Gengis Khan would be pretty zen after those rolls.  Between the two of them, Sarah and Cortez got what, 7 extra degrees of success?  Yeah, if Charm had any chance of working, it probably will.<br/><br/>Anyway, speaking, not specifically of the Tau, but of the new toys they are offering, I have some thoughts.<br/><br/>The Railgun is a fantastic weapon for it's space... and the Alexander does indeed meet the power requirements, and to spare... (I hadn't noticed, but while the Kobias is maxed out in space and power, the Alexander has 11 power doing nothing...)  The only problem with it, is as the only weapon on a ship, it will be incapable of penetrating the 2 void shields that are standard on light cruisers and above...  while the Alexanders current macrocannons are otherwise inferior weapons, they can, if luck is with you, score three hits, giving it a slight chance of harming even ships far outside it's weight class.<br/><br/>However, if you want to delegate the Alexander to a roll of crippling vessels of the frigate size and smaller, (and, as Cortez imagines, such a weapon will indeed leave a lot to salvage... if you don't cause a warp breach, cause the plasma drives to explode, or accidentally hit a munitorium...). The increased range and ability to crit at will will make the Akexander, if even marginally well flown, a holy terror in one on one space combat against a single smaller vessel at a time... and pretty much useless except as a destraction against anything large enough to carry a second void shield.<br/><br/>As for their Cogitor Array?  A potentally very useful gadget... but, as it takes the power of an entire Lance battery to run, slightly difficult to use in our current fleet setup.<br/><br/>If we retooled the Everest gun set up with less in the way of lances, and focused on, say Macrobattery Broadsides, trading space requirements for power, and dropped the salvage systems and ships stores components, we could manage the component that way... but I am not terribly fond of the idea for two reasons.<br/><br/>First, we'd have to give the Tau computer control of the stongest ship in the fleet... and worse, control over five out of eight of our ship weapons... which, by the very nature of the system, would be within firing range of any other ship in our fleet that wanted to take advantage of it's bonuses...  A single act of treachery could wipe out our entire fleet.  Cortez is right to want to keep the Tau confined to a single ship for now.  (and the weakest ship we have is the Alexander... If worse comes to worse, they could steal it, but they couldn't kill us from it... probably.)<br/><br/>Second, in a fleet of our size, we'd essentially be giving up one lance battery for an across the board +10 to hit for any shots going long range... and, I'll admit, a not insignificant bonus to our turret defenses.  If we fly the ships within 5 VU's of each other during combat, the benefits may be slightly greater than the loss in firepowe, for now, anyway.  But I highly doubt Sarah will be content to remain that close to an allied ship in the thick of combat, not with the speed and maneuverability offered by the Kobias and the Alexander.<br/><br/>So until we get more ships... I think it's probably not in our best interests to get the Cogiter array.   Although getting that railgun installed in the Alex is quite likely a good move.<br/><br/>For the targeting array Thingy, I'm actually thinking of a specialized command ship to carry it, guarded by a fleet that it is buffing... a sort of "iron core" of ships that focus on armor and long range firepower over speed and manuverabilty...   Such a device would make that sort of tactic much more viable...<br/><br/>Quick, maneuverable vessels like the Kobias and the Alexander do not belong in such a fleet... Or at least, not in it's iron core.  They, and ships like them would be the perfect hammer to the Iron Core's anvil, however... but of course now I am envisioning battle tactics involving perhaps dozens of ships on a side... Much more than we'll have to worry about any time in the near future.<br/><br/>In the meantime, if a PC that understands xeno-tech could do their best to figure out the possible ways for that Cogiter array to be used against us, and figure out how to keep that from happening, that would probably be good... although, if my opinion on the matter is heeded, we will have plenty of time for that.