Does a gunner have to declar WHICH gun and/or arc he is on at the beginning of the round? Or does he just have to declare that he is A gunner?
Also, does a gunner on a turret have to choose which arch the turret is facing at the start of each round, or when he goes to fire it?
In short, is being on a turret more like Star Wars (running from one side of the ship to the other) or more like Star Trek (standing behind a console and firing everything)? :D
Hm, interesting questions. For SFS, I've always ruled that the gunner has to state which gun they're on at the beginning of the round, but can swivel the turret towards any facing when they go to shoot at the end of the round. I just assumed that's how they work, but I don't have a rules quotation to back them up.
A starship can have at most one gunner (or gunner team) per weapon mount.
As the GM, I'm taking that to mean it's like Star Wars: You actually have to choose to man a specific weapons array when you declare as a gunner at the start of the turn. If there are multiple weapons in a given mount, I would say the one gunner can control any or all of them.
For turrets, I would say you choose which arc to fire in at the time you attack. That is the benefit of a turret, they are more expensive for a reason.
I would say Star Trek style centralized weapon controls should be possible, but should also be an upgrade that costs BP for each weapon linked into it.
Interesting, we took it to mean that declaring yourself as "gunner" was enough for the start of the round. What gun(s) you decide to fire is part of the gunner phase, much like how engineers decide what engineering actions to do during the engineering phase. Like Jhaeman I can't really point to a rules quotation, that's just how we took it to work.
This is covered on page 324.
Shoot (Gunnery Phase)
You can fire one of your starship’s weapons. If you use a turret weapon, you can target a ship in any arc.
You simply declare you are a gunner; you declare neither what gun you are assigning yourself to, nor what arc your turret is facing - both are declared later, when you take the Shoot action. Even if you did assign yourself to a specific gun, the assignment would do nothing - every Gunner action that actually exists (Fire at Will, Shoot, Broadside, and Precise Targeting) lets you dynamically choose your gun, as it says in the action. This is particularly true of a Point weapon, which lets any current Gunner fire it, without preassignment.
A weapon mount refers to an individual weapon unless you have two weapons on the same arc that are linked together (they have to be the same weapon to link them, IIRC). There are some weapons that take two mount points, but those count as a single weapon.
At least, that's how I read it.
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Per page 294, the base frame defines starting weapon mounts. Looking at the frames that follow on page 295+, it appears that "mounts" refer to arcs and/or turret. It further defines a "mount" as being heavy or light.
On page 304 under Array, it states that an Array weapon uses two weapon mounts.
Page 305 has language about upgrading a weapon mount and adding a new weapon mount. It also defines how many weapon mounts can be put into an arc or turret.
So from all this, I agree with pithica42, a weapon mount refers to a single weapon unless the weapons are linked, then it is two weapons that fire at once using only 1 gunnery check.
Well that's good enough for me, looks like I interpreted it wrong. But how I was doing it still works in play thematically for now, they have an old rustbucket with only a couple weapons as their starting ship which I wasn't intending them to keep for long, so once they upgrade to a newer vessel they can get the benefit of declaring dynamically.
Well that's good enough for me, looks like I interpreted it wrong. But how I was doing it still works in play thematically for now, they have an old rustbucket with only a couple weapons as their starting ship which I wasn't intending them to keep for long, so once they upgrade to a newer vessel they can get the benefit of declaring dynamically.
That seems like a nice way to do it, makes the players appreciate the base gunnery system more
The way I'm reading it. If you've got 2 weapons in each arc (lets say each 2 are fire linked) and a turret on your ship, and only 1 'gunner', when its time to fire the gunner can use the turret and whatever arc is appropriate, but then has to choose which one to actually use. They can fire the turret or they can fire one of the 2 firelinked guns.
If on the other hand you had 2 gunners, 1 could use the turret and the other can fire the guns in the appropriate arc. If you have broad arc guns and a couple more gunners you could fire the turret plus 3 out of 4 arcs potentially.
Or if you're a pilot with no gunner you could choose an appropriate arc, or the turret to snap fire.
This game is Star Wars outside the ships and Star Trek inside the ships.
Having the gunner pick a quadrant at the beginning of the round would just slow starship combat even more, and actually contradicts the RAW:
Fire at Will (Gunnery Phase, Push)
You can fire any two starship weapons, regardless of their arc. Each attack is made at a –4 penalty.