Re: More EW, the celebration continues!

>Laserlight
>> Let's consider the logic of this.  You paint a target with
your
>> own FC, the signals come back with a delay for distance, and
you
>> shoot based on that.  With the drone, the drone paints the
>> target, receives the signal with a delay for distance from
>> target to drone, processes it (another delay) and passes the
>> information on to you (a third delay).  Total distance delay
>> will be at least as much as if you had pinged the target
>> directly and will usually be more, plus you have the drone's
>> processing time.  I don't see that as making a hit more
likely.

Tony said
>It makes it more likely because the drone is supplying the
firer with a
>constant update of the targets position. The information delay
would be
>between the  drone and the target. If it's 10mu, then the info
delay is 20
>(double the distance). The info then gets sent to the firer who
is 20mu, so
>the info delay is 20. Total time 40. As opposed an info delay
of 60 between
>firer and target 30mu distance.
>Looking at this, I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but it is
1:00am

First off, you don't need to worry about the time for the
outbound signal.  If the signal reflects off the target at T0
and is received by the FC at T1, all you're concerned about is
how far the target moved between T0 and T1 (we will ignore the
time for weapons fire to arrive since that's not relevant to
whether a drone helps or not).

However, you have to count the total time from target to the
firer.	 You either have the time for a straight-line distance
from the target to the firer, or you have the time for a
triangle from target to drone to firer.   Unless you have FTL
comms--which is specifically not canon--you're not going to be
able to get a faster time going around two sides of a triangle
that taking the direct route.

Where a drone will help is when you:
 a) happen to have maneuvered it close enough to a formerly
unseen target that the drone can see it when the main ship
can't;
b) when you want an expendable platform for active searches (or
active ECM jamming); or
c) when you want cheap sensors so you can deploy a screen to
cover a greater area than your ships can.