I think that it makes good sense that for a ship to be able to try pinning something, it must be able to see it.

Another ship spotting it in this case and yelling 'Look a pirate' will only result in the blind ships captain yelling back "Where? !!!"

Which brings me to my favourite moan . One would expect ships to be able to exchange scan data when working in the same quad ring, even with a few minutes signal delay time (approx 1 min for every 11.75 million miles) it should give them all a chance to stop the spotted ship for a battle. Logically the force commander would despatch his fastest ships to intercept.

Lets face it, ships working more than 10 million miles apart would hardly be in a position to support/defend each other.

Geoff

If its works in combat (when all positions become transparent), then why not before? A scanner ship can pass the data to the others in the fleet, etc.

Taken to its extreme, it would allow ships to all become so specialised that the advantage of having big ships (and all the underlying research) is taken away. You just create a sensor ship, a ship with lots of targetting computers, one with all the weapons, etc and then have them "pass the data to the others" (to quote myself<g>) so that they all work like a gestalt uber-ship.

Mark

Okay, not a bad analogy but what if you and each of your friends had a sophisticated communication/GPS/navigation computer? You spot your enemy and broadcast your position and the enemy's relative position to your mates. They now know where he is and home in on him while you keep your eye on the enemy following him and constantly updating your friends' trajectories...

I am of course assuming that our Phoenix ships have such a kind of technology. If one of your ships spot something, why isn't that data relayed immediately to the rest of your ships?

Space is big yes, but there must be a way to location yourself and other objects within it, or else space travel is unfeasible (It really goes without saying that we are assuming it is feasible in this game as it is the whole underlying premise of the genre).

I think thats the point though, because he couldn't pin the other ship then we can also assume it could lose his 'tailing' action, assuming it noticed him, so the result is the same.

Of course this makes my previous point mute as assuming the ships are close, which as you point out makes sense for a squadron, then the commincation and scan data transfer times are likly to be in the second range, rather than the minute range, so your combat vessels should be down on that pirate like a pack of wolves.

Out of interest does ISR speed have any effect on this? Because it should IMO. A ship with slower or even the same ISR speed should not be able to out run the ship that spotted it (unless it jumps of course). You could argue against the same speed case with out-maneuvering (perhaps officer experience?) but its hard to outrun a faster ship (after all, space is big remember with little or no "obstacles to dodge around or hide behind - this isn't quite like a car case where James Bond can out smart those BMWs in his 2CV by ducking into the back of a parked lorry or something (oh wait he went down the side of a big hill while they all drove around the winding road, not really relevant in space

So you use several smaller, balanced squads as opposed to one big one. Better at finding your enemy, but less efficent with ships designs and submitting orders.

You don't make any individual ship less effect but yes you make the squadron as a whole less effective at the initial spot, but more effective at making use of the information. As things are then yes, you have a much beter chance of finding your enemy by splitting up, but as pointed out, its very often useless information s you don't get to engage.

I would take the higest sensor rated ship as the one that does the main check. After that each of the other ships makes an additional check at a vastly reduced chance of spotting anything different (they might *just* be in a slightly better position to scan something, but it's unlikely to make a difference due to lesser scanner power).

And again, the best solution in this case, as in the way things are now, is to make your scanner ships also fast pinners so they can hold anything they spot. I was just suggesting a different model for how fleets (squadrons) might behave in the "bigness" of space

Well, it would have to be fast and carry weapons and have a naval officer (you'd have to use tractor beams as your weapon as a Caravel is never going to be very fast in combat a Heavy hulled scanner/pinner would be best as they get the best combat speed).

Oh yer, but i like your idea so wanted to point out things/problems/etc that would need to be changed before we could convice 'them' to use it

Giving a squadron global scan knowleadge in exchange for the number (or power) of scans makes sense.

Fleets should behave differently than a bunch of ships, i mean thats half the benifit of them.

correct.



And this I think is the crux of the current situation since it simply makes sensor ships useless at finding ships in order to engage them.

I think this thread has elaborated explanations for and against the current situation, the question to me is not 'how do you justify this in game' amy more but more is the current situation how it should be or not.

Lets take the intial question of this thread as an example. I think a squadron of 5+ ships should have an edge on outrunning a scanned enemy position simply for the numbers (cutting off angels etc). This is currently not possible since the roles of finding (sensor) and pinning (combat speed) cannot be spread across different ships. This simply does not sound right to me.
To bring it even more to the point, (as far as I remember) Mica and David have always been saying that the game was designed (as well) in a way that 'you cannot have it all' in a single position. The current situation contradicts with this I think.



Thomas

I wasn't suggesting that can spread out, I was suggesting that that's how they have been implemented already. If different ships in the same squad can scan different ships then that suggests they are all in different locations within the quad, thus spread out. I was suggesting that they should act more as one big ship (i.e. in the same part of the quad, thus able to share data and respond to a target as one).

I agree in part with what Nic has written. This originally started as a misunderstanding of how squadrons work rearding scanning/pinning. Given what Mica has written, then there should be no change to the program without some form of penalty.

Thus I think that there should be a new squadron order which allows the squadron to move in closer formation with communication allowed between the ships. This should be in the form of a time penalty in moving between OQs (say 10-20% extra).

However, I do not think that sensor power should be combined across a fleet. What I think should happen is that if one ship scans an enemy vessel but cannot pin it, then there is a chance that other faster ships in the squadron can get to the required location in time to pin it. The chance would depend on ISR, thrust and/or combat speed of the ships in question. So even then there is a chance that the enemy ship can get out of there without being caught. This then, whilst giving a patrolling squadron an added benefit of pinning an enemy ship, would not place an enormous bias against the enemy ship.

As has been said, ship configuraitons can be changed so that the scanning ship is also very fast and liable to pin an enemy, but this again is a compromise of speed and scanning power over the dedicated ships. I think this would lead to a fair baance to both sides.

Nik