"What rules for this size of Star Wars scenarios?" Topic

I'm looking to recreate battles from the X-wing and Tie Fighter series of yore in miniature, and as wondering which rules work best?

Here's a couple of example battles (not the largest there are, mind you):

Four Ace X-Wing (one of them a Star) and four novice Y-Wing vs two freighters, covering are about 7 Ace T/Fs, but an STD jumps in and launches a squadron of 12 Ace T/I.

A later defend mission would have 4 X-W (again, one Star) and 4 A-W defending a CRV and a CRS against a STD, 4 GUN, 6 T/I and 20 T/B.

The rules I've got my eye on are of course 5150 Fighter command, but the game has to resolve generally within 3 hours, but also needs varying skill levels of fighters.

Capital ship combat should be resolved simply and quickly as they provide the backdrop for the fighters, but they are the key for mission objectives usually.

Would it be possible to thus resolve capships with the Star Navy rules – and maybe Imperial grunt fighters could be resolved in groups?

I think Fighter Command sounds more like the better fit, but that's just my opinion.

Can you do capitals in FC?

Would Star Navy AND Fighter Command be required? In what ways are they 'compatible'?

Doug

Star Navy and Fighter Command are two separate rule sets, so no, you don't need 1 to play the other. Yes, there are rules for cap ships in Fighter Command, I believe there's an entirely separate section handling cap ships, and I think it goes up to Carrier size, it might cover larger ships though. :)

Ed (THE Ed that is…) provided an example for Fighter Command on his blog, where he lined up a broadside of a frigate (I think it was a frigate) along an entire table edge, basically the escorts for the frigate were to destroy the incoming bombers before they could take out the frigate (cap ship). Looked like an interesting way to handle it. There are several bat reps floating around showing examples of Fighter Command, that way you can see if it fits your needs or not…maybe it doesn't. :)

here's a link to the bat rep on the THW blog:
link

And no, I'm not affiliated with THW, just like their games! :)

Star Navy and Fighter Command are two separate rule sets, so no, you don't need 1 to play the other.

Wasn't my question, but your example doesn't answer it either. 'Are both required to have both battles?'

Does FC have capital-on-capital combat as well?

Doug

I believe I answered your question when I said "Yes, there are rules for Cap Ships in Fighter Command", so, Yes, Capital ships can fight one another. There are lots of bat reps floating around.

I know there are capship rules in Fighter command, but it's true that I want them to play second fiddle to the fighter action. Then again, I don't want them to be merely "scenario special rules" – the fighters need to be able to interact with them. Again, most scenarios revolve around them and their fates.

A midway point between Fighter Command and Star Navy, where there's room for Star fighter pilots and differentiated fighter and pilot qualities, but the fighters acting in groups or flights (but not with an "abstract number of fighters per flight) might work best.

I seem to recall some battle reports for FC with fairly large flight groups (12 fighters a side?) so I think you could squeeze this into a standard FC game.

Also, IIRC the original computer game missions correctly, it was VERY rare for all of the enemy's fighters to show up at once, usually they showed up in waves as prior waves got destroyed or other in game events happened (for game engine reasons, but there's viable behind the scenes explanations). So in your first example, the reinforcing STD would launch a flight of 3 T/I (or whatever), followed by another flight of 3 T/I as the first was destroyed, and so forth.

-Will

Well of course the launches wouldn't be related to the destruction of craft but rather the actual launch capacity. A squadron would be launched as one unless for some reason only a part was ready for launch before the STD jumped in.

To summarize, it looks like I'm looking for a system that does fighters as flights consisting of 1 to 4 fighters, and doesn't treat the fighters as "one stand of generic fighters" destroyed on one die roll as in most fleet scale rules.