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Is there anything you can do to foil another starship's attempts to detect you? Or to make the scan action against your ship more difficult?
I mean something active and skill-based - I don't mean tier and/or countermeasures.
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Unless I missed something in the rules section, no, there's no way to put a ship into "stealth mode" as it were. And as far as hindering scanning, the ship's tier and countermeasures seem to be the only thing that raises the DC.
The closest I've seen is in the Society scenarios they may have the ships' science officers roll opposing Computers checks to determine who notices who first to set up facing at the start of combat, but even that is technically part of the scenario, not the core rules.
I expect in a future book we'll probably see a "stealth field" upgrade you can get for your ship, but until then any method of hiding your ship will be a house rule.
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Thanks. I think I'll at least make it harder to spot a 'powered down' ship. Hiding on an asteroid or in some other crowded space with everything switched off seems like a common trope.
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The starships’s frame is also built with a transponder that is essentially the ship’s “address” for standard system-wide and unlimited-range communications; this transponder can be turned off, during which time the starships can’t send or receive messages, but neither can it be tracked down by conventional means.
This does not exactly answer your question, but is the closest I know of to actual rules on the subject.
A ship that had communications open can be tracked at a distance if the tracker knows the communications ID of the ship, this can be avoided by cutting communications.
Extrapolating this a little, in close quarters a ship that scans another can read information about each powered system. It's reasonable to house rule something making a ship running on low power harder to detect, but completely cutting the power would also involve turning off basic life support functions, so it would be pretty rare that completely powering off a ship in space would be practical.
RAW: You can prevent your ship from being tracked in space by cutting off communications. Given the size and sheer "biggness" of space, this should allow you to avoid a known adversary. However hiding from close enemies that are in scanning range is not really possible.
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The starships’s frame is also built with a transponder that is essentially the ship’s “address” for standard system-wide and unlimited-range communications; this transponder can be turned off, during which time the starships can’t send or receive messages, but neither can it be tracked down by conventional means.This does not exactly answer your question, but is the closest I know of to actual rules on the subject.
A ship that had communications open can be tracked at a distance if the tracker knows the communications ID of the ship, this can be avoided by cutting communications.
Extrapolating this a little, in close quarters a ship that scans another can read information about each powered system. It's reasonable to house rule something making a ship running on low power harder to detect, but completely cutting the power would also involve turning off basic life support functions, so it would be pretty rare that completely powering off a ship in space would be practical.
RAW: You can prevent your ship from being tracked in space by cutting off communications. Given the size and sheer "biggness" of space, this should allow you to avoid a known adversary. However hiding from close enemies that are in scanning range is not really possible.
Cheers.
We're very much a "the rules are just suggestions as to how Paizo would do it" kind of group, so houserules are fine - I just wanted to check if I'd missed something somewhere in the book.
I quite like the idea of totally powering down (with the life-support issue imposing a time limit) as a kind of desperation tactic.
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You could have everything powered down for like a week provided you all have armor as it handles your environmental protections.
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Put me in the "you can probably hide from enemy ships, depending on the situation, but you *can't* hide at tactical engagement range" column. In terms of procedure, it would likely involve shutting off all active sensors and communications, and then carefully angling and maneuvering the ship to minimize your passive sensor signature ( ie, using as little thrust as possible, aiming your engines away from observers, mimicking the motion of debris, etc ). Its not perfect, and would rely a lot on hostile ships just not looking directly at you, but Starfinder is soft sci-fi enough that you shouldn't run into the "infrared signature of doom" problem.
Yeah, I definitely meant this in the context of avoiding combat - not as a strategy to be used once combat has commenced.
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Does this mean stealth/cloaking systems are completely non-plausible in Starfinder?
More likely, just not implemented yet.
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So, from a hard sci fi viewpoint (correct me if I'm wrong) hiding in space is difficult if you are being looked for. Even running silent, your ship is magnitude warmer than the space around it.
However, space is big. Far enough away from your enemy and it should be a reasonable for them to miss you with a targetting laser. If they knew your last course, a few blasts of RCS would send you elsewhere.
However, this is less fun.
My current house rules involve engineering, piloting and science officers making checks, opposed by a rival ships pilot (navigation) and science officer (scanning). The PC's switch everything off, cut transponder and use RCS & controlled emissions to scramble their path. The enemy ship tries to chart their movements while analysing detailed scans of the area.
This potentially could take days, maybe weeks. In that time, the PC's are on high alert, living in cold, zero gravity environments with limited light and cold food. It would be a test of endurance for anyone!
In an asteroid or comet field, this changes. Ships could hide on, or in, small bodies. Piloting and science checks would be good here.