Re: [FTFB] Not ships, exactally. . .

Izenberg, Noam wrote:
> 
> [John's nifty defsats]
> 
> I hadn't thought of going this small with defasts. Not a bad idea.
> However, if they are unmanned, they should have some limitations -
> disruptable by ECM, beam range bands of 10" instead of 12", Die rolls
at
> -1, or something like that. IF they are manned, they certainly won't
be
> jobs of choice for the military.

Why?  I figure the operation of these things is going to be real
simple.  They always target the closest hostile ship in arc, and they
don't do much else.  The ground command (or station command, or ship
command, or whoever is commanding them) sets them to one of a few
setting, perhaps Red, Yellow, Green (Don't shoot, Shoot only after
positive verification, Shoot unless verified friendly) depending on
threat level--Red being peacetime operations, Green being "Dammit, where
are all these Kra'Vak coming from?".  After that it's nothing but a
targeting sensor.  Which doesn't have a human in the loop--you don't
manually aim particle beams at starships with 6G maneuver drives across
thousands of km, regardless of what you see on St*r Tr*k (which fights
only at ranges under 2km, so it's not a real problem for them).  So
firecontrol would be no more disrupted than would be the fire control of
any other ship.  Most people onboard modern naval vessels are there for
damage control and maintinence, and these buggers don't need damage
control and maintinence would be a function of a tender moving in,
taking them into a bay, doing whatever, and putting them back.	

John M. Atkinson