Driftbourne's page

I would like to see fires break out on the ship.

Ship components get damaged and destroyed.
Holes in the ship that vent out all atmosphere.
Ship components that can be tuned and customized.
You can really get into the numbers by going with bigger numbers.
Go with percentages.
Just a couple ideas.

A bigger ship is more likely to be disabled VS blown up.
-0-G combat.
Gravity generator is down because PowerPlant is damaged.

Have you had a chance to play Battle for Nova Rush yet? It doesn't have any tactical Starship combat, but the entire adventure takes place during a starship battle.

I would like to see fires break out on the ship.

Ship components get damaged and destroyed.

Holes in the ship that vent out all atmosphere.

.
So overall, I think The Battle for Nova Rush did a really good job of feeling like you are on a ship during a ship battle. I'm courious to see how this could be combined with tactical ship combat, perhaps the pilot and gunner deal with the tactical part, the rest of the crew deals with hazards caused by the combat, similar to how The Battle for Nova Rush handled them.

Side note: the Nova Rush is a big ship, by big I mean it would take up both sides of an enormous flip mat. Our GM printed out the maps from inside the cover, each of the 2 maps was around 46 x 36 inches, lots of room for the PCs to customise that ship. Also worth noting, most of the ship's corridors are 10 to 15 feet wide, so plenty of room for large PCs. The storage areas have enough room for mechs, vehicles, and or small starships, possibly all 3 at one time.

I would imagine it will be in the Archive of Nethys, which should say what the original source is.

So, Chk Chk's little grippers hanging out over the edge of his apron is basically the shirren equivalent of cleavage, right?

Younger generations these days, just throwing cultural norms out the window.

I'm guessing the Jotunborn are the first official Large PC race put out by Paizo, yes?

Maybe a first for Pathfinder, but not a first for Paizo, Starfinder has had large playable species for a few years, not sure which one was first.

I've never done Free RPG Day before. If I travel a couple hours to a shop that has the books, will I just be able to pick them up, or is there a requirement to play since I won't be GMing because my local shop isn't participating?

Depends on the shop; I would call ahead to see how that ship handles it, before driving a long distance. Some of the shops where I live used to give things out randomly, so there was no guarantee you would get the Free RPG book you were looking for.

Driftbourne wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

Bonus conspiracy theory. Druids caused "The Gap", the disappearance of the Wildsong language, is a cover-up...

Druids caused the The Gap because someone taught a non-druid Wildsong. One thing led to another and things got out of hand.

It might have been young druids who were being taught Wildsong, and one of them accidentally livestreamed the lesson on the infosphere, thinking they were just recording it for themself. What happened to the student who livestreamed the lesson is likely part of the cover-up that led to a bigger cover-up, leading to The Gap.

And somebody probably then used the livestream to create a Wildsong sound-board to replay Wildsong phrases...

Then a band made a song using the sound-board, that song went to the top of the charts.

Is (or was) the Wildsong the same language on every planet?

also, are there druids for worlds who's life forms don't resemble those on Golarion. Like aren't there worlds were all life is silicon based and thus crystalline? Or what about Aballon?

To add to that, what about druids of the Drift?

Driftbourne wrote:

Bonus conspiracy theory. Druids caused "The Gap", the disappearance of the Wildsong language, is a cover-up...

Druids caused the The Gap because someone taught a non-druid Wildsong. One thing led to another and things got out of hand.

It might have been young druids who were being taught Wildsong, and one of them accidentally livestreamed the lesson on the infosphere, thinking they were just recording it for themself. What happened to the student who livestreamed the lesson is likely part of the cover-up that led to a bigger cover-up, leading to The Gap.

Now, I expect someone will tell us that everything about how the Wildsong language was lost is described in details in last year lorebook "The Gap". :)

I have both the PDF and the hardcover version of "The Gap." I can confidently say I can not disprove that the way Wildsong language was lost is described in the book. However, I do suspect the hardcover goes into more detail since it's 30 pages longer than the PDF.

Why is the book longer? I suspect Paizo accidentally included more info about The Gap than intended, but didn't catch it in time to stop the printing, so only corrected it in the PDF, making the hardcover a collector's item.

Bonus conspiracy theory. Druids caused "The Gap", the disappearance of the Wildsong language, is a cover-up...

Advice on mixing character options between SF2e and PF2e will be in the GM Core. The Galaxy Guide seems to be setting up the lore changes for playing a druid in Starfinder. There's a big diffrence between playing a PF2e druid character in SF2e, and using the druid class to make a SF2e character.

ObsessiveCompulsiveWolf wrote:

Driftbourne wrote:

RPG-Geek wrote:

No. I have other systems for sci-fi that do it better. We don't need character classes and d20s in space.

What other Sci-fi game has anything as cool as Zo! or Strawberry Machine Cake?

Pretty sure RPG-Geek is talking about the system mechanics such as character classes and even using a d20, which some other sci-fi RPGs dispense with. As for “cool”, given the vast range of tonal preferences available to the possible player base I’d say the answer swings from “none” to “lots/all of them”. Starfinder’s insistence on replicating realworld tropes like TV/vid/net influencer-stars and musical supergroups are not to everyone’s tastes.

This! If I wanted a space game, not sci-fi in general but space, I'd do Eclipse Phase. For sci-fi, I'd pick between heavily modified Cyberpunk 2020, Hard Wired Island, BattleTech (not sure which version just yet), Dark Heresy, Lancer, or even crib the setting from RIFTS, Traveller, or Spelljammer and use them with GURPS before I'd consider SF2.

Paizo's current themes and tones are a huge miss for me and part of why I'm less bullish on PF2 and SF2 than I could be.

Have you ever played Starfinder2e or Pathfinder2e? That you would consider almost any other game before SF2e, and you don't like Paizo's current themes and tones, and SF2e isn't even out yet. I get the feeling this isn't really about the game system.

I also play multiple other game systems, including several on your list.

No. I have other systems for sci-fi that do it better. We don't need character classes and d20s in space.

What other Sci-fi game has anything as cool as Zo! or Strawberry Machine Cake?

Is there any skills we are missing as a party?

I can Daily Prep a single skill feat temporarily, looking to Skill Training into a skill gap we may have…

Recently took Athletics to Expert as I noticed that was a little lacking… what else?

Not sure what's needed, but this is what we have.

Acrobatics, Dr. Sani, Fengsai, Grizzi, Laurel
Arcana, Jazz, Zashodu
Athletics, Fengsai, Grizzi, Jazz
Computers, Grizzi, Jazz, Zashodu
Crafting, Dr. Sani, Fengsai, Grizzi, Jazz, Zashodu
Deception, Laurel, Jazz
Diplomacy, Dr. Sani, Grizzi, Laurel
Intimidation, Laurel
medicine, Dr. Sani, Jazz, Zashodu
nature, Dr. Sani, Jazz, Zashodu
Ocultism, Fengsai, Zashodu
Performance, Performance
pioliting, Fengsai, Grizzi, Laurel, Zashodu
Society, Fengsai, Grizzi, Laurel, Zashodu
Stealth, Fengsai, Grizzi, Jazz, Laurel
survival, Dr. Sani, Laurel
Therivey, Dr. Sani, Fengsai, Jazz, Laurel

Lore Astronomy, Zashodu
Lore Infosphere, Grizzi
Lore Life science, Dr. Sani
Lore Physics, Jazz
Lore: Settlement, Laurel
Lore Sports, Fengsai

Distant Shores is one of my all-time favorite PF1 books, and I've really struggled to ever feel hooked reading SF1's Pact Worlds by comparison. A do-over would be a lot of fun, as an overview of the setting's core and an excuse to flesh out a bunch of the locals as Ancestries.

What interests me about using Distant Worlds in SF2e is using it as a source of archaeological sites and pre-Gap history.

GRIM*! Gaming Network wrote:

sonicnarukami wrote:

how do i roll dice on the forums?

Looks like you are new to Play-by-Post on the Paizo forums. Have you played Pay-by-Post on any other platform?

If you look at my profile, I have set up several dice rolls you can copy to your profile and edit to change to your skills, attacks, and bonuses.

Nope! This is my first pbp, so I'm still figuring everything out

Feel free to ask a question. There's a bunch of help info in the sticky post here.

If you would like to add an avatar image to your character,
go to > My Account > Account Settings > choose your character from your list of Messageboard Alises > Edit > Avatar Image > Change

If you want to use that same image for your game token, download that image > go to slide 2 (there's a link to the slides at the top of the game page) > pick a token that doesn't have character info filled out, fill out that info for your character. > right click on the token and select > replace image.

And the DC 20 one appears cut off...

good catch here's the full info for DC20

Intermittent life signs registered in scans of AA-126D,
which the dwarves associate with common space vermin. Before
the Pact Worlds’ formal union in 41 ag, the Diaspora was considered
especially lawless, and many dwarves aboard the Sledgehammer
speculate that this duergar installation dates back to that time
when storied investigators like Avaldur Rhols and Gwahil Starpeak
brought justice to the asteroid belt.

When's the deadline?

Botting for Grizzi at PaizoCon

"You look like you could use another hand, let me roll your dice for you."

"You know what every GM at a convention needs? A page turner, here let me turn the pages for you."

I'm traveling through Japan this week and the next, so bear with me if I'm slow to post...

Have fun! That's quite the drive...

Biohacker is also cool, would love to see it brought in as a dedicated non-magical healer. Feels like it'd make an interesting alternative to an alchemist. Don't really want to see the biohacker brought in as it is in 1E though, feel it should implement some additional considerations to emphasize surgery as well as medicine and poison. Put more emphasis on them as a physician and surgeon on top of being a Hojo-tier bio scientist. Let them emphasize knives as well as darts. Let them craft elixirs, poisons, and mutagens in addition to medicinal items.

I wouldn't want to see Biohacker as a dedicated non-magical healer. I wouldn't mind Biohackers having a healing subclass that is really good at non-magical experimental healing, with some cost, risk, or side effect.

An extreme case of Biohackers focused on improving themselves could be the Evolutionist class. Farscape episode 9, "DNA Mad Scientist," would be a good example. The Netflix series "Biohackers" is a good example of biohackers without going the full Evolutionist class route. Spider from the movie Johnny Mnemonic would be another Biohacker example, more focused on augmentations.

If Galorian is a kitchen sink setting, then Starfinder is a warehouse of kitchen sinks. If you want to run a campaign that feels stuffed with corporations, you can, but you could also go to most of those locations and completely ignore the presence of corporations.

Several people here have compared the center ring of Verces to Night City or Coruscant. My shirren character is from one of the shirren colonies on the bright side of Verces, which they would describe it more like a small colony on Tatoone.

Akiton can be many things: Space Detroit, the road warrior, the Las Vegas of junk collecting, Firefly, John Catter, it's also home of the Contemplatives. Whatever is going on in Akiton, it's not stuffed with it; places tend to be spread out and isolated.

One thing I love is that Starfinder has its own Pop Culture, everyone knows about Zo! or the band Strawberry Machine Cake. For me, it's details like this in the lore that make the setting feel more lived in, it can give a character goals and motivation outside of just being an adventurer. It also gives characters some common knowledge that makes getting to know new people on a mission easier. Songbird Station is a place where my characters often go during downtime for concerts.

[dice= Profession, professor] 1d20+8

I'll be sorry to see Jek go. I love playing with him, but I'm sure I'll see you 'round the boards. Are you running Ashbourne's Ashen Asteroid?

Yes, that's the one GRIM*! Gaming Network’s SFS 1-36: Enter the Ashen Asteroid.

Jek's my first Starfinder character, I'll play Jek again someday, got a lot going on so want to focus on running the game, it's only my 2nd time GMing Starfinder. Once I get my game going and my last playtest game is over, I'll likely pick up another game as a PC. I've had fun with Ears and your other characters. I still remember when I figured out what HFG-5-309 was from... lol :)

Not sure what everyone else is doing when SF2e comes out, but I plan on playing both editions, so I will be around.

The contemplative feats in the Galaxy Guide are worthy of much contemplation, the flavor is spot on.

I'll be GMing 1-36: Enter the Ashen Asteroid as GM GRIM*! Gaming Network

Qstor, Aphelion Leto, and EbonFist have seats but need to confirm they are still interested. The rest of the seating will be first-come, first-served. The earliest start date would be Monday, May 19th, but it will depend on recruiting.

Here the link to the game
1-36: Enter the Ashen Asteroid .

I made a brand new dwarf for this one.

I'm having lots of internet connection problems, I got a repair tech coming tomorrow, I should have the game thread post Monday or Tuesday.

Are you making a guide to Paizo's Starfinder Setting, or is it your own setting for Starfinder?

There's also last year's free RPG day release, Second Contact, which is a mini alien book with 12 SF2e aliens.

Second Contact.

Although all 6 of the Playtest adventures have aliens in them, Playtest Scenario #3: Wheel of Monsters might have the most, with around 14 Aliens.

Wheel of Monsters.

As others have said, all the PF2e monsters work in Sf2e too. Any of the adventures released at the same time as the Player Core should be self-contained, not needing the Alien Core to run.

I have a feeling we will be playing "Those who fight back..."

I made a brand new dwarf for this one.

Ok, I'll just run 1-36: Enter the Ashen Asteroid then.

I've got a dwarf I can bring.

A dwarf is great for this scenario, also characters that have played 1-12: Ashes of Discovery. I have 1-12: Ashes of Discovery If the group wants, I could run both?

Honestly, I'd be really surprised if they can manage to mechanically push a ranged meta.

They don't need to push it, they just need to enable a ranged meta. Having a ranged meta lets opponents deal with flying PCs at any level. If an all ranged party is more viable, then it is in PF2e, then mechanically they have succeeded in enabling ranged meta in the game, but what the players choose to play is still up the the players.

The other big issue with a ranged meta is simply making more of the maps larger to enable it, but that also depends on what's going on in the adventure. I don't expect a lot of ranged meta inside a starship or office building, but the right map can make it better.

The AoE templates? I did not make those, no.

I don't remember where I originally got them. In fact, if I remember correctly I didn't copy them at all. They just appeared one day in one of my games, presumably pasted in by a player who wanted to have them handy.
So I'm afraid that I can't tell you who originally made them to give credit, but I think they've been shared around pretty widely.

That's an interesting story, I like that they just appeared, my guess is that where they came from was lost during The Gap...

I'm starting to prep to run another scenario. I was wondering if slides 9 through 13 are something you made or are available somewhere for other GMs to use?

is anyone willing to run #1-36: Enter the Ashen Asteroid when the game day is over? I can run something in return if needed.

I just downloaded it, I still have some outpost games going, so give me a week or 2 to read and prep it.

Chronicle looks good. Thanks for running! Great game, fun table, thanks everyone for playing!

As with many conversations about the game, where and how you play make a big difference. I've only played SF1e and SF2e PbP. My first character is now level 6 after 3 years. The first group I played with only lost one player in 9 months. Playing with the same group made it easy to play the same character up to 5th level.

Once that group split up, I had to build a new character to fit in with low-level games. I also started playing in more than one game at the same time, so I ended up with lots of low-level characters, none of which are over 2nd level. I will also frequently make a new character depending on the team's needs or if I don't have a character that fits well with the scenario. With SF1e having so many playable species, I just like making new characters to try more species and classes.

After playing 5 8th-level pregens at the same time during Outpost VIII, I'd much rather play multiple low-level characters than high-level ones. It's much easier for me if I learn my character abilities as they level up. The lower level pregens were not hard to play, but 8th level was much harder since I was not familiar with the equipment or abilities at that level or what other PCs could do. I think the new rules letting you build your character at higher levels will help with some of that, since picking your own abilities and gear makes it easier to understand how it works.

So, for me, high-level play is more interesting if I'm not playing multiple games at the same time, and am playing with the same group of characters. For me, making lots of characters is more interesting than playing one all the way through.

But I get why people would want to keep playing a character they are attached to after it reaches some level limit. I don't care what level that is at, but I think some option to keep playing without gaining levels might help. Maybe a maxed-out character could have some special SFS rank or title, like being an SFS officer instead of an SFS agent.

Leveling up goes much faster if you are playing in live games vs PbP, but even in live games, I tend to bring several characters and then play the one that best fits the party's needs, so I level up slower there, too. There's no one right way to play the game. I don't go to conventions, but that does seem like a good time for die-hard players to play their high-level characters.

I agree with not overclocking non-tech items. The thing about defining what overclocking does to different types of tech items in the class is that there isn't enough room to do so, or if you try you are limited to a large general effect on a group of similar items.

For items, having upgrades that allow them to be overclocked, makes it so that you don't have to define it in either the class or the item, the original item.

For creatures, maybe there could be an overclocked condition that boosts it somehow, or a weakness to being overclocked that stresses it out, causing it to glitch.

For hazards, it's easy to define what overclocking would do to it in the hazard stat block.

I'm also hoping that hazards are used in starship combat, which would make for some really interesting damage for the crew to deal with.

For technomancers, a lot of the way they interact with tech could come from spells we have not seen yet. I'm not sure if we have seen any spells yet that were made with overlock in mind.

I don't have time now to look, but wondering if any technomancer feats with jailbreak would work with the DESTRUCTION PROTOCOL spell from the SF2e playtest book, or other spells that deal with tech. Finding those types of combinations is where I think the technomancer will get a lot of class flavor and effect.

In the Starfinder setting, unless you are in the middle of nowhere, almost everything around you is a potential electrical/mechanical hazard.
Since some hazards can be dealt with by using both skill checks and attacks, tech and or computer-flavored hazards and complex hazards are a great way for mechanics and technomancers to interact with tech in or out of combat.

A Cosmic Birthday has around 20 hazards in it, so I think the SF2 team is aware of how to add tech encounters to the game. Now the question is, how good are the mechanic and technomancer at dealing with hazards?

The problem is that classes focus mostly on combat, and dealing with tech is mostly skill checks. Other than being good at a tech skill and getting better at that skill, what makes dealing with tech interesting is the tech itself.

One reason I thought why the mechanic and technomancer were held back until the Tech Core book was that for the classes to feel right, there needed to be more tech items for them to use or interact with, but it's likely better to playtest a class with out lots of other verables like new equipment.

One thing I'd love to see with the use of overclocking tech is to have some tech items that define their own effect when overclocked. This could be special equipment or an upgrade.

So the intention realy is to copy D&D 5e Adventurer's League?!?

SFS 2.0 seems to be getting worse with each announcement...

We keep seeing growth in PFS2 from players abandoning Adventurer's League...

People leaving 5e in droves started with the OGL mess, WotC trying to digitize every aspect of the game to monetize micro transactions, talk about AI GMs, sending the Pinkertons after people, laying off workers right before the holidays, making a new edition that wasen't really a new edition but is, just to sell more books. There are entire YouTube channels like Dungeons & Discourse that do nothing but report on WotC scandals. There are dozens of reasons to stop playing any game WotC makes long before you get to Adventurer's League.

What's the name of the pink face holding a knife in its mouth? Is this the iconic space pirate?

Keeping your equipment overclocked has its own advantages, so I see jailbreaking spells as something you save for the right moment, not as something you keep cycling through casting spells to overclock to jailbreak another spell repeat.

As Teridax pointed out, at low levels, using jailbreak will run out your spell slots quickly. Normally in Starfinder, the solution to save spell slots is to "Cast Gun" so having equipment that takes advantage of overclock and or jailbreak that's related to the equipment in addition to your programming language might help.

Instead of having to give each piece of equipment some ability for overclocking and jailbreaking, if there were special spell chips or something similar that a technomancer could install to enable using JAILBREAK SPELL to trigger an additional minor effect built into the equipment, perhaps using up extra battery charges, and having a cool down period, instead of discharging the spell that overclocked the gear. This would keep "Cast Gun relevant, and give more to the tech side of technomancer.

I'm guessing you meant 1 action heal, the 2 action heal already has a 30 range so using it in a grenade would likely shorten the area of effect. Although I do like the idea of a healing smoke grenade, so you can provide cover for the person you are healing at the same time.

What I'm curious about is how a touch spell like the 1 action heal would work in an area of effect against an opponent. Normally, If the target is a willing living creature, it would be healed. If used with a smoke grenade, there's no saving throw for the grenade, so the heal would be if willing, but if you used a shock grenade, if the opponent rolls a saving throw against the damage, then they are not willingly accepting the effects of the grenade.

Aoe slow at level 8 instead of 13, but at the cost of having to be already overclocked, need a free action available, and use a consumable grenade. One problem I see is using low-level gerandes for high-level spells to save credits on consumables. So maybe the grenade should be of the same or higher level than the spell used.

SF1e already has holy water grenades, I imagine SF2e would too.
Holy Water Grenade .

Grenade spell sounds really fun, I hope it survives with as few changes as possible, but there is likely some crazy combination that needs to be considered.

Technomancer Real-World References That Don't Quite fit in the layout of a Starfinder book...

//DELETE ROOT ACCESS

integer actions = 1;
integer feat = 4;
Key SPELLSHAPE;
Key TECHNOMANCER;

if (You have delete in your spell database.) {
....if (your next action is to cast delete,)
....{ replace its target with “one construct or tech creature.” Instead of delete’s normal effects, the target becomes controlled by you
........if (its level is equal to or lower than your level – 3.)
........{ It can attempt a Will saving throw to resist being controlled by you. }
........if (the target is already under someone else’s command,)
........{ the controlling creature also rolls a saving throw, and the construct uses the better result.
............if (Your gear is overclocked) {
................if (you use Jailbreak Spell to use this spellshape,) {
....................if (the construct or tech creature succeeds at its save but < critically succeed,)
....................{ it is your minion for 1 round. }
....................if (the construct fails its save,)
....................{ it is your minion for 10 minutes.
....................else if (it critically fails,)
....................{ it is your minion for 24 hours }}}
............else () {
................if (Critical Success)
................{ The target is unaffected and is temporarily immune for 24 hours. }
................if (Success)
................{ The target is unaffected. }
................if (Failure)
................{ The construct or tech creature becomes a minion under your control. The spell gains a duration of 1 minute,
but it is dismissed if you or an ally attacks the construct or tech minion. }
................else if (Critical Failure)
................{ As failure, but the duration is 1 hour }}}}}
else ()
{ you can not use DELETE ROOT ACCESS
}

my guess is that its also a matter of timing, the OGL debacle forced the SF crew to get cracking on SF2e and trying to fit everything in one book would have probably taken a lot more time so splitting it up a little and dedicating a book to tech stuff and 2 tech themed classes was probably the best method to keep on schedule and keep the quality high

My guess is that it has more to do with SF2e using the same layout design of the PF2e remaster, splitting up the core rule books into Player and GM core, and that the Tech Core will be SF2e's Player Core 2.

At one point during Outpost VIII I ended up playing 6 8th-level pregens at one time in addition to 3 of my own characters. I've played a lot of low-level pregens before with no problem, but at 8th level, I found a lot of issues that being able to make your own high-level character helps solve.

At one table, we had 3 8th-level pregens in an underwater scenario. The pregens don't have any underwater gear, many of their spells didn't work underwater, and they didn't have enough credits to buy underwater gear at the start of the scenario. I don't mind the challenge of dealing with new environments, but this was a bit extreme. Being able to start a character at higher levels would have let us gear up properly for this adventure, which would have normally happened had we played the earlier parts of the mini-plot. So happy to see this change.

At another table, I played 2 8th-level pregens in a scenario with high gravity, normally not a big deal until I realized none of the pregens had their bulk recorded, and we had to drop equipment to be able to fly. Had I made my own characters, then I would have known the bulk.

On the other hand, there is no way I would have had the time to make 6 8th-level characters fast enough for all of those games, but being able to make your own high-level character under normal circumstances would be great. I do have fun playing the pregens just not 6 at a time...

Side note I recently bought Angels of the Drift reading it really helped me play the pregens, because its hard to play a character when you don't know ther personality.

You could run one of the SF2e playtest scenarios with PF2e characters, or with the playtest pregens.

SITZKRIEG! wrote:

Maya Coleman wrote:

TODAY IS THE DAY!!!!! LOOK OUT FOR THE BLOG THIS MORNING!!

You'd better not be secretly rolling a bluff check! :)

Don't worry; Bluff isn't a thing in SF2E.

Though, Deception is...

Does that mean you can use bluff in 2e, but must succeed a Deception check to do so.

" I swear you can trust me, bluff is on page 78 of the Player Core, not let's get on with the game."
Deception: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (7) + 14 = 21

Anyone else spending their morning/noon refreshing the blog page?

Guilty

A lot to love in the tech class playtest at first glance. I'm glad to see more ways to deal with overcoming hardness, the programming languages are a great idea, and super flavorful. I'm excited about the little sidebar about hover, this could have an important impact on things outside of the scope tech playtest.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

Wise_fuer wrote:

Wasn't this playtest going to have the testing rules for spaceships? Will we have another playtest until the official version or will we only see it in Player Core?

I don't think any Paizo announcement said that the spaceship playtests would be included.

More bad news: spaceship rules aren't even going to be in player core. Basic rules will be coming in the GM Core, and the tactical rules are TBA. I'm not even sure they've confirmed a spaceship playtest at all.

That's equal parts irksome and concerning.

Ship combat is such a huge part of the draw for me, and a mainstay of the genre.

The Free RPG day adventure that comes out June 21st, before the SF2e Player Core is even out. Sounds like it takes place entirely on a starship, with combat in the ship, but also having to deal with an enemy ship nearby, maybe a chase. This might be a preview of the starship encounter rules from the MG core, but not sure. Either way, it shows starships are still part of the game even if full rules are out. Also, the RPG day adventure features the new SF2e iconic ship.

One of the reasons given for the entire year-long Drift Crisis event was to justify changes to the Drift to allow piracy to function better, so I'd expect more shipboarding-type combats in SF2e, which is something else that can be done without full starship rules.