Our group got together last night and we're working to put together a game at
our local store. One of the topics that was bruited about was the use of
cloaking fields.
One of our guys just watched a couple of the Star Trek movies from his
collection and it came up in conversation.
What house rules or variants had the 'list come up with? Our take is that
there need to be a few mods on each side for pro and con. Some greater chance
of scan locating the cloaked object perhaps? Maybe some flexibility for
movement or direction chances when cloaked?
We all agree that cloaked vessels cannot fire or drop any sort of mine or
small craft while cloaked.
Please advise, Gentle Sirs (and Ma'm). Awaiting you replies....err, wisdom.
Pat Connaughton
e-mail - ptconn@earthlink.net
homepage - www.home.earthink.net/~ptconn
ICQ # 2535086 "Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets,
drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor."
--Groucho Marx (as Otis Driftwood)
"A Night At the Opera"
[quoted original message omitted]
From: "Pat Connaughton" <patconnaughton@earthlink.net>
> Our group got together last night and we're working to
I had some cloaking rules to simulate submarine warfare. They could probably
be adapted:
http://members.nbci.com/rlyehable/ft/techlibrary/cloak_uboat.html
---
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
http://www.ftsr.org
---
> -----Original Message-----
> On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, Pat Connaughton wrote:
> What house rules or variants had the 'list come up with?
We basically use the following rules for cloak:
1. When you cloak, you remove your counter from the field and write down all
move orders for when you're cloaked.
2. You're not allowed to fire ANY weapons. If the cloaked ship is equipped
with a wave gun, they are not permitted to either charge it nor retain any
charge on it that they may have had before they cloaked. (PSB: The charge on a
wave gun is an excellent sensor beacon that even the most advanced cloaking
device cannot conceal. Issue of balance reasoning: if you could charge a wave
gun while cloaked, cloaked ships equipped with wave guns would be pretty much
invincible... cloak, charge it, decloak, turn towards your enemy, fire, cloak
again while you charge. Since it's pretty much impossible to match the damage
a wave gun inflicts without advance warning in that one turn, it became pretty
quickly evident that this was a bad thing.)
3. The cloaked ship cannot be fired on. Not even with area effect weapons.
(PSB: Space is a HUGE place, it has three dimensions, and the chance of
hitting something you can't see in that huge place even
with a mass destruction weapon is miniscule. In-game issue: checking
to see whether there are any cloaked ships in the area of an effect without
tipping off to the other player where they actually are is cumbersome at best
and impossible at worst.)
4. If the cloaked ship overlaps an asteroid while they're cloaked, they're
dead. End of story. (Tactical suggestion: do NOT attempt to execute fancy
maneuvers under cloak in an asteroid field when you can't see perfectly as to
where the rocks are. I had an opponent accidentally scuttle half his cloaked
force doing that.)
5. If the cloaked ship goes off the board, they've left the battle field and
may not return. (We play fixed table, if you fly off the table, it's assumed
that you've run with your tail between your legs and you cede the contested
space to your opponent.)