Re: Auxillary Cruisers

At 17:58 13/07/99 PDT, you wrote:
>I considered for awhile a way to use the cloaking optional rules to
create a 
>sort of space U-boat.	This however was never followed throuhg because
I 
>could never, under the exsisting rules for cloaking in FT, figure out
an 
>effective method of operation.
>
>Under the rules, a vessel is complete blind while cloaking.  I assume
that 
>some sort of navigational systems are functional, but that's about it. 

>Under the system I came up with, the vessels would operate from 
>pre-determined bases, who's coordinates would be used as a ready course

>after an attack.
>
>Under cloak, they would procede to a predetermined set of coordinates
and 
>wait, only when they were in position.  A swift attack, then recloak
and 
>return along a preset course.
>
>This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot,
but as 
>far as commerce raiding and use against actual moving targets it seemed
that 
>the cloakign vessels would tend to come out of cloak off the mark too
often.
>
>Well, that's what I came up with.  any other ideas?

A simple imperfect modification is to allow the cloaked vessel to write
orders each turn, but with a delay:
Assuming a ship starting cloaked:
Turn 1:  write orders for T1 AND T2; execute T1 orders (on paper)
Turn 2:  write orders for T3; execute T2 orders (on paper)
Turn 3:  write orders for T4; execute T3 orders (on paper)
Turn 4:  write orders for T5; execute T4 orders (on paper)
etc. etc. 

This means that a cloaked ship can respond to other uncloaked vessels,
but
more slowly (it's hard to be sure what the enemy are doing without
giving
yourself away).  On decloaking, use the mapped course to position the
model
of the U-boat\BoP\etc.	Obviously this is easier with cinematic rather
than
vector movement.

Decloaking can be ordered as normal, but it might be an idea to allow
"crash
decloaking" when a target of opportunity arises- e.g. roll a d6, on a 5
or 6
the ship decloaks before firing, on 1 to 4 she decloaks at the start of
the
turn and isnt allowed to fire (i.e. the crash decloak has been
mistimed).

Rob
"Rob Paul

Dept of Zoology
Oxford University
South Parks Road
Oxford
(01865) 271124
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"Auld an' bald!"
"