As I rambled on before, I think the challenge with the MG skill list is that it’s so pre-industrial & pre-modern.
Droids/automation provide most of that productive capacity in the era, so a pre-industrial skill basis won’t feel right to me. Some concepts are okay… Like Smith mapping over to Engineer, but even that is a soft linkage. Carpenter, Stonemason, Apiarist, Brewer - there is no good reason to bring many of them over, even Brewer. Most of it has to be scrapped instead of mapped IMO.
And these are the prominent skills in pre-MG & apprenticeship experience during Recruitment. (Err, Youngling/Initiate Training rather than apprenticeship.)
This is why I tried to look at it from a modern, post-industrial, American perspective. It’s why I listed Dancer and Musician as separate, originally. Ditto to preserving Programming on its own, and separate from physical things. It’s more modern & service-oriented. I see Scavenger, as a post-production skill, being more likely to fit the futuristic setting than a primary production ability like Stonemason.
See, why didn’t Baker and Cook get bound together in Mouse Guard? Smith, Stonemason, Carpenter, Potter… I can see why they are separate, but they could also be various Builder concepts in another manner of seeing things. Simplicity is good, but in a service-oriented skill list, I would still push back against making productive skills separate/specialized & making service skills bundled/generalized.
I don’t mind bundling Engineer and Programmer and Droidsmith, but a mechanical engineering guy is different from the EE or compsci guy today. Also, Droids are the significant opponent in the Clone Wars era, and I see them more like the Animals of Mouse Guard (hence Droidsmith rather than outright Programming).
Hazards… Droids (as the #1 foe in the era), Sith, Space (the journey obstacles based on hyperspace navigation, which includes hostile fauna)… And Technology seems like a brilliant idea for an obstacle since it’s always getting FUBARed in the movies.
What if Droid/Sith gets combined into the Separatists, with non-aligned worlds being some other idea (Diplomatic obstacle/hazard)?
Battle Meditation is supposed to address Separatists hazards… but Meditation as a Precog/inform-the-GM method can work.
Informing the GM through skill use is a great aspect of the BW system. I just think there needs to be some specialization since it is so powerful. Weather Watcher doesn’t tell you what animal comes next in the story, though maybe Hunter or Loremouse could. Pathfinder and Cartographer are also not Weather Watcher.
Battle Meditation for Separatist hazards. Navigator & some Jedi precognition for Space hazards? Engineer or Programmer for Tech hazards? Something Jedi for landing on a potentially hostile non-aligned world.
Anyway, that’s my pushback/disagreeable morning mood for you.