Re: [FT] Fleet design (Was Re: Alarishi Home Page)

Stealth Lives! Muah-ah-ah!

NI> >However, I have been thinking about making
NI> >_another_ NI fleet using only FB systems, for situations
NI> > where house rules are different or dis-allowed.

Schoon> I think that this would be a good call. It's important 
Schoon> to seperate canonical from "house" creations.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board.

JCrim> What I've decided to do when I redo the page 
JCrim> (soon, honestly) is include the stats for the Illuminati 
JCrim> stealth system, and add a note to each ship; 
JCrim> something like "To include stealth system, remove 
JCrim> one Class 2 Battery and three point of armor."  

I'd do that for NI, but the changes would be too many

devans> I haven't been following the stealth discussion; 
devans> I figured the ideas were prettymuch covered
devans> under 'cloak'. However, I'm a little confused. Firing
devans> doesn't  negate stealth characteristics?.

Not according to my PSB. The game mechanic of my stealth hull reduces
weapon range by 1/4 to 1/3. The PSB is that the hull prevents lock-on,
so you have to fire manually or at a large error ellipse. The scattering
effect of the hull is not cancelled by weapons fire over tens of
thousands of km, though enhanced and special sensors can beat down the
noise and reduce stealth by 1 or 2 levels respectively if tied in with a
firecon. Now some people on the list dislike the game mechanic or the
PSB or both, so YMMV.

devans> Rather thansniping and constantly negating your 
devans> stealth, wouldn't you use stealth toapproach to allow
devans> short range/powerful weopens a chance to devastate?

That would be a different (and interesting) conception of stealth. For
example, make range reduction 1/2 and negate the effect if you fire any
weapons. However the tradeoff in offensive power for that kind of
stealth would not be worth it in my book. 

JClem> Thanks kindly.  It seems the NCS, sometime in 
JClem> 2185, slipped someone intothe Midbar Skunkworks 
JClem> and, ummm, obtained, the specs for New Israel's
JClem> stealth tech.  

If you had any idea how unlikely that was... The skunkworks are located
in the dense Sabra asteroid belt with an exact location known to only a
few thousand in NI itself (even the majority of those that work in the
complex couldn't navigate to it from more than a few million km away).
The average NI citizen would tell you it's not even real. It is well
defended and secured by Mossad and Shin Bet. This is not to say that
other groups couldn't develop the tech themselves (clearly a balanced
system (which I hope this is) should be available whoever wants to use
it). I'm just taking issue with the idea that it was  _stolen_ from the
reasobably paranoid NI, of all places. I would posit that if such a
theft were somehow to occur, either military confrontation would very
quickly ensue (say, raids on NCS research and construction facilities),
or energies would be devoted to sabotage efforts to gain from the theft.

Now if you want to talk trade or sale, NI has no qualms about selling
certain ships of its own design or contracting to construct custom ships
for others. 

Noam

Noam R. Izenberg		noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu