If a ship with Stealth takes damage from the Assault Missiles splash damage, does the stealth device get destroyed?

This seems like a pretty clear cut answer, but this happened in a tournament to my opponent and he claimed it was like bumping an asteroid, not breaking the stealth.

I decided not to press the point (his ship later got taken out by two seismic charges in one turn so it didn't effect anything).

Splash damage is NOT a hit. So it does not remove the Stealth Device.

The card states: "Increase your agility value by 1. If you are hit by an attack, discard this card." and hits are fairly well defined in the rules.

Core Rules: Page 12: "If there is at least one uncanceled * or [crit] result remaining, the defender is considered hit"

It says when hit by an attack (or something that uses the word attack) discard the stealth.

Is an assault missile not an attack?

The splash is not hitting the other ships with an attack, it is dealing damage to them based on the other ship that was attacked being hit. The target of the missiles is being hit by an attack. The others are just suffering damage.

The attack part is when the assault missile hits its target. So that part is yes.

But the splash damage isn't an attack at all.

From FAQ:

As Ken said, the splash damage is not considered a hit. This is covered in the FAQ I believe.

But the short of it is this...

A hit is not damage, a hit is any time you have [hit] or [crit] results that have not been canceled by the evade dice rolled for the Defender.

In the case of the splash damage from assault missiles, you didn't role any [hit] or [crit] results, or any dice at all for that matter. So the ships caught in the splash damage are not considered hit.

Again, Hit is not the same thing as taking damage.

Ok. Thanks for the clarification.

What about if they miss the attack but hit you with Vader crew ability? I would assume that would remove the stealth, but seems hazy.

I would assume that would remove the stealth, but seems hazy.

No because it's effectively the same thing as the assault missile.

Vader does damage to a target ship, but that is not the same thing as being hit per the rules. A gunner would count, because that's an attack, Vader isn't an attack just damage delt to the target.

Vanor is correct. Vader is not an attack - in fact this is pretty clear in the fact that he is an ability that triggers in response to you making an attack. Unlike Gunner, which has the same trigger (except on a missed attack, specifically) but then directs you to "make a primary weapon attack." Vader just 'causes that ship to suffer,' which doesn't refer to itself as an attack anywhere.

Hitting a rock or a bomb/mine also doesn't cancel stealth, because neither one is an attack.