Re: Fire Control lock-on musings

John Leary wrote:

>O.K. Lets just bring back the enhanced and 
>superior sensors to provide the desired 
>difference in the sensors for lock on.
>Might as will bring back the jammers as well.
>  
>
Semantically, I'd like to call them by levels like shields, instead of
titles.  So please bear with me.

So you'd have Level 0 sensors through... say, level 3?	Level 1 being
the "standard" ones that are presumed to already be on every military
ship, level 0 is the merchant designs standard sensors.

Jammers could be designated in the same way.

Sensors and jammers get a number of "beam dice" (with re-rolls) equal to
their level for locking-on and jamming.  The difference between the
numer of sensor "hits" vs the jamming "hits" must be =>0 in order for
the firing ship to get a lock.	Any sensor hits in excess of 0 minus the
jamming hits could be said to reflect a stronger sensor lock and thus
allow that number of re-rolls FROM BEAM-DICE-TYPE WEAPONS ONLY.  (No
rerolling that Pulse-Torp.)

Example:  A ship with level 2 sensors attempts a lock on a ship with
level 1 jammers.  The attacker rolls a 3 and a 4, so he has 1 sensor
"hit".	The defender rolls a 3, getting 0 hits.  Sensor Hits minus
jammer hits = 1.

The attacker gets a lock and can fire, rerolling 1 beam die if he so
chooses.

Now, this would slow the game down immensely, which is not desireable,
so unless something can be codified in order to introduce task-force
groupings of ships for orders/movement and firing to speek things up, I
wouldn't expect the suggestion above to gain any traction..  That would
include, I think, task-force based lock-on rolls in which ships in a
task-force combine their sensor and jamming rolls into a pool.

>This way the player must pay in points and mass
>for the advantages.
>  
>
Yes, for anything above level 1 military sensors and jammers. 
Everything should have it's price.  Likewise a discount for having only
civillian sensors (level 0).

In general, for future editions perhaps things like sensors, bridges,
life support and power cores could be seperated out from the "assumed"
components of the ship so that different levels and/or redundant systems
could be introduced.  It could make it easier to vary new races and/or
technologies by giving them different costs and/or game effects.  Not
sure what I think about that but I thought it so I'm throwing it out
there.

--Tim