[FT]EW Yet again

> Consider the original FT/MT sensor rules to be kind of suspended

FWIW the more I look at them, the more I like the "Simple Simon" rules
proposed earlier.

Some people may want EW to affect combat though. I'm not convinced this is a
good idea, but it's worthy of examination.

One mechanic (if you really want to go down the road of making EW effective in
combat as well as target identification) is to have "roll twice, take the
best" or "roll twice, take the worst". Basically, an EW-ship firing at a
non-EW
one rolls twice, taking the best. A non-EW ship firing at an EW one
rolls twice, taking the worst.

This can be done by a) Rolling twice for every die for SMs (remember they have
to be rolled individually
anyway for taking PDS fire etc - it takes almost no additional effort to
roll 2 dice rather than 1)
b) Rolling a pile of dice, then re-rolling misses/re-rolling hits for
beams, PDS etc.

This has a very significant effect of firepower. Forex, assuming a weapon has
a probability of a hit of 0.5. Re-rolling misses takes this to 0.75,
re-rolling
hits to 0.25. But if it has a probability of 0.4 (and most things do), the
change is more marked: 0.64 vs 0.16.

If you do have such a system, make sure
a) It's large/expensive/rare (otherwise it would have appeared in FB1)
b) It applies only to fires by/to the ship that it's on, no "Fleet
effect". So a specialised EW Dreadnaught might be both difficult to hit, and
hit most of the time, but does so with at best 2 Type Is due to the (30% with
min
10?)
mass for the EW fit. PSB is that the extra mass is needed as shielding against
the ship's background radiation from thrust, life support, reactor etc etc.

c) Have a "Fleet effect" for superiority of EW, as per the Simple Simon rules.

What this means is that a large-ish fleet will generally want to have 1
EW ship per 2000 pts or thereabouts. Small EW ships the size of light cruisers
are favoured,
rather than Capital ships - they'll be armed with a PDS that hits rather
often, will be difficult to hit themselves, but that's about it re offensive
potential.