Federation Commander

How many drones can a defense satellite control? If it is 6 like a ship and you have 5 orbiting a planet, with 2 launchers each you could easly do a end turn launch followed by launch on impulse 1 for a solid wave of 20 drones and have 10 more ready to launch the next turn. so to summerize 5 defense satellites around a planet would have 30 seeking weapon control. please verify if that is the ruling. Thank you.


P.S. As a Kzinti player I love this but I know that some of the other players in Palida's campain are going flip. Adding 20 drones to a fight for 100 points when defening planets is cool. My biggest fleet in the campain so far had 6 kzinti ships with 35 launchers with 60 control. adding 30 control, even if you would most likey only have 20 flying at a time, to that would be nice to say the least!

That sounds like too many drones for a DefSat to control. I haven't played with DefSats that use drones yet...all I've used have been heavy wpns such as disruptors or photons, but mainly disruptors.

How many drones do you think a DefSat should be able to control? My initial opinion is only 2.

I think that at the min lvl would be 3 for each satellite. that would be about one par with kzinti ships, most kzinti can control about one and a half salvoes from their launchers i.e. 4 launchers with 6 control. Def Sats are kinda a odd duck with being pure weapons that don't move and can only be placed around a planet. Not sure if it should be reduced, the trick would be to get in and knock them out to drop the control. But as a player with interest in the power of the weapon, I don't know if I am being fair or not which is why I am putting it here to bug Steve or Mike West about it.

I would have said that since FC is a simple game system, then in order to keep things simple defsats should have either 6 control limit each, or the collective set of sattelites should have a total drone control set for them.

Since at the moment defense sattelites are treated as ships (5L5a), I would say that unless a ruling is given to the contrary, each satellite should have the ability to control 6 seeking weapons.

Well, I am pretty sure that the intent is that a given DefSat can control as many drones as it can launch. It can launch two a turn. A given drone lives for only three turns. That means a given DefSat can only have at most 6 drones on the map at once, giving it a control rating of 6.

And, yes, if you have five DefSats that are all armed with two drones, you can launch 10 drones per turn, including doubling up at a turn break. But, when you think about it, that is 10 photons or disruptors or whatever, too, which is gonna sting if they hit.

Thanks for the reply Mike,

I thought that was the case but was afraid I was being blinded by what I could do with this under the right conditions. bringing up the other hvy weapons helped put it in perspective. Still think the drones in this case are the cat's meow

Thanks again,

Drake

Well, it will certainly help defsats to do what it says in the rules and "make most individual pirate ships think twice about trying to raid the planet"...

I'm wondering if individual DefSats can be tractored?

If so, could they be pulled over to one side of a planet?

If that is possible, then the side with no DefSats could have uninterrupted operations and they would not be able to fire at anything going on in the shadow of the planet.

Is this a viable tactic?

I'm pretty sure that DefSats, like bases, cannot be tractored.

As for the drones issue: remember, that you have to have Line Of Sight to launch drones at a target: careful flying will avoid letting all the DefSats shoot at once.

DefSats cannot be tractored.

As an aside, I don't know of any line-of-sight limitations on seeking weapons. There is for direct fire weapons, but I didn't find any for seeking weapons. Did I just miss it? (Kinda embarrassing for "The Answer Guy" to miss rules, but it wouldn't be the first time ...)

As a slight detour, for which I apologise: Can a DefSat bolt a plasma-F?

A little off-topic, but it answers Mike West's question about seeking weapons and line-of-sight.

As an aside, I don't know of any line-of-sight limitations on seeking weapons. There is for direct fire weapons...

Rule (6A1e) Seeking weapons will hit the planet if they try to fly through its hex. If the direct line between a unit launching a seeking weapon and the target of that seeking weapon is blocked by a planet, the weapon cannot be launched as it cannot see the target. Guidance of a weapon in flight is unaffected.

I take this to mean that if a planet blocks a direct line between a ship about to launch seeking weapons and the intended target, the seeking weapons cannot be launched. Furthermore, by the earlier description in rule 6A1 about how planets block the direct line between hexes, it seems clear that if any part of the direct line from the center of launching hex to the center of the target hex intersects any part of a planet hex, that firing/launching opportunity is voided.

Kang wrote:As a slight detour, for which I apologise: Can a DefSat bolt a plasma-F?

I don't see anything that would preclude it, nor do I see any reason to prevent it, so, yes, they can be bolted.

I will check on that, though ...

BTW, got it clarified. Both Pl-F and Pl-D on a DefSat may bolt under the rules of normal operations. (E.g. Pl-D may only fire a single bolt at a ship per turn.)

A Gorn Pl-F DefSat may NOT, however, use Carronades. They may only bolt normally.