Tricks of the Trade

[Sabre]

I was watching Firefly recently and thinking about the various tricks one could use to evade sensors, ditch pursuers, or other things that those who run against the law might find useful in the Star Wars universe. I recall reading somewhere (in the capsule for a life support backup battery for starships, could have been Pirates or the smuggler guide) about a trick where a ship powers down completely and becomes indistinguishable from ordinary space debris to anyone not scanning very close (I believe it was a VD sensors roll to detect).

Does anyone have any other tricks players can use? And would you require a streetwise/tactics/starship skill check to know/use them?

[gollummen]

I don´t know if I know any other tricks, but here are a few tricks to keep other ships from detecting your ship:

Hide: Simply hide behind a planet or star!
Passive sensor mode: Keeping your sensors passive makes your vessel harder to detect
Run silent: Shut down all systems! That will make you much harder to spot, but if you need life support you can´t do it for more than 5 minutes.
Jam their sensors: Any ship can flood the surroundings with static. The opponents will certainly know there is a ship, but not what ship or where it is.

I guess all of these tricks would be know to anyone with training in sensors.

[Hellcat]

Communications jamming. It won't prevent your ship from being detected, but if you're in a hiding hole and one ship finds you while the rest can't see you, you keep the one from telling folks where you are. And coupled with sensor jamming and hiding behind a large object, you could possibly take out the other ship so it could never get word out without being seen. There's also sensors baffles that make it difficult for sensors to detect your ship, but not impossible. And of course, though very rare and even more costly than the sensor baffles, cloaking devices.
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[Ray]

Sensor jamming causes sensors to go haywire. They're something to prevent you from being scanned actively, but are a big tip off that you're there.

If you want stealth, it's a bad idea.

Communication Jamming is ALMOST as bad, but you can control the area better, so as to only nail one craft.

Thing is, a lot of military scout vessels would have powerful communications devices as there's a HUGE amount of jamming that goes on in military campaigns. *AND* the communications officer on the ship would have a high Communications skill. If it's a Starfighter Pilot, he'd probably have a Higher Sensors and Communications skill, and less Starship Gunnery (As scout Snubfighters aren't supposed to dogfight.).

Debris Fields, Asteroid Belts, ect. are all good to hide "Doggo" in, as all the metal and rock screws up sensors.

Wedge Antillies used a regular Asteroid Shower to mask the insertion of X-Wings once. Had the Carrier tractor a few big enough rocks into the path of the planet, and the X-Wings snuggled up behind them. Then a N.O.E. (Nape of the Earth, or *REALLY* low flying) to the attack point.

[KageRyu]

One could always use the magnetic poles of Stars to hide in, though this is risky as it can fry your own ships electronics. Certain polarized nebulas are great too. Planetary magnetic poles that are strong provide some sensor and electronic cover, but also render the ship in them blind. Then there's always trying to manuever behind a larger ship and into the wake of it's own Ion engines...this will render you almost invisible (works best in a chase).
In chases, keep in mind that if the chasee performs a risky manuever and succeeds, then the chaser must make an equal manuever to maintain his tail (i.e. all those flight manuevers listed in the rules like Bootlegger's turn are more than just eye candy). A particular skilled pilot can easily shake a less skilled pilot (try mixing and matching manuevers...drive the GM crazy >)

To escape tractor beams is a little trickeir, you must find something to get between you and the tractor emitter (escape pods, cargo, proton torpedos(generally too small...but they might disable the tractor), concussion missiles, etc...). The novels have used all of the above at some point.
Space chases are too often underplayed in RPG, as too often space is seen as "Vast and empty". A good encounter would usually happen at or near something of interest, like a planet, a starport, etc...
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[garhkal]

And the other problem with using the poles is sometimes that magnetic field can disrupt other circuits/systems, like life support, repulsors... etc!
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[KageRyu]

[Volar the Healer]

I once had players who used their vacc suits as diving suits and repeatedly parked their ship under the water of a lake or ocean to avoid detection by pusuing Imperials.
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