Onno Meyer wrote:
Pauli replied to me:
I allow the TL10+ Deceptive Jammer to affect passive sensors
and radscanners as well (but jammers or stealth have no effect
on the external hyperspace entry and exit point FTL signatures).
Except for the radscanners, this is official, I think.
'Official' GURPS distortion field technology only affects radars and
bio- or chemscanners, as per (3e) GURPS Ultra-Tech page 86 under
'Distort Belt'.
Allowing a TL10+ Distortion Jammer to affect PESAs and Radscanners
in addition to AESAs is a houserule.
With this small rules change, basic stealth with fairly modest
jammers can allow pirates to take civilian transports or small
freighters by surprise. Powerful sensors are expensive and
civilian craft often cannot justify the expense of fitting in
enhanced or advanced sensor systems.
Unless there is FTL radar, which is pretty much required for
warp but otherwise optional. The nice thing about jammers is
that their cost and weight doesn't depend on ship size. That
may be unrealistic, but $500k per vehicle isn't very much by
starship standards.
Yeah. It might make sense to have a houserule that one jammer
could cover at most a certain (large) surface area of a vehicle,
meaning that huge vehicles would need a network of several jammers.
Perhaps something like one jammer per 50 000 sf of hull surface
area at TL10 would be plausible?
This hyperspace interdiction thingy is another interesting
factor. What is the best FTL option for a pirate setting?
Not sure about that, but hyperdrive seems to work quite well
for me. STL space combat/action, with hyperdrive to skip the
vast distances at more reasonable speeds.
Hyperdrive has problems with the look and feel of sails at
the horizon, catching up in a stern chase with enough time
for deliberations and some fancy sailing.
Tactical maneuverings, shadowings, sneak attacks etc simply
happen STL in realspace with hyperships. Hyperdrive simply serves
as an entry and exit from the danger zones, and there can be
ways to technologically implement area denial for hyperdrive
usage (escaping hypership must either get out of the denied
area before jumping, or it must disable the interdicting
ship). And even if it is possible to jump, there could be a
minimum safe countdown time required before jump - I use a table
with decreasing 'Malf' number for increasingly hastier emergency
jumps - The usual safe countdown time limit is 1 minute, less than
that and the malf starts to go down.. Sneaky pirates might be able
to disable a hypership before it manages to jump, even with no
interdictor.
Encounters could typically start with a distant hyperdrive
entry point signature appearing on the FTL sensors (only
gives the entry point location, incoming FTL vector and shunt
tonnage of the incoming ship with succesfull enough sensor
op skill roll), followed by attempts to detect the incoming
ship with passive sensors while maneuvering tactically to gain
an advantageous sneak attack vector (FTL exit/entry point
signatures are much more easier to detect than the actual ship,
which may or may not be operating jammers and/or be stealthed).
Even without interdictor, pirates might succesfully attack
gravity-well limited hyperships in the vicinity of some planets
which either lack strong planetary defenses or have exploitable
holes in their defense grid (likely situations on small frontier
colonies). While approaching a planet with any kind of starport,
civilian ships typically fly with active transponders, making
it child's play for pirates lying in wait to detect them on
approach or takeoff vectors.
Well, in my setting the light starfighters are strictly
short-occupancy vehicles with limited endurances/range - They
require a larger ship or a base for refueling, refilling air
tanks, maintenance and pilot accomodations. Think of them
simply as additional helpers for the main pirate ship, cannon
fodder to draw in (and hopefully dodge) fire so that the main
ship takes less overall damage in a fight.. Losing a fighter or
two every now and then sucks, sure, but losing a vital key system
on the main ship could mean losing the battle.
Maintenance access space might be the key. I thought that
the dividing line between short and long occupancy was at
24 hours, but I can't find the quote right now. Fighters
with only STL drives could be a tactical liability.
I have been allowing very small hyperdrives, 1 ton of shunt
being the minimum size possible. This means that small short
occupancy craft like light starfighters for the most part do
only relatively short in-system jumps and are not as fast in
FTL as a more optimized larger hypership with more tons of
shunt per tons of mass would be. An LSF (light starfighter)
can get a bit more FTL speed (and thus a bit more of effective
range) by mounting extra hyperdrive pods in hardpoints,
but this typically gives only 1.5x - 2x or so more FTL speed and
reduces the available firepower noticeably.
Also worth mention is, that in my setting small fighter craft use
almost exclusively Partial Conversion Thrusters (which coexist with
the reactionless thruster tech used for bigger ships). These
PC Thrusters use water for conversion fuel and require no external
power - indeed they do produce some byproduct power
(kW = Thrust Lbs/100) and may well be able to power the rest of
a small fighters systems with some energy banks. This results in
more compact and cheaper small LSFs with high STL thrust but limited
endurance, as the PC thruster system can both power and move
the fighter.
-Pauli
--
"Our ship is made out of darkness, she mocks the laws of nature.
With cables, ropes, tackle and sails, she moves on the waves
of the void. On her decks a red crew, dark as if painted with
blood. From among the hooded cloaks of crimson, eyes of
silver gleam darkly.. Oldest of all is Hiram of Malta, the Red
Commander. He knows the secrets of Schwarzchild Radii, of Neutron
Stars and Cepheids. His hidden paths we follow, like ghosts from
space we strike deep, only to disappear again soon, sometimes even
the fear itself is afraid of us.."
-CMX, Punainen Komentaja
(Translated from the Finnish song 'Red Commander' by CMX)
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