25 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Genesys has a revised set of ship rules, it’s still not perfect but it’s so much better it’s ridiculous. For one there’s a skill called Operating (Intellect) that’s used instead of Piloting on big ships (Silhouette 5+ generally). Then every ship moves every round unless it’s at speed 0.

Yeah, the only trouble is that the mandatory range band change is ... utterly impractical with anything fast. Mainly because the range bands are not sufficient for the amount of range bands you have to pass each round.
Basically the pilot can take the last init slot, get in from beyond extreme range, fire all weapons, takes the next turn the first init slot, fires again all weapons and moves out of the encounter. The basic idea is simply not sound anyway.

The difficultly to hit is not setting appropriated for star wars either. It's realistic that a aircraft carrier has no trouble to shoot down an enemy aircraft at close range, but it's not very star wars, because trench disease is part of the setting. Or in other words, the realism ends pretty quickly when large artillery canons have no trouble to shoot down enemy aircrafts at close range.

The Star Wars rules are not even close to flawless, but the Genesys rules are ridiculous for anything involving flight. FFG can managed to write something which is even worse than what they had before.

I’m not sure I entirely agree, although I did say that Genesys isn’t perfect I do believe it’s an improvement.

for starters that example of a fighter moving from Strategic Range to Short then back to Strategic and therefore avoiding being attacked makes two assumptions that basically makes it invalid.

First off it assumes the target isn’t moving, which is highly unlikely unless it’s a fortified position. If the target is even moving at only Speed 1 then they can always close to Long Range, plenty for most Weapons.

The second assumption is that the target has not got weapons with Strategic Range, any significant target is going to have surface to air missiles which will not only have Strategic Range, but also Guided which will then be attacking at Short Range themselves against a target that’s 2 Silhouettes bigger than it... (that would be a difficulty of Average with the rules for guided)

The requirements that vehicles keep moving make for a much more dynamic encounter, where characters don’t have to constantly explain why their speed 5 Fighter somehow didn’t move anywhere.

To answer the earlier question about the group composition, YES, there is only ONE PC with a decent gunnery skill.

And that's kind of why we introduced . . . The HAWS! He fills that one missing gunnery chair comfortably . . . while possibly being an Imperial mole . . . (WHERE IS MY DEVIL SMILEY EMOTICON)?!?!?!?

To be fair, all of the piloting is done off scene in my campaign.

Although I do get a perverse pleasure from introducing an encounter with, "You all hear Celeste scream over the intercom; 'BATTLE STATIONS! We're under attack!'"

3 minutes ago, Mark Caliber said:

(WHERE IS MY DEVIL SMILEY EMOTICON)?!?!?!?

? ? ? ? ? ?

Cool. Thanks!

On 8/9/2018 at 10:24 PM, HappyDaze said:

Yet we have many Specializations that push things in that direction, such as Slicer (Computers), Mechanic (Mechanics), Doctor (Medicine), and the numerous lightsaber form specs (Lightsaber). Sure, each of these actually requires a set of skills--and truthfully, so does Pilot--but they really expect to get a lot out of a single primary skill. Sadly, the Piloting skills don't offer as much as the others.

No they rrally dont. Thatnis your hang up.

On 8/11/2018 at 3:17 AM, Richardbuxton said:

for starters that example of a fighter moving from Strategic Range to Short then back to Strategic and therefore avoiding being attacked makes two assumptions that basically makes it invalid.

My example was not only moving from within strategic range and getting close in between, but moving in and out of the encounter. If you are fast enough, you can move even beyond strategic range. Sorry about being unclear on that.

Beyond extreme can included beyond strategic. You can just move in and out of the encounter range. A simple house rule which could fix most of this would be reducing the mandatory speed to half the range bands of your current speed, rounded down. If your moving zero range bands you can pick a new location within your current range band.

Speaking of moving within a range band. Going full speed at close range makes you a harder target to track with weapons than going full speed and leaving close range. Angular speed is simply much higher when staying within a range band and circling your target. It gets as well faster the closer you are to your target.

On 8/11/2018 at 1:37 AM, SEApocalypse said:

Yeah, the only trouble is that the mandatory range band change is ... utterly impractical with anything fast. Mainly because the range bands are not sufficient for the amount of range bands you have to pass each round.
Basically the pilot can take the last init slot, get in from beyond extreme range, fire all weapons, takes the next turn the first init slot, fires again all weapons and moves out of the encounter. The basic idea is simply not sound anyway.

The difficultly to hit is not setting appropriated for star wars either. It's realistic that a aircraft carrier has no trouble to shoot down an enemy aircraft at close range, but it's not very star wars, because trench disease is part of the setting. Or in other words, the realism ends pretty quickly when large artillery canons have no trouble to shoot down enemy aircrafts at close range.

The Star Wars rules are not even close to flawless, but the Genesys rules are ridiculous for anything involving flight. FFG can managed to write something which is even worse than what they had before.

I think an incidental 0-X fly/drive (where X is speed) on the first pilot turn each round, and then no second fly/drive, would work much better. Not sold on how Genesys handles difficult terrain either- difficulty = silhouette breaks down horribly when you try piloting, say, a Star Destroyer through an asteroid field. Plus making it an action to fly through difficult terrain means you simply can't have a dogfight in an asteroid field, nobody has any actions to fire their weapons.

Well, if you chose to not use the pilot skill as you could, then of course it is not "usefull" or "overrated".

But the same goes for many of the skills. You can recruit NPC mechanis, doctors, pilots, computer specialists, and so on. Always saying that the skill is not usefull or overrated. To me it is much more fun if you have covered most of the skills within the pc´s and up until now we had tons of situations where the pilot saved our asses.

10 hours ago, dreenan said:

Well, if you chose to not use the pilot skill as you could, then of course it is not "usefull" or "overrated".

But the same goes for many of the skills. You can recruit NPC mechanis, doctors, pilots, computer specialists, and so on. Always saying that the skill is not usefull or overrated. To me it is much more fun if you have covered most of the skills within the pc´s and up until now we had tons of situations where the pilot saved our asses.

Of course, if you're disregarding the use for, but my question was about asking what is it suppose to be used for....as I could already find something relevant where you would be required to do a piloting (space) check ...

Because for instance, when you're in a fight....you select a maneuver, you select an action....almost none required a piloting check....while this is where I though it would be more relevant....

Couple of people gave example here and some other gave house rules....which makes it more interesting

1 hour ago, Mefyrx said:

Of course, if you're disregarding the use for, but my question was about asking what is it suppose to be used for....as I could already find something relevant where you would be required to do a piloting (space) check ...

Because for instance, when you're in a fight....you select a maneuver, you select an action....almost none required a piloting check....while this is where I though it would be more relevant....

Couple of people gave example here and some other gave house rules....which makes it more interesting

Oh, I just realized I forgot the give you half a dozen examples for using the piloting skill, I am gonna start with the most controversial because there are opposing developer interpretations for:

1. Gain the Advantage, or short GtA, allows you to decide which arc of an ship you are shooting. You gained an advantageous position after all and keep it until it runs out or your opponent breaks it. One interpretation here is that you lock this way one of your arcs into the chosen arc of your opponent, i.e. getting on the six'o'clock position during a dog fight. And in a dog fight this would mean that your opponent can not shoot at you, while you can shoot at him.

2. A normal opposed piloting checkFor capital ships GtA is not an allowed action, but if you refer to chapter 3 and check out the description for piloting you will notice that you can take position in a similar way in a battle for positioning between capital ships as well. This is huge, because such fighting for positioning is determined by an opposed Piloting(Space) check … most star destroyers have literally not a single gun on their aft arc and nearly all battle cruisers have uneven distribution of their weapon systems. There is nearly always a blind spot to abuse and your piloting skill always matters to hold this relative position. My pilot has taking down with this tactic literally more than a dozen of capital ships.
   
   Here the quote from AoR-CRB p127

   Quote

   During a space conflict, pilots may jockey for position to determine which shields face the enemy and which weapons may be brought to bear. When opponents attempt to negate these efforts, the winner is identified through an opposed Piloting(Space) check.

   So even if you don't allow GtA to bring the benefit of getting into the right arcs, you can still get into an advantageous position via a simple opposed piloting check. And stay there until your opponent successful negated your positioning.

3. Chases already have been mentioned, but let's not forget how important those are. They are imho best handled by giving pilots a free piloting action at the beginning of each round and handle the round other wise normal, minus the movement maneuvers. A lot of situations are actually chases.

4. Terrain, terrain, terrain. Empty space is boring and with little opportunities to spend advantages and threats in interesting ways. But with terrain there come piloting checks, usually with the joys of difficulty terrain rules, which makes going fast dangerous. Spice it up with a chase on top and those checks can be happing quite often and become quite deadly based on the amount of red dice you can see in those checks.

5. Negating all those nasty red dice at the other hand is the job of a skillful co-pilot. The copilot action (AoR-CRB p248) is an Average Piloting check which downgrades the difficulty of the pilot's next by one per success. You can reduce or even completely eliminate the chances for despair during piloting checks this way. Don't forget to make those co-pilot checks before GtA or opposed Piloting checks. Co-pilots can make all the difference in the world and I love my little Astromech for them ❤️

6. Lastly, difficult maneuvers in general can make your GM call for piloting checks. Ramming for example is done via a piloting check, and while you usually take yourself a critical hit as well when ramming other vehicles ... flying into a group of Stormtroopers with a Lambda shuttle is quite the effective way to clear a deck of opposing troops while not wasting time. ?

7. On top, talents like Full Throttle, Brilliant Evasion, etc make Piloting essential to activate them reliable, especially Brilliant Evasion is a key talent for Pilots to keep smaller ships alive. You can for example engage a star destroyer via Brilliant Evasion safely, while keeping it's fighter escort mostly out of weapon range via the chase rules, using the imperial star destroyer basically as terrain and target dummy for a few rounds. Now hopefully you cripple the ship enough via critical hits before your Brilliant Evasion runs out. Works best with the squadron rules, which gives you additional attacks for each Triumph you roll on your regular checks. (See Squadron rules in the AoR GM Screen expansion) ?

Nice input

I would just point out that #1 is for starfighters as freigther and others have turrets all arc, and #2 i wouldnt allow as a player or gm "blind" spot like x-wing vs tie-fighter old computer game.... But you could of course diminish the number of weapons pointed at you...

But it is nice input

Even all arc turrets usually are not without blind spots, ventral and dorsal is an arc used sometimes in the game. Rolling is the cheapest maneuver in space combat, but with some agile ship you can compensate for even that movement usually (if you are close enough to your target).

And besides, fast, agile fighters become a lot more successful in surviving space combat when you allow arc dodging. The best kind of damage mitigation is not allowing shots against you after all.