Pilot

[Wajeb Deb Kaadeb]

I'm not sure I've got a handle on how easy it is to become a pilot in the SW universe.

By the D6 game, the various piloting skills in both editions are not advanced skills, thus anybody without the skill can be a pilot just by using their Mechanical attribute.

This means, in the game world, just about everybody is a pilot. You'd have to make some special GM calls for those from low tech worlds.

Piloting is like driving a car in the real world. It's hard to find people who can't do it.

But, do the movies reflect that?




THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY

My first take on piloting is that its a specialized skill. Not everybody can be a pilot. This seems to be backed up by the deleted scene in ANH, that also shows up in the novelization, where it turns out Luke can pilot the X-Wing because the controls are similar to that of the Skyhopper he few on Tatooine.

But, the game went another way. I wonder why. Probably because it's a Space Opera Adventure Tale, not hard science, so why bother?





THE D6 SOURCEBOOK

If you read the entries for vehicles in the D6 Sourcebook, again, you get the feeling that piloting is easy and most people can do it. Civilian vehicles are speeders: landspeeders and airspeeders, or some version of the two. Swoops, speederbikes, skiimmers, cloud cars, skiffs, sail barges, floaters, pod racers, whatever you call them, they're all basically just speeders. Some have altitude restrictions. But, its reasonable to assume that the controls are the same, no matter what type of vehicle that you pilot. And, the game reflects this with the skill.





THE PREQUELS

Then, the prequels came along, and it seemed to me that everyone could be a pilot, and being a pilot is easy. Again, like driving a car, most people can do it.





THE NEW FILMS

Now, the new films seems to go a new direction. Or, do they? Finn needs a pilot to get off the Finalizer. That's why he needs Poe. Otherwise, I presume that he'd get off the ship himself (unless he knows that he's not good enough of a pilot to not get blown up once he's outside the hangar.

Then, in TLJ, we see him piloting a ski speeder.

In TFA, Rey tells Finn that she's a pilot, and in the novelization, she expands upon this saying that she's been flying since she was very young. Who's ship? I've got no clue.





TWO SEPARATE SKILLS, NOT RELATED.

So, the new films lead me to believe that the D6 game has it correct. Piloting a starship and piloting a speeder are two separate skills that are not very related.

The question becomes: How did Luke learn how to fly the X-Wing if the Skyhopper skill he has did not help him?

One answer to that (and I think this is in the novelization) is that Luke was training to go to the Academy, and he spent a lot of his time in the simulator. Maybe the simulator scores are required with the application? I think I read that Toche Station had an old simulator that Luke used (and Darklighter before him). Maybe that was in the Radio Presentation--I'm not sure.

We can discount the Skyhopper stuff from the deleted scene because, well, the scene was deleted.





MECHANICAL DEFAULT

But still...in the D6 game, you don't need the skill to be able to fly, which means that Finn should be a pilot, too.





Thoughts on this?

[Mamatried]

I have actually been thinking about this.
What I sort of came up with was that any basic piloting of the most common type of shuttle, airspeeder and various repulsorlift vehicles , like swoops could be "piloted" in a to and from work kind of way, very basic.

As to animals, they follow the above, basically, again what is common to the culture.

Then come the more advanced piloting, here I actually sometimes use the crew skill rating to indicate the "trained" level of a normal stock pilot of the vessel type.

Like If toy pilot transports, a fairly common thin in the galaxy, using the above limits this to some transports.
If you have high enough skill, say 4D+2 you could reasonably figure out how to pilot the VT-49, a military ship and thus reasonable to assume somewhat different n how it is handled and piloted.

Because the ship is "special" and he is not a trained military pilot and at least familiar with that type of flight controls, he uses his full skill but has a default -5 to -10 to any pilot check.


As to the X wing and the skyhopper are they not made by the same company? and if so I would assume the flight controls on one is more or less the same as on the other, thus helping luke in the x wing piloting.

Above this indicated familiarity, and he does not have the penalties to his piloting rolls

[Whill]

[Wajeb Deb Kaadeb]