FT3 Sensor Rules [Long]

Nice rules Schoon.

A couple of suggestions:

What about "silent runnng" - running with engines at lower power
(lower effective thrust, lower effective emissions) and weapons and
firecons shut down - zero emissions?

Shouldn't this be feasible? Especially for intelligence gathering ships such
as scouts etc (what if you just drift in with everything
but life support and minimal CPU running - you are an asteroid - hard
to detect much about you until people get in visual range)? And
meanwhile passive sensors can be running, gaining system/ship
data.

And this more accurately simulates sub warfare (trying to find the enemy when
he's running quietly).

What about some form of obnoxious ECM decoy that 'combined with silent
running' could fool hostile weapons systems? Or a sensor bomb that temprarily
blinds enemy vessels? Or even worse, might burn out sensitive sensors!

just some ideas.

Tom.

> Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@sofkin.ca> wrote:

[snip]

> What about "silent runnng" - running with engines at lower power

Sure, although there's almost no such thing as Zero emissions (I know what you
mean, though). You could represent this, and also stealth systems by a
modifier reducing the LoI for the ship so operating/equiped.

For example, (and I'm pulling this right out of thin air) a silent running
ship might have a LoI-2 modifier, and a special stealth ship might have
a
LoI-3 (or more) modifier.

This makes them harder to spot, and especially if they have an electronics
suite to further lower the LoI, you could get a really interesting game of cat
and mouse as the searcher gets LoI0, firmly establishing that something is out
there, but doesn't know exactly where.

> And this more accurately simulates sub warfare (trying to find the

Yup.

> What about some form of obnoxious ECM decoy that 'combined with

I intentionally made the rules so they didn't affect weapons fire to avoid
the SFB style ECM /ECCM escalation. I figure once they figure out pretty
well where you are and get a good picture of your emissions, that's enough for
weapons targeting.

However, decoys of that variety might be more effective at deceiving the enemy
about how many ships you have. A decoy might allow an admiral to report more
ships at LoI0 than he really has, or have a second formation that the enemy
must then react to.

As for a sensor bomb or sensor blinding, I'm dubious of the feasibilty of such
a thing. It would have to be delivered close to the sensors, and I suspect
that "future" sensors would have cutouts to protect against overloads, and
most of their mechanisms would be vulnerable only to weapons fire.

Which is not to say that if you really want to have such a thing in your
universe, that you can't go right ahead and do it!

Thanx for the comments,

Hmmm, why not just make a modified version of a cloaking field that acts as a
mask of the electronic signature to sensor scans. This way he could be
operating at silent running with full speed and sensors, but no weapons or
fire con active. You might even go so far as to say that once he goes to an
active sensor ping on enemy vessels, he's detected.

Due to its highly specialized nature, it would cost more than a cloak, but
might weigh less in mass. Still there is the problem of all that expelled
exhaust....

Just my $.02

Gil