I'm a pretty brand new GM to most of this stuff, feeling my way around and learning the system.

One question I have is establishing initiative in space battles and how you handle NPCs when you've got your players vs. an NPC ship.

For example, you have 4 PCs and they're on a YT-1300. I am flying an NPC YT-2400 against them. When we roll for initiative here are my questions:

1. do I treat the YT-2400 as one roll and then I am only entitled to make one move per round in the encounter? OR

2. Do I decide how many NPCs are operating within the YT-2400 and make a roll for each of them into the initiative slot? OR

3. Do I again treat it as one initiative slot but during that one initiative can I make a piloting check and a gunnery check and a repair check, etc.

Thanks!

You could just use one initiative roll if you like for the NPC ship, or you could roll separately. Each NPC assigned to doing something can do whatever, so even if you make one initiative roll you can make a Pilot check, fire weapons, spoof missiles, etc. As long as there are crewmembers assigned to the specific task. One initiative roll vs all of them rolling separately is more a matter of not having to track a bunch of slots needlessly. If you feel its appropriate though and will just mean 3 or 4 and that's ok, do what works for you.

Yeah, it depends on how you've got the crew laid out, but #2 is the way it should work