So after a few month of playing an mostly avoiding space combat due to our lack of understanding and my players empathy toward it so far I decided to try and tackle space and get a good understanding of it. But there's one fundamental thing I just don't understand as it pertains to speed with vehicles. After reading this section on starships and speed I get that it takes a certain amount of maneuvers to change range bands like from short to close or close to short. But the first part of the sentence doesn't make any sense to me what does "One starship maeuver to move within close range of a target or object" mean? Any clarity or help would be appreciated thank you.

It's basically the same thing as this in personal scale combat.

"Moving within short range. Performing this maneuver allows an unengaged character to move to another position that is currently within short range of him."

So in personal scale combat say you're trading shots with a fella in the cantina and you're both at Short range, and you have a buddy that goes down also within Short range and you want to go to them to do whatever, it still costs you a Maneuver to change positions within Short range.

In ship combat say you're within Close range shooting at a ship, and then decide you want to land in their hangar. You aren't changing range bands but it's still a Maneuver to make that move.

My thought was the first sentence meant one starship maneuver to move to another object or target within the same range band?

Generic positioning within the range band isn't all that relevant in ongoing combat. The ship rules are muddy to be sure, but it's more about doing something within that band that requires movement and is going to encompass something beyond just flying around and shooting at one another. So like my example, you're in that range band and instead of just flying around shooting at the capital ship you decide to land in the bay and board that sucka, or you're gonna ram them, or you're gonna fly into the asteroid cave they can't fit into, etc.

Gotcha that make sense thanks for the help.

Gotcha that make sense thanks for the help.

NP, enjoy. Don't feel badly either, I avoid ship combat as well, I tend to just stick to chase rules/scenarios and skip the pitched battle stuff.

Gotcha that make sense thanks for the help.

NP, enjoy. Don't feel badly either, I avoid ship combat as well, I tend to just stick to chase rules/scenarios and skip the pitched battle stuff.

Yeah it's hard one of my favorite parts about star wars is the epic space battle and chase scenes.

Chase is easy, it's the battles that get hard. I think the break down lies in that crunchy tabletop tactical sim games fill in the time with the multitude of rules and strategic number crunching approach. In this game the GM has to put more effort into the environment and circumstances of the battle in order to make it more appealing and interesting. The tactical games can be as simple as Fleet X engages Fleet Y in the booga booga system to seize the cotton candy asteroid mines, and that's all players need. The details of what's involved for forces does the rest. In the RPG more thought has to go into the battlefield then the battle I think.