Is it possible for a ship to go past it’s nromal speed? Player wants to basically try and out run some fighter ships. They have speed 5 and they have speed 3. Doesn’t seem like there are any actions to just strain ship to gain additional speed.

No actions, you need the Full Throttle talent, in the Pilot and Driver specs

4 minutes ago, whafrog said:

No actions, you need the Full Throttle talent, in the Pilot and Driver specs

Thank you sir

There's also the Improved Full Throttle, which costs 1 Strain to reduce the difficulty of the Full Throttle Piloting check to Average, as well as the Supreme Full Throttle talent, which increases the top speed by 2 instead of 1.

It's hilarious when your expert pilot jumps into an Imperial cargo speeder-truck that normally trundles about at Speed 1, messes with some dials, then get the thing blazing along at Speed 3, the speed of a souped-up swoop !

This has happened in my game. They managed to get away with it .

Also note that when trying to outrun you opponent you're usually talking Chase rules.

20 hours ago, theclash24 said:

Is it possible for a ship to go past it’s nromal speed? Player wants to basically try and out run some fighter ships. They have speed 5 and they have speed 3. Doesn’t seem like there are any actions to just strain ship to gain additional speed.

Furthermore to the full throttle talent, there is no need to have a faster ship to outrun someone. Just fly better. Top speed is irrelevant for the ability to outrun someone. Well, actually top speed helps, but it is still a piloting thing.

BTW, speaking of Full Throttle. Personally I recommend to house rule the talent. Per Raw it does now allow to perform maneuvers it could not perform before, but imho this makes the talent rather weak, because as mentioned chases are doing just fine with superior piloting skill. So allowing for a K-Turn for example on a VCX-100 when full throttle is active sounds like a fine combination of talents to get something out of a freighter which it wasn't meant to do. This way full full throttle, a real xp sink, becomes much more attractive. (though as all player in our game avoid full throttle like the plague, we have little practical experience with the talent in practise )

Now speaking of useful stuff:

Astromechs can increase the speed with the increase power maneuver. Page 72, Stay on Target, which increases the speed of a ship by 1 for number of rounds equal to the astromechs intelligence. Limited to Sil 0-3 ships, does stack with Full Throttle and does not stack with itself. The astromech can not take it the same turn it took a boost shields action and the ship takes two strain AND reduces handling by 2.

13 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Furthermore to the full throttle talent, there is no need to have a faster ship to outrun someone. Just fly better. Top speed is irrelevant for the ability to outrun someone. Well, actually top speed helps, but it is still a piloting thing.

Only if there is anything to require maneuvering around. In the flat open of deep space, pure speed is king.

That's true for in combat, but I assume he means the chase rules. There speed only aids the participants but if a slower ship's pilot can net a few more successes than a faster ship, then the slower ship will pull ahead. In the flat open of a deep space chase it will just be a simple competitive piloting check with the chase rules.

Depends how big the gulf in skill is. If it's close, the higher speed helps a lot, considering the extra range bands you can close/widen the chase by if you're the faster vehicle.