Woohoo!My 2 years of planning for a game, is almost coming to actual dice on table.

Just picked up Lead by Example, like the Mass Combat rules. I have no pilot PCs and will be staging most of the game on a corellian corvette exploring unknown space and dealing with the odd imperial cruiser (small star destroyer for a climax or two).

Mostly our adventures won't have anything to do with space and when it does it will be scripted segments. Though I will certainly have at least one leadership guy, so was planning on mostly skipping space combat and using the Mass Combat rules instead.

Though the book lists space combat as an option for mass combat, most the examples focus on ground combat.. anyone got any experience with it? Any counsel?

I'm running a campaign with a lot of the same themes as yours, and used the Mass Combat rules (Arda ones at the time, but not hugely different) during a space battle.

Essentially it works in an identical fashion to on the ground, just with "IN SPESS!" added. So you run the battle for a round or so, or run a specific encounter related to the larger battle, then you make the combat check. The results of the check will then dictate adjustments made to the larger fight that you then apply to the battle/encounter.

In my case the battle started in an asteroid field where the players where ambushing a damaged Escort Carrier and a repair ship (Gozanti).

The fight a few turns, and then made a check. Went about like this IIRC:

Success:The Gozanti bugged out, ceasing to actively fight and made a run for it.-> Failure w Threat, The Carrier launched a squadron of Bombers-> Success w advantage The carrier's flight deck took significant damage halting launches->failure with advantage the fight moved out of the asteroid field-> failure w Despair Imperial reinforcements arrived, the players backed off, encounter ended.

The rules they give, to me, are nore guidelines for interpretation. On the table, it lists space combat examples of sizes of forces (1 ability die for a bunch of freighters somewhat armed to 5 which is like a battlefleet).

Just follow the steps and use your judgement. Think about the make up of the space forces and assign die accordingly. Does the PCs have only a few freighters that have been armed? Most likely one ability die. They have a couple of CR90s and a squad of XWings? Probably 2 or 3.

Your leadership PC would then upgrade those ability dice to proficiency with their leadership ranks. 2 ranks means 2 upgrades. You fill out the difficulty and challenge die the same way.

Roll and RP out the situation. They suggest that you have a few combat turns with the PCs to influence the fight (IE awarding more blue or black dice ontop of all the other factors), but since none of your PCs would really be able to do that, find other solutions. Maybe the PCs come up with some tactic for their forces to implement that will give them an advantage (Fighting near a debris field so that you prevent enemy capital ships from effectively engaging with your forces, etc).