This paragraph og GTA confuses me: "Once the advantage has been gained, on the following turn, the opponent may attepmt to cancel out the advantage by using GTA as well. This works as described earlier, but this check is one step more difficult for each time he or his opponent has successfully GTA against the other"

So:

1.- Does difficult reset to try the action? So, increased difficulty only applies when cancelling out GTA?

2.- Does cancelling out consider to be a use of GTA?

The way I have been handling it, cancelling out is not considered an use of GTA, and difficulty to try the action is reset to standard showed on corebook. If during the encounter both pilots have GTA once each, the the difficult to cancel out is increased by two. Is this the correct way?

Cancelling GtA means you simultaneously gain the advantage over your opponent. I think that is pretty much clear, at least that seem to be the intention and consensus on the matter. It requires an Action and it would be too much to require two full rounds to cancel and then gain the advantage over an opponent, it would slow combat needlessly. As it stands now, many people ignore GtA as it prevents the pilot from attacking that round, until the pilot gets the Master Pilot talent at least.

Whether or not you allow other gunners aboard the ship to gain the benefit is a matter of GM discretion, strictly speaking RAW states it applies only to the pilot, but from what Sam wrote me, it isn't game breaking or against the spirit of the rules to allow gunners to gain the benefit too, as usual it's left intentionally open to interpretation - so now you can start to categorise and put yours GM: bastard or in it for the fun?

There is no explicated rule on when or how the difficulty resets, but my own take on that is that it's lost once the pilot has attacked while having the advantage, or if no one has attempted to gain or cancel the advantage for a full round (for whatever reason).

So:

1: It applies for as long as both pilots are continuously trying to Gain the Advantage. So if you gain the advantage on me, my check would be increased once on my turn, if I succeed and you want to cancel/gain the advantage, your difficulty is increased twice.

2: Yes.

Of course this leads us into the issue, if you have the Master Pilot talent and gain the advantage and attack in the same round, are you still considered to have the advantage the following round? I'd say yes since the wording of the Action is pretty specific on that, I believe (although I'm AFB). Would this then mean that the opposing ship would have increased difficulty when trying to cancel/gain the advantage on it's turn? I'd say yes.

So, next thought: would multiple instances of GtA stack? I mean, this might not make sense, but if you have the Master Pilot talent, you can perform a GtA on the first round and then attack same turn. If my assumption above is correct - that GtA still lasts until the end of the ... advantageous players next turn - and the opposing ship doesn't manage to cancel the GtA, when it's your turn again you have the advantage, and two Actions to perform... That could either be two advantageous attacks (right?) or could you GtA once more to receive further upgrades for one attack that same turn?

Master Pilot is such a great talent!

Ok, i think i understand the action now. Putting aside Master Pilot (I haven't read about it yet) this leads me to another conclusion: there's a limit to the times you can perform GTA loop right? I mean, let's suppose you have gained the advantage twice on your enemy and the enemy did gained it once on you, all of them in a row. That would mean that at the fourth round, if your enemy tries to GTA again the difficulty will be three steps above. If standard difficulty is, for example, hard, there's no way he can perform GTA because it will exceed Formidable difficulty. Am I wrong?

Of course, the enemy can use a maneuver (or two) to try to accelerate and lower the initial difficulty...

Regarding the Master Pilot talent, now that I have read it, I agree with you in that the effect of GTA will last for the following round, as specified in the rules. However, I don't see how that will grant any advantage. You can perform only one action, not two, and GTA doesn't upgrade anything, just removes penalties from Evasive Maneuvers.

I suppose you can perform Evasive Maneuvers twice (so upgrading twice difficulties) but even in that case, GTA states that "pilot ignores all penalties imposed by his own and his opponent's use of the Evasive Maneuver..." so by RAW you don't need to stack GTA. I think that only if attacked by more that one starship performing GTA while still having advantage against the other ship will be useful, since then you would cancel penalties from the two ships.

He can of course try. Chances are slim, but there is no reason to not allow the attempt, it's a dogfight, the best (or most lucky) pilot wins. So the limit is only the characters ability, or luck, with the dice. I doubt you'll see many more than 3 attempts before one of them fails.

A-hah! I got that mixed up! Yes, only removing the evasive manoeuvres, well then it's not an issue.
That means for 4 strain you can GtA and attack three times over two rounds... ignoring Evasive Manoeuvres. Still perky I'd say.

Ah, I see now, you are converting one action (to attack) as a maneuver...wow. That's awesome. So it would be round 1, perform GTA and attack: round two, two attacks with the benefit of GTA if the other ship doesn't try to cancel it out... Again,wow!

Aye.

Two yellows, a green, and a boost die vs 6 purples still has around 35% chance of success.

(My McCool gambler tries not to annoy the GM with too much gambling. He gets sensitive when his tables full of tourists lose their flowered shirts.)

Whether or not you allow other gunners aboard the ship to gain the benefit is a matter of GM discretion, strictly speaking RAW states it applies only to the pilot, but from what Sam wrote me, it isn't game breaking or against the spirit of the rules to allow gunners to gain the benefit too, as usual it's left intentionally open to interpretation - so now you can start to categorise and put yours GM: bastard or in it for the fun?

This is weird, I asked the same regarding GtA to Sam, and I got this answer:

"(...) If the check succeeds, the pilot ignores all penalties imposed by his own and his opponent's use of the Evasive Maneuvers starship maneuver until the end of the following round.(...)

(...) In addition, the pilot also chooses which defense zone he hits with his attack. (...)"

Does that mean that the gunners of the YT-1300 do not get any benefit from the pilot's Gain the Advantage action?

Answered by Sam Stewart:

Actually, any shooting from the ship that has "gained the advantage" benefits from this action, including that of gunners.

Aye. Well. What can I say. It depends how pedantic you want to be about wording, I usually am quite pedantic about it. So my question reflected that I guess. His answer can be read here. On the very end of the first post on that page. It tells me that the main idea is fun, and I guess allowing GtA to apply to ship rather than specific character is more fun.

A-hah! I got that mixed up! Yes, only removing the evasive manoeuvres, well then it's not an issue.

That means for 4 strain you can GtA and attack three times over two rounds... ignoring Evasive Manoeuvres. Still perky I'd say.

As for attacking three times in two rounds: remember that any given weapon system can only fire once per round, regardless of number of gunners using it (or number of actions/manoeuvres used to fire it).