General Comments

[procyon]

I'm pretty sure drakar was just using our old standby that you had one hour for the initial 'probe' which amounts to less than 1% of 5 day. Any more than that and you were considered to be conducting a 'system probe' for us and it burned the StMP for survey.

It isn't exactly spelled out in the rules so that was our 'rule of thumb'. A tactical probe was 1 hour or less and a system probe was greater than 1 hour. But it could be set to individual tastes.

[olivertheorem]

I presume a "tactical probe" is for the purpose of finding out of there are bad guys on the other side of that WP, while a "system probe" is to find out what all is in the system on the other side of that WP. So this would be a system probe, which I think I will also treat as burning the StMP.

The important thing is to be consistent, right?

Edit: On the explorers, I've decided to put a pair of Bsa's on each of them. Minimal increase in maintenance costs and it increases capability.

[olivertheorem]

Modified the WP transit stuff in the turn 1 post in light of the excessive speed I was giving my EX's. I think it works properly now.

And yes, I know I'm taking a whole month to get the fleet over. I think this empire likes to play it safe and keep all their ships together as much as possible. The dice said they only explore 1 WP a month, so it fits.

[JoeBuckeye]

Edit: On the explorers, I've decided to put a pair of Bsa's on each of them. Minimal increase in maintenance costs and it increases capability.

Make sure you watch the limit for bays of any sort (BLx or Bsx) on non-fast hulls. See [B?.03.1].

[olivertheorem]

Oh crap. Back to the drawing board (again).

Thanks for the catch, JoeBuckeye.

[Vandervecken]

I'd just go for the 7 HS 6 HTK ...

[2] S (Bsa) H Xa Qa (Ica) [4/4]

... design. It isn't pretty. It isnt unique. But it gets the basic WP and System Survey jobs done; and as mentioned before, you can swap out the 'H Xa' for an 'Xb' in a few turns (hopefully).

I'd make 1 of these for every 2 to 4 of the basic 5 HS Explorers.

[olivertheorem]

I just took out one of the Bsa's so I could get on with things. Turn 1 numbers are now final and the first month narrative is up.