Rather, recent talk about recon starfighters and my first complete playthrough of one of the v 1.0 campaigns gave me an idea about how Star Wars sensors work that could be implemented in PR. I'm looking to answer several questions:
1. What's your feeling on how canon this idea is? Does it feel Star Wars to you?
2. Does this variation sound like any fun to play?
3. Can anyone point me to a reference on how I might make these changes?
The basic idea is that a suitably equipped ship should be able to see anything on the tactical map unless the target is small and hiding behind something else. Hence give capital ships unlimited sensor range and smaller craft limited sensor range.
Rationale: Assuming that the ships are in scale to the map as well as each other, the space tactical maps appear 20 or 30 km on a side (based purely on how big EXECUTOR is on the minimap). Large military craft (like an ISD or Mon Cal) would have a very long sensor range in scale with the map. This idea is based on the way the old X-Wing/TIE Fighter games played, my take on the movies & novels (Zahn, Black Fleet), and real world/hard sf spacecraft detectability mathematical modelling I've been working on over the years. If you recall playing X-Wing vs TIE fighter, you could see large ships upwards of 100 km away. If you recall the view of the Imperial fleet at Endor from the Rebel flagship's bridge or Emperor's throne room windows, the observers were a LONG way off and we could see the ISDs just fine (see * at end). Long story short: there shouldn't be much fog of war in space.
This has some in game effects that I hope others will find interesting:
1. The defender (as long as they have some kind of capital craft or large base) can reasonably see the whole map from the beginning of the battle. Perhaps some bases (pirates) are a bit less capable...but when something comes out of hyperspace within 20 klicks: the defender should know exactly where it is.
2. Given the time it takes the cap ships to cross the maps, attack tactics might change considerably. It still takes time for a cap ship to launch starfighters: do you jump in on top of the defender and pummel them at the expense of being without starfighter cover? Or do you jump out far away such that you have a longer time to deploy your starfighter screen?
3. Asteroid fields would be the only places that the large ships couldn't see automatically (unless the enemy had a cloaking device). They have "fog of war" as they do now in EAW/FOC/PR. This introduces a modest amount of uncertainty. It also means that you've got to get a platform closer to the field so that the enemy fires and is revealed or fly starfighters into the field to scout it out. A player might be able to hide starfighters in the field to achieve a modest surprise.
4. Small craft (transport and lower size) sensor ranges would depend on the craft. Something like an Imperial TIE fighter or Vulture droid relies heavily on outside sources for vector to targets because the sensors to do that are on the launching ship. This allows TIEs to be cheaper and is in keeping with Imperial policy of ensuring their pilots are dependent on carriers. Such starfighters would have very short sensor ranges. Something like an X-Wing, a Star Wing, or a Blastboat (larger and designed for independent operations) would have a larger sensor range. This again changes attack tactics considerably by making it harder for the quick Blastboat/ATR raid to be successful: no more hiding from the AI just out of sensor range picking his fighter squads off in twos and threes. The raiders have a limited sensor range. The base does not. The defender can mass squads of starfighters on the raiders, potentially destroying them before they can damage the station.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
r/
feld
*Long sighting ranges on large objects make sense when you realize that a Star Destroyer (1.6 km) at 20 km distance appears about 4 degrees wide. For comparison, the full moon appears about 0.5 degrees wide when viewed from Earth. It stands to reason that, if you are on a large space platform, and you've got sensors with full sky coverage, that you're going to see that ISD if it's within 20 km's pretty fast. Please take my word for it (or accept for purposes of argument) that a spacecraft putting out enough power to perform like starfighters do would also be visible to suitable sensors at very great distances. Two RL examples: radar on modern warships routinely spot aircraft at hundreds of kilometers and it has been calculated that a Space Shuttle maneuvering thruster would be visible to a modest (~1m) telescope pointed in the right direction at thousands of km.
Edited by feld, 28 November 2008 - 07:09 AM.