I'm a new GM, starting my group's first major campaign. I have combat down, as well as basic conversation skills, but I'm not sure how to explain vehicle movement and action to my Players. Their first vehicle action will be a high speed chase on speeder bikes through the streets of a backworld's major settlement.

Chases are easy. Start at whatever speed makes sense. Costs a maneuver to speed up, and if you're involved in the chase your default action is going to be an opposed Pilot (Planetary) check. Movement is relative to the other parties involved in the chase. Speed determines the difficulty: sometimes being faster can make it easier to chase down the opponent, but at other times being faster means you'll have more difficulty maneuvering in tight spaces.

You can do other things depending on range, for example if you're at Close vehicle range you could move the encounter to personal scale and allow the players to get some attacks in, or jump from speeder to speeder, etc. Just narrate accordingly, explain things in simple ways like "he's going faster than you are, but is having to bank hard to make turns because of his speed. You can either try to match his speed or try to out-maneuver him and cut him off before he gets to a straightaway."

The most important element in chases is description: that from the GM, and that from the players. Get them involved in describing the scene and it should be a piece of cake to run and adjudicate.

One last thing, once you've started, forget about the rules. Don't go back to the rulebook for anything; just run it as best as you can and check the rules afterwards.

Thanks for the advice! That sounds like good sense to me.

The mpst difficult thing to grasp is that difficulty for weapons systems is based on relative size of the target's silhouette to your own.

Say Sarev is at Medium Range from me and moving away at Speed 2 and i am at the Speeder bike of Speed 3.

In a Round all PCs and NPCs actions happen almost simultaneously,

So if my Speeder Bike uses 1 Maneuver to go from Close to Short and 1 Maneuver to go from Short to Medium, shouldn't Sarev have already moved

with his Speed 2 AT LEAST 1 MORE range band? (Medium) to Long?

I mean since the attacking Characters act simultaneously, All movements should Occur first using Initiative and after the FINAL RELATIVE POSITIONS are SET, then the Attack should Begin, if the range permits it and using the INITIATIVE

No, don’t think linear - You reacted faster than Sarev so you spotted a break in the trees, gunned your bike between them and took a shot before he could react

It’s not a simple drag race

Some threadcromancy going on in here.

I thought you dont use manuever to change positions. Highest pilot check moves 1 range and highest speed for the vehicle also moves one range. You use your manuevers for other (manuever actions still).