Combined Actions

[Jedi Skyler]

The lieutenant took care of his own sorry butt and had to be REMINDED that he needed to see to the needs of his troops (where they were going to sleep, how they were going to eat, etc.) He had a team go out before the rest of the platoon just to make sure that the tent HE was sleeping in was A) Up, B) heated, and C) His own cot was set up before he ever set foot on the platoon's field site. Boomer's right. That kinda crap will make you the unwitting victim of friendly fire. And as any of my veteran or current service comrades can tell you: friendly fire, isn't.

[KageRyu]

Ok, previous posts point out several valid things. I have run many large battles, and usually try to do the rolling ahead of time. When it comes to the command skill in any form of Military setting, you need to set up a structure of command. In a fleet, your Admiral would really only be commanding the Captains of the ships, so he rolls for them, co-ordinates them, hands down orders. They in turn, command their ships officers (weapons, tactical, security, comms, and flight ops if fighters on board), those officers command the Wing leaders, gunnery officers, and teams leaders of relative arreas. With fighters, your wing leader co-ordinates your squadrons, passing orders to the squadron leaders, who, in turn co-ordinate the flight leaders and pilots (in Star Wars, One Wing is 6 squadrons, each squadron is 12 fighters, or 3 flights). If the Wing Leader is told to "take out that Star Destroyer" and decides to try to co-ordinate all his squadrons, he would first roll his command to co-ordinate the Squadron Leaders (6 of them, so if he doesn't have a command 6D, he loses one already), the squadron leaders could then directly try to co-ordinate each fighter (12) or just the flight leaders (3) and roll as appropriate, then for the flight leaders co-ordinating their 4 fighters.

Me, I would make all the rolls, because it makes nice narative and storry to see one of the squadrons either not-getting, or not following the orders and peeling off. Or a couple flights lose focus and begin chasing Ties. Much more realistic.

As for the initial question, Yes, combining actions in 2nd R&E does affect damage as well. This takes into account that not only are more firing to create diversionary fire, but more are hitting, producing a cumulative affect. Sure, SF damage on capital ships is mostly superficial at first, but it can add up.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[garhkal]

It also explains the 'Trench run disease' vunerability of cap ships to combined shots from Xwings...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[MA-3PO]

I'm curious, which system for CA do you tend to use? The R&E rules don't seem to help characters much since in my games they are generally only 2 or 3 people coordinating but I must admit not using the charts is nice.

[garhkal]

[KageRyu]

[garhkal]

Yup. So rather than have those 40 troopers you had at the base shoot on their own, you could, say, split them into 9 4 man fire teams, with the remaining 4 troopers acting as the co-ordinators (each taking 2 commands with one doing 3)...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[KageRyu]

Another trick that works really well for large combat/combined action is to take smaller units and combine them, treating them as 1 unit.
For example:
Combining Squadrons of fighters and treating them as a single entity. Figure out the combined fire bonus and damage bonus for the entire squad, but when rolling wounds, treat the Squadron as a single ship. Subtract the dice penalties for wound levels from the combined skills and damage. say that each wound level represents a number of ships either crippled or destroyed. there are 5 basic wound levels. A bit simplified, but effective at speeding up combat. This also works for infantry squads.
On a 15 fighter squadron that is wounded twice, six fighters are either destroyed or damaged enough to be removed from combat (could be weapons damage, forced to withdraw, or blown to pieces). Once the total damage reaches Killed/destroyed results, the squadrons is wiped out or forced to retreat from crippling damage.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[garhkal]

[KageRyu]