Rupert replied to me: > If FTL sensors are limited to a few AU, interstellar FTL comms by > anything other than courier become exceedingly expensive - with a reach > of 20AU between each relay you'd need 13-14,000 to reach from here to > Alpha Centauri.
According to 3E vehicles, the weight of both FTL sensors and FTL commo (expect for short-range coms) is linear with range, so a few big installations are superior to many little ones. The TL14/TL15 ships I've been posting recently have ranges of several lightyears, and that is against a standard SM+4 target. The reason is to overcome the massive stealth penalties at high TLs, especially if you assume that deceptive jammers, force screen stealth, and conventional stealth stack. > Unless the polities involved are small I don't see how to avoid it > except by massively limiting how many people any polity can put into > space, or by playing action/thriller stype games where things pivot on > the actions of small groups and not fleets and armies by convention. If there are hundreds of small craft, none will be decisive by itself, but one will have to be at the point, or in the center of the formation. That could just happen to be the PCs, who get a chance to shine. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
