Re: More EW, the celebration continues!

Earlier Thomas Barclay suggested
> Drones
> ---------
> UAVs for FT. I need a system to go active in order to lock on real
hard on
a
> target. But when I spark it up, I say "shoot me" with a neon sign.
Solution?
> Drones. I launch my scan-drone (passive). When I need a firing
solution, I
> bring it active (it links to me via either a neutrino comm system or a
laser
> - neither of which is detectable by emission unless you are in line of
> transmission AFAIK) and I get the fire control solution without
risking my
> ship. You fire, you kill my drone. Oh woe is me. I have twenty or a
hundred
> or a thousand of them. Okay, if you think sensors are expensive, it
might
> not be cheap BUT it will be cheaper than losing my BB. And then this
data
is
> (by similar hard to intercept/detect link) spread around the fleet of
> passive 'silent' ships.
<Snip>
> And sensor drones would
> make for an entirely interesting (but somewhat un-FTish) space combat
game.
This sounds very like the scout/sensor drones in games such as 'Star
Cruiser' and 'Brilliant Lances' and is a concept I like a lot.
The way I see to integrate it in to FT is:
Build your drones like MT missiles but fit them with a Fire Control
system
(based on the assumption that FCs have the targetting sensors). When a
drone
gets near a target ship the friendly ship it is linked with through the
ships own FC (another assumption) can now fire on the target based on
the
distance between the drone and the target. You can't of course fire
further
than your weapons can reach. For example if the target was 10mu from the
drone and 30mu from the firer, the firer would roll 3 dice for class-3
beams
instead of 1 die for that range (30mu), but it would still be out of
range
of smaller classes. Also if it was firing P-torp you would only need a
+3
instead of the normal 6 to hit.
I did consider if one drone should allow multiple ships to use it but I
think that would make it too powerful a system. They would be almost
invunerable as they can't be hit by main weaponary being too small to
notice
and can only be hit by PDS if they get within 6mu of a ship carrying an
ADFC. The PDS integral search and targetting sensors are designed to
deal
with threats to the parent ship so it  needs the more powerful sensor of
the
ADFC to locate the drone. On the other hand drones do have a limited
operational life
Comments?

Tony

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