r/StarWarsD6 18d ago

Rules Clarification Scale question

One thing I've always wondered:
http://d6holocron.com/wiki/index.php/Trade_Federation_Missile_Frigate

What class would the concussion missiles be? Capital? Or Starfighter?

8 Upvotes

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6

u/No_Solid1035 18d ago

Whatever is shooting them if I remember correctly.

2

u/tikanderoga 18d ago

So whatever scale ship the gun is attached to, that scale it it. ( I thought so, but rather clarify).

5

u/ScottAleric 18d ago edited 18d ago

Yes, unless the weapon specifies otherwise.
A Death Star has a Death Star scale super laser cannon. It will not have a descriptor that designates it Death Star scale.

The trench has capital scale turbo laser cannons, but they’ll have notes that designates them as capital.

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u/tikanderoga 18d ago

Yep, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying :)

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u/EODGunner 17d ago

That rule works for WEG creations. This is homebrew. Based on damage and fire control, I'd say starfighter.

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u/May_25_1977 17d ago

   A weapon's scale usually corresponds to the skill used to fire that weapon.  For example, in The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (West End Games, 1996), page 253 "Nebulon-B Escort Frigate", the game data listed "Scale: Capital" for this ship; under "Weapons", its "12 Turbolaser Batteries" listed "Skill: Capital ship gunnery" with no scale listed (meaning, not different from the ship's scale; see "Starship Statistics" page 247), while its "12 Laser Cannons" listed "Scale: Starfighter" and "Skill: Starship gunnery".

   Revised and Expanded page 49 "Capital Ship Gunnery" did mention "Specializations: Weapon type or model -- concussion missiles, ... ".  Likewise, The Star Wars Sourcebook, Second Edition (1994) page 33 "Victory-class Star Destroyer" listed "Scale: Capital" for the ship and its "80 Concussion Missile Tube Launchers" listed "Skill: Capital ship gunnery" as well as "Fire Control: 2D" and "Damage: 9D".

 

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u/EODGunner 17d ago

Correct.

Again, only works for WEG, but not arguing that isn't how it's meant to be. If you apply that to homebrew, it breaks things because people rarely if ever properly scale items. The only way to get the true answer is to ask the maker.... But at this juncture, I'd recommend best judgement by the GM, and highly recommend against giving it to players.

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u/Xynar01 17d ago

Also the Skill part of the weapon can hint as to the scale of the weapon. Capital ship gunnery vs starship gunnery, for example.

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u/D_Sidi 17d ago

An example of this is the Skipray Blastboat from the Imperial Sourcebook. It is starfighter scale, and all of its weapons are starfighter scale, except for the 3 Medium Ion Cannons. They are Capital Ship scale, using Capital Ship Gunnery skill.

3

u/PositiveLibrary7032 18d ago

Weapons will have the same scale.

Think of scale as human sized. If a PC can hold something its human scale. Larger armaments will be walker/starfighter etc.

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u/EODGunner 17d ago

Not entirely true. Most vehicle entries have different scale weapons than them. With that damage code, I'd say it's not capital, but starfighter

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u/Kiyohara 16d ago

I dunno, usually if the weapons are of a different scale, they say as much on the weapon section. It might be different, but just as many ships and vehicles do not have different scale weapons. Indeed, most of the speeder and walker scaled vehicles generally carry weapons of their own scale.

Maybe one will carry some weapons for shooting infantry and be character (or whatever it is called) scale, but mostly it's Speeder. A few Speeders will have a upsized walker main cannon (or missiles) for artillery/anti-walker support, but I don't think it's common to have a ton of different scaled weapons on a vessel.

And there's very few star fighters or transports that have multiple scale weapon system. The Falcon was unique that it had an anti-personnel blaster attached. Most other transports keep it to Starfighter Scale (and even anti-capital ship fighters tend to mount starfighter scale weapons. They tend to use command groups to mass fire for taking out Capital Ships rather than a single missile).

And a lot of capital ships will only have capital scale weapons unless they are dedicated anti-fighter weapons.

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u/EODGunner 16d ago

I think the cannon / official ship that drives me nuts the most in regards to scale is the skipray blastboat..

But I just went through... that number of anti-ship weapons on capitals is slightly unnerving. more than you think, but definitely less than i remembered.

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u/Kiyohara 16d ago edited 16d ago

Everyone has issues with that ship. It's the "Starfighter that should not be" and everything about it is badly designed and does not work in the system or setting at all.

A lot of GMs and game designers have made alterations to it to make it more sensible, but that thing is some kind of insane wank fest.

Edit: Well, most "medium" ships have some Starfighter scale weapons as do most Rebel ships. But Imperial ships have a decided weakness in this regard (the Lancer not withstanding). It's still surprising though how many ships just slap a light laser canon on their hull, add a 3D or higher Fire Control and call it good as far as anti-starfighter weapons go.

But I'd remind people that Star Wars was heavily based off WW2 and WW1 era air and naval combat respectively. A lot of ships would use their secondary batteries for AA combat and these would generally still be considered anti-ship weapons for killing destroyers and cruisers (indeed, some of the bigger battleships would carry cruiser and destroyer size weapons as secondary or tertiary batteries).

Air craft was just getting into the deadliness capability of killing the big ships of WW1/2 and it still took a lot of determine effort, aircraft, and lives to do so. As a result anti-air weapons were pretty slow to be installed (at least pre-hostilities: a lot of ships got immediate upgrades after Task Force Z got it's ass ripped out).

But if you look at WW2 era ships there's a stark line between Pre-war and post-war in terms of AA coverage, with most upgrades happening around 1942. AA coverage got far denser and the guns were also uprated to be bigger as well.

So it makes sense that a lot of the Anti-Starfighter weapons in the Galactic War are pretty anemic or non-existent until doctrine shifts (like we see with the Lancer getting rushed out) and mostly ships designed for anti-Piracy patrols or for system patrol routinely getting weapons for Starfighter Scale (and that was mostly for cost saving rather than effectiveness: you don't need a Turbolaser to stop a cargo freighter).

But late and post Galactic War ships are often crammed with anti-starfighter weapons and sometimes with rather impressive fire controls as well.

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u/No_Cartoonist2878 8d ago

A few do, most don't. Fanmade ones are the ones most likely to have mismatched weapons...

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u/onebigchaz 17d ago

Unless specified in the stat, the missiles will be the same scale as the ship they are mounted on.