Richard,

Thank you, that seems to confiorm what Alan Trevor was talking about.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, March 18, 2011 - 03:14 pm: Edit

There is a very real question as to what point the defsat (or captor mine) becomes so large that it can no longer hide. Large is not just a factor of sheer size, but simply the energy signature. I think the existing game defsats and captor mines put the upper limit on this (or they would already have been larger). Larger defsats and captor mines would not have any of the "hidden benefits", i.e., they would put out enough of an energy signature to be detected and targeted at long ranges.

Seriously, there has to be a point where you say "stop". Otherwise in a year or two the "mega" defsat would be proposed that would be just a little larger than this one. A few more years down the road, and we eventually have the Super Mega DefSats that can crush a heavy cruiser in a single turn but are still considered to be hidden and untargetable until they fire.

I do not see a reason to start down this path yet again (this is just a different version of the "planetary defense platform" proposal, which is why I say "yet again").

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, March 18, 2011 - 07:58 pm: Edit

Steve Petrick:

If bigger is bad, what about smaller?

What about a set of point defense DefSats (with tranporter repeater function) that had 1xPhaser2 and 1xphaser3 and 1 heavy weapon (such as a single photon or a single disrupter) and half the normal Electronic Warfare points (such as +1 ECM and+1 ECCM) for half the cost of a normal DefSat?

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Saturday, March 19, 2011 - 11:03 pm: Edit

Jeff,

Why? What is to be gained by doing this? Since we can pretty much now know that defsats were made the size they are because that is about as big as they can get, what is to gain by making them any smaller? Are there that many situations where having four half-sized defsats are that much more useful than just having two full-sized defsats?

At this point, and to be brutally honest, it just looks like you are trying to make something to make something. There is no purpose; there is no in-game goal. It is just an exercise to see if you can make something. Frankly, that doesn't look good.

[Note that I am specifically not accusing you of this. I don't know you. I don't know your motivations. I am not trying to insult you. It just doesn't look good.]

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Sunday, March 20, 2011 - 04:42 am: Edit

"More" is often as good a solution as "bigger" too. If your planet has 200 BPV to spend on Defsats just buy ten standard ones. (Personally I'd buy minimum-required Defsats and spend the rest on mines and ground bases but that may not be an option).

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Sunday, March 20, 2011 - 06:36 am: Edit

A defense satellite needs to be small enough to be stealthy, but big enough to be a threat to a raider. A pair of heavy weapons and some phasers is enough to punch through a shield of most small raiders (frigate size and smaller). A defsat half that size just means you have to fire (and make vulnerable) two DefSats instead of one.

I don't know if there were any defense satellites in the EY period, perhaps a smaller, less capable defsat was deployed in that period given that ships were smaller and less capable and a smaller satellite would be worthwhile.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, March 20, 2011 - 10:32 am: Edit

Mike, Andrew answered this... If I had a choice to reveal a smaller 10 BPV defsat to kill a drone or a fighter and a normal 20 BPV DefSat, I'd pick the cheaper one as that would result in the loss of fewer victory points than the larger one.

more to the point, if a normal package of 5 defsats costs 100 BPVs and I could get 10 small 10 BPV cheap defsats with the same general capacity (same number of Ph3s, Ph2s, heavy weapons, transporter repeater functions, Electronic Warfare points etc) it would force my opponent to make 10 separate attacks instead of only 5... plus as was pointed out above, many players save the last DefSat to preserve the transporter repeat function for ground defense... the net of which I get to use 1 more phaser3, phaser 2 and both heavy weapons(be they photons disrupters or whatever.)

the biggest draw back that I see from smaller defsats is the burden it puts on seeking weapons control of the surviving ground bases for any seeking weapons that might be launched by the DefSats...such as drones or plasma torpedos (in the cases where the defsats are armed with such).

It is something of a wash, given that the same number of launchers exist on both normal sized Defsats and the mini-defsats.

But, This may be another case where I am mistaken. That is the real answer to why I asked the question.

As I have said many times before, I don't care if I get published credit for anything, I enjoy the discussions on the BBS.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, March 20, 2011 - 12:04 pm: Edit

Well, what about some sort of command sat that can control captor mines in the def sat system (i.e., captor mines in orbit). Naturally these would be weapons type mine only as explosives type could cause other problems.

It's early and raining and I'm not fully awake so maybe I'm missing something I should be remembering.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, March 20, 2011 - 12:08 pm: Edit

Defsats ARE command controlled captor mines.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Is there a limit to the number of DEFSATs that can be deployed?

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 07:34 pm: Edit

Not really, though once you have more than 18 (3/6/9)...

[Also dependent upon ones DS mix]

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 09:21 pm: Edit

Buying DEFSATs limit purchase of other options you might want/need.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 09:42 pm: Edit

I mean is there any controlling rule that limits how many can be deployed?

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 12:26 am: Edit

Well, DefSat sub-rule (R1.15A) says that "Normally, a set of five satellites is deployed." That would mean any larger deployment is abnormal.

I don't know if that quite rises to a controlling rule, but, man, anybody want to try a 550-point battle force against a Agro Station and 27 photon DefSats, Standard Victory Conditions?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 09:04 am: Edit

Shush!

Don't give Petrick any idea's!

Though the point is a good one... let's say the planet has 27 DefSats, do the math and you will soon see the problem. Even discounting the ability of DefSats to overload heavy weapons, the shear number of weapons will overwhelm a 500 point battle force.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 09:32 am: Edit

The context I was thinking of would be an assault on a capital planet, like you would find in F&E.
A 500 point battle force would be vaporized at range 15, I would think, in a capital assault.
It stands to reason that a "mere" colony or even the equivalent of a F&E major/minor planet couldn't have DefSats stacked up like Super Mario power ups, because of the cost.

What got me reviving this thread was the idea mentioned above of bigger DefSats instead of MORE of them. Which then begged the question, how many more CAN you have?

By Mark Steven Hoyle (Markshoyle) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 09:52 am: Edit

---

Quote:

the shear number of weapons will overwhelm a 500 point battle force.

---

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Mark Steven Hoyle:

You are confusing defense satellites and captor mines.

Defense satellites could only be near a base if the base was also pretty much orbiting the same planet (or was built on the surface of the planet) the defense satellites are orbiting.

Captor mines exist in minefields and do not orbit and thus can wind up out of range of an attack.

As to how many you can have, we have never defined that, and really only SVC could. I could, at this juncture, refer to published material that indicates that you get three per defense battalion. But the original scenario has defense satellites and no defense battalion at all, and we would much like to keep that concept (representing a pretty much minimal defense capability to try to fend off a freighter with bad intentions as opposed to trying to fend off an Orion Light Raider). We have, in essence, gotten this far by the players having been reasonable about their use.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 01:07 pm: Edit

The DefSats first strike will eliminate about half the attacking force. 13-14 facing photon DefSats should average about 200 points of damage to targets 3 to 4 hexes away. The rest of the attacking force should kill many DefSats even as orbits bring new DefSats into position. Very bloody.

There should only be one size of DefSat. Too easy to either overkill a small DefSat or not do enough damage to a big DefSat without knowledge of damage points which leads to attackers dying because they guess wrong which is not fun.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 04:37 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:
Actually, no, DefSats can't overload (last sentence in R1.15A).

Mark Steven Hoyle:
All 27 sats have to be in a standard orbit around a planet. Which means, given a ship has to be at range 5 to hit a small ground base on a planet (like the agro station), the furthest any of the sats is from a ship able to hit the station is eight hexes (radius 3 orbit), and the firing arcs are 360-degree. Some will have their firing line blocked by the planet at any given time, but most will not. Under player control, a photon DefSat can fire its pair of photons (with prox fuses if desired, IIRC) at up to range 15 (+2 ECCM built-in). 27 photon DefSats would mean 54 photon torpedoes, of course.

And, well, you can't destroy them as a practical matter. You can't get lock-on to a DefSat until it fires (R1.15C). When it does that, you only have a 2/3rds chance of getting lock-on per (R1.15E)/(M7.4), the same chance or retaining it turn-to-turn, and auto-lose it the moment you move speed 7 or more. When you fire on one, it gets +2 ECM native (R1.15C) and the E1.7 and FD1.5 modifiers (if range is long enough). Explosions don't affect them (R1.15E)/(M8.53). And you need to do 25 points of damage to destroy it, no damage short of destruction degrading operation.

Seeking weapons are your best shot (after you've sent a suicide ship to draw fire from the sats), but under player control the player can use the pair of ph-2s on each to supplement their pairs-per-sat of defense-only ph-3s.

(Hmm. One issue is that captor mines count against base seeking weapon control limits for the impulse of firing and the next seven, and player-controlled DefSats are treated as captor mines, so we may well be overwhelming control capabilities. Oh, well. Trade some DefSats for phaser-4 ground bases to control the sats; they're not quite as hard to hit and have inferior arcs, but they're cheaper, hit harder, and still have the small ground base rule on the range you can hit them.)

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 04:57 pm: Edit

You want to kill DefSats? Take ESGs.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 05:43 pm: Edit

Kamikaze Lyrans screaming through minefields and DefSats with ESGs a glowin'.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 06:45 pm: Edit

A David Merritt:

I don't think ESGs work.

Each DefSat has 25 damage points. Which is to say, if you hit only one DefSat with a max-strength zero-radius ESG, the DefSat survives and the ESG is gone. (Well, an X-ESG at radius 0 or 1 can kill one DefSat.)

Second, the ESGs have to get close. If I'm counting right, against lots of DefSats under player control, ESG ships die before the ESGs get close enough to hit, even under max ECM (including a lending scout and a drouge).

But if you still want to use ESGs, go ahead. Construct an ESG-using-force of 550 points to send against a planet with . . . let's see, to adjust for the control channels issue, five player-controlled GBDPs and 24 photon DefSats, that's 550 points exactly. Sub in hellbore DefSats if you'd rather a "historical" match-up (and GBDHs if you'd rather face them than ph-4s, sure).

Webcasters are the only thing that I can think of that really works. Lots of free-standing web to block the DefSats from shooting while making an attack run on the ground bases, then pull out of range entirely and let the scenario end by mutual consent when only DefSats and an undamaged Tholian fleet are left.

(This has been today's edition of "Pushing Things Until They Break". For a subscription, please send $4.95 to PO BOX 1701, Enterprise CA, ATTN: JTK.)

By Mike Bennett (Mike) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 07:42 pm: Edit

I don't know how SFB handles DefSat control, but (and I wish I could give chapter and verse) I remember reading that DefSats had to have a controller facility.

Perhaps DefSat controllers are like drone control on FC ships. Most ships are limited to controlling six drones on the map at one time. Special drone-throwers can control 12.

Maybe there should be a limit as to how many DefSats can be controlled???

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Friday, February 20, 2015 - 08:06 pm: Edit

Steven E. Ehrbar:

I have absolutely no interest in attacking the monstrosity you have created.

However, at more reasonable deployment rates, ESGs become a valid counter weapon. Also it doesn't have to be Lyrans/LDR, you have Orions, WYN, and the FRA from Omega. Even against your setup from above, a slow moving Orion with doubled engines and a LOT of ECM may work, not likely of course.