Additional Ship Countermeasures Reaction - Sensor Jam

[locarno24]

A lot of the discussion is based on using HG for a table top style game. If you go back to the RPG side of this where a group of Travellers are flying the ship and your engagements are a small number of paramilitary craft, does expanding the ECM add more to the game or take it away?

Indeed. In a 'generic' situation - where a couple of armed freighters are shooting at one another - it essentially gives a sensor operator PC something to do.
It essentially boils down to whether in your games the constant argy-bargey of "I have a lock" "no you don't" "yes I do" etc, etc, is enough to keep the systems operator busy during a fight (assuming no jammable missiles are involved).

 

[Condottiere]

If you can get a ship to fly through a chaff cloud, it should disrupt sensors.

 

[phavoc]

If you can get a ship to fly through a chaff cloud, it should disrupt sensors.

Space is far too vast for a ship to fly through a cloud of chaff. And the speeds ships travel would have them through it so fast it wouldn't be able to affect them unless you counted physically coating sensors to cause disruption.

 

[h1ro]

A lot of the discussion is based on using HG for a table top style game. If you go back to the RPG side of this where a group of Travellers are flying the ship and your engagements are a small number of paramilitary craft, does expanding the ECM add more to the game or take it away?

Indeed. In a 'generic' situation - where a couple of armed freighters are shooting at one another - it essentially gives a sensor operator PC something to do.
It essentially boils down to whether in your games the constant argy-bargey of "I have a lock" "no you don't" "yes I do" etc, etc, is enough to keep the systems operator busy during a fight (assuming no jammable missiles are involved).

Space combat is pretty dangerous for mere mortals, as it should be. If the back and forth of lock/break can add some dramatic tension while the combat itself is avoided, I'm all for it. I know that's not very "Arrrrr, Pirates in Space" but that was never really my thing anyway.

 

[Condottiere]

They've dropped magnets on submarines.

Stealth gone, plus the rattle drove the crew crazy.

Non magnetic hulls seems definitely a bonus.