How much detail do you get when you use 'identify technology' to identify a ship with Engineering? I've been assuming that by default, a basic success gets you the name of the model and a rough description of what they're built for, and beating the tier gets you a rough listing of what their default weapons and defensive capabilities or not. Maybe getting it high enough lets you pick out custom modifications and the like.
Does that sound about right, or have I missed something?
I might just use the information from the Scan starship action. Have the base DC and then for every 5 above give them the next piece of information down.
Actually, both of your responses make me realize it comes down to something I missed -- I keep forgetting that there's a 'Scan' action, because I've been running out of the adventure paths, which explicitly refer to using the 'identify technology' action to identify enemy starships when 'Scan' would be more appropriate. (Like many things, probably just a quirk of having to get chunks of Dead Suns written while the core book was still being polished.)
So that resolves that. Thanks.