I should qualify that multiple ships in this case meant 5 on one side and 4 on another. It works great with 2-5 ships total. Which for RPG puproses is terrific. I'm pushing the system to find the "sideboards", ie. what it does well and what it doesn't. Which tells me and reinforces that this is for RPGing not space battle simulations.  And that is a good thing. The moment rules try to cover everything they start getting bloated and for me, unusable.

Last edited by jasales (8/07/2014 11:20 am)

Yeah, I've found that keeping the action on the players and their ship is best. Let the rest unfold as the story and their actions indicate.

Oh and I'd cross out the line that capital ships do 10X damage against smaller craft. No fun for PC ships (again, think Millinium Falcon dodging and weaving to escape a Star Destroyer). But that is just how I would play it.

Last edited by jasales (8/08/2014 7:05 am)

jasales wrote:

Question about Chases in BotV: do you roll for initiative each turn or just alternate, starting with Players first as in the example?

My preference is always roll initiative each round; I prefer the unpredictability it causes. Others may feel that it's too much dice rolling. I'm sure it doesn't matter either way although nerosfiddle may have a preference as far as the official rules for BoV is concerned.

Ok, I ran some more fights with a small 2 weaponed freighter (pc's ship) and a bunch of pirate fighters (rabble). I can say that yes, indeed the rabble rules are excellent. I can have some pretty big fights with crazy fun action. I don't think I was applying the rabble rules correctly earlier this week.

So, if I get a mighty success (rolling for the pcs) may I destroy a number of rabble ships equal to damage done?  Cause that is really fun.

But....the amount of damage that the rabble ships can dish out can be pretty scarry. Letting the players spend hero points for the starship compenstates pretty well as per page 72.

Last edited by jasales (8/09/2014 10:05 am)

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you earlier, it's been a busy couple of days.
In order and purely based on my own preferences:

- Capital Ship Weapons vs PC Ships: In retrospect, perhaps X 10 damage is excessive. The original idea was to make the notion of being shot at by a capitol ship a terrifying prospect for smaller vessels. You either run away or get brought on board, because trying to shoot your way out would be  suicide. Originally I had envisioned the damage caused as representing either enormous weapon strikes, or a huge number of smaller weapons tearing through the vessel (without having the GM roll 10 or 20 times for capitol ship weapons). But maybe there's a better way to do it i haven't thought of yet.

- Initiative: My own preference is also to roll initiative each round. But to each his own. I had been thinking about how to incorporate the BoL: ME initiative system, but for now the standard mechanic serves nicely.

- Rabble Ships: I'm really happy to hear that it worked out. And yes, a Mighty Success allows the PC ship to blow up a bunch of rabble ships per normal. I envision the PC ship shooting furiously at an incoming wing of enemy fighters and taking out a bunch of them as more wings attempt to swarm them.

- Torpedoes: You make a very good point about the sequence of events. I hadn't thought about that. My initial thoughts were as follows: The torps each have their own targetting system. So standard torpedo would roll a straight 2D6 and need to get a 9. More advanced torps would have a targetting bonus, so 2D6 +1,2 or 3 depending on how sophisticated they are. All these rolls would be modified by the target ship's ECM.

However, now that you mention the fact that players can't react to that, I want to propose the following: Instead of having the Shields roll apply, which to my mind defeats the strength of having torpedoes to begin with, what if they get fired, but only hit on the following turn? This allows the PCs to try "evasive manoeuvers", making the ship that much harder to hit. On a successful roll, the pilot adds his career to the ship's ECM for instance. Something like that.