Space Opera RPG

[aramis erak]

Neither are what are in the adventures. It wouldn't be the only game to have skills that aren't routinely actually rolled for anything; Alternity had armor skills that mostly served as offsetting various problems at various ranks.

Marc Miller has stated in several different places that he used the Xd6 for <= Att+Skill since creation; this implies that that the rules in the book aren't in fact Marc's rules. Note also: Book 0 (part of the deluxe set core) includes the probabilities and implied methodology that is explicit in a couple adventures that Marc wrote.

And yeah, its extremely common for games of that era to have abilities without explicit mechanics... Such as OE D&D having very limited use for attributes...

It's a cautionary tale for GM's - just because you see a pattern in the mechanics doesn't mean the designer put it there. It could be the editor, or the developers. Or even just coincidence.