Ok, I am a total noob to Starfinder and my group is trying to understand starship combat rules. In our first combat we couldn't find a reason why a pilot would choose to move through a ship if flyby allows to make your movement, and if you fail the roll the only penalty is to take a free attack from the ship...exactly the same as in Moving Through Other Ships.
Can anyone point me out what we are not understanding?
1) sometimes at lower levels you REAALLY need to hit the same shield quadrant you hit last time before their engineers can fully repair it so you can start doing hull damage. If you successfully flyby the other guys you can hit that shield regardless of your positioning.
2) A gambit when you lose initiative and have to go first is to park your rump right in front of the other ship, who has to either fly by you (possibly sucking up an AOO) or use back up instead of evade.
Ok, re-reading my post i am afraid i didn't explain myself. My issue is not with the maneuver itself, I think I understand it, my question is why would anyone select to simply fly through a ship's space instead of using flyby all the time? Except when a system like engine or core is malfunctioning or wrecked, there's no other limitation to flyby except the roll, and if it fails, there's no additional penalty apart from the one you get for moving through that space.
Not sure. Maybe you wanted to use another maneuver instead really badly.
Just flying through an occupied hex, without doing a flyby, is something to avoid. Attempting the flyby, instead of going around carries some risk. Attempting the flyby carries the opportunity cost of not doing something else, like evade.
It burns your pilot action for the round. It means you cant evade, functionally making you 2 easier to hit
