Re: Forcing fights

 
Örjan:

> FT2 pages 21 and 22. They're marked "Advanced" just like the fighter
> rules, all non-beam weapon rules and the ship design rules; it's your
> call if that makes them "optional" or not <shrug> 

Jon's comment about putting sensor rules on hold doesn't count? Nor the
fact that weapon ranges can now exceed maximum sensor range?
 
Ok, you're god and sensor rules are now strictly required in "fully
compliant" games. Did everyone hear this?

> The enemy scout ships need to get within 54mu of my capitals to be
able
> to tell what classes they are... or indeed if they are capitals at
all,
> rather than weasel boats. Your proposed "immediate 180-degree turn"
> won't gain you any more information than the FT2 campaign system had
> already given you - the general size of the bogies. 

The campaign system does not give that unless I jump to the system. And,
IIRC, immediately bugging out without the "table" phase is not an option
for the attacker. I'm just pointing that you can do no risk probing.

Under cinematic, it's not even too hard to do some actual sensor sweeps
with no or minimal risk with a fast scout.

> Wouldn't it be...
> very embarrassing, to say the least, if you fled from each battle
> because you failed to scan my weasel boats and thought them to be real
> capital ships?

Actually, not really. Even weasels don't come free. The only viable
course
of action in "The Lafayette Incident" is take the "free" planets with
single scouts and keep the strike fleet together. For the attacker. The
defender can look forward to simply losing.

Though there are some holes in the campaign rules that could render the
whole campaign moot if pressed...

> The U-boat service depends on not being detected by the target and
> ambushing it when it is too late for it to evade, not on running it
> down in a long chase. Yes, since the MT cloaking rules have very large
> gaping holes in them the U-boat service is effectively a dead cause.

Missing the point here. I simply meant that you think that trying to
*intercept* (by whatever means) is a dead cause?
  
> In wet-navy history since times immemorial, there have been three
> effective responses to fast enemy raiders:

And now there's FOURTH. Cargo ships fast enough to simply run away (or
fast enough never to be intercepted in the first place). In the long
run,
I reckon that's the optimal choice.
 
> The "attack the enemy convoy" was the very scenario we fought to the
> would-be long-range sniper raiders' exhaustion, and where I learned
how
> to handle such snipers with slower, shorter-ranged ships.

There wouldn't BE any convoy if the nation running it wasn't so
gentlemanly as to give their enemies a shot at destroying the cargo.
THAT'S what I'm getting at.

If I was playing the defender in that scenario, I would be asking: "WHY,
oh WHY, would I use transports that are actually slow enough to be
caught?"

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