There is a side point here. Under the second edition scale rules, a Star Destroyer spending twice as long as it needs to line up its weapons on a ship at long range flying straight, level, and at a constant speed still has an almost 70% chance of missing. However, with the NEW and VASTLY IMPROVED scale rules in second edition, revised, this drops to almost 0% (they can, after all, roll poorly).
There is another side point
here. "Wait a sec!" I hear a voice cry out, "Wouldn't they be able to SEE
the Star Destroyer with the naked eye?" My answer is - possibly. I admit,
a Star Destroyer is rather stupendously huge. However, if you think a Star
Destroyer is huge, think about all of the rest of space. That is a whole
heck of a lot bigger. Now consider the fact that there are stellar phenomenon,
planets, stars, suns (being distinguished from stars by proximity), asteroids,
comets, other starships, and dozens of windows to look out of in a light
frieghter, what do YOU think the odds are? I'm not going to tell you -
you have to run YOUR campaign YOUR way. But I think it's obvious where
my feelings lie :) And before anyone says it, YES, there are not all that
many windows on an X-Wing, but I GARUNTEE that ANYONE who would be flying
an X-Wing would be looking straight ahead. No F-18 pilot would ever look
out the side of his cockpit to keep track of his position.
That is why I always want
powerful sensors - because the reasons that I just gave work both ways.
In well over three quarters of all starship combat I have ever run/participated
in, the starship that gets in the first shot wins. And not only do they
win, they almost always escape unscathed. Furthurmore, in 100% of all starship
combat, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the ship who knew where the other guy was first
also shot first. THIS is why TIE fighters never stray from the sensor coverage
of
their home base/ship - they don't have the sensor power for it (but
a skipray blastboat does - which is what it was designed for, patrolling
space). I'm sure that my idea of the ideal ship very closely mirrors all
of yours out there, but I GARUNTEE that mine would have better sensors,
and that if you had sensors that scanned less than 123 (48 <speed> +
75 <weapon range>) space units, you'd be in deep, deep trouble. Ideally
everyone should get a Crystal Gravfield Trap (CGT) Array - it's impossible
to jam (though large masses, such as planets, asteroids, or gravity wells
do disrupt it somewhat), and it has phenomenal range. Here are the statistics
that I play with:
Passive: 500
/ 2D
Scan:
750 / 4D
Search: 1000 / 5D
Focus:
50 / 7D
For those of you who can't afford to try and a) steal one of the fifteen or so in the galaxy or b) spend over fifty billion credits to develope one yourself (don't bother looking on the black market - a CGT will shatter if subjected to more than 200 N of force (say, a 2 lb. rock falling about a foot), you should consider a multiple sensor system. DER's, FST's, EPR's, the works. It is NOT difficult (though it is expensive, roughly 90,000 credits) to get your sensor range out to around 200.
Just think for a second too
- If you have a range of 200, and that pesky Star Destroyer has a range
of 200, you could detect one another over 200 space units away - plenty
of time for you to turn, shut off your sensors, and gun your engines. By
the time anyone else gets into the area (assuming you have a space move
of 4 and they have TIE's on patrol 50 units from the Star Destroyer), you'd
be over 60 space units away by the time those TIE fighters showed up -
FAR beyond their sensor
range, and odds are beeter than fantastic that a Star Destroyer will
NOT alter its course to check out a fuzzy sensor image detected at long
range, especially when the TIE fighters report nothing present.
Sensor Countermeasures : The Ultimate Strike Tool
Shields are nice, and powerful
guns, and deadly torpedoes and missiles and whatever else you want. AND
nessesary! I'm not diminishing their importance. I AM pointing out that
there are more important things, like stealth. You see, at heart, I'm a
sneaky person, and I do sneaky thinks, and sensor countermeasures are super
at being sneaky. Design your super ship, then mount a single Nuetron bomb
on the undercarriage (12D capital scale damage - this is the Star Wars
equivalent of modern day nuclear weapons). How close could you get before
they detected you? Not closer than 100 space units, and certainly no closer
than 60 before you would be under heavy fire (from whatever your target
may be and the ships defending it)(If there are no ships defending it,
then why are you attacking it with something as impressive as a nuetron
bomb?). BUT - if you were to equip yourself with a BrightStar Industries
Ship Stealth System (SSS), designed and built by Dev BrightStar (my favorite
character), you would certainly be able to get to 60 space units out before
being detected (or if you were detected, misidentified), at which
point, with engines gunning, you can scream in (figure 1 round of surprise
and two rounds of confusion), and BOOM! You're streaking away from the
scene, a massive EMP wave travelling out from the explosion (6D capital
scale ion damage, moves at 24 space per round) disabling all the beig,
stationary guns, and voila! Out and gone, with not a clear sensor or visual
inspection to definitively say who done it. Here are just some of the many
types of SSS's (pronounced essessesses) available on the black market (needless
to say, the Imperial, and later the New Republic, government discourages
the use of this type of system)
NOTE: Unless otherwise specified, all sensor masks described below have
Availability : 3, X and are all totally innefective against a ship
with a CGT Array
BrightStar Industries Ship Stealth System Model XI-AVII
Cost (during ship construction) : 28,650 credits per hull pip
(1D = 3
pips), x10 if capital scale
Cost (After ship Construction) : 347,850 credits per hull pip
(1D = 3
pips), x10 if capital scale
Weight : 0 (see below)
Difficulty to install : During Construction: Easy
After Construction : Heroic + 10 (at least - assuming that it is even possible)
Game effect: Adds +4D+2 to sensors difficulty to detect and
identify
Capsule: Rather than coat the ship in a material that bends
sensor waves around it, the hull of the ship itself is composed of
this material. Extremely expensive to install, it lends a great deal of
internal support to the vessel, and as such they are always 10% larger
in every dimension when stealthed in this manner. Instead of reflecting
the waves, the hull is sensor transparent on one side, and refletive
on the other, allowing the waves to pass into, but not out of the
ship's outer hull. The inner hull is also reflective, protecting
the internal systems and the crew from concentrated sensor radiation.
This is also useful for creating a sensor "shadow" behind the vessel,
allowing other non-stealthed ships to sneak in (Note that multiple
sensor platforms effectively negate this advantage). If the ship
has been absorbing sensor radiation for some time, and then sustains
a puncture to the outer hull (ie damage), it is automatically detected
by every ship within sensor range of it, as the radiation pours out
through the hole. Also note that this device can never be turned off, and
anytime internal servicing is to be done, the crews must don full
radiation gear for their protection.
If remaining unidentified
is your goal, then sensor jammers are for you. The basic premise
here is that, instead of concealing or misdirecting your own ships
signals, you instead broadcast lots of signals - enough so that the
area of space around your ship (out to about 300 space units is pretty
standard) displays over twenty signals per cubic meter. There are
few sensor operators who can sort through the billions of signals
to pick out the ship(s) from the stellar static. But lets take a
closer look, shall we?
By flooding space with billions
of signals, you definitely mask your identity and exact location
- but the sensor operator on the other end DEFINATELY knows that
something is up, and will usually press that big red button that
says ALERT on it. So regardless of how powerful your jamming systems
are, there is no sneakiness involves. It's kind of like trying to swat
a fly with a Buick (a type of car, for those who don't know).
Sensor operators aren't
stupid. Regardless of how much other junk is out there, they WILL NOTICE
a potential ship signature that moves in a linear fashion (ie from
point to point to point without disappearing). Things like this just beg
for visual identification, and will almost always attract two or more starfighters.
EPR sensors, which rely
on ambiant light from the surrounding objects, couldn't really care
about sensor jamming. Niether could CGT arrays, which only look for
mass. This means that, if you ARE spotted visually, weapons accuracy will
not be affected (except on larger ships, but that is discussed immediately
below). Not only that, laser fire carries a long way in space, and is obvious
in about a 200 space unit radius as little green flashes (or red
flashes or, my favorite, little blue flashes).
Sensors are powerful, designed
to defeat jamming. They are, therefore, difficult to jam. Also, the
larger the ship, the more powerful the jamming device required to affect
it. That is, an X-Wing cannot jam a Star Destroyer. It simply is not possible.
The Star Destroyer has so many DER's that it can almost instantaneously
screen out the static and focus on the source of the jamming. The basic
rule is that a starfighter jams starfighters (all of them) but not capital
ships, and a capital ship jams capital ships and starfighters (all of them).
Finally, sensor jamming is best
used on solo missions. Why? Because not only are your sensors fouled up,
so is every one of your teammates sensors. The potential for ship collision
increases by a factor of, say, a thousand or so, when you suddenly blind
them all.
For those of you who want to know
why I include it on every ship I build, I'll tell you: