A couple of quick questions

[Condottiere]

Decoy sounds like deception, so a roll for a successful feint, opposed by the cunningness characteristic of the opposing commander.

 

[locarno24]

Congrats on your purchase! If you end up enjoying the box even half as much as I do, you're gonna be one happy Traveller

It's actually another person in our group who's got it, but yes, it look great. Fleshing out a single class of ship is always a really good way to engage people (I love the Harrier sourcebook in Pirates for the same reason), and actually doing that in enough detail for a multi-kiloton capital ship takes some doing.

Agreed on it being a missile. The reaction thing is a great question, hadn't thought of that myself! Either way it can of course be used against a long-range volley, or to fool sensors and make the enemy think you're coming from the wrong direction - or to fool them into thinking you're a full fleet when you're just a single ship.

We've locally agreed that you need to launch the decoy using a missile rack, and in theory you can have as many as you like floating in space. Powering one up to 'draw off' a salvo can be done as a reaction (but obviously costs you that decoy), but launching a replacement can't. You can, as ever with EW, only use one decoy per incoming salvo.

Launching one and sending it off to pretend to be you for some nefarious reason - such as missile ambush - obviously takes more time and effort, because you're trying to fool an enemy warship's sensors section, not the brains stuffed in the back of a single Cr250,000 missile.