[FT] ECM

Just wanted to point this out

(opens can of worms)

There is a reason our campaign system uses the ECM rules it does. If you have
perfect knowledge of ships at 48" there is no point to ECM. You get outside
weapons range, look at your opponent, and jump out if you cannot win. With the
ECM rules as written you can disguise things and possibly pull off surprise.

> There is a reason our campaign system uses the ECM rules it

Two worms for the can:
1) Very few people ever used the FT2 Sensors/ECM rules.
2) Virtually all FT battles are "full knowledge" from the get go.

This led me to the conclusion that Electronics rules needed to be relatively
transparent at the tabletop level, and be used more at the grand tactical or
strategic level.

Oh - and there are plenty of situations where even complete knowledge
of a larger enemy force will not "force" a retreat.

On 29-Mar-01 at 13:27, Sean Bayan Schoonmaker (s_schoon@pacbell.net)
wrote:
> >There is a reason our campaign system uses the ECM rules it

Yes, but in those situations the ECM status on strategic level will have no
affect either. I'm not saying you can't have unequal battles, I'm saying that
if you don't have ECM at a tactical level you may as well not bother.

> Roger Books wrote:
wrote:
> > >There is a reason our campaign system uses the ECM rules it

PBeM games can also benefit from the ECM rules, but it does require an
additional bit of effort to apply them. I've run a number of games with active
ECM, weasels, decoys, and scanning reports.

I've never used ECM on the tabletop.

I also ran a PBEM game that had decoys. Since it was a standard point fight,
the opponents knew that some were decoys, but still had to choose which group
go approach.

-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
-----

> -----Original Message-----

> Yes, but in those situations the ECM status on strategic level

That's essentially what's been happening by default - and I'm not
sure that it's altogether a bad thing thus far.