SV: Of Sensors and Needles - Some Questions and Suggestions

Allan wrote:
 
[huge snip]

> Basic Sensors and Passive Sensors: successful active scan gets you the
> ship name, the class name, and size grouping. You do NOT know if it is
> a military ship or a merchant.

Um... if you can identify the ship and class names, you probably know
pretty well what armament the ship has :-/

[snip]

> Needle beams become seriously over priced based on the above argument.
> Either you end up with a lot of onerous bookkeeping or your needle
> beams can't fire until a ship has been scanned. And does the same
> criteria hold true for needle missiles? 

I don'¨t use needle missiles. I refuse to believe that a missile can
mount
powerful enough scanners for such precision targetting...

> Does anyone have any suggestions for handling this anomaly? 
> 
> I've come up with some options to handle this. I'm not 100% in favour
> of any of them, but they cover the options I could think of. Any other
> options, or comments on these, are greatly appreciated.

[snip]

> 2)  Don't let a needle weapon fire at any system -- including the
> engines -- without the system being scanned. (This makes needle
> weapons more difficult to use. It also has the weird situation of a
> weapon being fired but no needle weapon able to target it because it
> wasn't scanned).

Weird? Not IMO. You know it's there _somewhere_, but do you know exactly
enough to hit it (instead of the crew quarters two meters to the left)?

> 3) Allow a needle weapon to fire at the engines of a ship without
> having to scan them. All other systems must be scanned first.

This is what I do currently.

> 4) Allow ships firing needle weapons (beams and missiles) to see a
> list of systems on a target ship.

and

> 5) Make all system information available to all ships within 9",

Not if you're using the advanced sensor rules, no.

> 6) Allow a needle weapon to fire at a ship that hasn't been scanned.
> The shot will target a random system. As an option, allow knocked out
> systems to be counted as the possible target system. (Essentially, the
> gun team or missile AI is aiming at gun ports, missile tubes, or just
> prominent bits of the ship.)

Sounds fun. Havent' used it, but it ought to work; it's a bit like the
Starfire Needle beam (although, to make it identical, a needle without
any
precision target would work as a C battery in FT. I prefer to treat the
Starfire N as a one-point E instead of a one-point F weapon <g>)

> 7) Same as 6, but group systems into three main chunks: weapons
> (including fire cons), engines (including FTL) and other. A needle
> weapon would target one of these chunks, and the system targeted would
> be chosen at random from the systems in that chunk. (Same as 6, but
> the firing player has a bit more control over what he fires at). 

Hm... how can you aim for fire cons etc that are basically internal
electronics? Hitting them accidentally, yes, but aiming for them
specifically?
 
> Note that in most cases if a successful scan has been done, allow the
> ship to fire at a scanned system. This may still involve bookkeeping,
> as it's possible for a ship to discover that it's target had -- for
> example -- an A beam but it wouldn't necessarily know that it had been
> taken out on a threshold check.

Well - if you pinpoint a destroyed system with your needle beam, tough
luck
:-)

> And finally, do you use the advanced sensor rules? Do you use the
> needle weapons (beams and/or missiles)? If yes to both, do you use
> them both at once? If so, how do YOU handle it?

Yes (sometimes), yes and 3 above.

Oerjan Ohlson

"Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry