RE: EW, Sensors, Stealth and Ships that go *BLIP* in the night

I haven't been reading every word in the EW topic because some posts
were
more detailed than I want, but a couple of the recent posts caught my
eye.

Basically there are 2 areas were EW can come into play, 1) detection and
identification, and 2) combat

Some people like to think of space combat as similar to modern submarine
warfare, stealth is the key, and if you can locate and identify the
enemy
before he knows you are there, you win.  Another point of view has space
combat being similar to WWI-WWII surface combat.  I fall into the second
group and my preference is for EW rules to do some of both #1 and #2 but
not
make detection and identification define the game.

Mr Anthony Leibrik wrote:
> The easiest way I can see of doing this and using a system that is
already
> on every ship,is the Fire Control. For every additional FC that you
commit
> to a target, you roll an extra die per battery and choose the best
dice
> equal to the number of batterys/classes firing. For example if you
have 3
> Class-1 firing at 10mu and you commit 2 FC you then roll 6 dice and
choose
> the best 3. If you added a Class-3 battery you would roll an
> extra 4 dice (3
> dice as normal plus 1 for the battery) and you would use the best 6
dice.

This is a neat idea, I'll expand on it below.

Why don't I throw this proposal out for comment, it has minimal changes
to
current rules.

In MT we have ship ECM and area ECM, for combat purposes, have them
increase
effective ranges when targeting a ship with ECM active, 150% actual
range
for area ECM, 200% for ship ECM.  Example, if firing at a ship with
actual
range 10" but covered by area ECM, effective range is 150% of actual so
combat is resolved as if the ship was 15" away.

Now to burn through, a target's ECM, how about for each additional fire
con
dedicated to targeting the ECM covered ship, either:
A) Gain an additional beam die per beam and keep the highest (per
Anthony's
thought above) or get an additional to-hit roll for Pulse Torps, K-guns
etc
and if either roll is high enough, it is a hit (but with range
modification
still in effect), or
B) Roll a beam die and if a 4-5, area ECM is negated and ship ECM is
reduced
to 150% effective range, and if a 6, both area ship ECM are negated.
Which would work better? What to the rest of you think?

These could be some quick and easy rules for EW, but it is Monday so I
may
be way off :)

Dean Gundberg

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