I agree with Mikko Kurki-Suonio and a few others that additional die
rolling as in a EW duel will slow the game down. This is probably why Jon did
not have a roll to detect and a roll to hit in the first place, it was
simplified into the roll to hit. The question should not be what info can I
get from or can I detect that ship (if it's on the table it's detected) but
how well can I hit the target. The easiest way I can see of doing this and
using a system that is already on every ship,is the Fire Control. For every
additional FC that you commit to a target, you roll an extra die per battery
and choose the best dice
equal to the number of batterys/classes firing. For example if you have
3
Class-1 firing at 10mu and you commit 2 FC you then roll 6 dice and
choose
the best 3. If you added a Class-3 battery you would roll an extra 4
dice (3 dice as normal plus 1 for the battery) and you would use the best 6
dice. You don't increase the number of hits just the possibility. You can
rationalise this by saying that by commiting extra FC you increase the
detection elements and processing power to give a better target solution. It
should work for all weapons systems that use FC and for the xenos as well with
a slight adjustment but I won't go into that until FB2 is more common. There
is also the problem, that if you give a ship a EW suite dedicated to spoofing
or decoying an enemy ship shooting at it, you invalidate and render obsolete
all those FB1 and 2 designs that don't have it. Although there would be
nothing wrong with having a dedicated EW ship whose primary function was the
disruption of enemy targetting locks. You build a ship as normal but instead
of beam batterys you have systems designed to temporarily
blind/overload an enemy ships FC. These systems would have the same
mass, cost, range and roll to hit as the batterys they replaced but they only
affect the targets FC, that is substitute the DPs for FCs blinded and no
re-rolls. If these ships appear to be overpriced for their capabilities
that could be why none of the major powers built any. Stealth Ships: Stealth
systems for ships should be mass intensive and
expensive otherwise all ships could be retro-fitted with them. The
characteristic of stealth in the game would be to increase the apparent range
of the ship for each level of stealth. If you have 3 levels
'Basic',
'Enhanced' and 'Superior'. Basic would increase the range by 6mu, Enhanced by
12mu and Superior by 24mu. I'll leave this for now but I have more ideas;
ships running cold, 'weasel' fighters, terrain effects etc.
I haven't been reading every word in the EW topic because some posts were more
detailed than I want, but a couple of the recent posts caught my eye.
Basically there are 2 areas were EW can come into play, 1) detection and
identification, and 2) combat
Some people like to think of space combat as similar to modern submarine
warfare, stealth is the key, and if you can locate and identify the enemy
before he knows you are there, you win. Another point of view has space
combat being similar to WWI-WWII surface combat. I fall into the second
group and my preference is for EW rules to do some of both #1 and #2 but not
make detection and identification define the game.
> Mr Anthony Leibrik wrote:
This is a neat idea, I'll expand on it below.
Why don't I throw this proposal out for comment, it has minimal changes to
current rules.
In MT we have ship ECM and area ECM, for combat purposes, have them increase
effective ranges when targeting a ship with ECM active, 150% actual range for
area ECM, 200% for ship ECM. Example, if firing at a ship with actual range
10" but covered by area ECM, effective range is 150% of actual so combat is
resolved as if the ship was 15" away.
Now to burn through, a target's ECM, how about for each additional fire con
dedicated to targeting the ECM covered ship, either: A) Gain an additional
beam die per beam and keep the highest (per Anthony's
thought above) or get an additional to-hit roll for Pulse Torps, K-guns
etc and if either roll is high enough, it is a hit (but with range
modification still in effect), or
B) Roll a beam die and if a 4-5, area ECM is negated and ship ECM is
reduced to 150% effective range, and if a 6, both area ship ECM are negated.
Which would work better? What to the rest of you think?
These could be some quick and easy rules for EW, but it is Monday so I may be
way off:)
> On 10-Apr-00 at 16:44, Dean Gundberg (dean.gundberg@noridian.com) wrote:
> Why don't I throw this proposal out for comment, it has minimal
Now, I think I have made it fairly obvious I am not thrilled by the idea of
using extra FC to negate ECM, but if you must do it what about doing it this
way:
use your range mods for area/ship ECM. For each extra fire control
used you gain back a lost die for each weapon fired, up to what is normal for
the range.
How do sensors fit into this system though?
> Roger wrote:
Possible but this would benefit smaller ships more than larger ships. A
cruiser using a second fire con gets a higher percentage of its dice back than
a dreadnought, who would have a tough time to get all its beams back to an
unmodified state unless it has lots of firecons. Option A) adds back a die per
beam and B) removes the penalty if the die roll is high enough so they affect
all ships equally.
> How do sensors fit into this system though?
I would think the same as in MT but I don't have it handy right now and I
can't rememeber the details well enough right now:)