Re: Auxillary Cruisers

On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Eli Arndt wrote:

> I considered for awhile a way to use the cloaking optional rules to
create a 
> sort of space U-boat.  This however was never followed throuhg because
I 
> could never, under the exsisting rules for cloaking in FT, figure out
an 
> effective method of operation.

how about this: rig for silent running (not cloaked, but under strong
emission control). close to just outside the limit of the target's
passive
sensors (not hard against a civillian). track the target by her drive
emissions - being commercial types, they should be nice and noisy.
figure
out where she's going. figure out an intercept course. cloak, and
execute
the course. uncloak - you should be pretty near to the target, as she is
pursuing a very predictable course. attack.

this only works well if the target is (a) unescorted - military sensors
make closing hard (b) not actively evading. the former is unlikely to be
true in wartime, whereas the second is likely to be true - jinking on a
large scale eats expensive fuel and time. thus, the real problem is
geting
reasonably close under silent running without being detected by the
escorts. not easy, but not impossible.

> This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot,
but as 
> far as commerce raiding and use against actual moving targets it
seemed that 
> the cloakign vessels would tend to come out of cloak off the mark too
often.

if the target has a known course, it is as easy to hit as a 'stationary
emplacement (such things aren't really stationary anyway). nonetheless,
it
would make sense to pack long-range one-shot weapons, so you can
uncloak,
fire your entire warload in one turn, then cloak and run. you need the
range in caase you're off the target. SMR/ER or MTM would be ideal.

however, i fear that such scenarios would be rather boring as tactical
games - only as part of a campaign might they be interesting.

tom