RE: cloaking rules

I posted the rules to which you refer.

I did not understand from your post if the Advanced Cloaking put the
cloaked
ship in standard mode or blind mode cloaking with the additional ability
to
fire.

I also have a concern about the ranges you stated for scanning. Can a
FCS be
used to search for a cloaked ship and then be used to fire on that ship?
If
not, the cloaked ship is immune to all standard ships below Light
Cruisers
(since they only have one FCS). Also, most ships of Light Cruiser to
Battlecruiser (1/2 of the Fleetbook Battlecruisers have 2 FCS) could
only
attack cloaked ships at 12" or less (one FCS to scan, one FCS to shoot).
At
a the bare minimum, the weapons of the cloaked ship should be reduced to
12"
and the FCS should be allowed to fire on the cloaked ship as well as
search
for it (if it finds it). 

A cloaked ship should have the same difficulty locking onto a ship
through
the cloak. It should require a 6+ on a d6 modified as below to lock onto
the
target (and then normal chances of hitting with the weapons).
Target ship used MD, +1
Target ship fired during the Firing Phase +1
Target ship scanned area of cloaked ship +2 (regardless of if the
cloaked
ship was found or not)
Target ship is powering up for FTL +1
Target ship has taken damage this turn +1

I still prefer to not allow a cloaked ship fire, as it adds a lot of
complication and unbalances the game. At the MOST, a cloaking field
should
add no more value than level 2 screens (<shudder> Think of a Komarov SDN
with a cloaking field instead of level 2 screens).

When I set up the rules for standard cloaking, I may have been unclear.

The distance of 12" (6" for vector) was set so that it was 2x the range
of
salvo missiles. This allowed the area to be saturated by salvo missiles
to
simulate depth charges, but a single salvo missile had little (but some)
chance of catching the cloaked ship.

The clock direction and range from the cloaked ship to the marker did
NOT
have to remain constant from turn to turn. It just needed to be written
down
when it changed. This could make the cloaked ship's movement seem
erratic.

I was trying to avoid giving the cloaked ship a free shot at other
ships. If
you allow a cloaked ship to fire, the player will always (or almost
always)
wait until the cloaked ship is the last ship to fire. Other ships having
fired would not be able to return fire. And the next turn the ship would
have to be searched for in order to find it. (Under your Advanced Cloak,
do
the bonuses last through the next turn? If not the problem persists with
Advanced Cloaking system.) I felt that this was too lopsided.
I had wanted to allow the cloaked ship to fire at a penalty, but the
mechanics of Full Thrust use different methods to determine a hit with
different weapons. A -1 penalty for beam weapons is very different from
a -1
for pulse torpedoes (especially after shields are taken into account).
Because of this, I did not include allowing a cloaked ship to fire.
I had also thought about allowing return fire through the next fire
phase,
but this would not be possible unless the location of the cloaked ship
was
made known in the next turn. I felt that this was unacceptable (I wanted
to
keep disclosure to the current turn only). 

I also added rules that if a ship was in standard mode, and the location
of
his ship was scanned (regardless to if the ship was found or not), the
standard cloaked ship could then fire on the scanning ship (but would
pinpoint his location). This would make scanning for a cloaked ship a 2
edged proposition. If you scan and find the ship, you can fire on it. If
you
scan and don't find the cloaked ship, it will probably get a free shot
at
you.

-----
Brian Bell
http://fly.to/fullthrust      
-----

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen Bailey [SMTP:Glen.Bailey@sabre.com]
> Sent: Friday, July 23, 1999 9:10 AM
> To:	GZG digest
> Subject:	FT: cloaking rules
> 
> I liked the cloaking rules that someone suggested which I found at a
> website which I cannot find anymore, and I don't recall who deserves
> the credit for them.	But I felt they didn't far enough and so I
> modified them, especially in detecting cloaked ships.  One problem
> I have is how to mark a ship that just cloaked after not being 
> cloaked, especially to standard mode.  Maybe the cloaked ship has
> to use the marker where it is and everyone knows where the ship is
> as it moves, the only way for the cloaked ship to move off of
> the marker is go to blind mode (in which case the marker does not
> move as long as the ship remains in blind mode).
> 
> The Advanced Cloaking System I added on a whim because of a 
> particular movie.  I don't know if the cost I assigned is fair 
> and maybe the detection bonus could be +2 for one weapon fired 
> and +3 for 2 or more weapons fired (or +n, n being the number 
> of weapons fired?).
> 
> Glen
> 
> 
> 
[snip]