One of the things about Aurora gameplay that has concerned me a little lately is the ability of fighters and, to a lesser extent, FACs to launch missiles from outside enemy sensor range with almost no chance of detection. This gives them an inherent invulnerability that I believe creates an significant imbalance in favour of small craft. While I want an emphasis on carriers, fighters and FACs to be a viable fleet doctrine, I don't want it to be the obvious best fleet doctrine. The underlying problem is that the active sensor model, while it works very well in many respects, makes detection of very small targets difficult at anything but minimal ranges. This was fixed for missiles by the introduction of the zero resolution sensor and I think the missile detection model works very well. Unlike missiles, which have to reach point blank range, FACs and fighters can launch an attack without even coming close to the likely detection range of a hostile ship so they are almost never in any real danger of counter-attack. Aurora's combat model is similar in may respects to modern naval warfare and I tend to use that as my real-world comparison. In the real world, fighters and fast attack craft are a danger to large warships but they are also vulnerable to detection and counter-attack at reasonable ranges. I have decided I need to create an analagous situation in Aurora. Therefore I am introducing narrowband active sensors in v5.20.
All active sensors and fire control will be divided into broadband and narrowband sensors. The existing sensor model is the broadband version, so every Aurora sensor created up to this point is a broadband sensor and will continue to work in exactly the same way. A narrowband sensor is designed in the same way, except for changing the broadband/narrrowband option, but can only detect objects (such as ships, shipyards, mineral packets, etc.) that have a size between the sensor resolution and the sensor resolution +5. In other words, a narrowband sensor with a resolution of 100 can only detect targets with a size of between 100 and 105. Anything outside that range is totally invisible to the sensor. To compensate, a narrowband sensor has five times the range of a broadband sensor. The only restriction is that resolution 2 is the lowest resolution for a broadband sensor. Resolution 1 is already handled by the resolution zero mode. For the purposes of consistency, I may make resolution zero mode a narrowband sensor that operates from 0.01 to 1.
While the new narrowband mode will not be that useful for larger resolutions, it will be very useful for low resolution ranges such as 15-20 or 3-8. As an example, here is a comparison between broadband and narrowband sensors designed to detect fighters. They are both size 10 and use active sensor 21/EM 11 tech. As you can use, the first one is not really very useful but the second gives the ship a reasonable detection range against fighters. The narrowband sensor won't be able to detect anything else though except fighters of 200 tons to 450 tons. Fire controls also have broadband and narrowband options to you can still match fire controls to active sensors.
Broadband Sensor
Active Sensor Strength: 210 Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Sensor Size: 10 HS Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 4 Maximum Range: 9,240,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 210 Crew: 50
Narrowband Sensor
Active Sensor Strength: 210 Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Sensor Size: 10 HS Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 4 to 9 Maximum Range: 46,200,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 210 Crew: 50
FACs will also be easier to detect, without having to use huge sensors. In fact, a secondary active sensor designed to detect FACs might be a regular feature on larger warships. Here is a size 3 FAC-detection sensor using the same tech level as above. Remember it won't be able to detect anything outside the 750 ton to 1000 ton range.
FAC Detector
Active Sensor Strength: 63 Sensitivity Modifier: 110%
Sensor Size: 3 HS Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 15 to 20 Maximum Range: 51,975,000 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 63 Crew: 15
Obviously these changes will make fighters and FACs a lot easier to detect and target. Their speed will provide a defence but I am also going to look at a chaff/flares equivalent to add some survivability. This should provide a more interesting challenge than their current invulnerability.
Steve