The entry for Operate is a little confusing, as the various specialisations are not laid out the same way for all skills.

Is a single specialisation in Operate meant to only be for a single type of vehicle (like a bike or a jump pack) or a class of vehicles (like Surface or Voidship)?

AFAIK (from what's in Black Crusade), it's the latter. There are only three Operate types generally seen. It's possible that there might be som 'exotic' vehicles that require their own Operate skills (I would have thought that Titans would have required something beyond the typical Sentinel, but no).

Huh. Reading the NPC entries in Only War, both Chaos and Imperial Troops get Operate (Surface) skills, while Dark Eldar and Orks get Operate (Surface [Hover]) and Operate (Surface [Rokkit Pack]) respectively. Also, according to the Operate skill entry, jump packs should be an Aeronautica operate, not a Surface.

This looks like there is definately an error here- either its meant to be more general, as in (Surface) is all you need, or you are supposed to sub-specialize. Look like this will have to be errata'd.

Alternately, those dirty xenos just can't learn to fly/drive everything with a single skill. Proof of their inferiority to glorious Humans!

Armour said:

Actually up untill now jump packs have required Pilot[Personal].

I think the issue is that once again FFG have lazily copied and pasted from earlier books without properly checking that it makes sense.

Considering how powerful it would be to allow characters to pilot ALL types of vehicles with a mere 3 skill purchases (Surface,Aeronautica, Starship) i would rather it be split up into its constituent types of vehicles (Wheeled, Tracked, Skimmer, Personal, Aeronautica etc).

Looking back in my Rogue Trader book they use to split up all the vehicles skill between six different skills. You had Drive (Ground Vehicle, Skimmer/Hover, Wakler) and Pilot (Personal, Flyers, Space Craft). So back in those rules jump packs would be covered in personal.

For Only War using a jump back should be Operate (Aeronutica) as stated in the skill discription on page 128, its also the skill a PC gets from a Drop Troop Regiment.

You can also grab the Talent Hotshot Pilot as long as you have one of the Operate skills and then you will count the others all at Rank 1 (Known) and add one degree of success to any successful Operate Test. A really good talent for an Operator to have for sure, any nice and cheep xp wise as they will have both the aptitudes.

Giving the Ork Stormboy Operate(Surface[Rokkit Pack]) might not be a mistake. Jump packs are usually treated as a Flyer-type skill because they're capable of full flight, even if only for a minute or so. Even the grav-chute can stay airborne for a while (depending on altitude). The Rokkit pack, on the other hand, states that it's basically incapable of flight and can only make powered 'hops' - " he must be on the ground by the end of his Turn."

I've been reading a lot about this in the book as well and the only skills i can find which are specialist skills in the book is the Lore skills.

So according to the book the Operate and Trade skills are basic skills and can be used with a -20 penalty. Which according to me is really retarded...

And another thing I though was strange is that the first level of Operate costs 100/200/300 XP depending on the amount of matching aptitudes. And then there is the talent called Hotshot Pilot which is a tier 2 talent and thus costs 300/450/900 XP (the skill and the talent has the same aptitudes as well) which makes all Operate skills counts as beeing known to you, and adds 1 DoS to all operate skills. Well the later part in that one is ok, but the first part in it makes no sense at all. Why would i take a talent for double or tripple the cost of just buying the other Operate skills :S

And let's face it, there is 3 operate skills, Surface, Aeronautica and Voidship, but the Operate(Voidship) is more or less useless to the character, i doupt that there is many cases when the Imperial Guard will take on random soldier and let him drive a 2km long voidship. From a roleplaying view I think you more or less could ignore that skill

And then to the second really bizarre thing, if the operate skills is concidered a normal skill and anyone can use it with a -20 penalty, that means that any IG Soldier in the whole universe can walk into a voidship and have about 10-20% chance of successfully drive it o.O

So, have anyone tried to handle the Operate skill like a specialist skill and forced the players to choose a specialization for the operate skill? Or what do you guys think about this?

I think that according to the description on the page 113 of Corebook, Operate i s definitely specialist skill.