Offence - as far as I can tell works for ANY combat attack from a 1-1 melee fight up to gunnery targeting a star destroyer (not sure how it works against targets that aren’t really aren’t dodging but hey)

the defence side confuses me slightly - melee combat and being shot at fine - what if I’m piloting an x-wing, or a freighter, or on a turret of a gunship, are these all no?

I allow it to work defensively when the character can plausibly react based on what he senses, in a way that makes it harder to attack him. While piloting a fighter, sure (“the Force is strong with this one”); while sitting in an artillery turret, no.

Edit: don’t forget the range of the power though, especially while in space combat

I think that's in the realm of "GM Interpretation", but I don't have my books handy to check the wording. Personally I don't think it's at all unfair to let it apply to defense checks while piloting. They made a point many times in the films to establish that a Force user's ability to tap into the Force, can help them do things like avoid attacks, due to heightened senses. I see no reason not to have this be reflected by the Sense power itself. Makes...well, makes sense to me.

We have always allowed it to be effective in any vehicle that can take evasive action, in other words siloet 4 or lower.

I too don't have my books available, but for the Defensive Awareness upgrade, it technically does not apply to attacks against the vehicle the character is piloting, and there are two ways we can know that:

First, it upgrades the difficulty of attacks made against the character . 99% of all attacks made during vehicle combat will be targeting the vehicle, not the character. Some exceptions might be made in open cockpits, such as on a speeder bike or smaller in-atmosphere speeders, but in general the attack will be against the vehicle.

Second, if it applies to attacks made against a vehicle you're piloting, it makes the Intuitive Evasion talent pointless. Intuitive Evasion costs 1 strain to activate and 1 strain per round to maintain, requires one commit per upgrade you get, and limits you to one upgrade per rank. The only upside is that Intuitive Evasion is a maneuver instead of an action. As written, Intuitive Evasion is pointless if Sense: Defensive Awareness can apply to the same checks.

The Offensive Awareness Control upgrade, however, does not specify that it has to be personal-scale, so I see no reason why it couldn't apply to planetary-scale attacks. The talent that affects such attacks, Intuitive Strike, adds your Force dice to the roll and you spend Force points to add Successes or Advantages to the check; as that's entirely different from upgrading your combat checks, the two both have uses that might be better or worse in different situations.

Last official word from Sam Stewart on an Order 66 podcast was that the defensive Control upgrade for Sense doesn't work in vehicle/starship combat, since as Absol197 noted it's the vehicle that's being targeted, not the character. Probably due to the Starfighter Ace having a talent that does exactly that (upgrading the difficulty when the character's ship is targeted by an enemy).

That being said, prior to F&D being released Sam had said in the past that allowing the defensive Control upgrade to be used in vehicle/starship combat for a piloted vehicle was kosher if the GM allowed it, but again the Force user had to be the one actively piloting the vehicle, and even then it was best to limit to ships that could be operated by a single pilot.

However, for the offensive Control upgrade, so long as the Force user is the one directly operating the weapon, be it a blaster pistol, a lightsaber, or a starship's laser cannons, then it applies to the skill check.

Even before the podcast, our group said no on the defense for a handful of reasons:

1. There are other talents and skills that account for ship defense.

2. Sense is basically a personal scale ability. Going down the "mind-reading" side of the ability, you start at engaged range and have to buy improvements on range and level of detail. On the combat side of the tree, it specifically addresses attacks against the Force user - again, personal scale.

3. Practically speaking, applying it to a ship being piloted starts getting too powerful on top of making some of those other piloting talents irrelevant. One of the strengths of the FFG system is that, as powerful as Force users can be, you can invest an equal number of points in other careers sans Force and be every bit as formidable. My Jedi Guardian is incredible, and I love her, but she's only marginally more powerful than the Marauder one of our group played up in our last campaign. She feels different, and her story is very different, but the rest of the group contributes every bit as much as she does. It makes for more satisfying gameplay when you avoid allowing any single ability or power to be all-powerful, to my mind.