Scouting and campaign

I wonder in what interesting ways scouting can be made
into an interesting scenario as well as fun to play.

In one-offs, everyone always seems to manage to get
their fleets in line abreast formation at slow relative
speed at maximum weapon range. I could understand them
getting their ships in formation if they had scouting,
but how then do they justify the low closing rates?

If the fleets meet accidently there should be a lot
of randomness in their facing.	If one of the fleet
is deliberately intercepting, their vectors and
orientations should reflect that.

If you allow 1 Mass ships, when jumping into a
system have 6 appear about 36" from the main fleet
entry area, and another 12 or so 36" beyond that.
Your scout ships should be able to pick up anything
close to weapons range by the time your fleet is
sorted out from the jump.  Likewise, when travelling
in normal space you should have a network of scouts
beyond weapon's range if not beyond sensor range of
your fleet.

In a scenario you'd have several turns between the
initial scout encounter before the fleets even got
on the main map.  Perhaps there would be some cruisers
in front of your main fleet, screening it so that the
scouts can't get a good count of your main fleets
strengths and composition.

Has anyone played with hidden victory conditions?
If you have a referee who knows the relative
strengths of the forces he could say:

"One of you may have up to twice as many points as
the other player.  Both of you have as an objective
to find out as much as possible about the enemy
fleet and runaway if it is stronger and destroy it
if it is weaker.  Running away if you are stronger
will cost you, and not being able to inflict damage
will cost if you are stronger.	If you are able to
take the system without being extensively scanned,
that is a solid victory."

Basically, if the Admiral of the smaller force can
prove how outnumbered he was and get out with minor
losses the intelligence he brings back will be
quite valuable.  For one thing, the fleet he scans
in this system can't be somewhere important at the
same time... :)

Defensive scouting should be a bit easier.  They
could set up "Sensor Mines".  Sensor mines cost the
same as standard mines, have a passive scan out to
36" but can only be detected within 6".  They have
no offensive weaponry, their sole purpose is to detect.
They should be a little easier to clear than ordinary
mines once you detect them, but you could stack live
mines nearby, set to go off if the Sensor mine is
destroyed.

They can be detected on _active_ at standard ranges, but
that would give the Sensor Mines even more information.

If you allow fighters to have Thrust 12 to allow them
to keep up with the fleets, may I suggest that their
speed relative to their opponent has to be below
a certain point, say 24"?  Otherwise you could have
fighters make ridiculously high speed passes.  Have
a scouting board where 1" = 18" or so and a good
scouting network should detect the enemy fleet over
200" out.

Fighters could reach them quite quickly:
Orders	 Speed Distance from Launch 
+12	  12	 12		    +18  18  18
+12	  24	 36		    +18  36  54
+12	  36	 72		    +18  54 108
+12	  48	 120		     -6  48 156
-12	  36	 156		    -18  30 186
-12	  24	 180		    -18  12 198
-12	  12	 192

Or about 7 turns, or much less for a 18 speed fighter group.
You might want to increase the cost of fast fighter groups
for play balance under these sorts of rules.

For this to work you'd need 3 strategic boards, one
for each player and one for the referee.  Fortunately,
at 18"::1" the strategic boards don't have to be very
big.  I'd recommend hex boards for easy coordinate
references.  You'd also need a fairly big tactical board
as well, although you might want to squish the scale on
the tactical board too.

All those really slow Superships would have a problem
under these conditions, but at least they'd have time
to build a decent vector towards the ultimate target.

If you want a justification for an upper limit on
speed, how about:

All ships travelling faster than xxx take 1d6 radiation
damage per YYY turns, shields apply.  All ships travelling
faster than 2xxx take 4d6 radiation damage per YYY turns.
If you want an adjustment for larger ships having a larger
cross-section, multiply that damage by the square root of
the ship's mass, or have a fudge factor for streamlined,
with streamlined ships taking less damage.

In this way, you could have your dreadnoughts come in too
fast to be intercepted by fighters a long way out, but
they'd be taking radiation damage on the way in.  And if
they lose their drives their crews will die of radiation
damage.

With an obvious importance to scouting, ie, knowledge of
where the enemy fleet is enables you to launch fighters
against them, fleet composition will include a much larger
scouting element.  And that scouting element will come
into combat with their opposite numbers.  Scouts will
be designed to take out scouts, not dreadnoughts, and to
punch through the enemy fighter screens.

You could either work out all the scouting or have each
player define their scouting screen and just run a sample
combat between the scouting screen.  How they define their
screen depends on how far out they are likely to detect
the enemy fleet.  You could have a very wide screen, but
then you'd have to evade the enemies denser scout screen.

If you define the hyper limit to be >600" from the planet,
the Carriers may be able to get several full Carrier strikes
off before the main fleets hit.  And of course, with such
a huge distance to the hyper limit it becomes very important
to know what you are getting into!

This would turn a single planet battle into a whole campaign,
which is either good or bad depending on what you like.

On a similar line:
Given 100% knowledge of the composition of an enemy
3000 pt force, and mutually agreed upon rules for
what can be built and what sort of encounter they
would have, how small a force could you build that
would have a 50-50 shot at beating it?

If you could take the sleazy approach, like hit that
Kra'Vek fleet with EMP missiles, or hit the Federation
A Batt ships with Fighters, how much of a cost 
advantage do you think you could swing?

Anyone want to work up a good 3000 point force that
would force people to spend at least 2000 on a
killer force?

Michael Sandy
Looking for Full Thrusters in Portland, Or