Federation Commander

There has been a lot of resistance, an understandable so, to letting ships with Special Sensors into FedCom. What I propose is people think about allowing Special Sensors into FedCom using only SFB Rule G24.27 "Gathering Information."

This rule in SFB basically allows the Special Sensor to act as Lab Box on steroids. It allows the Ship to gather a flat 10 points of information on a target out to a range of 15 Hexes.

Since Special Sensors traditionally replace weapons so you would still need a note on the ship card saying what hit destroys a Special Sensor (Phaser, Torpedo, etc.) But the Box itself could be Rose colored like the rest of the Weapon Boxes or a Yellow System Box with a Rose Colored Boarder, or a different shade of Yellow could be used similar to what is currently done with Stingers.

If Special Sensor are allowed into FedCom using only the Gathering Information rules, and they could still be blinded by Weapons Fire, it would allow access to Survey Ships, Police Flag Ships, and of course the Klink D6D or Kzinti DF.

Mmmm.... No, that wouldn't really work. The point valuse would have to change drastically, and scouts would become usesles, except against space aomebas.

Pinecone read the post. I never mentioned BoM Scouts Rules. I said specifically STANDARD Fed Com. I am looking for away to get some classes into Fed Com and if they are useable by BoM or have their abilities modified by BoM Rules that is outside of the conversation I am trying to start.

Well, that would be more of a player thing, like:

"I don't really like special sensors."
"But I want to use the Fed GSC."
"Well, what if we played that special sensors only give extra lab points, nothin else?"
"well... I guess that's fair."

Considering the absolute furor that occurred when Steve was considering the addition of special sensor rules into the main game, I doubt he plans on revisiting it anytime soon.

Besides we already have two sets of rules for special sensors, I doubt there is room for a third.

Finally, pinecone is correct: giving the special sensors basically zero function is tantamount to simply deleting them outright. As such, there would need to be an adjustment to their point value. At that point, asking to have them published without their special sensors is probably a better bet.

Two sets of rules? I know of the BoM, what's the other?

Drew Klenotic wrote:Two sets of rules? I know of the BoM, what's the other?

Drew, MJW is referring to the Scout Rules for BoM. There are 2 sets of those rules published now. One is in Communique#28 (the more extensive version) and the other is in Hydran Attack (a more simplified version).

mjwest wrote:Finally, pinecone is correct: giving the special sensors basically zero function is tantamount to simply deleting them outright. As such, there would need to be an adjustment to their point value. At that point, asking to have them published without their special sensors is probably a better bet.

MJW yes Special Sensors in Standard Fed Com are basically a Zero but so are Probes, until your crippled... And yes Pinecone in Standard Fed Com the Federation Scout is just a glorified target with 8 free hits. What I am saying is why can we not have Special Sensors that are for Research/Information Gathering only in the standard game so we only have to have ONE Ship Card for Survey Cruisers instead of one with Special Sensors and one without?

While I know we have a Middle Years Fed GSC without special sensors in Briefing #2, I really don't see the need for any GSCs, Scouts or similar ships in Fed Comm outside of when using one of the two sets of Special Sensors rules that have already been released.

If you want to have a ship with special sensors in a scenario or campaign, just include it and specify which set of special sensor rules are in play. This has been done at least once already for a scenario that was included in one of the recent Communiques.