The full tactical starship (and other vehicle) rules for SF2e are apparently still under development.
I think they may be part of the "tech" book that will release the final mechanic and technomancer. Or maybe there will be a dedicated vehicle/mech/starship book.
At the moment, drift travel can probably be handled "off screen" and have the PCs accomplish downtime tasks on the ship as passengers.
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It's in GM core. Here's the Archive of Nethys Link.
They're pretty unchanged from SF1, same dice rolls for Abasalom Station, Near Space, and Vast, except:
1. Drift Lanes have better defined rules now. If there's multiple nodes then the 7 days is how long it takes from one end to the to other, and individual segments with intermediate nodes divide that up. So a three node lane with two segments is 3.5 days per segment, a four node lane with three segments is 2.333 days per segment, a theoretical five node lane with four segments is 1.75 days per segment, etc.
2. The piloting skill use to chart a course (or whatever it's called) allows you to half your travel time on a crit success, and there's some ancestry options that upgrade a success to a crit.
3. So far we don't have any higher grades of drift engine to further divide the time.
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Not a rules change, but pretty sure its a setting change...
I could have sworn in SF1 every use of the drift brought planar chunks into the drift from somewhere. Now is SF2, according to the GC...
"In rare cases, when a Drift engine is activated, it somehow pulls a chunk of extraplanar matter from a seemingly random plane into the Drift with it."
Page 11 of Drift Crisis says whenever. It's likely in other SF1e sources too.
It could be an SF2e mistake, or restoring the Drift after the Drift Crisis has made it more stable, so not every jump causes it now.
I don't know the specifics of the resolution of the Drift Crisis, but prior to that adventure it was uncommon knowledge that basically every drift jump was causing damage to other planes.
Maybe the results of Drift Crisis resolve/repair this issue. Maybe it's still uncommon knowledge within the overall setting and the SF2 GM Core rulebook it writing it from that point of view.
I could see the establishment of lanes having a knock-on effect of limiting how often other planes have chunks carved off of them. Lanes aren't physical locations, exactly, but the word at least suggests a fixed route rather than the free-for-all that the Drift was previously.
Yeah, I was doing some reading and it sounds like the big thing that came out of the Drift Crisis was Drift Lanes.
As a GM, I'd probably just play it as interstate style hyper space lanes and not from anywhere to anywhere warp travel, and as a knock on effect on how drift travel changed, the chances for tearing off chunks of other planes plummeted to a close to 0, but not 0 value.
To be honest, the from anywhere to anywhere kind of drift travel created a lot of problems with the setting that made a lot of things not make sense.
Like defending an empire, you can't just station forces in a "defensive line" but rather at anything of important because the enemy can just jump past your line. And it also made space piracy not very viable.
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Yes the initial form of the drift and still to some extent made a lot of Sci Fi tropes difficult to impossible.
It is hard for a space pirate to pirate if you never have any idea of where something is coming or where it will arrive. Defense of anything was a challenge because your attackers can pop out with a whole fleet if they are all linked up anywhere so there is no way to do any kind of defense in depth.
Pactworlds had the double edged sword it was faster to get back to Absalom station from literally anywhere than even short jumps in near space. Problem being this is great for trade but it also meant attack fleets could be right on top of you before you had any time to react. Reinforcements for those fleets could also come very fast from any direction.
At least now with drift lanes there is more set "geography" to channel conflicts/trade so you can get a lot more normal scifi stuff going on while not totally wrecking what made the drift unique.
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Yes the initial form of the drift and still to some extent made a lot of Sci Fi tropes difficult to impossible.
It is hard for a space pirate to pirate if you never have any idea of where something is coming or where it will arrive. Defense of anything was a challenge because your attackers can pop out with a whole fleet if they are all linked up anywhere so there is no way to do any kind of defense in depth.
Pactworlds had the double edged sword it was faster to get back to Absalom station from literally anywhere than even short jumps in near space. Problem being this is great for trade but it also meant attack fleets could be right on top of you before you had any time to react. Reinforcements for those fleets could also come very fast from any direction.
At least now with drift lanes there is more set "geography" to channel conflicts/trade so you can get a lot more normal scifi stuff going on while not totally wrecking what made the drift unique.
I mostly agree, though I think I disagree with "what made the drift unique" bit.
What made the drift unique was neither hyperspace lanes or from anywhere to anywhere warp travel. It was honestly its association development by Triune as an "additonal" plane. I always thought of it as kind of analogous to the Plane of Shadows, where distances and time don't map. Or similar to "The Ways" from The Wheel of Time (but for space ships).
Yeah, that's an important feature in Starfinder, interstellar travel of information I believe takes as long as it would take a starship to travel via drift because the information is relayed via drift beacons.
Which it's not nothing, to get information that is days/2 weeks behind the event. But also, it's like nothing compared to other settings where it can take years to get information across the galaxy.
If the Mystic Cloud Storage feat is available to NPCs (it doesn't have to be - just as NPCs have custom abilities not available as PC feats, not all PC heroic abilities have to be something NPCs can grab and logically effect campaign world) then you can station a few of your bond mates in other star systems and send them one way digitally recorded correspondence on 1 bulk media drives at regular intervals. Great for commercial, military, and espionage organizations.
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If the Mystic Cloud Storage feat is available to NPCs (it doesn't have to be - just as NPCs have custom abilities not available as PC feats, not all PC heroic abilities have to be something NPCs can grab and logically effect campaign world) then you can station a few of your bond mates in other star systems and send them one way digitally recorded correspondence on 1 bulk media drives at regular intervals. Great for commercial, military, and espionage organizations.
While this is an insanely cool idea I think it mostly falls into the category of
"If you screw around with the mechanics too much and too literally the entire surrounding culture WILL collapse" :-).PF1 had zillions of ways (Fabricate being one of the clearest) that PCs could TOTALLY destroy the economy, make deserts bloom, etc etc etc.
Starfinder has (at very quick blush) this cool way of having instantaneous messages and the fact that Absalom Station should be being invaded even more often than Absalom was on Golarion and falling under the domination of some empire or other at least once a year :-).
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Yeah, that's an important feature in Starfinder, interstellar travel of information I believe takes as long as it would take a starship to travel via drift because the information is relayed via drift beacons.
Which it's not nothing, to get information that is days/2 weeks behind the event. But also, it's like nothing compared to other settings where it can take years to get information across the galaxy.
The way communication works also opens up the job of Info Courier ships. Fast ships with hot drift engines and data servers that can cart around big info sphere updates for far out colonies. You could likely beat a transmission if you are a skilled navigator and then get back with responses quickly. Also for people wanting to do stuff a bit more hush hush paying somebody to cart it to the destination is not losing you much if any transmission delay while keeping it from interception by anybody sniffing around at those communications.
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I'm not sure there is generally a wide market for "infosphere" level "courier ships" but there would absolutely be a market for basically anything time sensitive to be delivered via courier that could beat the "average" transmission time via drift beacon relay.
But I am making some assumptions about the kind of information that's generally available on the infosphere, mostly that it's been watered down to something that isn't actionable or important to most people.
But being a reliable transporter of sensitive information certainly has a market.
I'm not sure there is generally a wide market for "infosphere" level "courier ships" but there would absolutely be a market for basically anything time sensitive to be delivered via courier that could beat the "average" transmission time via drift beacon relay.
But I am making some assumptions about the kind of information that's generally available on the infosphere, mostly that it's been watered down to something that isn't actionable or important to most people.
But being a reliable transporter of sensitive information certainly has a market.
I think for colony worlds in the back of beyond there is probably enough value on getting the latest hot gossip and orders from any backers/corporations who funded it and then on the return trip you can do return mail/updates on discoveries colony progress. It would be honestly a pretty solid business for smaller enterprises like a player ship and give you a good excuse to get sent all over the darn place.