I understand that those maneuvers and action requires a moving vehicle, but... why can't an X-34 Landspeeder chasing another X-34 Landspeeder position itself to stay on target (or similar)?

Because at low speeds, you're not gaining the advantage, you're lazily following. At higher speeds, the slightest misstep will cost you dearly, and that's why the speed requirements, I think.

When flying slowly, you don't execute evasive maneuvers. Being fast is part of being evasive. Going a slow pace means they can easily follow you.

Stay on target, though, is a bit odd, I agree. I can't think of any reason why you can't go OCD on something regardless of your speed. I look forward to hearing other people's reasonings!

-EF

Yeah, I've got no real world explanation so it must have something to do with game balance, but I don't feel confident enough in my system knowledge to know what exactly that is

I'm piloting a Storm IV Cloud Car and I'm approaching my target: a Trast A-A5 Heavy Speeder Truck.

I want to Gain the Advantage against him, but... to gain it I've to go at full speed (4), while my target is moving at a turtle's speed (1). This seems... a little strange.

I would say that for this Action, the speed difference is the only thing that should be taken in account.

Yeah, I feel that way too. If you have two ships,one speed 2 and one speed 3, the faster one should be able to gain the advantage on the slower.

Edit: Reading the fluff for the GtA action it almost sounds like they feel that unless you're in small, fast ship, your ship simply can't maneuver quick enough to Gain the Advantage, but what if the ship you are flying against is even bigger and slower than your bloated pig of a freighter? Should still apply I would think

And when you think about it, with Gain the Advantage, doesn't the huge difficulty for speed difference already deter most slow craft from attempting it? Is there a real reason to restrict it further.

I mean, as written Speeder bikes and Swoops can't gain the advantage. And that seems odd as they are depicted as fast and maneuverable.

I would be more tempted to make maneuvers only work based on relative speed. Examples:

Instead of Evasive Maneuvers working against everyone, any enemy ship targeting you while you are using evasive maneuvers that has a speed 2x higher or more of your ship ignores the upgrade. This allows speed 3 ships to use it against anything except speed 6 ships, keeping them the baseline (3+ is RAW), but allows a speed 2 ship to go evasive against a ship with 3 speed.

Stay on Target: can only be used on vehicles with speeds less than twice your own.

Gain the Advantage: Just straight up drop the requirement. Possibly add another level of difficulty onto the end of the chart. The difference in speed difficulty already makes it hard enough to do on someone that much faster than you anyway.

The way I see it speeder bikes and swoops can't use GtA because GtA is a dogfighting kind of maneuver. While bikes and swoops are fast, relative to all other vehicles, dogfighting at those speeds at the kind of low altitudes they would have to work at trying GtA would be suicidal. You'd need open air/space in all directions around you in order to not smack into the ground. Not to mention that the driver would stand an excellent chance at falling off mid-loop.

That back and forth jockeying for good position thing isn't solely done by planes. Hell its done by race car drivers all the time, and no race car on the planet goes as fast as a swoop bike does in fiction. I see no reason to restrict the action to solely airplane style dogfighting when it narratively fits so many other things.

Even with your assessment, swoops have maximum altitudes in the hundreds of meters, some into the thousands (How else could swoop bike gangs exist on Coruscant if they couldn't gain altitude?)

Another note: The max speed of a swoop in fiction is similar to the max speed of a P-51 Mustang.

I think any system where you can't dogfight in a P-51 Mustang might be a little fishy. (also, just for reference, dogfighting was never a thing that happened at maximum flight speed anyway, you wanted to dogfight at your corner velocity for maximum maneuverability. In Star Wars this is a bit different because of inertial compensators and lack of wind resistance etc, but my point is the dogfighting speed of a P-51 Mustang is lower than the max speed of a Swoop bike)

Seems to me that going too fast is going to be a liability if you're tailing a slower target. To Gain the Advantage, you should have to match speeds, otherwise you're going to constantly overshoot. Another related issue is that all ships accelerate at the same rate, unless they Punch It, but then you take Strain. I know it's all abstracted, but having Acceleration as one additional stat might have helped. It makes no sense that a TIE fighter can't zip up to max speed in short order without damage...that's what they're made for.

House rule ideas:

Acceleration = Handling, minimum of 1. You can increase your speed by your Handling score without damage, it still takes a maneuver.

GtA as written, except:

-- 1) minimum speed 1

-- 2) if you are successful you must match speeds with the target. You get a penalty of setback dice equal to the speed difference if you are going faster (...or more than 1 faster...?)

This probably breaks something, but...?

The problem there is that you lose the variable difficulty of the action. Unless you just use max speed as the variable instead of current speed.

Honestly, I'm very tempted to drop acceleration/deceleration. As written its just one more thing to track, it doesn't seem to add MUCH to the game, and it doesn't seem supported by the fiction on anything smaller than a capital ship.

I mean, in personal combat people talk all the time about how "Rounds aren't 6 seconds, they are much longer, like a minute", but jeez guys, I've never seen anything in fiction that showed it took an A-Wing 6 minutes to accelerate without practically disabling itself (Using Punch It! an A-Wing would from a stop would inflict 6 strain on itself. It has a strain threshold of 6). Most ships in fiction seem to reach speed and change speed fairly fast, certainly to within any speed they want inside of a minute.

Not only that, but changing acceleration taking a maneuver means you can't change speed and move range bands in the same round without taking strain on the ship!

Not only that, but changing acceleration taking a maneuver means you can't change speed and move range bands in the same round without taking strain on the ship!

This, and the fact that you can "move twice" also bugs me. There's abstract, and there's "so abstract it's divorced from reality". I know SW space combat makes zero realistic sense anyway (banking, shrieking engines, etc) but moving twice implies a sudden acceleration and deceleration, and we all know in space once you accelerate it takes energy to slow down, so why would you? I hope they revisit these rules with a good supplement someday.

I think at a bare minimum I'm going to roll the accelerate maneuver into the fly maneuver so you can increase / decrease speed at the same time that you are changing range bands. For movement purposes I'll just assume the speed increase / decrease happens first.

Although, both times that space combat happened in my campaign, we just assumed that the ship was already travelling at max speed as they were on their way to a location when they were attacked so why wouldn't they be moving at full speed?

The only case where I can think of not starting at speed is things that should still be fairly common: Starfighters launching from hangers.

I just don't see any evidence that a TIE Fighter takes 5 minutes to reach speed after exiting a Star Destroyer.

True...I haven't been running much of a starfighter game, but yes, I could see my group getting attacked as they leave a spacestation or something, though in those cases I would think the ambushers would be waiting off in the distance rather than deal with the spacestation or anyone else coming in or out of dock.

But, yes, that situation could be fairly common in other campaigns.