Starship Combat: Fire at Will

[Bloodfencer]

I have a question regarding the Fire at Will action during the Gunnery Phase. In the Core Rulebook it says "you can make two attacks with any weapon regardless of their firing arc" and you do so at -4 to both attack rolls.
Does this mean I can use this to make attacks with my port weapons to attack in the starboard arc? It seems like something like that would be more in the realm of the Stunts like Barrel Roll.
Since the phases technically happen at the same time, are we to assume that the gunner blasts at the enemy ship while both ships are still maneuvering?

[J4RH34D]

My understanding was that it's not like firing all the weapons in the same arc.
Say you have a ship on port and starboard.
You can use fire at will to fire weapons from both arcs into their respective arcs.

The starboard weapon cannot fire to port.

If you have two port weapons you could fire them both, or a port and starboard, or a port and fore. But you can only fire them in their normal arcs

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

It also lets you fire your turret weapon, and any other weapons which have targets in their arcs.

[Bloodfencer]

J4RH34D wrote:

My understanding was that it's not like firing all the weapons in the same arc.

Say you have a ship on port and starboard.
You can use fire at will to fire weapons from both arcs into their respective arcs.

The starboard weapon cannot fire to port.

If you have two port weapons you could fire them both, or a port and starboard, or a port and fore. But you can only fire them in their normal arcs

Oh so it would two attacks against two different targets? Excluding of course the situation where you also have turrets which can definitely shoot into the same arc as your stationary guns.

[Bloodfencer]

I guess what confused me was the phrasing "regardless of their firing arcs" which makes it sound like you can shoot a port weapon into any of the other arcs.

[J4RH34D]

Bloodfencer wrote:

J4RH34D wrote:

My understanding was that it's not like firing all the weapons in the same arc.

Say you have a ship on port and starboard.
You can use fire at will to fire weapons from both arcs into their respective arcs.

The starboard weapon cannot fire to port.

If you have two port weapons you could fire them both, or a port and starboard, or a port and fore. But you can only fire them in their normal arcs

Oh so it would two attacks against two different targets? Excluding of course the situation where you also have turrets which can definitely shoot into the same arc as your stationary guns.

That is my understanding.

So if you had a turret and a fore gun. You could fire both into the fore arc at the same target. Or the fore gun into the target at the fore and the turret into your rear arc at a target there

[J4RH34D]

Bloodfencer wrote:

I guess what confused me was the phrasing "regardless of their firing arcs" which makes it sound like you can shoot a port weapon into any of the other arcs.

I know. They could have phrased it better.

However not it doesn't say that you can target the same target regardless of firing arcs.
It doesn't say you can fire out of the arc either. So you have to do a but of mental gymnastics to figure out "what can I do regardless of arc?" I can shoot the gun. "Ok, so I can shoot it, what can I shoot it at?" Let's check the rules for what I can shoot a gun at. "I can shoot it at something in its arc". That makes sense to me atleast

[Claxon]

Bloodfencer wrote:

I guess what confused me was the phrasing "regardless of their firing arcs" which makes it sound like you can shoot a port weapon into any of the other arcs.

I believe the idea is that different weapon with different firing arcs have different control stations for those arc.

Fire at Will, I believe, lets you "move" between those different stations to fire any two weapons.

Normally a character is limited to firing weapons from only 1 firing arc each round (IIRC).

[mike roper]

As it stands one gunner fires one gun each round even if there are say 3 small lasers in the port arc and starborn. Fire at will allows that gunner to fire two and to pick which guns he files it does not allow him to ignore facing rules though