Thoughts on EW

[Soban]

I had this discussion on Discord about EW with @Kai and @Alex Hart, and I was wondering what the larger community thought about it and it's role in combat.

Soban — Today at 9:38 PM
Ok, so I think I've finally figured out Separa'Shan Fleet doctrine. It's exemplified by three ships. The Cloaked Fighter, The Salvage Corvette, and the Generalist Stealth Frigate.
Soban — Today at 9:59 PM
The Cloaked Fighter is able to cloak and has great ECM ect. It has a internal missile bay that lets them launch 'status effect' missiles as well as a main gun. It has great speed and the cloak/ecm makes them very hard to hit. However, they have pathetically little armor. Vertically oriented rather than horizontally oriented like most other fighters. (Think B-wing). General use is ambush, apply status effect, harass with main guns until bigger ships arrive. Probably tier 9?

The Salvage Corvette is almost the complete opposite. While it also has cloaking, it's not as good as the cloaked fighter. It doesn't have strong weapons, it has very heavy armor, strong engines, and a very strong tractor beam. They are able to close with a ship and than use hacking and an advanced onboard AI to immobilize it while a marine team takes and boards the ship. It is also very capable of hauling the ship to somewhere safe for more extended boarding actions if needed. Tier 10. Rule of thumb is that tier -9 is how many Salvage Corvettes are needed to take a structure. so for tier 10 and below, it's 1. For tier 11: 2, tier 12: 3, tier 13:4, tier 14:5, tier 15:6. For larger ships, one salvage corvette may be able to degrade the target ship's capabilities even if it's not able to take it completely.

The Generalist Stealth Frigate is basically able to fight anything that can probably catch it, and escape (usually through hiding) anything that could confront it. It is a generalist ship that is able to do a lot of different things on independent patrol. Strong tractor beams, good stealth. Alpha striker. This is what smaller stuff Salvage Corvettes snag often gets towed to. It's on the high end of tier 12 in size.
Alex Hart — Today at 10:16 PM
It's a very gamified description of things for sure, reads like a modded SARP-inspired homeworld faction
demibear — Today at 10:18 PM
I have been thinking of making something like the stealth bombers (particularly the Nemesis and Purifier) of Eve Online since I think of any attempt from the many subfactions of the Reds would be like German U-boats. But I can't think of a way to cloak something that isn't CFS.
Alex Hart — Today at 10:18 PM
I'd love to see things like this actually wikified but there's a few red flags where game terms wouldn't translate well onto SARP
Things like "Status effect" or the salvage corvettes immobilizing things straight out
Soban — Today at 10:24 PM
So we already have status effect sorts of missles, things that say prevent FTL, or a tracker, or wahtever (perhaps a swarm of tiny robots that tear the ship up) ect. Those are all 'status effect' type things.
with regards to the salvettes, it's probably a combo of doing 'hacking', a good grip, and having absurdly strong engines themselves.
Kai — Today at 10:25 PM
I have wanted to do EW 'status effects' with PA for years
Soban — Today at 10:27 PM

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=stararmy:weapons:mini-missiles_type_41

Those were all based on at the time currently existing warheads. I think we could have a lot more if we were creative.
Kai — Today at 10:28 PM
Give a PA a backpack with some really strong EW transmitters and hack enemy PA to give status effects. They only last a short time before the affected PA can fix itself. Or the hacker PA can focus target to make the effects last
Soban — Today at 10:29 PM

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=stararmy:equipment:tailpack_type_41

Check out version I
Alex Hart — Today at 10:31 PM
I suppose when I hear "Oh status effects" I wasn't thinking of things like shield disruption I was thinking "Oh like movement-down or that kind of thing"
Kai — Today at 10:31 PM
That's neat. But I'm talking beyond just like, sensor blindness/misdirection. I'm talking like what Alex says
Soban — Today at 10:32 PM
The Subspace Detonator varient prevents FTL and pokes holes in shields. To me, a status effect.
the basic tech of SLEX could be used for things other than an explosive
Kai — Today at 10:33 PM
Like shutting off an armor's life support temporarily as a 'poison' efferct or locking down joints so it can't move, or ordering it to eject munitions, etc.
Like fantasy RPG status effects
Soban — Today at 10:34 PM
That could be done with hacking/EW, yhea.
Kai — Today at 10:34 PM
You lose a turn because the enemy hacker made your suit dump its rifle's magazine
Soban — Today at 10:34 PM
So the Electronic Warfare missle could do that
Alex Hart — Today at 10:34 PM
IDK if an EW missile could manage that on its own
Kai — Today at 10:34 PM
EW missile could maybe be the vessel
Alex Hart — Today at 10:34 PM
You'd need something with a pretty heavy EW suite, like a dedicated craft for that
Soban — Today at 10:35 PM
like say IES?
Alex Hart — Today at 10:35 PM
A missile is just too small to fit the kind of equipment you'd need to overwhelm a craft's own MI and EWAR defenses
Kai — Today at 10:35 PM
But you would also need to reprogram the effect each time because once you use it the target will develop a counter
Alex Hart — Today at 10:35 PM
Because it's not like your targets don't have significant anti-hacking and EWAR defenses
Everything you're gonna go after will have its own machine intelligences countering that kind of thing
Soban — Today at 10:36 PM
it depends, to me putting a ewar drone on target is a good start for doing stuff like that
Like everything has trade offs and counters
Alex Hart — Today at 10:36 PM
So you need a drone at the very least, but if you want to have a good effect you'll want something like a Nagamaki
Big enough to carry the sophisticated computers you'd need for that kind of EWAR/hacking suite because you've got to not just match but overmatch the defenses of several opponents
Kai — Today at 10:37 PM
Yeah.... Nagamaki has capship level electronics and a huge feking sensor/transmitter dome
Alex Hart — Today at 10:38 PM
And that's the kind of thing you'd actually need to overwhelm the digital defenses of even fighters
Soban — Today at 10:38 PM
It could be that putting the ewar missle/drone on target is what lets the Nagamaki do it's job better
Kai — Today at 10:39 PM
I was thinking something like that. That missile thunks in and gonnects directly to systems helping give a physical backdoor
Soban — Today at 10:40 PM
that makes sense to me
Kai — Today at 10:40 PM
The missile itself doesn't hold any malicious programming but it's basically a receiver for malicious signals
Alex Hart — Today at 10:41 PM
So like, no warhead but it tries to punch directly through the armor and plating and splice itself into whatever system is closest?
Kai — Today at 10:41 PM
Yup
Alex Hart — Today at 10:41 PM
Reminds me of the speaker pods from Macross 7
Soban — Today at 10:41 PM
pretty much, I'll have to add that to the missle discription
Kai — Today at 10:41 PM
Especially useful if you want to take prisoners or steal hardware
demibear — Today at 10:42 PM
Or adjust the mixture of the internal atmosphere.
Crank up the oxygen.
Alex Hart — Today at 10:42 PM
But you'll still need some actual craft with powerful EWAR to actually make use of the backdoor or you're just gonna be pestering the enemy's EWAR MI
Kai — Today at 10:43 PM
Go from 74%nitrogen to 100% nitrogen
Alex Hart — Today at 10:43 PM
I picture pretty much everything from a fighter up as having its own dumb AI that handles that kind of thing, even if it's not interacting with the pilot in any way
Just a powerful anti-hacking subroutine
demibear — Today at 10:43 PM
Soban — Today at 10:43 PM
have a specialized EWAR unit in whatever group of stuff you have seems reasonable requirement to me.
Kai — Today at 10:44 PM
That's why the Nagamaki has a backseat
Soban — Today at 10:44 PM
So for Armor it's probably the Tailpack-I and for Fighters it's something like the Nagamaki.
Kai — Today at 10:44 PM
The mission profile of a given naga will vary depending on the backseater's skillset
Soban — Today at 10:45 PM
I like the idea of having higher level ships that do stuff other than directly shoot to effect combat
Kai — Today at 10:46 PM
Coconut and Hazelnut do mostly coordination and comm relay because Hazel is a comm specialist. But put an EW specialist back there and you can start f%^*ing with enemy fighters
Put a sensor specialist in the backseat and send the Naga on scouting missions
Or just leave the backseat empty and use it as a heavy fighter with generalized support from the AI

 

[Immortal Cyan]

I feel like we need to decide on one thing: Is hacking on SARP like it is on some TV shows where the person doing the hacking does a "keyboard smash" before saying "I'm in"

I feel like hacking is a lengthy process that requires some kind of direct connection to the system in question that you're trying to break into. It doesn't seem like something that can easily be done during a battle. That said, I guess we could take a more "soft" sci fi interpretation of it, but that opens up a can of worms because now we have the possibility that big capital ships can immediately hack into every fighter or power armor attacking them on the justification that the capital ship is a bigger platform with more computing power, even if that big capital ship lacks a direct connection to the units it is trying to hack.

That said, I'm not an IT person by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm of the opinion that we should be very careful with this kind of thing. It shouldn't be instantaneous by any means and tbh I feel like "hacking attacks" shouldn't be seen as a viable strategy to build entire military doctrines around.

EW and ECM is fine. However, outright hacking is many steps further and should not only require immense amounts of power, but also time, especially if you don't have some kind of direct connection to your target.

 

[Alex Hart]

I tend to try to treat EWAR and Hacking as the "All else" in "All else equal" when it comes to writing combat on SARP. The assumption I often operate under is that unless something is specifically designed around/specializing in hacking and electronic warfare, that other units on the field will be able to counteract its EWAR efforts.

Machine Intelligences sparring with each other with ECM and ECCM, intrusion routines against counterintrusion routines, all while pilots and ship crews have it out without really being aware of that other battle going on unless there's a unit out there specifically designed to take advantage of these kinds of things. Even then, like Cyan said, we should be really careful about opening this can of worms.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

In the end, can of worms or not it depends on the player and gm and we should remember that going into this conversation before such topics as this tend to get out of hand as passionate personalities go.

Knowing how ecm,eccm,ewar, etc. work is very neat and I can say I’m one of them. But while someone can make an extremely detailed article on the wiki with that knowledge to take advantage of others lack of said knowledge it is at the end of the day up to the individuals understanding.

A gm or player might not understand it or may otherwise do so wrong. We must remember the balance between hard and soft sci-fi and remain in the middle while some thing lean a bit closer to one another but never fully.

That’s all from me. I like ewar and more complicated modifiers to combat situations personally~

 

[raz]

It's cool to disrupt enemy signals and obfuscate friendly information with traditional EW principles. It happens all the time in RP already. Within sci-fi writing, most of that stuff just happens from normal ships as part of their sensors and electronics package, so having dedicated EWAR vessels is kind of wonky due to the nature of the genre. It's the far future and all of the specialized equipment that make a Growler different from a Super Hornet are miniaturized and give everything from a huge battleship down to power armors and fighters the same capability. Things as small as Thought Armors and fighters have CIES, for example. Smaller and less capable factions might still have to use EWAR dedicated vessels, I guess.

Seems to me like EW, at least in the SAoY, is more of a task for red panels to undertake with the equipment provided to them on their spaceships than anything else. The role of realistic EW in sci-fi combat is commonplace while more fantastical things like hacking to effect specific enemy systems or AI fights are saved for fun story focuses. As an example, hacking and wild AI warfare from SAINT helped us win at Glimmergold, but stuff like that isn't commonplace and I don't think should be wikified or made more common than any given writer having a one-off idea.

 

[Kai]

To sort of piggyback on what Raz said, here's something that I posted in the Discord that should probably also be put here for posterity:

Also the fact that we don't really do PVP, and ultimately it's between the GM and players how stuff goes. If nobody cares then that's all background, but if people want to get into it and roleplay it out, that's great!

That said, I do still think it's a good idea to have some specific equipment to facilitate these types of things if players want to play it. The Nagamaki I just made being one of the more prominent things that may be capable of it, but also the idea of some sort of physical device such as the physical missile/drone that can tap into systems to allow for the backdoor hacking of a single target, etc.

 

[Wes]

As someone who works with computers I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to get a computer to do anything when you're not an authorized user, especially from afar. I feel like most electronic warfare stuff is going to be based around feeding AIs bad data like false sensor images, fake targets, etc. Even if you can't break in to enemy AI, if you feed it crap data in, it'll spit crap data out.

I guess one issue is there's no sort of "Damage rating" for electronic warfare.

 

[Alex Hart]

I feel like most electronic warfare stuff is going to be based around feeding AIs bad data like false sensor images, fake targets, etc. Even if you can't break in to enemy AI, if you feed it crap data in, it'll spit crap data out.

I feel like this is also a lot easier to roleplay around than outright hacking. The most I've handled hacking is in @Charmaylarg Dufrain's Die Screaming plot, and that mostly works because the character's whole schitck is hacking, and he's hacking military-grade hardware for which he already knows the ins-and-outs.

Hacking a ship operated by a foreign enemy during a battle from the safety of your own ship is a much harder proposition. There's certainly the possibility of using AIs or non-sapient MI/SIs to handle hacking and counterhacking, but at that point I figure it would end up being more a background thing where it evens out to no effect that we actually see in "gameplay".

 

[raz]

Maybe there should be a general roleplay convention against remote hacking. Never occurred to me that people would want to do this because all of my own hacking roleplay has involved computer systems experts having to infiltrate an enemy ship or installation to interface with the target network directly. Kind of surprising that there’s an idea that these things could be done from a distance easily; only maybe if you have a captured enemy computer that has the ability to connect to their networks.

Not saying to make distance hacking against the rules because it’s sci-fi and Will Goldblum taking out the alien mothership with a laptop is cool . But just perhaps more of a general idea that doing things like that will fail 99.9% of the time because it’s silly.

PS: I had the AI write a reply (and didn’t use it) but it could have even written a passable OOC reply. Is this EW?

 

[Whisper]

I like the no remote hacking idea. If the character has to put in the work to get a physical connection in a space battle, and not get blown up while they stop to do their thing, that feels like something that should be rewarded.

The scope of that impact/reward (imo) should be around the same as what another character could achieve in a more conventional role. If they're an EW specialist, then they have to at least pull their weight.

If another character can take down a fighter, then they should be able to do contribute to a similar effect- maybe not by taking out a fighter directly, but by making their squadron some % better. If they're fighter 5, then the others could be 25% better. If the mission pitches their role as necessary, then what is the GM giving them to make their role engaging?

Making hacking a compelling 'game experience' is tough (look at all the subpar hacking mini games). I think that requiring physical contact with the system goes a long way towards improving that and getting the other PCs involved in their success.

 

[Wes]

SARP does have this guide, for reference:

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=guide:computing_systems_and_the_lack_of_invulnerability

 

[Ametheliana]

I mean, I feel like remote hacking is Hanako-taisho's bread and butter. This lady is an expert at electronic warfare and my favorite thing is seeing her do things like that. She had Charisma track Mishhuvurthyar fleet communications to pinpoint which ship was the leader in order to take them down, mid battle and remotely. She also did the same against the Kuvexians, jamming their comms momentarily with the Type 31 EWS in order to do the same mid-battle and remotely. But even she, in that battle, said there's no access like physical access and sent in armor teams to enemy Kuvexian ships to find hatches to work more seamlessly through. I don't think that amounted to much because armor teams get distracted >.< But she was able to determine Kuvexian flagships from spending some time with her MEGAMI and ship, which are equipped to find those things out.

I know everyone said jamming is cool, but she said hacking a lot while doing this so I thought to add in what's happened before. That was the important history lesson, now to my self aggrandizing spiel about what I did recently. This post is just "here's how I've seen it done" btw.

Personally I also recently used the Type 31 EWS, so I think it's ought to be brought up. With a special addition, we were able to jam teleportation of the enemy. Basically odds were 20,000 to 40,000 (Mishhu had the better numbers) and we spread out our forces across four towns and outposts, so they did the same. Then at dawn we retracted most of those forces to one town while we activated the teleportation jammers against them, forcing them to stay and fight through the smaller forces in order to get to our main one. By that time, we were already through. So a huge modern generator-sized piece of equipment did the electronic warfare bit. If I didn't have that, it wouldn't have been a good plan at all.