RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters

> From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> [mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of B Lin
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 4:36 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: RE: Its Doctrine, Scouting and Tactics not Fighters
>
>
> I put terrain as a general item, it could just as
> easily be rapidly laid mine fields, an exploded comet
> or asteroid to generate a cloud of gas or metal
> particles to throw off sensors.
>
> The attacker is attacking based on his best recon -
> i.e. the ecliptic is empty go in that way.  The
> defender may have sown it with shielded mines or set
> up Beam 4 stations above the ecliptic plane.

This is where campaign play really takes effect.
>
> The scenario design assumes that the attacker is
> attacking for a reason - to destroy the opponent's
> fleet.  You aren't gaming the scenarios where one
> side see's it's overmatched and withdraws.

This is again one of the problems with trying to judge whether
the bring so many points to the table in a one-off is unbalanced
without affecting campaign play.
>
> One fleet may be on patrol in-system or in-transit to
> station, the commander decides to stand and fight and
> will take advantage of any "terrain" available.  If
> you don't want too much "terrain" just limit the
> number of scenario points to each side, or simply
> don't allow terrain and just allow hidden ships and
> flank attacks.
>
> If a ship has good stealth characteristics, and is
> not active, you might not need asteroids to hide
> with, just sitting out in space "running silent"
> might be enough to evade detection until the opponent
> was too close to do much about it.  It would
> definitely make people think twice about dashing
> across the board at high speed.  The feel would be
> like WW2 submarines against convoys - you'd have an
> active screening force to the front and outsides to
> catch hidden ships before they got to fire.

We allow silent starts with believe it or not, MT rules on
systems starting from cold. On a roll of 5-6 the system comes
back on line (roll for each system), on a 1 it cannot be
cold-started and is inoperable during the coming engagement
(drives are the exception and always come active on 4-6 ignoring
rolls of 1) shamelessly stolen from one of the scenarios given
in MT.
>
Rgds,

Alfie