I’m not finished with this one yet, the drive and full speed numbers need to be worked out, but for anyone who liked the last post here is some more to chew on.

Trying to fill out our airplane statistics and I have a nice template fighter, but I want to show a little more variation between what are all essentially Level 3-4 Gargantuan air vehicles. IF you’re going to do Aerial Combat with nothing but Gargantuan vehicles I would like to suggest using 50ft squares to keep the maps and movement to a manageable size. The more that I think about using the NPC fighters based on monsters instead of vehicles or starships I will likely give them Good and Master skills as monsters or ship crew of their CR. Gunnery can equal their normal skill same as it does for starships.

Some of the fighters will be bumped up to the next level of weapon damage (2d10 Medium Reaction cannon)because while they have a rifle caliber bullet they have 6-8 of them. I may start from the minimum CR required for the damage of the guns and backwards from there, but a clumsy fighter with huge cannons might not be better all around than a nimble fighter with the correct size guns for its frame. Basing vehicle Tier only on weapon damage makes every fighter a minimum Tier 6 vehicle. The 2d10 medium cannon fighters would be minimum Tier 10. Anything with .50 caliber machine guns Tier 13, 20mm cannon Tier 15, 30mm cannon like the GAU-8 on an A-10 a Tier 18, while lesser powered 30mm only rate Tier 17. Giving generous logarithmic scaling to the impact of higher weapon damages I get Tier 22 (11d10) for the 120mm smoothbore of an M1 Abrams tank. I get about a theoretical Tier 28 for 16d10 on a 16 inch guns on a WWII Battleship. If you do the character to starship scaling thing and divide damage by 10 thats a 2d8 approximately the same as a Coilgun. Battleship fans don’t cry, that’s just the impact a hunk of lead, none of the numbers currently account  for armor piercing or other effects used by modern weapons. Also in starship terms WWII Battleships had 3 turrets with 3 cannons each, 9 coilguns doing 36d4 (just shy of the Supergraser’s 2d8x10). in a broadside is going to ruin somebody’s day.

In 2010 BAE Systems tested a railgun that hurled a 7 pound projectile (lighter than the 120mm smoothbore) at 11,000 fps (twice the speed), for about 2 times the impact as the 120mm gun or 20th the impact of the battleship gun. This would give the railgun a theoretical Tier 24 type damage of 12d10, closer to the Laser Net on starship scale.

I can’t go looking at every fighter’s blueprints, so right now we’re somewhere between the 32 hp of a 3rd level spellcaster and 40 hp of a 3rd level combatant and guided roughly by the Hit Points by weight Rich Redman created for D20 Modern vehicles. Rich had a very lumpy 5/10/15 and 20 hardness for his vehicles from family cars to tanks. Starfinder seems to just gradually give more hardness over 20 levels, I might take a hybrid approach as some WWII aircraft were all metal bodies on all metal frame, while others were thin metal skins over wooden frames and the WWI aircraft were cloth stretched over wooden frames. The damage listed below means typical fighters can only take a few hits which is fairly true to my intention, but take still more hits than some current Starfinder vehicles which people say go down too easy. The problem with using damage as the only metric is that a Tier 13 fighter with .50 cal machineguns does 3d10+13 or 29 points on average and has from 190-225 hit points combined with just 5 points of hardness it will take 8 or more hits to kill it. That doesn’t feel thrilling or cinematic.

Do we throw in some popcorn minions that do full damage and act normally but explode after one hit, combined with some named enemy ace pilots that are as durable as a monster fighting a whole party is supposed to be?

Ideally I want crunchy minions that could explode on a critical hit, possibly just two good shots. As I start adding in Rockets and Missiles as well as damage for Armor Piercing and High Explosive Anti Tank type rounds, the problem may just go away by itself. At Tier 6 the WWI fighters would only have 75-90 hit points and guns doing 1d10+6 or 11 points on average with 5 hardness that’s 15 shots to kill one, I’m probably going to have to give the fighters linked machineguns or something to get over this. As the cannons get bigger we see fewer of them being mounted so it might be just an early fighter problem.

The Starship Operations Manual is supposed to have rules for Aerial dog fighting so maybe this will all be obsolete in a few months. It also looks like my Area 88 GM got all of his Aerial Maneuvers from Blood and Guts Modern Military.

Please ignore the extraneous 1s, the tables are easier to work with if they have something in the cells.

Name	Level	Price	Type	Speed	EAC/KAC	HP/Hardness	Collision	Gunnery	Modifiers	Systems
Curtiss P-40	3	$44,892	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 334 mph	14/16 Partial Cover	40(25)/5 8,515 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Messerschmitt Bf 109	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 320 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	38(25)/5 6,940 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P 2x 13mm	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 314 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	40(25)/5 7,397 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P 1x 12.7 2x 7.62	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Nakajima Ki-27	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 314 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	34(20)/5 3,496 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Polikarpov I-15	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 220 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	32(20)/5 3,120 lbs	7d4 DC 8	1d10 P 4x 7.62	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Mustang	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 314 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	40(25)/5	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Spitfire	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 370 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	38(25)/5 6,622 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P 8x .303	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Mitsubishi A6m Zero	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 331 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	38(25)/5 6,164 lbs	7d4 DC 8	3d10 P 2x 20mm	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Fokker D.III	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 100 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	26(15)/5 1,565 lbs	7d4 DC 8	1d10 P 2x 7.92mm	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Albatros D.III	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 117 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	28(15)/5 2,176 lbs	7d4 DC 8	1d10 P 2x 8mm	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Macchi C.202	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 370 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	38(25)/5 6,460 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P 2x 12.7mm 2x .303	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio
Macchi M.33	3	$	Gargantuan air vehicle	155 ft., full 330 ft., 168 mph	11/11 Partial Cover	32(20)/5 2,990 lbs	7d4 DC 8	2d10 P	+2 Piloting, -2 Attack (–5 full spd)	Radio

Warhawk fighter (Curtiss P-40)

Level: 3
Price: $44,892
Type: Gargantuan air vehicle (37.3 ft. wide, 31.7 ft. long, 10.8 ft. high)
Speed: 155 ft., full 330 ft., 334 mph
EAC: 11; KAC: 11; Cover: partial cover (the KAC/EAC are suggested by Ultimate Vehicles, a CR 3 combatant construct would have EAC 14, KAC 16)
HP: 9 (4); Hardness: 5                                (The Warhawk would have 40 hp in D20 Modern by Rich Redman’s vehicle building rules, listed are from Ultimate Vehicles) A CR 3 Combatant Construct built with the Monster rules from Alien Archive would also have 40 hp.
Attack (Collision) 7d4 B (DC 8)
Attack medium reaction cannon (2d10 P) Curtiss P-40 Warhawks had 6 .50 cal machine guns
Modifiers: +2 Piloting, –2 attack (–5 at full speed)
System:  comm unit

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Comm Unit (Radio)
Warhawk fighters have radios for issuing orders from the squadron leader to the other planes. The radios of the 1930s were limited range.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3

Level: 3
Price: $
Type: Gargantuan air vehicle (33’6″ ft. wide, 37’1″ ft. long, 10’10” ft. high)
Speed: 155 ft., full 330 ft., 314 mph
EAC: 14; KAC: 16; Cover: partial cover
HP: 40 (25); Hardness: 5
Attack (Collision) 7d4 B (DC 8)
Attack medium reaction cannon (2d10 P) Curtiss P-40 Warhawks had 6 .50 cal machine guns
Modifiers: +2 Piloting, –2 attack (–5 at full speed)
System:  comm unit

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Comm Unit (Radio)
Warhawk fighters have radios for issuing orders from the squadron leader to the other planes. The radios of the 1930s were limited range.

Lets try some Aerial Combat stuff, but also sprinkle a little Starfinder Unchained degree of success on top.

Stunts

Back Off

The starship moves up to half its speed in the direction of the aft edge without changing facing. It can’t take any turns during this movement. To perform this stunt, you must succeed at a Piloting check (DC = 10 + 1 – 1/2 × your starship’s tier). On a failed check, your starship moves backward only 1 hex. If you fail this check by 5 or more, your starship does not move at all and takes a –4 penalty to its AC and TL until the start of the next round.

I kind of want to turn this into a Cobra, Hammerhead, or something else where a pilot just stops in mid air and the pursuer just keeps going past.

Barrel Roll

To perform this stunt, your starship must be Large or smaller and you must succeed at a Piloting check (DC = 10 + 1–1/2 × your starship’s tier). This is the Eratta DC.
Critical Success – The starship moves up to half its speed and flips along its central axis. For the next gunnery phase, the starship’s port shields and weapons function as if they were in the starboard firing arc and vice versa. The starship reverts to normal at the beginning of the next round. +Random bonus
Success – The starship moves up to half its speed and flips along its central axis. For the next gunnery phase, the starship’s port shields and weapons function as if they were in the starboard firing arc and vice versa. The starship reverts to normal at the beginning of the next round.
Failure – The starship moves half its speed but doesn’t roll.
Critical Failure – Your starship moves half its speed, doesn’t roll, and takes a –4 penalty to its AC and TL until the start of the next round.

Wow the Critical failure for Barrel Roll is worse than for Evade. Since we don’t have shields I should look into making these Displacement Rolls. Actual Barrel rolls help the attacker cut inside an defender’s turn.

Evade

To perform this stunt, you must succeed at a Piloting check (DC = 10 + 1 – 1/2 × your Starship’s tier).  This is the Eratta DC.
Critical success – The *ship* moves up to its speed and can turn as normal, but it gains a +4 circumstance bonus to its AC and TL until the start of the next round.
Success – The *ship* moves up to its speed and can turn as normal, but it gains a +2 circumstance bonus to its AC and TL until the start of the next round.
Failure – The starship moves as normal.
Critical Failure – The starship moves as normal, but it also takes a –2 penalty to its AC and TL until the start of the next round.

If you noticed the original Starfinder text says (If you fail the check by 5 or more) and gives what I’m calling the Crit fail, there have always been fail by 5 or more consequences in D20 since 3.0 the degree of success just codifies it a little more and lets the GM give you more for rolling well. I’m thinking that the critical success should get more than a numerical bonus, like shaving a movement off a turn or an extra square of movement, but I am undecided. Maybe a list of random piloting benefits that are nice to have but random so you can’t always count on the one you want coming up.

Flip and Burn

The ship moves forward up to half its speed (without turning) and rotates 180 degrees to face the aft edge at the end of the movement. To perform this stunt, you must succeed at a Piloting check (DC = 15 + 1 – 1/2 × your ship’s tier). If you fail this check, your starship moves forward half its speed but doesn’t rotate.

Inside an atmosphere this is just an Immelmann or Split-S.

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