Rules say: "When a ship passes near or through one of these treacherous obstacles, the pilot might need to make an appropiate Piloting check, even if he's attempting a starship maneuver that tipically wouldn't require one"

I understand that making a skill check is normally an action, but in this case I am not sure. if it was an action, then a pilot in an x-wing dogfighting a TIE in a dense asteroid field won't be able to shoot at all, since it will spend an action in every turn just to navigate through the phenomena.

My interpretation is: "if you are performing a maneuver that normally wouldn't require a skill check, like Fly/Drive or Stay on Target, then you have to perform a skill check as part of the maneuver. If you are not performing any maneuver at all, then you perform a skill check as a maneuver"

Considering this a maneuver comes from "This starship maneuver's difficulty is based on ths ship's speed...", mentioned in the rules as well.

Opinions?

So, to make it short, look here. I've asked the developers about this.

In short: pilot check = action. Although there shouldn't be necessarily be a need to make a check each and every round for each and every manoeuvre. Also, good (awesome) pilots get Master Pilot talent asap.

It's like, anytime the game asks you to roll some dice it's hinting that what yer character's doing requires the majority of their attention.

Master Pilot becomes much cooler when you think of it this way; you're no longer concentrating - piloting has become almost pure instinct.

Understood. What would be then the difference between stellar phenomena and hazard? When do you set difficulty based on siolhouette and speed and when you just add some setback dice? Can anybody make an example?

I'm away from the book but I'd guess phenomena would be anything that'd make the pilot's job harder*

(adding one or more black Setback dice) whereas actual hazards would be stuff that could damage the ship**.

I'd do the Speed+Sil thing only when crashing into something solid.

Episode 25 of the Order 66 podcast was a Space Combat special and featured Sam Stewart (lead developer).

It's really long but it's the guy who wrote the rules explaining them so is pretty exhaustive.

* Nebula, ion/electrical fields, gravitational effects (e.g. an Interdictor's gravity projector).

** Big-ass rocks, other vessels/debris, (enemy) mines, canyons and towers.

I'd usually combine a silhouette/speed difficulties with setback dice - opinions vary, but I think it can easily be warranted.

If I recall correctly the Crates of Krayts adventure in the EotE beta book had some set difficulties when it came to navigating traffic on Nar Shaddaa, and through some duct work stuff - these had a set difficulty, which varied on whether the Pilot check was done using the (planetary) or (space) skill.

I guess you could simplify it to this: how important and dangerous is the challenge/encounter, and how important is speed in these scenarios to the difficulty. Of course one could argue that speed is always important, but from a narrative perspective, sometimes speed is of less relevance than the actual manoeuvre or environment - particularly in relation to the importance of the encounter to the plot, story and group.

When navigating a canyon at high speed, one could set the difficulty at a predetermined level, for instance Average or Hard, add a setback die or two (and then upgrades if speeds are really high). Navigating an asteroid field would, in my opinion, be more dependant upon speed/silhouette as the environment is moving around independent of the ship - whereas the canyon is stationary (unless you're on a smallish large asteroid ). So the asteroid field would include both speed/silhouette pool, plus an appropriate number of setback dice.

So, an example. Skimming the surface of the Death Star II, underneath the firing angles of most batteries, would for instance be a Hard to Daunting difficulty, add 1-2 setback dice, and if speed is 4-5 I'd add an upgrade, two upgrades at speed 6.

When entering Death Star II, I'd generate a difficulty based on speed/silhouette, add 2-3 setback dice - and probably flip a destiny point for another upgrade of difficulty - if I was feeling mean that is.

I guess you could do it the other way around, but my reasoning is that the latter check is more dangerous, imperative for victory and only the most skilled pilots should attempt and succeed navigating such an environment, an environment which sort of becomes an opponent and where speed is of the essence, whereas in the former check the environment is more a set piece and backdrop to the manoeuvre, and not hardly in as a confined space.