Melbourne Accords wrote: ↑Fri Sep 20, 2019 12:10 am
Re. particle accelerators, can anyone offer a good in-universe rationale for why they are not used for point defence? I have no objection to the approach in the current excellent rules, but I’d like to offer a rationale to players in our next season of
Traveller. Might Rate of Fire be a factor, for example? I’d appreciate any suggestions.
Maybe the majority of PA damage is radiation, and this doens't actually kill a missile, but a starship wiith more complicated systems can be affected? This may also explain why you can't just nuke (literally, with a nuke) a missile salvo with a single counter-missile. They have to cluster up at some point if they want to hit you all at once.
The shortcomings of today's point defense guns against certain missiles are basically engagement range vs missile speed. They can hit, but not far away enough to prevent missile debris hitting the ship. This shouldn't be a problem for particle accelerators.
Rate of fire shouldnt be an issue. You put the laser pointer on the missile, you fire the particle, it goes out at light speed. If you have to track where you are shooting to correct your aim - well you can't do that as the beam is likely invisible in space. Therefore their guns probably shoot exactly where the beam pointer is laid. Other alterantive is that you guess the position relative to the ship but then I don't see how they hit anything. Unless lasers just spray everywhere and only 1% hit. Might that explain the additional rate of fire in dogfight rules?
Missiles should really be targetable at any range, not just point defense. Point defense is the last-ditch system after it breaks through all the other layers, but I notice in gaming that it's common to consider it the only hard kill system that can engage missiles. I'm told there's sone additional rules in Traveller Companion to address this.