Flat-Footed Starships: At the start of a battle, before a starship has had a chance to act (specifically, before its first turn in the initiative order), it is flat-footed. It can't apply the pilot's Dexterity bonus to Defense while flat-footed.
JOINING A BATTLE
If starships enter a battle after it has begun, they roll initiative at that time and act whenever their turn comes up in the existing order.
SURPRISE
At the start of combat, a starship is surprised if it was not aware of its enemies and they were aware of it. Likewise, a starship can surprise its enemies if it knows about them before they're aware of it.
DETERMINING AWARENESS
The GM determines which starships are aware of which others at the start of any battle. The GM may call for Computer Use checks to operate shipboard sensors (see the expanded Computer Use skill description), Spot checks, or other checks to determine whether one ship detects another.
A starship makes only one roll or check against surprise, regardless of its crew complement.
Starships that are unaware at the start of battle do not get to act in the surprise round. Unaware combatants are flat-footed because they have not acted yet. A flat-footed starship loses its pilot's Dexterity bonus to Defense.
This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms
of the Open
Game License v1.0a.
Compilation, formatting and oranization by DMReference.com.