09-12-2020, 05:53 PM
There's something about Scouting that I think I've forgotten to mention publicly... There's a relatively new rule (that is not often needed) that hasn't made it into the rulebook yet. However, you might find it useful, especially during this portion of the game.
Scouting is usually done with an expendable minimally-designed ship, since they are so often caught and destroyed. This usually means keeping the cost as low as possible and still be useful, by equipping it with nothing but engines. Of course, the number of star drives should be relatively high so the scouts can move across large distances quickly. But if they engage in combat, inertia drives determine their combat ability instead. Since an unarmed scout really has no chance of surviving armed combat anyway, there's no point in spending extra PI to put on lots of inertia engines. So most scouts will be designed as //20-1 or //30-1 or similar.
If such a ship Scouts a system and finds enemy ships, and the enemy has no ships Patrolling (or on Sentry) there, then the scout ship will not be caught and will provide a scouting report on the enemy present. If there are Patrols, then their chance of catching the scout depends on their inertia engines (1% per engine) - the more Patrolling inertia engines, the better their chance of catching the scout. The scout's inertia engines are not taken into account here, only those on the Patrolling ships.
So, if you want to keep a system from being scouted by your opponents, place large numbers of inertia engines (use 20 each instead of 1) on Patrol there (since each one will have a separate chance to catch a Scout). However, this leads to a difficulty - it's quite easy to place enough ships on Patrol to catch virtually any scout that enters, completely protecting the system against information-gathering, and thus preventing an enemy from knowing how big a fleet needs to be used to attack it. From the attacker's point of view, this is a game-breaker. So this leads me to the new rule to provide a partial way out of this dilemma.
The new rule allows for a scout, after being caught by patrols, to be nimble enough to get away while the patrols try to chase him down. If he succeeds, he will be called an "Escaped Scout". An Escaped Scout does get a scouting report, but without as much detail as an un-caught Scout. In particular, they only learn the empire name of the enemy and the very rough size of the fleet (of which they only obtained a quick glimpse). But that can be enough to tell an attacker whether he needs to bring in a 500-SSD attack fleet or a 5000-SSD attack fleet, and what would be completely hopeless. (Note that an Escaped Scout needs to be given orders immediately afterwards or else it will almost certainly be destroyed in combat the next turn - it will be treated as if it had None orders by then.)
The chance of a scout escaping combat is small, but useful. The percent chance to escape now depends on the number of inertia engines (1% per engine) on the Scouting ship and has nothing to do with the number of engines on the Patrolling ships nor on how many Patrols there are. Since the largest number of inertia engines possible is 20, that's the largest percentage chance a Scout may have to escape. However, it's possible to send in multiple Scouts, each with its own chance to escape, so that while most won't escape a heavy Patrol net, one or two might.
Of course, flooding a system with a large number of Scouts will also tell the defender that you're trying very hard to get his information and thus an attack may be imminent. So there are strategic issues involved here, too. Also, building all your scout ships with large numbers of inertia engines usually isn't very effective either, as they cost about twice as much as the cheaper everyday scout ships.
So, while you've got a new feature, to be taken into consideration by both attackers and defenders, it should be used only in circumstances that require it.
Scouting is usually done with an expendable minimally-designed ship, since they are so often caught and destroyed. This usually means keeping the cost as low as possible and still be useful, by equipping it with nothing but engines. Of course, the number of star drives should be relatively high so the scouts can move across large distances quickly. But if they engage in combat, inertia drives determine their combat ability instead. Since an unarmed scout really has no chance of surviving armed combat anyway, there's no point in spending extra PI to put on lots of inertia engines. So most scouts will be designed as //20-1 or //30-1 or similar.
If such a ship Scouts a system and finds enemy ships, and the enemy has no ships Patrolling (or on Sentry) there, then the scout ship will not be caught and will provide a scouting report on the enemy present. If there are Patrols, then their chance of catching the scout depends on their inertia engines (1% per engine) - the more Patrolling inertia engines, the better their chance of catching the scout. The scout's inertia engines are not taken into account here, only those on the Patrolling ships.
So, if you want to keep a system from being scouted by your opponents, place large numbers of inertia engines (use 20 each instead of 1) on Patrol there (since each one will have a separate chance to catch a Scout). However, this leads to a difficulty - it's quite easy to place enough ships on Patrol to catch virtually any scout that enters, completely protecting the system against information-gathering, and thus preventing an enemy from knowing how big a fleet needs to be used to attack it. From the attacker's point of view, this is a game-breaker. So this leads me to the new rule to provide a partial way out of this dilemma.
The new rule allows for a scout, after being caught by patrols, to be nimble enough to get away while the patrols try to chase him down. If he succeeds, he will be called an "Escaped Scout". An Escaped Scout does get a scouting report, but without as much detail as an un-caught Scout. In particular, they only learn the empire name of the enemy and the very rough size of the fleet (of which they only obtained a quick glimpse). But that can be enough to tell an attacker whether he needs to bring in a 500-SSD attack fleet or a 5000-SSD attack fleet, and what would be completely hopeless. (Note that an Escaped Scout needs to be given orders immediately afterwards or else it will almost certainly be destroyed in combat the next turn - it will be treated as if it had None orders by then.)
The chance of a scout escaping combat is small, but useful. The percent chance to escape now depends on the number of inertia engines (1% per engine) on the Scouting ship and has nothing to do with the number of engines on the Patrolling ships nor on how many Patrols there are. Since the largest number of inertia engines possible is 20, that's the largest percentage chance a Scout may have to escape. However, it's possible to send in multiple Scouts, each with its own chance to escape, so that while most won't escape a heavy Patrol net, one or two might.
Of course, flooding a system with a large number of Scouts will also tell the defender that you're trying very hard to get his information and thus an attack may be imminent. So there are strategic issues involved here, too. Also, building all your scout ships with large numbers of inertia engines usually isn't very effective either, as they cost about twice as much as the cheaper everyday scout ships.
So, while you've got a new feature, to be taken into consideration by both attackers and defenders, it should be used only in circumstances that require it.