| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Successful Flyby has never been a free attack. Everyone running flyby as a free attack has been making a mistake. Flyby affects how your attacks work in the gunnery phase, by allowing you to fire as though you were one hex away, and select your arcs with no regard for the position of ships at the end of the helm phase.
Been reading the rules of Flyby and have gotten slightly confused.
Flyby
The ship moves as normal, but it can move through 1 hex occupied by an enemy starship without provoking a free attack (as described in Moving through Other Starships). During the following gunnery phase, you can select one arc of your starship’s weapons to fire at the enemy vessel as if the vessel were in close range (treat the range as 1 hex), against any quadrant of the enemy starship...you follow the normal rules for attacking...
BUT... If you fail this check,...the movement provokes a free attack from that starship..So if I'm reading the rules correctly now. A successful Flyby just gives you a attack with any weapon on your starship with one weapon at a range of 1 Hex during the gunnery phase.
A failed Flyby attack gives the opposing starship a free attack.
Just want to get this clarified as every Starfinder game I've played and seen played Flyby was always a free attack for one of the starships.
The rules don't state anywhere about a free attack or anything, it states "If successful, something changes in your regularly scheduled Gunnery Phase".
In practice so far it's a "Pilot lost the initiative check this round so try this so you might actually get a good shot off" ability, in my experience. Because if you won the initiative check and you're not flying a spaceship version of a blob of molasses you should be able to position yourself well anyway for the gunnery phase.