Hal wrote: > One thing that gets overlooked with the sensor rules, is that sometimes you > may not be able to spot something directly due to the "cloaking" or > hidability of stealth systems, but sometimes you gotta think outside the box.
Hello Hal, that is actually mentioned on VE174, but without specific rules. > For instance? A tank whose mass pushes aside vegetation, is going to be > easily spotted - not because the tank itself is visible, but because of the > effect it has on the surrounding vegetation. Wind moving the grain, or crawling battlesuits? > Likewise? A heavy tank that leaves ruts in the ground with its treads, can > be tracked even if the tank is currently unspotted. This requires sophisticated analysis of the data. A tank is a tank. A set of track impressions ending in nothing is either a tank or a sign that the tank reversed and got away. Or a sign that the wall collapsed later rather than sooner. > Then there is the issue of fast moving objects moving through an atmosphere > heating up to where it is visible simply because of the heat differential > with the air it has gone through versus the air it has yet to enter. Unless it has a very high TL and force fields manage to ease the air aside. (Iain Banks had that idea for stealthy culture craft.) There could be specific sensors for that, or you assume that highly skilled, high-TL sensors and software do just that. An Electronics Op (Sensors) skill program with sufficient complexity can reliably detect targets where a human with "normal human" skill levels would see nothing. For some other vehicles, I had assumed that the -9 cutoff was simply the resolution of the sensors, i.e. what a photo interpreter with a magnifying glass would be able to determine afterwards from a printout. (That was a way of scaling recon sats.) However, it could be that the computer is just better at collecting anomalies over time. But there could also be specific sensors to look for vehicle traces. 3E Vehicles has rules for wake-homing torpedoes, but no separate wake homing sensors :-( > As for myself? When I tried to create a combined arms style of warfare > utilizing stealthed tanks, battlesuits, and armored personnel carriers as > well as battlesuit carriers - I found it fun to try to come up with a > tactical doctrine that merges various aspects of the combine arms unit. > > For instance, tanks usually advance into battle (in my hypothetical doctrine) > surrounded by infantry and battlesuits. The Battlesuits are all tied in > together with a tac-net so that when a threat is identified, it shows up on > all battlesuit threat indicators. All of the battlesuits can combine into an > anti-missile defense screen with their rapid fire gatling rail guns firing > 2mm (or was it 4mm?) rounds in rapid profusion. The gatlings made for good > anti-personnel weapons when used against unarmored troops, and the regular > infantry could utilze their standard weaponry as needed (ie light anti-tank > weapons, air-to-air missiles, bunker busters, rifles, grenades, grenade > launchers, etc). The tanks on the other hand, were used for really HARD > targets. Their Long barreled Rail guns made them a major threat to even > shipping. I'm at a much higher TL, and there are several differences: * Unpowered troops will be unable to carry enough sensors and weapons to hurt powered armor, let alone a tank. They're out of the game. * Unarmored civilians come under riot control, not warfare. * Small, man-portable missiles will have problems to detect a stealth AFV. That limits standoff mines, too. * Grav AFVs will carry much bigger sensors than powered armor. Even if they are larger, they have a slight edge in detection unless there are obstacles. Powered armor only goes into close terrain, not into open terrain. > In the end, the fun was to try and decide what their opponents were fielding > on the battle field and see what it would turn into as far as force on force > battles. My original scenario was based upon an invasion of Columbia in > support of the local government being besieged by "Narco-terrorist" criminal > personnel whose incomes rivaled that of small nations! Ah well, that was a > LONG long time ago. I think the tank I built using GURPS VEHICLES was called > something along the line of the "Cohen" (Maybe M-6 or something). > > Hal Fall `97, M8 Cohen, but also called the M66 Cohen in the writeup of the Raptor-class Battlesuit. A disinformation campaign? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
