Road Runner Drone

In year 172, the Kzinti's needing faster speed drones to engage faster warships of the Klingons developed this drone as a predessor to the fast drone.

When Launched it acts as a standard medium speed drone. Once it reaches a true range of 5 hexes from the target the drone accelerates to a speed of 32. If it dosn't impact within 12 impulses after accelleration, the drone becomes innert and removed from play. If launched within the 5 hexes of the target, each drone has a 50% chance of premature detonation because the drone can not withstand the sudden stress of such an increase of speed ( 0 - 32 ) in such a short time. When this detonation occurs it will cause collateral damage to the launching ship.

This Kzinti drone designated by the Federation as the Road Runner.

to upgrade from a type 1 drone costs 3/4 BPV.

Limited Y172
Restricted Y173
General Y174

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 10:45 pm: Edit

Barton:

Normally, I would be among the last to discourage creativity and imaginative ideas to add to SFB's...

But I have to ask how you avoid the Auto reject list prohibition against changing drone speeds.

I think the relevant passage is:

F–SEEKING WEAPONS: Allowing other drones to use the tar-get search procedure of the type-IIIXX.
Warp seekers for drones other than type-VI.
Warp seekers for plasma torpedoes.
Systems to change the target or speed of a drone in flight.
Proximity-fuzed drones.
Drones with mine warheads (damage everything in one, or seven, hexes).
Wild weasel drones or probes.
External drone launch rails for ship.
Putting plasma-D torpedoes (or plasma-Fs) in scatter-packs other than fighters or MRS shuttles as already provided in the rules.
Cloaked drones or plasma torpedoes.
Drones that look like a ship to a mine, causing it to detonate.
Towed sensor arrays to allow cloaked ships to "see."
A drone able to do damage as a hellbore.
Any system to provide player command and control of any drone (so it can ignore WWs or EW) other than a probe drone as defined in the probe drone rules."

I like the name Road Runner Drone, but I don't see how it can function given the auto reject listing...

By Tim Longacre (Timl) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 12:00 am: Edit

An alternative would be to make a drone that corresponds to the type-IM(medium speed) as the type-II did to the type-IS(slow) drone.
Along those lines, you would get a fixed speed 30 drone that lasted 2 turns.
You could call it a type-IIM drone for the 1 space, or a type-VM for the 2 space.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 06:41 am: Edit

I would agree that changing speed in mid-flight is a no-no, for the same reason that random hidden mines would be - the enemy can get trounced by a surprise which he can do nothing about. This ability would be very difficult for the Klingons and lyrans to counter, as they would have to treat all Zin drones like the Road runner, or risk a hit by a bunch of drones which can wreck a ship.

You would do better by proposing a shorter duration speed-26 drone or something. Maybe just 1 turn as opposed to the usual: it never became standard as the tradeoff was not thought to be worthwhile.

Another option is to grant the full speed-32, but half of the payload is used up by the speed upgrade, giving a type-I an explosion strength of just 6.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 09:54 am: Edit

I could see David's suggestion as a viable option...

Just to give you another alternative, why not make the drone a little more difficult to hit in some way...

to be clear ***I AM NOT*** suggesting stealth for drones... but what about fitting a drone with a chaff? (not allowed on ATG drones)

The purpose being to avoid drone vs drone kills and maybe a bonus of some sort verses ADD's...?

The road runner drone would thus be "A little" more difficult to destroy...but not impossible for the defender to deal with.

fitting a drone with Chaff shouldnt take up an entire space on the drone frame but would have some sort of cost increase.

By Jim Cummins (Jimcummins) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 10:43 am: Edit

The Klingons would need a counter to this new Kzinti threat, such as....

The Coyote Interceptor Defense (produced under license for the ACME Corporation)

It has six rounds can fire all 6 in an impulse; it has two firing modes normal and suicide.

Mode To hit (2 dice) Damage to Drone
normal 1 1
Suicide 12 12

Suicide mode self destructs the launcher causing 12 point internal damage to the firing ship pulse 3 points per round in the launcher. It also imitates shuttle cascade explosions.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 12:07 pm: Edit

The Coyote Interceptor Defense should probably include suffering immediate breakdown (as in a failed HET attempt), the unfurling of a banner saying "YIKES!!! and a large dust cloud obscuring clear sight of the hapless ship.

You might also want to include a temporary change to the ships movement cost simulating the vain attempt to accellerate the ship out of danger while leaving it trapped in the hex to get hit by whatever terrain feature happens to be hurling towards it (be it asteroid, small moon or careening planet).

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 12:43 pm: Edit

No, no, the Coyote Rack fires Advanced Counter-Measure Equipment bombs.

The "Roadrunner" drone somewhat circumvents the auto-reject because it's not a controllable change; you always know when the drone will change speed.

Personally I don't think that five hexes out is enough; you just cover those five hexes in five impulses instead of eight. I'd think it would be better at 12 hexes, and the drone dies after the 12th hex of movement. Make the minimum-range thing be a hard requirement rather than a random chance; "the drone cannot be launched at a range of less than 13 hexes, and if it is then it is immediately destroyed by the hard acceleration."

I like David's idea about the half-space "speed module".

Or you could suggest a sort of "mega Stingray"; two spaces, Type-H drones only, fires a Type-I drone the same way that a regular Stingray fires a Type-VI. (And then you have a Medium-speed Type-H with one-space explosive and a Mega-Stingray carrying a Fast Type-I drone...)

edit: funny thing on that list. "Warp seekers for plasma torpedoes." oh hay there mister Plasma-K how are you doing?

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 02:06 pm: Edit

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I'll work on the idea and tweek it a bit. Then I will put it back up for another review.

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 05:25 pm: Edit

After careful thinking about this. I don't believe this is something that would be a good rule for the game no matter how much I tweek it. Thank you everyone for your input.