Hello team, picture 2 scenarios :

1. i drive a speeder bike of max Speed 3 and i have an enemy At St of Speed 2 (moving away from me) at medium range. My Speeder is Speed 0 at round 1 so i Accelerate to speed 3 and then Drive until i go to Close Range and then attempt the Chase Check

2. i drive an At-St of max Speed 2 and i am chasing the speeder bike at medium range from my starting round (speed 0 for me). I Accelerate to speed 2 and then Drive until i reach Close Range again and attempt Chase.

These 2 scenarios have a great difference though : A Speed 3 vehicle moving towards a speed 2 vehicle so it should require LESS MANEUVERS or LESS ROUNDS to go to CLose Range

and in the second, a slower At-st of 2 , moving towards a Speedier (3) speeder bike so it would require more Maneuvers or ROunds to go to the same Close RAnge.

What am i saying wrong here? any opinions?

Here's how I tend to work things in my campaign.

First, I only use the range bands in combat.

If there is a chase, the first thing I do is figure out if the chaser has sufficient speed to pursue & catch the target. If they don't then the pursuit is usually pointless as a faster ship can always outrun a pursuer.

And going back to combat. If those ships are shooting each other and are in range of each other, then if one is leaving, this becomes a race to get out of range, or to duck into cover (if possible). If the faster ship is the ship breaking combat, then it becomes a sequential race for the faster ship to get out of range & avoid damage, while the pursuer is trying to slow the escape artist by damaging (or destroying) their ship.

The other thing that I tend to do in vehicle combat, is that I paint the scene and let it play out narratively. What are the pilots directing their ships to do? How is the crew affecting the combat? What is the environment like and how is that affecting the battle?

For example; Last night we had a chase that turned into a very nasty fight.

To set the stage, a rebel agent had been arrested by a Bounty Hunter and the PC's decided to rescue their buddy (the rebel agent).

The PC's were able to track the bounty hunter down to a spaceport on Corellia and only one of the PC's was able to get into the spaceport. They discovered that there was a Troop Carrier with a dozen Strorm Troopers posting security & a paddy wagon.

After the bounty hunter transferred custody, the Storm Troopers got into their vehicles and headed out and the PC's hastily assembled a pursuit group . . . in a series of three Taxi cabs. (I kid you not).

A series of piloting & perception rolls later Team A & B had LOS with the Taxi while the spotter got into Taxi C to attempt to catch up.

The troop carrier spotted Team A and stopped to confront that Taxi's passenger, while Taxi B continued in it's pursuit of the Paddy Wagon.

The PC in Taxi A avoided incarnation by using his Force Powers and that's when Taxi C showed up and joined Taxi A (So Group C goes away narratively speaking).

Team B (meanwhile) realizes that the Paddy Wagon is headed to ISB headquarters and is a mere two miles away from that destination. Player B pulls his blaster and coerces (successfully) the taxi driver to ram the Paddy Wagon.

One wreck later and the paddy wagon is forced off the city street and the Taxi is busted.

Note that while this was a very fluid (and actually a more complicated 'chase' than what I've laid out) I never worried about nor took into consideration what the range bands were.

The biggest question for me, during this chase, was, what vehicles do the PC's have line of sight on? I also used the miniatures extensively, so that the Players understood their relationship to the various parties. (And frankly, as the GM I kept expecting the combat to start much sooner).

Once the collision occurred, I laid out the battlefield and we rolled for initiative. THAT's when the range bands began to be important.

Team A did eventually show up shortly thereafter and joined the fight, coincidentally at the same time the Troop Carrier showed up to help THEIR team. (The narrative dice actually determined the timing. IN this case, I had both drivers make piloting rolls vs 6 purple dice while totaling success & advantages and then reducing the total of failures & threats. End result for both teams was 2 purple results which I converted to 2 turns until arriving at combat).

If I have a point that can be put more concisely, Keep it simple, loose, and fast paced. Try not to bog down the plot with a lot of number crunching. Once the blaster bolts start firing, it's okay to slow down time and go into Alpha reflexes, but before then, relax and keep the players engaged.

Maybe later I'll break down how the space fighter combats tend to work out for our group.

Wow im starting to get your point....

4 hours ago, topacesteve said:

What am i saying  wrong   here   ?  

The chase is a separate movement structure than normal movement (as such you'll find many vehicle encounters may be, or involve, a Chase). So you don't make a move AND a Chase check.

So... Scenario altered for clarity and correctness it'll look like this:

4 hours ago, topacesteve said:

I drive   a speeder bike of max Speed 3 and i have an enemy At St of Speed 2 (moving away from me) at long range. My Speeder is speed  3 and I attempt to chase.

1) Roll initiative to establish encounter structure. Determine scale of chase and environment.

2) All parties make a compedative Chase Check vs. terrain difficulty.

3) Adjust distance based on Chase results.

4) Execute round using established initiative. All parties may make thier full action/maneuver economy, with the exception that they cannot do anything to change realtive positions in relation to the Chase.

So, you roll initiative. Let's say you get slot 1, and the walk crew gets slot 2 and 3. Well say this is a Chase through a medium density forest, so range bands of personal will make for a more compelling encounter than one conducted over several kilometers like in planetary.

Now you make a Chase check. Difficulty is based on sil and speed, with setbacks added for

So for the speeder bike it's 2P 1R plus 1 Blk for the forest.

For the Walker it's 2R 1 Blk.

You both roll and compare results. You have 3 success, but the Walker only got two. You Close the distance by two bands, 1 for success, one for going faster. You move from Long to Short range.

Now you do the round like normal. So you can do things like attack, decrease speed, ect. But, you can't take a Fly/Drive maneuver to change the distance between you and the Walker, nor can the Walker pilot fly/drive away from you.

Once you've finished the initiative, you kick off Around 2 with another Chase Check.

Make more sense now?

΅Wow yes it makes full sense... so Chase determines the relative ranges based on success on the Check. So the only maneuvers left for the ship to do are Gain initiative etc (we completely forget Accelerate and Drive

since they are included in the Chase). Wow this speeds things up a lot..

So as long as the encounter starts we can all make chase checks regardless what starting range is our fleeing target

1 hour ago, topacesteve said:

So as long as the encounter starts we can all make chase checks regardless what  starting  range is our  fleeing target

Within logic and reason.

And a Chase can be started whenever the gm says so. You just hit the top of a round and the gm can be "You know what, this is a Chase. Roll chase checks everyone."

Likewise there's room to work.

A foot Chase can do the same thing, just using athletics or coordination instead of piloting.

You can even go hybrid. Imagine something like a bad guy trying to escape in a speeder and the hero using rooftops, back alleys, and other paths to give chase. Unusual, but well within the cinematic construct of the system and setting...

Edit:

Also, if you want to go full rules options. You technically CAN still Fly/Drive in a Chase, it just won't affect the distance between chase participants.

Again, unusual, but possibly applicable depending on the GMs encounter design.

Think of a situation where you are on a speederbike at Extreme (Planetary) range from your ship, and being chased by biker scouts at Medium (personal) range from you.

The Chase check could define relative distance between you and the biker scouts at the Personal scale, but you can still Fly/Drive to change the relative distance between you (and by extension everyone participating in the chase) and your ship on the Planetary scale.

This is a complex scenario, but one that is possible.

Is the Chase an Action?

It is an action, but you don't count it as the characters one action that round. Doing so would weaken the encounter (ei: biker scouts couldn't chase and shoot).

On ‎6‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 9:37 PM, Ghostofman said:

You technically CAN still Fly/Drive in a Chase, it just won't affect the distance between chase participants.

Another situation it might be relevant - if you have a high agility, a decent piloting (planetary), skilled jockey, and a vehicle with a good handling score, you might want to do a fly/drive action as part of a chase scene.

Narratively, this is you doing 'bond film car chase driving' through obstacles in order make life harder for your pursuers.

Mechanically, this is you specifically spending an action to make a piloting skill roll with lots of positive dice which (should) generate a load of opportunity results you can use to load strain, setback dice and difficulty upgrades on your pursuers.