Ethan Winters's page

"Not in motion" doesn't actually MEAN anything coherent in space. You'd have to define a complete stop to come to one.

"Not accelerating" is something you can actually use as a rule.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. This is probably how I'll wind up ruling it. Either way my players will probably manage to make a case for using it to travel, at least this way I won't have to deal with them trying to calculate Aucturns orbit to project where it will be in two weeks so they can just wait cloaked in that exact spot.

Thanks all!

Remember, it's space once you get up to speed you keep moving at that speed until acted upon by an outside force.

Practically speaking, in between solar systems you can just coast to your next destination. Inside a solar system you probably need to build up some momentum, and use the gravity wells of planets and the star to get you where you want to go, but it should be mostly possible with only short periods of time where you need to accelerate again and use thrusters. Also, if something is substantially far away it wont matter if they momentarily are aware you're there, and if they're close enough that they could detect you, you can probably just cruise by on whatever trajectory you're on and then adjust later.

So this is my fault for not quoting the entire rule, but it does state that in order to engage the ships cloaking field the ship must not be in motion.

"Activating a cloaking device takes one action by an engineer while the starship is neither in motion nor engaged in combat. The ship vanishes from view, and based on the cloaking device’s level, another ship must have sensors of a minimum level to detect it."

I'm not sure what the practical feasibility of making a ship hurtling through space come to a complete halt would be, but its the future so who knows.

It kinda seems like the intention was for ships to be able to just camp out somewhere and hide? If that is the case I may wind up house ruling it that they are able to coast on momentum and do minor movements on maneuvering thrusters while still remaining cloacked. Or maybe just the maneuvering thrusters bit so they don't use being cloacked to bypass every possible conventional space encounter I design for them. If I'm still misinterpreting this let me know.

Hey all, quick question for you.

In Pact Worlds we got a much requested piece of starship technology, a cloaking device. The text reads as follows:

"Cloaking technology is named for the maximum quality of
sensors that can’t detect the cloaked ship. Cut-rate cloaking
technology fools only cut-rate sensors; budget cloaking technology
fools only cut-rate and budget sensors, and so on. Sensors
capable of detecting a cloaked starship can do so only when the
cloaked starship has entered the sensor’s first range increment.
Engaging a Drift engine or thrusters or beginning starship combat
(Core Rulebook 316) immediately negates the cloaking ability,
whereupon the ship reappears and can be detected normally."

So my question is regarding the last sentence, specifically that engaging thrusters immediately negates the cloaking. Am I interpreting that correctly? Any type of movement instantly makes you visible again? Or is there something in the core rulebook I missed that describes engaging thrusters as a very specific action which is distinct from general movement?