High Guarding again

[AnotherDilbert]

It's a rules construct, nothing more.

Yes, of course it is, just like jump drives and meson guns...

HG is a highly abstract imaginary system describing imaginary technology an imaginary far future. Yet we are still discussing it 45 years later, while later editions are mostly forgotten.

 

[McPerth]

Interposed ships providing ECM, incidental anti-missile fire, and stray sandcaster clouds. Sort of like the difficulty with small-arms fire through a melee, but with more smoke bombs and flashbang grenades in the brawl.

You can't shoot at what you can't see. Not by being invisible, but by distracting you with something more visible.

At 1 ls ≈ 300 000 km range we are not seeing clearly, we are looking at weak sensor blips.
A weaker sensor signal will be masked by a stronger nearby signal.

We’re not talking about physically blocking, but rather sensor ghosts and distracts, which certainly is a real thing.

I don't believe this to be easy (if at all possible) on a 3 D environment (as Spinward Scout says)...

A smoke screen in your line of sight may mask you troops in a 2D environ, but aircrafts will be unobscured, as they work in 3D (unless, of course, the smoke is just over your troops, but that's not what the screening represents, but sandcasters and ECM, more represented (again, as Spinward Scout says) more by the Computer model).

I'm not an expert (to say the least) about sensors, but in a thread about them some years ago, when I defended an SDB hidden in a GG atmosphere would be difficult to detect by sensors due to the larger signature of the GG, I was told even today there are IR sensors able to detect a lit mach against the signature of a steel mill... If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), imagine in the future to detect those weaker sensor signals, even when stronger ones are in the way...

How does a submarine sneak into a harbour? By masking their sound signature with the stronger sound signature of a nearby surface ship.

And profiting of the lower state of alertness level in a harbour, against the higher one in the middle of a battle... In this case we're talking about the latter case, when all sensors and crews are at maximum level or alert and readiness.

 

[McPerth]

A bunch of Sloans with barely any armour or screens will not last long as battle line, a breakthrough is likely...

Depending on how strong the enemy is... I guess they can (barely) stand for the single round needed against a similar squadron, not against two of them.

But neither the Nolikians (or Tigris, for what's worth) could probably stand against too higher numbers, while fighers would be (with HG RAW) better in this role, as you must incapacitate them one by one, and you can have very high numbers of them...