Component:prowler

In Game Description

By removing most of the high-power components and reflective drive housing, this drive greatly reduces the warship's radar signature at the cost of a significant decrease in speed and reduced drive durability.

Gameplay usage

The Prowler drive is a useful piece of ANS tech, mostly employed for it's usefulness against radar, especially in conjunction with jamming on smaller ships such as the Sprinter and Raines. While it won't make much difference against normal radars, amounting to some ~10% lower detection ranges, it reduces the radar return in jamming, and the effective range fire-control locks can be achieved. Care should be made around the R400 LRT, which does not tend to care and will only be slightly affected, still having effective vision ranges in excess of 10km (up to 13.6 against a prowler-sprinter in worst-aspect), also meaning it will disregard jamming when outside of jammer range.

It can theoretically be stacked on larger warships to reduce their effective radar signatures down to the range of smaller warships - A Solomon with 4 Prowlers will get below the signature of a Keystone, for example, actually allowing these ships to hide in Jamming, however, this is rather ineffective as such a Solomon would only have a speed of 10 m/s and 15 m/s flank, leaving it mostly useless in actual combat. While regarded as a 'trap pick', a single prowler installed on a larger warship does by technicality contribute to missile defense by significantly affecting it's WAKE and THERM-signature times after mains shutoff, and reducing it's effective radar signature enough to make a difference in radar seeker's eyes- a stock Solomon's signature can be taken from larger to smaller than EA12 chaff with one prowler, though this has mediocre effect when considering the likely presence of an Illuminator on said Solomon, the odds of a Raider drive being present, and the degradation time of chaff.

Stats

FM30X 'Prowler' Drive
Faction	ANS
Cost	25 pts
Dimensions	5x3x5
Hitpoints	200
Hitpoints to Function	30
Damage Threshold	25
Mass	35 Tonnes
Catastrophic Event Prob. (Drive)	5%
DC Priority	Critical
Crew	10
Power	+500 (kW)
Modifier: Top Speed	-15%</span
Modifier: Angular Thrust	-10%
Modifier: Radar Signature	-25%
Modifier: Wake Signature Strength	-33%

Notes

Multiple drives do not inherently affect the mobility of a ship, only provide redundancy, however, the modifiers to a ship's mobility are a combination of all installed drives' modifiers, so installing drives with multiple of the same effect can further affect it's capability (two whiplash drives will provide more speed than one, but a whiplash and standard drive will provide no different speed than a single whiplash). If some drives are disabled, only those drives' modifiers will be removed, which may even result in the ship's mobility improving in some cases (such as a prowled drive being disabled). If all drives on a ship are knocked out, it will not be able to move altogether.

The FM30X does not have a larger equivalent. It is notably different in base stats to the other small FM2XX series, being the most fragile ANS drive.

Lore

You don't usually see these, at least not on frontline warships. From what I found in the old Naval Office documents, these were supplied to a line of now-mothballed Raines variants that haunted the Eight Ball Belt to weed out the pirate problem. Evidently, that worked out pretty well.

But the actual engine crew will give you a look if you so much as think about complimenting the drive. Since the Naval Office took off the protective housing, a good shake will make the entire drive switch into a shutdown state and blare the loudest alarm you've ever heard. I definitely don't miss working on these.

- I. Parker, CMC