I was looking at some of the ISC CL/CLS variants yesterday, and noticed that the PFT was quite an amazing piece of work. For the loss of 1 BATT, 1 APR, and 4 hull, it gains 2 Trac, 2 spec. sen, and 8 repair on a conventional CL. The carrier conversion is also quite impressive, and the Medium cruiser also illustrates the hull's versatility.

Given that kind of ability, it occured to me that the ISC could easily manage to simply add 2 sensors to a CLS (see the SSDs), and probably 2 extra APR. Given that this is a lesser conversion to the PFT, it would probably be relatively trivial to introduce this variant after the PFT was deployed.


Why?

1) Well, the major problem with flying ISC echelons is that the phas-1 firepower of the core ships is largely compromised due to the distance those ships are from the enemy when the gunline is engaged. So, on the turns when the PPDs are not firing, those ships are not using their full capabilities. Giving some sensors to a CL will allow it to operate as if it were a scout on those off-turns.

2) Having just flown klingon vs ISC, I noticed a severe deficiency in the drone defences of ISC ships. Using a plas-F on a drone is overkill, and the plas-D escorts can also be troubled by drones from an equivalent Klingon fighter group (only 4 shots per pl-D as opposed to the 6/12 from ADDs).
Some scout sensors may help here

3) Against plasma opponents, powering the sensors from reserve power to ID plasma targeting at long range will be immensely useful as then only targeted ships need to turn off/HET/weasel rather than the whole fleet.

4) A different philosopy could also be used. Two of these ships could alternate between falling back to provide EW support and firing their PPDs. I.e. they switch positions between the "scout" slot and a "core echelon" slot. Thus, for having slightly weaker scout capabilities (cf a heavy scout), you get two extra PPDs in the fleet. I.e. you can engineer new fleet concepts.

5) even if one does not change the ship in the scout slot, these ships can add significant EW options for the ISC echelon.

To summarize.

1) The ISC clearly can do this conversion, unless there is some basic incompatability to mounting PPDs and special sensors on the same hull. (in which case a CL-plas-S version of this would still be useful).
2) There is good synergy between Echelon tactics, PPDs, and having special sensors on core ships, because all can operate at long range, and PPDs only fire every other turn.
3) The ISC were always interested in preserving heavy hulls, and adding sensors always helps EW defence.
4) There would probably not be too many built/converted, as we are now hitting the X-ship era.
5) This is not necessarily that easy for other races to replicate (few races simply add scout sensors for their PFTs - most replace heavy weapons with sensors). Neither do their weapons and tactics go so well with the idea, or are their cruisers protected in an echelon. Hence, one can head off the "why didn't everybody do this?" argument.

Maybe this is an "obvious" variant, thus DOA. But it still seemed a good idea.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, February 16, 2004 - 10:26 am: Edit

PS

other names may be more appropriate

"Identification strike cruiser"
"War scout cruiser"

I chose echelon escort as it is a utility coreward ship that provides cohesiveness to the echelon as a whole. However, one could confuse "echelon escort" with "carrier escort".

By Stanley Kolakowski (Eurthr) on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 10:01 am: Edit

Let me double-check this:

By taking advantage of the extra space inherent in the ISC's CL/CS line, you want to tack on a pair of SpecSens with associated APRs to the stock CS design, correct?

If that was possible to begin with, why didn't the ISC, known to be drone-deficient, do so as a matter of course? Could be due to one of 2 things:

1. The extra space is not readily usable in the stock CL/CS arrangement. It requires a conversion (like to carrier / PFT / CM) to make that space extermely usable.
2. The cost of outfitting SpecSens on a number (even 1/4) of the CL-line's hulls is too prohibitive, even for the ISC. Especially since, as illustrated in the case of the CS w/sensors, you only plan on using those SpecSens 50% of the time (the other 50% they are blinded by PPD fire)

By Richard Sherman (Rich) on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 04:22 pm: Edit

David, you wrote:

"3) Against plasma opponents, powering the sensors from reserve power to ID plasma targeting at long range will be immensely useful as then only targeted ships need to turn off/HET/weasel rather than the whole fleet."

Special sensors cannot be powered from reserve power; they must be allocated for during EA, and announced as "active" at the beginning of the turn (along with initial speed, EW status, etc.)

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Friday, March 19, 2004 - 08:53 am: Edit

Richard - Sorry

Still- you can power the sensors in EA.

Stanley

"1. The extra space is not readily usable in the stock CL/CS arrangement. It requires a conversion (like to carrier / PFT / CM) to make that space extermely usable."

This *is* a conversion of a CL/CS, and note that I have not suggested that it is possible until PFTs are around, where the basic design to put Sp sensors on a CL hull is already around. I imagine such a fantastic increase of hull space in the CL/CS line was not possible before then. Note that my ship is still noticeably smaller than the PFT.
As for your (2), special sensors are not so expensive that it would not be worthwhile to put them on core echelon ships, which have a very low rate of losses. In F&E, I would gladly pay the ~2EP conversion cost (over the 6EP for the CL) to have this. Those sp. sensors are adding a third to the cost of the ship, and they would be worth it in SFB and F&E.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Friday, March 19, 2004 - 04:42 pm: Edit

Does the CS really have the power curve for sensors while reloading its weapons? Also remember that everytime it fires (and it wants to fire the PPD every other turn), it will blind the sensors (I need to check the rules on blinding since I have a vague recollection that its for 32 impulses, not the rest of the turn, but I could be remembering something unrelated).

By Jeff Laikind (J_Laikind) on Friday, March 19, 2004 - 05:37 pm: Edit

If a P-1 or a heavy weapon fires, it will blind one sensor for 32 impulses. So a ship with two sensors could leave one unpowered, fire all of its weapons on impulse 32 (blinding the powered sensor), and have a fresh sensor the following turn. If only one sensor is operating and heavy weapons are fired on two different impulses (31 and 32, for example), the sensor is blinded for 64 impulses.

The problem is this: I think (I need to check) that EACH impulse a PPD (or multiple PPDs) fires counts as blinding a sensor. So firing four pulses will blind a powered sensor for four turns.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Monday, March 22, 2004 - 05:33 am: Edit

Jeff.

If you are correct, then this would be a much more marginal conversion. I was imagining not powering the sensors at all on the PPD turns, or perhaps one.
This ship would be somewhat slow while doing all this, but it would be protected at the back of the echelon, and speed is not needed so much for scouts or for attacking/defending bases (where most battles are). It also would probably not be using its phasers much.

That's also why I suggested putting in a bit of extra APR (possible in terms of hull space when compared to the PFT, but maybe the ship has already hit its power limit). I note that you do not need much power to switch off drones or identify plasma.

By William Curtis Soder (Ghyuka) on Friday, June 25, 2004 - 04:21 pm: Edit

This is a nice proposal. I don't want to rain on your parade, but why not just take the PFT? Since you state the PL-S CL would still be of use but this adds a flotilla?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, May 06, 2010 - 08:08 pm: Edit

The concept is to add two special sensors to a standard CL (and the CS variant) on the theory that it will always be part of an echelon, and will be able to always withhold its own fire long enough to use the special sensors to benefit the echelon, apparently principally in the realm of drone defense. The first assumption is, of course, wrong in that ships are always operating independently or in very small groups and only gather into larger groupings when it is necessary. The CL or CS thus incurs the expense of the sensors even when it cannot really benefit from them. There is also the inevitable logic, if these ships, normally in the second echelon, can be and should be fitted with special sensors for drone defense, why not CAs and DNs? The same logic applies, i.e., if it is a good idea to have extra non-dedicated scout speical sensors on the CL/CS, why not the larger core ships? The proposal argues that the sensors can be used while the ship is rearmng its PPDs (and probably plasma torpedoes), but if drones are such a problem would not the ship be firing phasers in this period? or is the ship giving up opportunities to fire phasers at a damaged enemy ship that might have a down shield facing (as an example) in order to try to use a special sensor to knock down  a drone? The proposal intends to just use the special sensors as long range drone defense of the whole echelon, so in addition a few points of power are added to power the sensors and not otherwise affect the operations of the ships.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, May 06, 2010 - 09:53 pm: Edit

If you want really good drone defense then replace some forward firing torps with Pl-D racks and make the center torp as big as you can (ah, the better to shotgun with).