time to aim. I eventually removed it from my sheet because I decided it was no longer needed and was not to my standards of quality. If I were to stat it now, I would do so thusly:
Gunnery; 3 (Planetary); 2; Close; 8 Enc; 2 HP; Limited Ammo 1, Breach 2, Guided 2, Prepare 2, Targeting Silhouette 3.
“When attacking a target of silhouette 1, gains the Inaccurate 2 quality.”

This gives it a degree of anti-air support as well as just anti-vehicle, because air units will only infrequently be measured within personal scale.

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#47

Sure, and if you want a more cinematic “missile hits, vehicle goes kablooey” you can always fall back on the “minion vehicles die from crits”-guideline.
For the most part the soft approach works, particularly since attacks that don’t pierce armor can still have some effect through advantages. The problem is that it’s a bit arbitrary and works a lot better with PCs on foot vs npcs in vehicles than the other way around.

If the PCs trundle along in an AT-TE (armor 4), enemy minion cease to be a threat even if they brought what is supposed to be dedicated anti- armor weapons. Sure, they could “aim for weak spots”, but I that would feel arbitrary and unfair for players without a bit more structure to it to act as forewarning.

PCs: “We should be fine, we have enough armor to soak everything they throw at us.”
GM: “They passed a knowledge warfare check so they’re aiming for your weak spots though…”
PCs: “We have weak spots?”

Of course, to some extent this can be solved with good communication and trust between players and GM, but the more of a structure you have, the easier it is to communicate to players what to expect and plan for.
Not sure how to do it but maybe a list of suggestions for spending advantages, threats, etc when fighting vehicles might be a good way to codify a soft approach. I’ll see if I can scrounge up the time for putting something together.

I like the idea of automatic crits in some cases very much at it adresses the “randomness” of some crit-dependent weapons.

Yeah, I did something like that too, working off the “mini” concussion missiles from dangerous covenants, reasoning that if they’re small enough to put a bunch of them on a speeder bike, they should be somewhat man portable, but that lead me to thinking that maybe all missle launchers should be planetary scale weapons, and then I started to think about semi portable cannon emplacements, such as a light blaster cannon on a repulsorlift mount, kind of like the smaller anti-tank guns of WW2 and then things suddenly got big and complicated…

I’m quite vulnerable to scope creep. :sweat:

#48

This would be something to discuss up-front in a vehicle-based campaign. In the case of an AT-TE-centric campaign, I would tell the players ahead of time that getting flanked by anti-armor equipped infantry is dangerous, and that if they overextend and get past their infantry screen, their weak-points will be exposed.

They would know all their own weak-points and would have that necessary tactical knowledge. They may also learn what standard Separatist anti-tank infantry tactics are, perhaps with Knowledge (Warfare) checks thrown into the mix, and would be able to predict and counter the attacks using that knowledge.

They would have to use their guns and infantry support to avoid getting flanked, and in an emergency could disembark additional troops (if carried) to attack the enemies. It also breaks up the monotony of constant vehicle combat by throwing in a more unconventional encounter they can’t defeat with the same rote actions, and supports officer-type PCs by giving an infantry screen to command and control.

Yeah… xD
There’s a reason the game is pretty strict about personal weapons are all personal scale…
As for anti-tank guns, those would fall under the rubric of blaster cannons and there’s an example of one in FiB (the Atgar 1.4 FD P-Tower).

Closest alternative comparisons I can think of are the panzerfaust/bazooka and recoilless rifles, but those tend to be much lighter in damage, and anti-tank rifles are essentially just single-shot heavy machine guns/heavy repeating blasters in terms of efficacy and damage. Mmmm… fifty cals…

#49

Oh, no i didn’t mean anti-tank rifles, more like the smaller anti-tank cannons, something like the german Pak 36/38/40. A crew served gun on a some sort of carriage/repulsorsled.
The Atgar 1.4 was pretty much exactly what I had in mind, but the gun in FiB is confusingly enough not a P-tower. It’s a 1.8 anti-infantry turret, which I presume is something more akin to the DF.9. Stats-wise is closer to a heavy repeating blaster than anything else.

Anti-tank rifles are well represented by stuff like the proton rifle and the like.

More? You’ve already had eight!

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#50

Right, right, I was covering both (hence “alternative comparisons”). I think the 1.4 was actually in Lead by Example. FiB had two anti-infantry guns, LbE had the anti-tank gun.

Rule number one of fifty cals: You can never have too many.

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#51

I’ve had the book for years and I’ve managed to completely miss that one up until now. Wow. I’d be ashamed if I wasn’t so impressed with myself. :sweat_smile:

YT-2400BT Saga Edition Stats
#52

Hey P-47! Any chance you could create a stat block for the (YT-2400BT)? Perhaps in saga edition format if you were familiar with it. Thankyou very much regardless.

#53

I am not familiar with Saga Edition, nor with the YT-2400BT.
It seems that the YT-2400BT only appeared in a background role during the Battle of Exegol?

Are you aware of any particular differences between the YT-2400BT and the YT-2400 that would necessitate different stats?

#54

To me the BT version is pretty much the same the regular YT-2400 with the rear cockpit spar removed and replaced with an outrigger on the port side with a cannon mounted there. I’d call it even and just use the regular YT-2400 stats with an extra weapon of similar size as it’s stock guns. If you want it to be more of gunship, I’d increase shielding and maybe armor.

It was a while since I dabbled with Saga, but as far as I can recall, it does have some kind of system for customising ships using something like hardpoints. Emplacement points? I distinctly remember Corellian ships having lots of them, so that should cover any modification without homebrewing much. Consider it a standardized mod more than a brand new model.

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#55

That’s actually a good point I can’t really find much info on it at all haha. I’m mainly just looking for a freighter at the moment to transport water/ice that won’t really break the bank. Was thinking maybe a YU-410 may do the trick. But not sure how that would fair harvesting off an asteroid or something of the like. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as usual. Thankyou.

#56

Those are some great points Thankyou pen!

#57

What you need is something with a cargo bay that can be pressurized or depressurized, and ideally some sort of mining equipment (or attachments for mining equipment).

That immediately makes me think of the Wayfarer-Class Medium Freighter, which is starting-group-legal at 120,000cr and carries a modular cargo bay that can be de/pressurized separately from the actual “ship.”

There are a few mining vehicles, but they’re all terrestrial and you’d have to homebrew an attachment to make them spaceworthy.

“Musts” for a mining-equipped Wayfarer would be, in my opinion, at least one tractor beam and a couple cannons, or tools specifically built for mining (which would require homebrew, or borrowing from ground vehicles). A missile launcher is not necessary, but would be nice to have.

The weapons would break off chunks, and the tractor beam would then guide them into the ship’s depressurized cargo bay.

#58

Dude you’re frickin brilliant. I didn’t even factor in half of that. Why the pressurization p47?

#59

So you can just have the cargo bay exposed to space. Easier to pull in a giant chunk of ice if there’s no gravity or pressure change, and it lets you float between bay and space without the need for an airlock (you’d need a pressurized spacesuit anyway). It’s also automatically the temperature of space, so you don’t have to worry about your newly-harvested chunks of ice dissolving before you’ve put them in storage.
Being separated from the rest of the ship allows you to open up the cargo bay without compromising the actual spaceship, as would be the case in something like the YT-2400.

Plus, spacewalks are fun. Even if you argue that you could just open up the front and use a magnetic shield to hold in the atmosphere like the hangar bays of a Venator, that isn’t as interesting mechanically.

#60

You’re the man. That is genius lol. Thankyou so much for your time as usual.

#61

I’m glad I could help you.

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#62

Hey p47 in your opinion would a ship be better served with ion cannons or laser cannons?

#63

Depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re looking purely for DPS as a fraction of target threshold, most ships have a lower System Strain Threshold than Hull Trauma Threshold, but Ion Cannons deal less damage than equivalent Laser Cannons.

If you want to disable an enemy ship, ion cannons are best. If you want to kill an enemy ship, laser cannons are best.

If you’re using my houserules, where shields provide ablative protection at the expense of System Strain, a hybrid approach is very effective because Ion Cannons drastically reduce the efficacy of shields by disincentivizing their use and reducing directly how many times the shields can be used.

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#64

Wow those are very good points. Any other type of armament you would recommend for a Yt-1930?

#65

A concussion missile launcher is unexpected and provides significant punch. It’s expensive, and the ammo is expensive, but it would be a significant boost to your lethality (seeing as the base model, according to Wookieepedia Legends, has only a single medium laser cannon).

An ion cannon would give you flexibility, but mixing ion cannons with laser cannons would tend to do more harm than good on this scale. With a capital ship (in my houserules), you can mix a few ion cannons in and actually make your other weapons more effective pound-for-pound against shields and with critical hits, and you can (whether using my houserules or RAW) output enough damage to reliably disable small targets with just the ion cannons. However, a small ship mixing a single laser cannon with a single ion cannon will just have a harder time neutralizing most threats because the damage is spread across two thresholds, essentially doubling the damage you have to deal.

Something else you might want to look at is the quad laser cannon, which is only 5 damage but has Linked 3 and Accurate 1. That’s what the Millennium Falcon has, and the Lancer frigate, which is the most potent anti-fighter ship in the game.

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