That's a good point, I wonder if it's so challenging to design because we see such variety across the entire Star Wars Cannon media in how things are moved and how easy it is.

I imagine it is quite challenging. Designing a balanced game that is based upon a movie in which the writers either do not care or are actively showing how UNbalanced the characters are.

I think Richard's suggestion of costing the power and extra pip per silhouette upgrade is the right way. The strength upgrade should only increase the maximum you can carry but you should invest more to be able to do it. In this case it does make sense with FR 2 that you would be able to do it from time to time or more constantly with FR 3 (costing at least 3 pips) but it will not be so much overpowered compared to weapons and thus will keep the balance.

Can Move be used on Living beings, including beasts, PC's, NPC's, and Droids?

When using Move to take something from Engaged to Extreme range in a single action without the Control upgrade to cause damage does the entire travel time happen in a single round?

If not then do you have guidance on how long it should take?

When using Bind, in particular the Control upgrade for moving your target, do you need to activate the base power and immobilise your target before being able to move them? Or can you spend only a single Force Point on activating the power to only move the target a single range band?

Can the Bind control talent that moves the target one range band closer or further away be used to push/pull the target into/through an obstacle?

If yes, what damage would the target and/or obstacle take?

When using Bind, only "targets, others & enemies" are mentioned as to what you can target with the power. Can one use Bind on living beings such as animals & non-living beings, such as droids?

If yes, is there a silhouette limit on the Bind power?

If no one has anything to add to this ill submit it with fingers crossed.

The three things I find to be the biggest weak points in the rules is that it takes too few force points to move particularly large objects, that there is nothing that sets the speed at which objects can be moved, and there is no rule in place for catching/deflecting objects.

It should take more force points to move huge objects because having it be trivially easy to move huge things simply isn't consistent with the movies, and being able to reach epic levels of power with Move by just buying upgrades instead of actually needing to spend epic amounts of force points makes it kind of absurd compared to other powers.

There should be a set speed at which objects move because being able to move anything in the battlefield 4 rangebands in a single turn is in many ways a better control power than any dedicated control power.

Catching/Deflecting objects happens a lot in the movies and shows and presently isn't a thing at all. I'd much rather someone use move to deflect a Sil0 grenade that's coming at the party than throw a Sil3 piece of floor.

Some thoughts for house rules to Move:

--Require spending a destiny point every time a player uses Move to attack. I like this because it preserves the feel of the movies, in that telekinetic attacks can have a big effect but are only rarely used compared with lightsabers (something I also really liked about Saga Edition Force powers).

--Increase the cost to move larger objects in the following way: Silhouette 1 requires one upgrade point, Silhouette 2 requires 1+2=3 upgrades, Sil3 requires 1+2+3=6, etc. This maintains the feel that it was an impressive feat for Yoda to lift the X-wing, rather than something a Padawan with the right power upgrades could do.

--Further increase the difficulty to hit with larger Silhouette objects: If you're trying to hit a Sil1 target with a Sil2 object, that's +1 difficulty; hitting Sil1 with Sil3 is +2 difficulty; hitting a Sil2 target with Sil2 is no extra difficulty. Or add black dice instead of difficulty dice in this way.

The three things I find to be the biggest weak points in the rules is that it takes too few force points to move particularly large objects, that there is nothing that sets the speed at which objects can be moved, and there is no rule in place for catching/deflecting objects.

It should take more force points to move huge objects because having it be trivially easy to move huge things simply isn't consistent with the movies, and being able to reach epic levels of power with Move by just buying upgrades instead of actually needing to spend epic amounts of force points makes it kind of absurd compared to other powers.

There should be a set speed at which objects move because being able to move anything in the battlefield 4 rangebands in a single turn is in many ways a better control power than any dedicated control power.

Catching/Deflecting objects happens a lot in the movies and shows and presently isn't a thing at all. I'd much rather someone use move to deflect a Sil0 grenade that's coming at the party than throw a Sil3 piece of floor.

Except of course that doing so requires

1. A good force rating 3+ which requires at least 100+ xp

2. A lot of strength upgrades which requires a heavy investment in move.

So basically its not easy to reach that point.

There is a set movement speed for objects using move.

Using the basic move power you are looking at 1 range band, range only lets you move objects that are further away and does nothing to increase the speed that the object moves. (Still confused on how you don't get this)

Hurl lets you move objects faster by throwing them.

There is a set movement speed for objects using move.

Using the basic move power you are looking at 1 range band, range only lets you move objects that are further away and does nothing to increase the speed that the object moves. (Still confused on how you don't get this)

Hurl lets you move objects faster by throwing them.

Basic Power: Spend 1 Force Point to move a Silhouette 0 object within Short range up to their maximum range.

I think it's fairly clear in that description that if you activate your range upgrades the object can go from Short to whatever your maximum is in a single round, which could be as far as Extreme.

There is already a Dev answered question saying that the range an object can be from you to start with is also affected by the range upgrades. So an object can go just as far in the other direction too.

Except of course that doing so requires

1. A good force rating 3+ which requires at least 100+ xp

2. A lot of strength upgrades which requires a heavy investment in move.

So basically its not easy to reach that point.

Yes, but it requires three or four times more XP to do anywhere close to as much damage with any other force power, so this whole "But it costs XP to do this" argument doesn't in any way absolve Move from being way too powerful compared to the other force powers in the game.

I mean compare it to Unleash, a dedicated damage dealing power. It gets Willpower + Successes in damage + 4 damage for every activation of strength, + Burn 2 with an extra force point. It costs 2 FP to activate the basic power, 1 FP to activate range, 1 FP to activate duration for the burn, and 1 FP for each activation of strength. So, in order to get in the realm of 30 damage with Burn, which isn't even close to as deadly as inflicting it all in one go because you can soak multiple times, stim up or try to put out the fire, you'd have to spend 5 FP. In order to get to 30 damage in one chunk you'd have to activate strength a whopping 6 times, making the power cost a grand total of 9FP, just to get a similar result of what you can get on 3FP with Move.

The power also costs significantly more XP to purchase by the way. And yea, you also get Protect when you purchase Unleash, but Move does a whole lot of stuff other than throw things at enemies too.

That's a good point, I wonder if it's so challenging to design because we see such variety across the entire Star Wars Cannon media in how things are moved and how easy it is.

It'd say it's more challenging design because telekinesis is an incredibly flexible power in what it can be made to do. WotC's last attempt to have telekinesis be as comprehensive as possible was in their Revenge of the Sith compilation web document, and that took more than a page to try and cover everything.

So unless FFG wants to go down the same road of trying to legislate every little thing, there's only so much they can do. Jay Little as an RPG game designer is very much about letting the GM have creative freedom when implementing rules, as well as leaving things loose enough that players don't feel completely straight-jacketed, but that there's still enough structure that the players and GM don't waste valuable play time arguing over the rules.

After all, pointless bickering over rules interpretations are what internet forums are for

Ya know, if you simply cut one or two Strength upgrades out of the tree, it really solves the problem of throwing huge things at low levels. At FR 1, the most you could possibly throw is a speederbike, which seems okay for someone who has spend a lot of time honing his telekinesis. At FR 2 and 3, you can reliably start grabbing bigger and bigger things, but you're going to have a hard time moving anything truly massive, as you still need to activate the Range upgrades. It becomes quite a bit cheaper to buy up the whole tree, but you need to be stronger in the Force to really go for raw power. If you're skilled, you can instead start auto-firing rocks and shards of glass with the Magnitude upgrades.

It doesn't really address the issue of throwing people off of things, but in my opinion, Destiny Points are there to prevent "Save or Die" conditions. If you Force Throw Johnny Stormtrooper off a cliff at an easy difficulty, who cares? If your opening move against Darth Fartknocker is to do the same, and you succeed at a much higher difficulty, you can be darn sure I'm spending a DP to have him land on a lower ledge. Yes, you've done quite a bit of damage and put him in a precarious position, but I ain't letting him go out like that. Of course, if you goad the GM into spending all his Destiny Points, and then chuck him off the cliff, I think you've earned that victory.

Yeah, trying to say that Move can't be used on characters (player or non-player) based on the power description using "objects" is a major case of incredibly petty rules lawyering.

While I agree Move can be used on people, the term "objects" isn't the best way to describe "people". Many RPGs specify between living beings (sentient or otherwise) and inanimate objects. I feel "target" would've been a better word. I don't view it as rules lawyering to be confused by the wording in the books (although arguing after the official stance is know is very much rules lawyering).

That this has come up again and again all but proves it wasn't clarified as well as needed to be (in the books), causing a lot of confusion and debate. Luckily, Sam's awesome and clarified it online, so pointing those unaware towards this information is always a good thing, as I myself missed it. Perhaps a stickied and closed thread in bold letters with this alone is needed?

Can Move be used on Living beings, including beasts, PC's, NPC's, and Droids?

When using Move to take something from Engaged to Extreme range in a single action without the Control upgrade to cause damage does the entire travel time happen in a single round?

If not then do you have guidance on how long it should take?

When using Bind, in particular the Control upgrade for moving your target, do you need to activate the base power and immobilise your target before being able to move them? Or can you spend only a single Force Point on activating the power to only move the target a single range band?

Can the Bind control talent that moves the target one range band closer or further away be used to push/pull the target into/through an obstacle?

If yes, what damage would the target and/or obstacle take?

When using Bind, only "targets, others & enemies" are mentioned as to what you can target with the power. Can one use Bind on living beings such as animals & non-living beings, such as droids?

If yes, is there a silhouette limit on the Bind power?

If no one has anything to add to this ill submit it with fingers crossed.

I would say the question about whether you need to spend the base FP cost or not is unnecessary. Even I agree that the base FP cost has to be paid no matter what.

Can Move be used on Living beings, including beasts, PC's, NPC's, and Droids?

When using Move to take something from Engaged to Extreme range in a single action without the Control upgrade to cause damage does the entire travel time happen in a single round?

If not then do you have guidance on how long it should take?

When using Bind, in particular the Control upgrade for moving your target, do you need to activate the base power and immobilise your target before being able to move them? Or can you spend only a single Force Point on activating the power to only move the target a single range band?

Can the Bind control talent that moves the target one range band closer or further away be used to push/pull the target into/through an obstacle?

If yes, what damage would the target and/or obstacle take?

When using Bind, only "targets, others & enemies" are mentioned as to what you can target with the power. Can one use Bind on living beings such as animals & non-living beings, such as droids?

If yes, is there a silhouette limit on the Bind power?

If no one has anything to add to this ill submit it with fingers crossed.

I would say the question about whether you need to spend the base FP cost or not is unnecessary. Even I agree that the base FP cost has to be paid no matter what.

That one was for Aetrion, he interprets the upgrade as a new way to activate the power rather than something that can happen after the Base power is used.

I also added this following question along the same lines just to close another loophole he pointed out:

6.

When a Force User spends a Force Point from a power check to activate the basic Bind power is the target always Staggered? Or can the Force User chose to activate the basic power without Staggering the target?

Can Move be used on Living beings, including beasts, PC's, NPC's, and Droids?

When using Move to take something from Engaged to Extreme range in a single action without the Control upgrade to cause damage does the entire travel time happen in a single round?

If not then do you have guidance on how long it should take?

When using Bind, in particular the Control upgrade for moving your target, do you need to activate the base power and immobilise your target before being able to move them? Or can you spend only a single Force Point on activating the power to only move the target a single range band?

Can the Bind control talent that moves the target one range band closer or further away be used to push/pull the target into/through an obstacle?

If yes, what damage would the target and/or obstacle take?

When using Bind, only "targets, others & enemies" are mentioned as to what you can target with the power. Can one use Bind on living beings such as animals & non-living beings, such as droids?

If yes, is there a silhouette limit on the Bind power?

If no one has anything to add to this ill submit it with fingers crossed.

I would say the question about whether you need to spend the base FP cost or not is unnecessary. Even I agree that the base FP cost has to be paid no matter what.

I can see the interpretation working the other way—after all, control upgrades regularly give us alternate ways of activating/using the power, and will generally speak specifically to whether they enhance the basic power or simply provide another way to use the power that doesn't necessitate activating the basic power.

Can Move be used on Living beings, including beasts, PC's, NPC's, and Droids?

When using Move to take something from Engaged to Extreme range in a single action without the Control upgrade to cause damage does the entire travel time happen in a single round?

If not then do you have guidance on how long it should take?

When using Bind, in particular the Control upgrade for moving your target, do you need to activate the base power and immobilise your target before being able to move them? Or can you spend only a single Force Point on activating the power to only move the target a single range band?

Can the Bind control talent that moves the target one range band closer or further away be used to push/pull the target into/through an obstacle?

If yes, what damage would the target and/or obstacle take?

When using Bind, only "targets, others & enemies" are mentioned as to what you can target with the power. Can one use Bind on living beings such as animals & non-living beings, such as droids?

If yes, is there a silhouette limit on the Bind power?

If no one has anything to add to this ill submit it with fingers crossed.

I would say the question about whether you need to spend the base FP cost or not is unnecessary. Even I agree that the base FP cost has to be paid no matter what.

That one was for Aetrion, he interprets the upgrade as a new way to activate the power rather than something that can happen after the Base power is used.

I also added this following question along the same lines just to close another loophole he pointed out:

6.

When a Force User spends a Force Point from a power check to activate the basic Bind power is the target always Staggered? Or can the Force User chose to activate the basic power without Staggering the target?

There is no precedent for that with any power. the base cost for any power is always paid regardless of how any given Control upgrade affects its use.

Oh I'm aware of that TG. If it was a new way to use the power it would be worded very differently, but this is "Rules Lawering"

There is no precedent for that with any power. the base cost for any power is always paid regardless of how any given Control upgrade affects its use.

That's not really true. Lots of powers have control upgrades that offer an alternative to the basic power, rather than simply upgrading the basic power.

• Enhance does it with a Force Leap, allowing you to spend Force Points in an alternate way than described in the Basic Power. Instead of a 1-1 success/advantage bonus to Athletics checks, you are simply allowed to leap to a location that might normally be out of reach.
• Foresee allows you to do something similar when making an Initiative check: instead of gaining vague hints of events to come, you're given a straight up 1-1 Success bonus while rolling the power as part of an initiative check.
• Heal does it with a "status removal" Control upgrade (interestingly, the other half of the upgrade just improves the Harm basic power), allowing you to "cure" a target from being staggered, or disoriented, or immobilized with a FP instead of healing wounds (or in addition to healing wounds if you have enough FPs).
• Influence does it with the "mind trick" control upgrade, allowing you spend a FP to force a target to believe something or other rather than causing him strain.

And let's not forget any of the powers that allow you to commit a Force die for an effect, without even making any sort of check whatsoever: Sense, Enhance, and Seek all give you alternate ways of using the power that have nothing to do with the Basic Power or even spending Force points.

I didn't bother to look at expansions, but you get the idea I'm sure.

There is no precedent for that with any power. the base cost for any power is always paid regardless of how any given Control upgrade affects its use.

That's not really true. Lots of powers have control upgrades that offer an alternative to the basic power, rather than simply upgrading the basic power.

• Enhance does it with a Force Leap, allowing you to spend Force Points in an alternate way than described in the Basic Power. Instead of a 1-1 success/advantage bonus to Athletics checks, you are simply allowed to leap to a location that might normally be out of reach.
• Foresee allows you to do something similar when making an Initiative check: instead of gaining vague hints of events to come, you're given a straight up 1-1 Success bonus while rolling the power as part of an initiative check.
• Heal does it with a "status removal" Control upgrade (interestingly, the other half of the upgrade just improves the Harm basic power), allowing you to "cure" a target from being staggered, or disoriented, or immobilized with a FP instead of healing wounds (or in addition to healing wounds if you have enough FPs).
• Influence does it with the "mind trick" control upgrade, allowing you spend a FP to force a target to believe something or other rather than causing him strain.

And let's not forget any of the powers that allow you to commit a Force die for an effect, without even making any sort of check whatsoever: Sense, Enhance, and Seek all give you alternate ways of using the power that have nothing to do with the Basic Power or even spending Force points.

I didn't bother to look at expansions, but you get the idea I'm sure.

Your absolutely on the money there away. But in every one of those examples the description of those Control upgrades there is something to the effect of:

"When making a skill check"

Or

"Perform X Action, Make a [Force Power] check to..."

The only one that doesn't is the Heal upgrade you mentioned, it's worded the same as the Bind upgrade. So it's going to be subject to whatever ruling Sam gives for the Bind Upgrade too.

IMHO you need to activate the basic power to have a target to use the control upgrade on, which for Bind means Staggering your target and for Heal would mean you have to spend 2 Force Points to remove a status effect (meaning they get healed as well).

There is no precedent for that with any power. the base cost for any power is always paid regardless of how any given Control upgrade affects its use.

That's not really true. Lots of powers have control upgrades that offer an alternative to the basic power, rather than simply upgrading the basic power.

• Enhance does it with a Force Leap, allowing you to spend Force Points in an alternate way than described in the Basic Power. Instead of a 1-1 success/advantage bonus to Athletics checks, you are simply allowed to leap to a location that might normally be out of reach.
• Foresee allows you to do something similar when making an Initiative check: instead of gaining vague hints of events to come, you're given a straight up 1-1 Success bonus while rolling the power as part of an initiative check.
• Heal does it with a "status removal" Control upgrade (interestingly, the other half of the upgrade just improves the Harm basic power), allowing you to "cure" a target from being staggered, or disoriented, or immobilized with a FP instead of healing wounds (or in addition to healing wounds if you have enough FPs).
• Influence does it with the "mind trick" control upgrade, allowing you spend a FP to force a target to believe something or other rather than causing him strain.

And let's not forget any of the powers that allow you to commit a Force die for an effect, without even making any sort of check whatsoever: Sense, Enhance, and Seek all give you alternate ways of using the power that have nothing to do with the Basic Power or even spending Force points.

I didn't bother to look at expansions, but you get the idea I'm sure.

There is no precedent for that with any power. the base cost for any power is always paid regardless of how any given Control upgrade affects its use.

That's not really true. Lots of powers have control upgrades that offer an alternative to the basic power, rather than simply upgrading the basic power.

• Enhance does it with a Force Leap, allowing you to spend Force Points in an alternate way than described in the Basic Power. Instead of a 1-1 success/advantage bonus to Athletics checks, you are simply allowed to leap to a location that might normally be out of reach.
• Foresee allows you to do something similar when making an Initiative check: instead of gaining vague hints of events to come, you're given a straight up 1-1 Success bonus while rolling the power as part of an initiative check.
• Heal does it with a "status removal" Control upgrade (interestingly, the other half of the upgrade just improves the Harm basic power), allowing you to "cure" a target from being staggered, or disoriented, or immobilized with a FP instead of healing wounds (or in addition to healing wounds if you have enough FPs).
• Influence does it with the "mind trick" control upgrade, allowing you spend a FP to force a target to believe something or other rather than causing him strain.

And let's not forget any of the powers that allow you to commit a Force die for an effect, without even making any sort of check whatsoever: Sense, Enhance, and Seek all give you alternate ways of using the power that have nothing to do with the Basic Power or even spending Force points.

I didn't bother to look at expansions, but you get the idea I'm sure.

Your absolutely on the money there away. But in every one of those examples the description of those Control upgrades there is something to the effect of:

"When making a skill check"

Or

"Perform X Action, Make a [Force Power] check to..."

The only one that doesn't is the Heal upgrade you mentioned, it's worded the same as the Bind upgrade. So it's going to be subject to whatever ruling Sam gives for the Bind Upgrade too.

IMHO you need to activate the basic power to have a target to use the control upgrade on, which for Bind means Staggering your target and for Heal would mean you have to spend 2 Force Points to remove a status effect (meaning they get healed as well).

That's not what I was saying. I said that you still need to pay the FP cost of the base power, regardless of how a Control upgrade affects the power's use, I know many Force powers have alternative uses through Control upgrades, but the base power's Force Point cost still has to be paid before you can use said upgrade. None of the Force powers allow you to forego that cost.

Actually I think they do Tramp.

The Enhance power has 8 different ways to use the power without having to use the basic power. You don't have to spend a Point on a phantom Athletics check to be able to spend other points on the Piloting check your actually making. Committing a die doesn't even involve rolling dice.

The Influence "mind trick" Control Upgrade is clear that you only need to spend a single Force Point and succeed on the check to be able to effect your target. You don't have to activate the Basic power as well. Same for the Control upgrade to add Force Dice to a social check, your not required to stress the mind of your target before adding success/Advantage

Except of course that doing so requires

1. A good force rating 3+ which requires at least 100+ xp

2. A lot of strength upgrades which requires a heavy investment in move.

So basically its not easy to reach that point.

Yes, but it requires three or four times more XP to do anywhere close to as much damage with any other force power, so this whole "But it costs XP to do this" argument doesn't in any way absolve Move from being way too powerful compared to the other force powers in the game.

I mean compare it to Unleash, a dedicated damage dealing power. It gets Willpower + Successes in damage + 4 damage for every activation of strength, + Burn 2 with an extra force point. It costs 2 FP to activate the basic power, 1 FP to activate range, 1 FP to activate duration for the burn, and 1 FP for each activation of strength. So, in order to get in the realm of 30 damage with Burn, which isn't even close to as deadly as inflicting it all in one go because you can soak multiple times, stim up or try to put out the fire, you'd have to spend 5 FP. In order to get to 30 damage in one chunk you'd have to activate strength a whopping 6 times, making the power cost a grand total of 9FP, just to get a similar result of what you can get on 3FP with Move.

The power also costs significantly more XP to purchase by the way. And yea, you also get Protect when you purchase Unleash, but Move does a whole lot of stuff other than throw things at enemies too.

Lets review the other offensive force powers who in fact can do more damage when kited out.

Unleash crits and can get the crit rating down to 1. Move can't crit. I won't even bother explaining again how Move is far more difficult to hit people for more damage then Unleash.

Harm ignores soak. Also Harm can also heal you and your entire party along with bringing dead people back to life...

Let me give for example what happened in my Monday session when I tried to toss an Assasin Droid out the window.

I failed. Did nothing to it. I have a 4 discipline 4 will power and was rolling against 3 red 2 purple 2 black so my 2 blue 4 yellow vrs his 3 red 2 purple. Now if I was using unleash it would have been 2 red 1 purple 2 black vrs my 4 yellow 2 blue.

Actually I think they do Tramp.

The Enhance power has 8 different ways to use the power without having to use the basic power. You don't have to spend a Point on a phantom Athletics check to be able to spend other points on the Piloting check your actually making. Committing a die doesn't even involve rolling dice.

The Influence "mind trick" Control Upgrade is clear that you only need to spend a single Force Point and succeed on the check to be able to effect your target. You don't have to activate the Basic power as well. Same for the Control upgrade to add Force Dice to a social check, your not required to stress the mind of your target before adding success/Advantage

Well, I didn't say "activate" either. In both cases, you still need to pay the FP cost, even if you don't activate the base but instead the Upgrade's effects. Even with Enhance, you do still need to pay the base FP cost plus the cost of the upgrade before using the upgrade, even if you don't want to boost to your athletics. The same with Influence. Activating the upgrade simply overrides the base power's Strain effect, but you still need to pay the full FP cost of the base power as well as the upgrade even if only to use the upgrade. The base cost must always be paid even if you're only doing it to activate the "alternate effect" provided by the Control upgrade. Neither of those two powers say you can forego paying the base FP cost of the power to use the upgrade. The base cost is just that, the base cost .

Actually I think they do Tramp.

The Enhance power has 8 different ways to use the power without having to use the basic power. You don't have to spend a Point on a phantom Athletics check to be able to spend other points on the Piloting check your actually making. Committing a die doesn't even involve rolling dice.

The Influence "mind trick" Control Upgrade is clear that you only need to spend a single Force Point and succeed on the check to be able to effect your target. You don't have to activate the Basic power as well. Same for the Control upgrade to add Force Dice to a social check, your not required to stress the mind of your target before adding success/Advantage

Well, I didn't say "activate" either. In both cases, you still need to pay the FP cost, even if you don't activate the base but instead the Upgrade's effects. Even with Enhance, you do still need to pay the base FP cost plus the cost of the upgrade before using the upgrade, even if you don't want to boost to your athletics. The same with Influence. Activating the upgrade simply overrides the base power's Strain effect, but you still need to pay the full FP cost of the base power as well as the upgrade even if only to use the upgrade. The base cost must always be paid even if you're only doing it to activate the "alternate effect" provided by the Control upgrade. Neither of those two powers say you can forego paying the base FP cost of the power to use the upgrade. The base cost is just that, the base cost .

I think my vertigo just kicked in from the twisted logic being used here. Tramp please tell me you are not actually saying that to use the Enhance upgrade to, for example Force Jump, you have to first spend 1 FP to activate some phantom use of a Athletics check. Because that is just plain wrong on so many levels.

Actually I think they do Tramp.

The Enhance power has 8 different ways to use the power without having to use the basic power. You don't have to spend a Point on a phantom Athletics check to be able to spend other points on the Piloting check your actually making. Committing a die doesn't even involve rolling dice.

The Influence "mind trick" Control Upgrade is clear that you only need to spend a single Force Point and succeed on the check to be able to effect your target. You don't have to activate the Basic power as well. Same for the Control upgrade to add Force Dice to a social check, your not required to stress the mind of your target before adding success/Advantage

Well, I didn't say "activate" either. In both cases, you still need to pay the FP cost, even if you don't activate the base but instead the Upgrade's effects. Even with Enhance, you do still need to pay the base FP cost plus the cost of the upgrade before using the upgrade, even if you don't want to boost to your athletics. The same with Influence. Activating the upgrade simply overrides the base power's Strain effect, but you still need to pay the full FP cost of the base power as well as the upgrade even if only to use the upgrade. The base cost must always be paid even if you're only doing it to activate the "alternate effect" provided by the Control upgrade. Neither of those two powers say you can forego paying the base FP cost of the power to use the upgrade. The base cost is just that, the base cost .

I think my vertigo just kicked in from the twisted logic being used here. Tramp please tell me you are not actually saying that to use the Enhance upgrade to, for example Force Jump, you have to first spend 1 FP to activate some phantom use of a Athletics check. Because that is just plain wrong on so many levels.

Actually, that is exactly how I read it. The base cost is always paid, as far as I know, based upon the RAW. Unless the book actually says differently.

No wonder Move is over powered in your game, you have effectively raised the Force Point cost of half the Force Powers by one!