Re: [FT] WotW #11 Stealth Systems

At 02:27 PM 7/15/01 +0100, you wrote:
>1) Blind Field [Aaron Teske] (Spacefleet conversion page)
>
>The blind field is a suite of powerful ECM equipment coupled with
chaff,
>flares  and a few PSB items that is designed to protect a volume of
>space. Unfortunately there were several drawbacks that prevented its
use
>on capital ships, but for smaller escorts it is a viable system.
>
>The blind field effectively doubles the distance between any two ships
>(or the ship and a missile) as far as targeting and firing is
concerned.
>
>i.e., Ship A (with Blind Field) is 8mu away from Ship B, but if B fires
>on A it would be as though the ships were 16mu away. the field works
>both ways: B is also considered to be 16mu away should A wish to fire
>upon it.
>
>A blind field takes up 3 MASS or 30% of the MASS of the ship, whichever
>is greater, and costs 4 points per MASS of the field. The radius of the
>blind field on the board is the ninth root of the MASS of the system:
>note you need to escort a vessel (per fighter rules) to grant this
>protection to another ship. Blind fields cannot be combined with other
>types of shields or screens.

Just to note, the numbers are complete PSB and designed around getting a

single ship (the Stalwart Escort, natch) to match the other Space Fleet 
conversions I did in mass while maintaining the same abilities it had in

Space Fleet.  So please don't go nitpicking the numbers too much (though
I 
admit I *am* curious how "well" the numbers work out...), I just wanted
to 
make a system that would make sense to mount only in small installations

(or else why wouldn't other ships have it...?).  I actually toyed with
the 
idea of restricting it to non-FTL ships only (the Stalwart doesn't have
a 
warp drive) but couldn't see why the thing couldn't just be shut down...
so 
I made it prohibitively expensive, instead. ^_-

BTW, in my Space Fleet rules I allowed small ships to escort larger
vessels 
as fighters, which partly simplifies orders (basically squadron 
maneuvering) but also allowed the Blind Field to operate.  Note that the

large ship can't use more thrust than the smaller ship is capable of or 
it'll fall behind... not that such a thing is a danger in the Space
Fleet 
universe!

I'm not sure if ninth root makes sense for anything, BTW; I just took
that 
from a high school physics experiment I did, theoretically to measure
the 
strength of a current-induced magnetic field vs. distance, IIRC.  The 
teacher said our setup was fine, but our numbers somehow fit (almost 
exactly!) a ninth root curve.  Very, very odd....