Re: [FT]EW Yet again

>Consider the original FT/MT sensor rules to be kind of suspended
pending
>decisions on what form sensor rules will take in FT3....
>
>Jon (GZG)

FWIW the more I look at them, the more I like the "Simple Simon" rules
proposed
earlier.

Some people may want EW to affect combat though. I'm not convinced this
is a
good idea, but it's worthy of examination.

One mechanic (if you really want to go down the road of making EW
effective
in combat as well as target identification) is to have "roll twice, take
the
best" or "roll twice, take the worst". Basically, an EW-ship firing at a
non-EW
one rolls twice, taking the best. A non-EW ship firing at an EW one
rolls twice,
taking the worst.

This can be done by
a) Rolling twice for every die for SMs (remember they have to be rolled
individually
anyway for taking PDS fire etc - it takes almost no additional effort to
roll
2 dice rather than 1)
b) Rolling a pile of dice, then re-rolling misses/re-rolling hits for
beams,
PDS etc.

This has a very significant effect of firepower. Forex, assuming a
weapon has
a probability of a hit of 0.5. Re-rolling misses takes this to 0.75,
re-rolling
hits to 0.25. But if it has a probability of 0.4 (and most things do),
the change
is more marked: 0.64 vs 0.16.

If you do have such a system, make sure
a) It's large/expensive/rare (otherwise it would have appeared in FB1)
b) It applies only to fires by/to the ship that it's on, no "Fleet
effect".
So a specialised EW Dreadnaught might be both difficult to hit, and hit
most
of the time, but does so with at best 2 Type Is due to the (30% with min
10?)
mass for the EW fit. PSB is that the extra mass is needed as shielding
against
the ship's background radiation from thrust, life support, reactor etc
etc.

c) Have a "Fleet effect" for superiority of EW, as per the Simple Simon
rules.

What this means is that a large-ish fleet will generally want to have 1
EW ship
per 2000 pts or thereabouts. Small EW ships the size of light cruisers
are favoured,
rather than Capital ships - they'll be armed with a PDS that hits rather
often,
will be difficult to hit themselves, but that's about it re offensive
potential.
It also allows really big monsters that both hit very often and are
difficult
to hit ( especially base stations...) but would probably be better off
with
that 30% of mass in beams an so on. On a size 100 ship, you can get a
lot of
beams for 30 mass.... On a size 100 ship with 30% for hull, 10% for
thrust,
10% for FTL, and 30% for EW, there's not a lot left for things like
weapons,
FCs etc.

The use of EW-equipped fighters is left as an exercise to the reader :-)