A completed Missile Article

apoc527

Mongoose
I was going to ask locarno if he wanted to help me with this, and I tried, but I couldn't tell if the PM went through or not. At any rate, here's a mostly completely missiles article with costs.

Please let me know what you think. I looked at Special Supplement 3, by the way. Not really compatible and way too fiddly for my tastes anyway.


Missiles in Mongoose Traveller

This document replaces all missile rules for MGT, except where stated otherwise.

Missile Sizes

There are four sizes of missile: antimissile, light, heavy and torpedo.

Light missiles are the current standard missiles, at 12 per dton.

Medium missiles are twice the volume, fitting 6 per dton.

Heavy missiles are twice the volume again, at 3 per dton.

Torpedoes are also called capital missiles and take up 2.5 dtons each.

The missile size determines the basic capabilities of the missile, including acceleration, endurance, and warhead size. Certain types of modifications are allowed, such as extended range, enhanced acceleration, etc.

All missiles are assumed to have basic command guidance. Guidance systems can be upgraded to smart at additional expense.

Missiles larger than light missiles are armored to resist damage. Any hit destroys the missile, but only if the damage exceeds the armor.

Light and Medium missiles are acceptable civilian weaponry. Heavy missiles and torpedoes are usually reserved for Imperial forces, but may be available outside the Imperium for illegal or semi-legal installation.

Missile chassis are listed in Table M1: Missile Size.

Type Acceleration Endurance Armor Cost (per dton)
Light 10G 10 turns 0 10,000 Cr
Medium 10G 10 turns 2 10,000 Cr
Heavy 8G 10 turns 3 10,000 Cr
Torpedo 8G 10 turns 4 3,000 Cr per torp


Warheads

Warheads are rated by size, as above.

Most warheads are available in all four sizes, but obviously have different capabilities depending on size.

Available warheads are listed in the following table.

Table M2: Warheads
Type TL Light Medium Heavy Torpedo
HEAT 7 1d6 AP 2d6 AP 3d6 AP 6d6 AP
Nuclear 7 2d6+2xE+CH 3d6+3xE+CH 5d6+5xE+CH 10d6+10xE+CH
X-ray Laser 9 1d6 AP 3d6 AP 5d6 AP 10d6 AP
Plasma 12 1d6+1 Super-AP 2d6+2 Super-AP 3d6+3 Super-AP 6d6+4 Super-AP
Ortillery 7 2d6 3d6 4d6 8d6
Shockwave 7 Special N/A N/A N/A

Table M2A: Warhead Cost
Type TL Light Medium Heavy Torpedo
HEAT 7 5,000 per dton 5,000 per dton 5,000 per dton 2,000 per torp
Nuclear 7 20,000 per dton 20,000 per dton 20,000 per dton 12,000 per torp
X-ray Laser 9 25,000 per dton 25,000 per dton 25,000 per dton 15,000 per torp
Plasma 12 8,000 per dton 8,000 per dton 8,000 per dton 4,000 per torp
Ortillery 7 15,000 per dton 15,000 per dton 15,000 per dton 9,000 per torp
Shockwave 7 25,000 per dton N/A N/A N/A


All references to armor piercing ability reference the Central Supply Catalog.

HEAT Warheads are High Explosive Anti-Tank (or Armor-Tapping). They are the standard warhead and use a shaped charge to create a jet of pencil thin molten metal that can penetrate armor. Effect adds to damage normally and they ignore their full dice of damage in armor.

Nuclear Warheads are fission or fusion devices built at arbitrary yields depending on the size of the warhead. Because nuclear weapons are incredibly deadly at close range (or contact), the damage from Effect is modified as per the table above. A heavy nuclear missile can destroy a small spaceship in one hit (using my modified damage rules). These yields are not the only possible yields, but represent reasonably sized warheads. All of them would cause significant damage in an atmosphere and such use would violate Imperial High Law. All nuclear weapons inflict a radiation crew hit as well. Nuclear dampers behave differently than the standard rules: the first nuclear damper defeats the crew radiation hit. Each subsequent nuclear damper halves the damage of the weapon (so five nuclear dampers effectively eliminates nuke warheads as threats).

X-ray Laser (or detonation laser) warheads use a nuclear warhead to generate powerful X-ray laser strikes. Because they detonate well clear of a target, point defense is less effective. Sandcasters may be used to defend against the laser, but not to shoot down the missile. Lasers used as point defense are fired with a -2 DM. X-ray laser warheads are Armor Piercing. X-ray laserheads are not subject to nuclear damping because they detonate beyond the field effect.

Plasma (actually directed plasma) warheads an advanced form of HEAT warhead available at TL12. Effect adds to damage normally but they receive twice the normal armor piercing effect and receive a slight damage bonus.

Ortillery warheads are not used in space combat, but are used to bombard troops and fortifications from space.

Shockwave warheads are available only as light missile warheads and are used to disrupt enemy sandclouds as per High Guard.



Missile Options

The following missile options are available for all missile types. Cost multipliers are all for the base cost of the missile (i.e. 10,000 per dton) and are not modified by warhead type.

Long Range: Increase Acceleration by 50%, decrease Endurance by 30%, -1 Damage per die. Cost: Normal.

Multi-Warhead: Decrease Acceleration by 20%, fits 6 warheads of one size lower, and 1d6 hit. Cost: 125% normal.

Smart Guidance System: This modification allows the missile to direct itself. A smart missile or torpedo can be created at TL8. Such missiles will hit on an 8+ and can make attacks until their Endurance is exhausted or until they are shot down. At TL10, brilliant missiles replace smart missiles and receive a +2 DM to hit. At TL12, genius missiles replace brilliant missiles, and receive a +4 DM to hit. Cost: x2 (base cost, not including warhead) at available TL, otherwise follows normal advanced/prototype tech cost rules.

Missile TL Upgrades

In addition to the standard upgrades for weapons (Accurate, High Yield, etc), missiles can have improved engine systems. Two upgrades are available: Boosted and High Endurance. Boosted missiles use 1 or 2 upgrade slots at +1 or +2 TLs and increase Acceleration by 25% and 50% respectively. High Endurance upgrade uses up 1 upgrade slot and increases Endurance by 25%.

Launch Systems

The basic launch systems are turrets, barbettes, bays, and heavy bays.

There are two types of turret-mounted missile launchers: standard and large. The standard missile launcher may fire 1 light or medium missile per turn and takes up 1 turret space as per MGT Core. The large missile launcher may fire 1 heavy missile per turn and takes up 2 turret spaces as per my house rules. Large missile launchers cost 1.25 MCr.

A missile/torpedo barbette can fire 3 heavy missiles per turn or launch 1 torpedo per turn. Cost: as per HG.

A missile bay can fire a flight of 12 light or medium missiles or a salvo of 8 heavy missiles. A heavy missile bay can fire a flight of 24 light or medium missiles or a salvo of 16 heavy missiles. Cost as per HG.

A torpedo bay can fire 3 torpedoes per turn. A heavy torpedo bay can fire 6 torpedoes per turn. Cost as per HG.
 
Not bad. :D

Did you decide to drop the (light/Anti/point defence missile) autokills any size of missile it hits bit? It made them usefull for point defence rather than dropping them for larger ships since they are all but useless.

Mediums from the light tubes. Good idea. With the higher damage they do the smaller magazines are less of a problem and should tempt more than a few to switch to them.

Antimissile/lights. A standard light used for firing at other small craft or a seperate antimissile round. Much faster with a shorter endurance, 20+G and 2-3 truns endurance only. They don't have much of a range but thats the point, getting there fast to kill the incoming missile at very short notice.

Otherwise not bad :D
 
Whoo! *Shivers* Heavy torpedo bays, loaded with multi-warhead bomb-pumped devices... With some quite-reasonable rolls, that's getting up towards a hundred dice of damage from a single bay. Honor Harrington combat, indeed!

Just as a quick side note, though, I'd have probably sized the missiles slightly differently:

Light missiles, as current. 12 missiles per dton.
Medium missiles, twice the size of light. 6 missiles per dton.
Heavy missiles, three times the size of medium. 2 missiles per dton.
Torpedos, five times the size of heavy (and incidentally, as current). 2.5 dtons per torpedo.

Alternatively, the step-multipliers could go 3-2-5, giving 4 medium missiles per dton and no other changes on the table. Either way, the progression is a bit smoother without really changing much.
 
Those are good points (both of you).

I'm hoping that we can generate a decent set of alternate missile rules through feedback from the forum.

Incidentally, I like the idea of 2 heavy missiles per dton, but 3 was simply half as many as for medium missiles. Also, with only 2 heavy missiles per dton, I'm not sure the economics works out in favor of heavy missiles over torpedoes.

As for antimissile/light missiles, yes, I think I would rule that a true "antimissile" has no warhead and if it connects, it simply destroys any other missile. Perhaps I'll create a special antimissile at half the size of light missiles, for 24 per dton and say that they mount no warhead (or perhaps just a small fragmentation warhead), accelerate at Thrust 20 (20G) and have 1 turn of endurance, their sole purpose being to shoot down incoming missiles.
 
Well, one thing I've noticed is that you don't have to remain all that closely wedded to the idea of the the same step multiplier, as long as you remain reasonably close. I noticed that the torpedoes were 30 times the size of the standard missile. If we were going to make it one intermediate step, the the obvious step sizes would be a factor of 5 and a factor of 6, and considering the sizes of the endpoints, probably have the 6-step be the first one, thus making the steps 1/12 dton per (light) missile, 0.5 dton per intermediate size, and 2.5 dton per torpedo. Since we're going with two intermediate stages here, the factors are 2, 3, and 5 - close enough to even for it to work. At that point, the question becomes what order to use in order to keep the sizes convenient.

As to the viability of half-ton heavy missiles, there's nothing inherently wrong with a less-viable intermediate size. Historically, weapons development is filled with experiments which either didn't work out or, while they weren't as efficient, still filled a niche role. But if it's too great a discrepancy, things can be tweaked - I'd personally look at perhaps adjusting the prices, since yield is a little bit granular for fine adjustment.
 
It's a great starting place apoc.

I did the same thing as you for missile sizes, cept I called mine standard, heavy, capital and torpedo. :) But the sizing was the same.

I also did the same thing about tinkering with the loadouts. I'm still playing with the idea, but basically a 'standard' missile has 3 slots - 1 for propulsion, 1 for electronics and 1 for warhead. So under my system you couldn't do much with a standard missile as far as modifications - there isn't any extra room in the body itself.

But once you get to heavy and up, you can (at least this is how my theory is working) mix and match the 'spaces' in the missile for whatever loadout you want. Like I said, I'm still tweaking exactly how to make this work. :)

I'm still a big proponent of adding in the concept of eliminating missile turrets on smaller ships and just going with launch cells. After kicking around a lot of ideas, I figured it was just as easy to simply double the displacement of the missile to accomodate the launching cell. So you could fit 6 standard missiles in 1 displacement ton of space. Just scale this up with each size missile you want, including torpedoes.

For smaller craft, like drone and fighters, the missiles they carry can be put in pre-loaded launch cells that can be quickly attached/detached to the small craft. Larger ships can also opt to use pre-loaded launchers instead of trying to load one missile at a time.

As far as the hardpoint question, well, in theory it makes sense for small ships to be able to let loose their missiles quickly because they aren't going to have very large magazines nor will they be able to stay in a battle very long against much larger opponents, so I just did a handwavium and came up with a house rule that you get 4 displacement tons of lauch cells per hardpoint. I think what this should do is make missiles far more offensive oriented with smaller ships, but larger ones are going to go with standard launch systems that allow them to utilze magazines.

I was also kinda bugged by idea that a TL15 missile is no different than than a TL9 one. Even though the book says missile tech starts at TL6, I think that a higher TL missile should do more damage. So from TL6 to TL9, the missile do their standard damage. For each TL above, they do 1 extra cumulative point. Which means at TL15, the missile is sophisticated enough that they can use a standard launcher, but they can cram more explosives (as well as better) into the warhead and thus it does standard damage +6.

For missile control, the book states you can have fire-and-forget (i.e. 'smart') missiles, and launcher controlled ones. To make things more interesting (as well as make people pay extra to control their swarms of missiles), I came up with a house rule that says you need to buy the right kind of software to control large flights of missiles. Otherwise you have to treat them as smart missiles. Smart missiles are only going to be so smart, and a warship with a strong ECM suite will be able to use its superior electronics against the missile to try and break locks and lure them away with decoys and jammers. Ship-controlled missiles would be able to take advantage of the launch ships gunner skills as well as any other electronics that they have.
 
While I don't agree with everything (just a personal taste thing), I can definitely see how these missile changes will make capital ships keep a wary eye out for fighter flights. Under these alternate rules, fighters and carriers become extremely useful in combat.

Very nice!
 
With the MongTrav rules any ship with armour 12+ becomes immune to 2D weapons. Makes all those light/medium/heavy fighters useless in a battle and good for nothing more than scouting and beating on merchants which doesn't go with cannon. All those 300+ fighters onboard the big carriers.

Unless you go with the 99dton gunboats with a P-beam barbette and three fixed missile tubes which is a bit more scary :D
 
That's the way it seems to me.

Even if the GM allows the addition of Effect to the damage rolls, the odds of a damaging hit seems to still be too low to make the existence of capital-class carriers with small fighters worthwhile unless the fighters are all carrying torpedoes and hitting the target(s) with attacks concentrated enough to have a decent chance of getting through point defense.
 
SSWarlock said:
That's the way it seems to me.

Even if the GM allows the addition of Effect to the damage rolls, the odds of a damaging hit seems to still be too low to make the existence of capital-class carriers with small fighters worthwhile unless the fighters are all carrying torpedoes and hitting the target(s) with attacks concentrated enough to have a decent chance of getting through point defense.

Kinda like a fast boats with 120mm AT guns attacking Iowa Class BB's. Just don't cut it.
 
DFW said:
SSWarlock said:
That's the way it seems to me.

Even if the GM allows the addition of Effect to the damage rolls, the odds of a damaging hit seems to still be too low to make the existence of capital-class carriers with small fighters worthwhile unless the fighters are all carrying torpedoes and hitting the target(s) with attacks concentrated enough to have a decent chance of getting through point defense.

Kinda like a fast boats with 120mm AT guns attacking Iowa Class BB's. Just don't cut it.

It would be more like a small flotilla of Pegasus-class hydrofoils launching Harpoons or Exocets. A few of them might not do too much, but enough would. I suppose you could swap out the Harpoons for 1-2 Tomahawks, which would be able to hurt a Iowa.
 
phavoc said:
It would be more like a small flotilla of Pegasus-class hydrofoils launching Harpoons or Exocets. A few of them might not do too much, but enough would. I suppose you could swap out the Harpoons for 1-2 Tomahawks, which would be able to hurt a Iowa.

Yeah, the Harpoons & Exocets would bounce off the 18" armour with no effect. The 'hawks would have a better chance IF a critical area was hit.
 
Hey think about this... attacking the fuel scoops of the ship, or the cargo doors, or the M-Drive exhaust nozzles (just bust them up/tear them off.. ship ain't going far and that's if it doesn't explode.)
 
GamerDude said:
Hey think about this... attacking the fuel scoops of the ship, or the cargo doors, or the M-Drive exhaust nozzles (just bust them up/tear them off.. ship ain't going far and that's if it doesn't explode.)


Hmmmm...no, there's no "official" rules on doing that since nothing in CT/MT/TNE/T4 has rules for that level of targeting. Guess that doesn't work.

:twisted: Sorry, couldn't resist.
 
GamerDude said:
or the M-Drive exhaust nozzles (just bust them up/tear them off.. ship ain't going far and that's if it doesn't explode.)

Grav M-drives don't have exhaust nozzles
 
Looks shiny. Sorry for not replying to your message, by the way. Just noticed the message...

I like the idea of armour-piercing warheads. Using the CSC standard AP rules gives missiles the ability to punch above their weight. I suspect Heavy missiles are the biggest deal - a 3D6 weapon with armour piercing capability for less than a Dton gives a massive chunk of punch, especially with plasma warheads.

Note that I think plasma missiles might be a bit underpriced - 1D6+1+2 (assuming the target is armoured) is essentially the same as 2D6, which is a core rulebook nuclear missile.
 
DFW said:
phavoc said:
It would be more like a small flotilla of Pegasus-class hydrofoils launching Harpoons or Exocets. A few of them might not do too much, but enough would. I suppose you could swap out the Harpoons for 1-2 Tomahawks, which would be able to hurt a Iowa.

Yeah, the Harpoons & Exocets would bounce off the 18" armour with no effect. The 'hawks would have a better chance IF a critical area was hit.

I tried to do some research on this last night. There are actually a number of threads out there on some boards where the naval grognards have debated this back and forth. The conclusion that I was able to come to was that about half said yes, and half said no. :) Which is not bad for being an internet forum!

Some people brought out charts and cited X evidence, others attacked and impugned the manhood of them.. you know, typical friendly banter.

One person said the US Navy thought 18 harpoons would potentially make an Iowa class BB mission un-ready, others said rubbish. However without a sinex of one of the remaining ships, it looks like its just gonna be an academic exercise of insult hurling.

I'd like to think that small anti-ship missiles like Exocets or Harpoon's wouldn't do much to a ship what was designed to resist 16" shells. The missiles could certainly do a number on the more vulnerable areas, such as defenses, sensors, and the like.

Tomahawks, with their larger warheads (excluding the nuke version of course) seem to be more likely... but again I could not find anything really concrete.

Now, if we upped the ante and say offered a few hypersonic ASM's... :) glub-glub!

An interesting aside from all this was that most battlehips of WW2 were sunk not by shellfire from other ships, but torpedoes. Today's torpedo is a smarter version of the old-school ones, but essentially the design has not changed since before WW2.
 
Some people brought out charts and cited X evidence, others attacked and impugned the manhood of them.. you know, typical friendly banter.

One person said the US Navy thought 18 harpoons would potentially make an Iowa class BB mission un-ready, others said rubbish. However without a sinex of one of the remaining ships, it looks like its just gonna be an academic exercise of insult hurling.

I'd like to think that small anti-ship missiles like Exocets or Harpoon's wouldn't do much to a ship what was designed to resist 16" shells. The missiles could certainly do a number on the more vulnerable areas, such as defenses, sensors, and the like.

Tomahawks, with their larger warheads (excluding the nuke version of course) seem to be more likely... but again I could not find anything really concrete.

The arguments generally centre on whether or not you have to get through the armour belt to do anything significant, or whether you count gun hits, antennae hits, etc, and whether a missile is sophisticated enough to try dirty tricks (e.g. pop-up attacks).


Now, if we upped the ante and say offered a few hypersonic ASM's... glub-glub!
Depends on the definition of hypsersonic...

An interesting aside from all this was that most battlehips of WW2 were sunk not by shellfire from other ships, but torpedoes. Today's torpedo is a smarter version of the old-school ones, but essentially the design has not changed since before WW2.

As commented before. Torpedoes are always the ship-killer. However, they also don't translate to traveller equivalent because they are using (a) the advantages of underwater detonation physics, and (b) the weight of the ship itself to inflict damage, neither of which really applies in space combat.
 
phavoc said:
I tried to do some research on this last night. There are actually a number of threads out there on some boards where the naval grognards have debated this back and forth. The conclusion that I was able to come to was that about half said yes, and half said no. :) Which is not bad for being an internet forum!

My uncle was an O6 and engineer who designed missile & anti-missile/anti-air systems for the Navy. An exocet or harpoon couldn't even punch through the conning tower armour on an Iowa class BB.
 
DFW said:
phavoc said:
I tried to do some research on this last night. There are actually a number of threads out there on some boards where the naval grognards have debated this back and forth. The conclusion that I was able to come to was that about half said yes, and half said no. :) Which is not bad for being an internet forum!

My uncle was an O6 and engineer who designed missile & anti-missile/anti-air systems for the Navy. An exocet or harpoon couldn't even punch through the conning tower armour on an Iowa class BB.

I saw pics of it. Looked like a bank vault. Says they had between 16" - 17" of B class armor...whatever that is...
 
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