Needle FireCons

Another silly idea...   :-)

One thing we see a lot of in sci-fi is ships using main guns to target
specific systems. ("Gunner, target engines only. Understood?") I thought I'd
play around with using standard beam weapons to make needle attacks, instead
of having seperate needle beams; I think it works pretty well (if I do say so
myself). I balanced things by making needle attacks affected by screens;
unfortunately, the easiest way to do that involved using dice with more than
six-sides, so you'll have to break out you DSII/SGII dice. <g>  Let me
know what you all think.

Scott Field

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“Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had
forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it,
pulverize it and wipe it clean of life -- but if you desire to defend
it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground,
the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.” T.R.
Fehrenbach, This Kind of War
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Needle FireCon (4 mass, 20 points)

This specialized fire control system may not be used to direct normal weapons
fire, but allows standard beam weapons to make attacks against specific
systems, similar to needle beams. One Needle FireCon may be used to direct
multiple beam weapons (from the same ship) against one target system. The
range for making needle attacks is half that of the beam’s normal range, and
at each range interval (6” instead of 12”) they roll the usual number of
dice, ie --

                                  Range
                  0”-6”       6”-12”     12”-18”
A-bat        3 dice       2 dice       1 die
B-bat        2 dice        1 die          ---
C-bat         1 die          ---             ---

Unlike regular needle beams, standard beam weapons making needle attacks ARE
affected by screens; the number of dice rolled stays the same, but the type of
die rolled changes with the level of shielding:

Screens Dice Required roll
None               6-sided               6
Level-1            8-sided               8
Level-2           10-sided             10
Level-3           12-sided             12

Thus, a ship firing 1 x A-battery and 2 x B-Batteries at a target 10”
away
with Level-2 shields would roll 4 x 10-sided dice, and the target system
would be destroyed on a roll of 10.