Detecting Courier Drones

[Caplin (OP)]

Hi All,

i'm rereading my copy of 3rd Revised, in hopes of playing a campaign, and was slightly confused by the detection of courier drones.

According to the table in 4.05, you can only detect them in the proper sys hex with long-range sensors, and never without. Does this imply that most drones are launched with a planetary target? If I can't see them from a ship, I imagine I can't pick them up.

I find the sensor ranges without XR, in general, to be quite restrictive. I imagine this was intentional.

Thanks for any info

[Paul M]

The CDs are picked up by standard sensors at 20 hexs from the ship.  When a CD is launched it needs to have a course pre-programed into it.  The CD flies blind to each destination it is programed to go to.  Usually they are fixed objects (planets, moons, bases, etc) because unless you know the ship will be at a certain place you can't just launch the CD to it.  In principle the CD flies to a tactical hex.

There are rules for getting a CD to transmit and there is also a bit of common sense that you can apply for things like pinging the drone and getting it to transmit.

The races that have not developed Xr basically can fight only near inhabitted worlds (as they have Xr equivelent sensors) or at WPs where the range will automatically be below 30 tactical hexes.  Outside of this they are blind in deep space.