I did a quick search on the forum and found a thread from over a year ago stating that the Sense defensive control upgrades could not be used by a pilot when in space combat because of Intuitive Evasion in the Starfighter Ace spec.

My question is, why? I get that the devs said so, but they aren't exactly equivalent, right? With the Force power, you must use a precious pilot action to commit the dice for Sense in the first round of combat. Not only that, even maxed out, you can only upgrade incoming attacks twice per round, which is fine if you are facing off against only a patrol and his wingman, but would probably mean you are SOL if engaged with a squad of enemy fighters or multiple batteries from a large ship.

On the other hand, Intuitive Evasion, while it does cost strain, is only a maneuver, so a dedicated Ace could uncommit for Evasion as an incidental, use their Force dice for Intuitive Strike or the Enhance piloting upgrades, and then re-commit for Evasion all on their turn. A mediocre pilot (e.g., Seeker), would have to give up their first action in combat AND choose in subsequent turns whether they want the Force for offense (piloting) or defense (Sense). Furthermore, Intuitive Evasion upgrades all incoming attacks each round instead of just 2, giving a dedicated pilot greater chance of holding off entire squadrons compared to a mediocre pilot.

Am I missing something on the balancing issue that would make it a totally broken house-rule to let a Seeker use Sense while piloting?

Thanks!

Main thing is the wording in the control upgrade that says "targets you." Generally speaking, in vehicle combat the opponent targets your ship, not you specifically.

Okay, now that we've gotten word semantics out of the way, the primary reason for disallowing Sense to be used in vehicle combat is that it steps directly upon the functionality of the Starship Ace's Intuitive Evasion talent.

Dodge, Defensive Stance, and Side Step while having a similar function to Sense's defense Control upgrade (upgrade difficulty of incoming attacks), each of those three talents have restrictions; Dodge is one attack as a reaction, Defensive Stance is only melee attacks after you spend a maneuver, and Side Step is only ranged attacks after spending a maneuver.

With all this said, there was a point where the dev answer was "sure, you can use Sense to upgrade the difficulty of attacks targeting a ship that you're piloting," so if you as the GM want to, you can allow Sense to work that way. Just bear in mind that unless the PC's ship has three or more attacks targeting it each round, then Sense is objectively better than Intuitive Evasion, as there's no strain cost each round and you can upgrade the enemy's difficulty twice for a single Force die. It's only for at most two attacks per round, unless there's more than two enemy groups attacking, that's not much of a restriction.

Thanks for your input. Sounds like it is still very much under GM fiat then.

I haven't GM'ed any space battles yet, but foresee some coming up in the not too distant future, hence my question. But your explanation begs another question in light of my inexperience and ignorance of space battles: does the other limitation that Sense is an action while intuitive evasion is a maneuver not matter as much? Are there not cases where a PC could use their action to boost their defense with Sense with their first action, only to have the opposing pilot Gain the Advantage as their first action, or something along those lines, to put the PCs at an immediate disadvantage?

Well look at this the following way:

While sense connects you with the living things around you (since every thing is connected within the force me, you, the stone, the water, hrmmh) it is only a quite short range (otherwise it blow up your mind would) you feel the evil intentions of beings directed at you (and only you) within a personale scale so that you can react to them and try to evade.

While driving a vehicle the attackers mostly don't see you, they mostly don't even know who you are, there is mostly no personal grudge at you but only towards the vessel you using (just another rebel!), that combined with the speed and the distnace (remember closest in vehicle can already be more than extrem on personal) within vehicle-/ spacefights makes it quite hard (or better quite impossible) to "feel" your enemys intention against you and still react to it.

therefore the ACE therefore has a special kind of symbioses to his ship something a normal pilot will never be able to reach (exceoppt for becoming an ACE himself) he doesn't feel the intentions towards him he just sees a glimpse of the future and in that moment he knows: it would be better to be at some other place right now, like two clicks starboard... and thanks to his special symbioses with his ship he already moved the controls and adjusts the throttle and balanced his ship before his thought is even over.

That is just something the consular with his high FR and sense outmaxed will never reach (execpt he buys in to the skill tree to become an ace himself of course)

And to bring even a movie/ book example: While Anakin and Luke are pretty good Starfighter pilots and also seem to really enjoy the thrill of flight... Obi-Wan ALWAYS mentions that he HATES flying and while he somehow manage to survive his Piloting experiances (enchance for piloting and equiped for agility) he has a hard time to do so.

It is just a total different kind of force using while the mechanics seems alike.

Nightone you make some good points about the range, though all my knowledge from the EU books says that basic danger sense is something all Jedi feel. I might restrict my Seeker to only using Sense for attacks from within close range. It wold still be helpful in a dogfight, but not for dancing through turbo laser barrages from capital ships.

Per your example of Obi Wan or high FR Sage, I would argue that Obi-Wan hated flying because his agility wasn't likely as high as a dedicated pilot, or his skills in piloting were not nearly as high, so when it came to dogfighting he was nowhere near as good as his opponents. And for a Sage, they would have to be an incredibly inefficient build to compete with a dedicated Ace for piloting. Based on that, do you think my approach to the range restriction of Sense would still be balanced but let a dedicated Ace still be able to do far more than a moderate Seeker pilot?

Thanks!

Sense is committed force die. So an action to commit then it says committed till uncommitted.

Intuitive evasion costs strain because you are pushing out to cover the vehicle.

15 hours ago, AeroEng42 said:

Based on that, do you think my approach to the range restriction of Sense would still be balanced but let a dedicated Ace still be able to do far more than a moderate Seeker pilot?

You can always try.

But with that an ACE within your group would mostlikely be forced to also get the Sense Power, and that way he could become extremly powerful with the total numbers of Upgrades for the enemys (once he reaches FR 3), but if he don't do it he would lose one of his traitmades to every other player that has sense. Espacially since the Skill piloting(space) isn't used so much during a space fight the pilot is mostly defined by the talents he contributes, if you now take him even one and open it up to everyone it reduces his usefullness, (and that leads to sorrow, which leads to the dark side.)

Especially since the sense user would gain the upperhand since he could use sense also with in personal scale combat, while the intuitive evasive maneuver states explicit that it is just for vehicle/starship combat.

I would recommend to stay with RAW/ Dev declaration for the sake of fairness and balance,
espacially since you are just starting to encounter space battles.

( IF you don't have an ACE within the group AND nobody commites himself to become one you may use the sense for vehicle situation, but then you shouldn't use vehicle combat to much at all... I really don't recommend it to open that box of pandora shennanigans)

For the EU, I've read my fair share of it (and don't get me wrong I liked a lot of it), and so I would like to remind you of the following things:

1. most Authors like to overpower theire Force-mainprotagonist in a way that they seem like some "Dragonball Z Ultra Sayajins" compared to other charackters that were introduced before they even wrote theire book (be aware that this is something that can happen easyly to GMs two, to bring in an "ALL MIGHTY" NSC that then total outshadowed the characters - happened to me in the first game of DSA I ever was to GM... I was sooo clueless back then...

2. you said that every jedi can use sense, which is incorrect, there are some examples of jedi (after rotj) that don't have a clue about it, those are specialised on other things. (some are very good pilots (Aces) and form a jedi squadron around Kyp Durron other are very skilled healers but won't touch a steering-stick and so on...)

3. And most important: This System does not represent the player powers/ skill and talents as those of the Jedi! all characters are per definitions only force sensitives! Nothing more. they learned some funny thing due to old artifacts, may be an padawan of the old days that hasn't finished his own training, or even through an old force tradition on a remote planet. But they are not anywhere near the Jedi of the Old republic, or the Rebulic, or the new republic (way to many rebuplic here...) we learned about within the movies and books.

at mostly they are just like Luke in ANH or the beginning of ESB where he has no real clue what he does and how he does it.

so please don't use the combination of this systems rules on skills and talent and force powers and the wording "but in books/ movies/ games ALL JEDI could do this or that") otherwise every one that declares that he will play a "jedi" would automatically start with most Force powers since every jedi has to have enchance/ sence / move/ seek and so one just because we see it in the movies and read it in the Books

I wonder if part of the concern on the part of the devs is that if they allowed for Sense's defense Control upgrade to be applied to starship combat, a PC with Intuitive Evasion (either Starfighter Ace or Racer from Endless Vigil) could and that upgrade could combine the two.

Yes, it'd take a fair amount of XP to purchase not only the necessary talents and upgrades, but with Force Rating 2, one rank of Intuitive Evasion, the Sense power, the defense Control Upgrade, the Duration upgrade, and the Strength upgrade, a PC could commit both their Force dice (one to each effect) and then able to upgrade the difficulty of an enemy's attacks against them three times. And since Intuitive Evasion only requires a single maneuver to commit the Force die, as opposed to talents like Defensive Stance and Side Step which require a maneuver each round they're used, that means a PC could very easily set up both the talent and Control upgrade in a single round, and cause most opponents to be rolling against a difficulty of 2 challenge dice and 1 difficulty die at the bare minimum rather than the default difficulty of two difficulty dice for two ships of similar Silhouette. Given I don't think there's any other player-character talent besides Intuitive Evasion that lets you upgrade the difficulty of attacks against your ship (Defensive Driving adds setback, Tricky Target increase the difficulty), potentially getting that many upgrades is pretty huge.

Donovan, that's a good point about not letting the two stack. That would get pretty ridiculous to go from base difficulty of 2 D to 2 C + 1 D, and I don't think that would be balanced at all by the loss of the pilot's first action and the strain from Intuitive Evasion. Thankfully, though, I don't have a pilot in the PC group, and won't be throwing too much space combat at them. I was just wanting to do something a little more challenging than just fly from point A to B, maybe avoiding a couple of stock TIE patrols to give the Seeker some time to shine behind the stick.

Thanks everyone for your input and experience. Definitely gave me a lot to consider about whether or not to allow it in my game, even in a limited capacity. If I do decide to allow it, definitely going to chat with my players to set the expectation that it is only if there are no dedicated pilots, and only for attacks from Close range. I think that could be reasonably balanced for a character who isn't a dedicated pilot, and thematic with what I have read about a Force-user's danger sense alerting them to hostile intent, but I will give it some more thought.

I'm actually not seeing the problem with this. Star fighters are extremely fragile. Even the situation you're describing of going from DD to CCD is still going to be a reasonably successful shot for a TIE fighter Ace (PPAA) or a TIE minion group of 4 (PPP). Defense is the hardest thing to increase in the game and doesn't scale nearly as quickly as attack strength does so I almost always lean on the side of letting all defensive abilities stack (I also house ruled away sources of defense not stacking- if you're wearing armor and behind cover in my games the enemy get all the setback dice you can muster. Also I allow shields over 4D in a zone).

Just my 2 cents.