A couple of unrelated rules questions

Carolus

Mongoose
I'm running a Pirates of Drinax campaign soon, and while reading the campaing, rereading some of the rules and during the character creation a couple of questions came foreward. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the following:

1a. The particle barbette. Reading the rules my understanding is that it can't be used for point defence, only laser turrets can. But is there any logical reason for this (other than balance)? It seems to me that point it toward a missile should work.
1b. The particle barbette is a radiation weapon. The radiation trait says the effect extends a number of metres equal to the number of dice the weapon rolls for damage, but if it's destructive this is multiplied by ten. Should the particle barbette be considered a destructive weapon for the purpose of this trait? Compared to traveller-scale weaponry it does multiply its damage by ten, as a destructive weapon would. And it would make quite a big difference, 4 meters might not even hit anyone onboard an enemy vessel, but 40 meters is a whole different story.

2. Sticking to spacecraft weapons: the missile rack turrets. If you have a triple missile rack turret, I'm assuming you can fire 3 missiles a round, but for how long? The description of the number of missiles it can hold is a bit ambiguous. Does it hold 12 missiles per missile rack, or per turret independent of the number of missile racks it contains?

3. Last question about spacecraft weapons: the fusion barbette in highguard has the radiation trait, but the bays do not. Is either a misprint?

4. On the topic of space combat: the close combat/dogfighting rules. I'm I correct that when fighting takes place at close (or adjecent) range the travellers can still fire weapons etc. once/round, meaning they can effectively fire their weapons 60 times faster than at a longer range? And how do you actually end a dogfight you don't want to be in? Can you simply expend thrust? Seeing as the rounds are now so much shorter it seems strange that the same amount of thrust could simply put you at a longer range. Seeing as short range combat is probably coming up a lot in a piracy campaign, I thought I'd better be certain.

5. Regarding critical hits on spacecraft: I get that they are cumulative, but if a vessel immidiatly gets a crit of a severity higer than 1, do I also have to apply the lower effects? For example, say that an undamaged ship suffers a crit of severity 2 against the sensors, does that ship now have sensors that are inoperative beyond medium range AND DM-2 on any sensor checks it could still make? If the same undamaged ship suffered a severity 3 crit against its power plant instead, would it's power be down by 70% and its thrust reduced by 3, or should I simply apply the worst modifier if it's mentioned multiple times?

6. The central supply catalogue introduces special ammunitions and states that any heavy weapons that specifically mention it may use variant ammo can use it. One of those heavy weapons is the machine gun (and its cousing, the rapid fire machine gun). One of my players claims that since it's a man-portable heavy weapon that mentions it may use variant ammo, he can use any of the variant ammo suitable for the heavy weapons catagory. While technically correct, to me this seems... odd. It seems to me the machine gun was meant to use the rifle catagory of variant ammunitions, as I can't inmagine a machine gun creating the effects of say a fuel air bomb. It's probably one of those questions where it's up to the referee, but I would like to hear some opions on how others would handle it.

7. My last question is a bit more open ended: one of my players has plans off trying to start a drugs emporium for some extra cash. (what's one more criminal charge if you are already a pirate?) I do have some ideas on how to get started on the "crafting illegal recreational drugs rule", but if anyone has some tips on how to run that, I would be very grateful. :)
 
1a) turret tracking speed, targeting system, is the beam coherent at close range?

1b) Don't know - but in Traveller lore a radition hit on a non-shielded vessel is serious. Rad weapons and rad shielding is one of the things warships have that civilian don't usually and allows a Gazelle to easily wreck free traders (in Classic, anyway).

2) 12 per tube, the ammo is factored as part of the weapon and not the turret

3) fusion bays have radiation (see errata)

4) yes they can fire 60x times faster in dogfight mode. don't think about it, and pretend everything is fine.

5) no, a level X crit hit just does that, and not level X-1 as well. However the next hits you take are bumped to X+1 if lower.

6) I don't have a problem with high tech machine guns firing "exotic" rounds like explosive, guided etc. Some of that already exists today in the lab, or can't be used in for "humane" reasons, or has already been deployed. FAE might be a bit strange but I wouldn't say it's impossible at sci-fi tech levels. I'd have to think about FAE but smart, explosive, AP and all that are 100% fine for me.

7) 5th amendement.
 
2. Missiles racks can't hold the magazine within the turret; you can have a missile on the launcher, possibly one in transit, though safety measures would keep the missiles in the magazine when not on alert; in theory, three ready rounds per launcher in a one tonne turret.

4. Speed is life.

6. Machine gun can cover a wide range of calibres, though after half an inch we tend to refer to them as automatic cannons; colloquially, rifle rounds and below.

7. Find a society exercising Prohibition; generally speaking, controlling three quarters of manufacturing and distribution vertical integration pays for itself. Degrees in biology and chemistry at one end, and possibly electronics, programming and neuroscience, should cover the range of possible addictive materials.
 
1a. I have not been able to find any rules for ship scale weapons with the Radiation trait so I assume that we have to use the rules for anti-personnel weapons and scale them up by applying the starship scale conversions. So yes, use 10 meters/die for the affected area.
2. This question has been beat to death on this forum and both sides are pretty entrenched. A lot of people love the “Each missile rack holds 12 missiles (missile racks on Firmpoints hold four missiles).” rule from High Guard and shove 3 dtons of missiles into a 1 dton turret. I believe that the rule on page 157 of the Core Rule Book that says “Each turret with one or more missile racks holds 12 missiles. . .” should be followed.

4. The dogfighting rules have issues. They assume that all ships have fixed mount weapons and can only fire in one direction, like WWI or WWII fighters. In that limited scenario, speed and pilot skill can indeed be used to gain an advantageous position where you can damage your foe while he is nearly defenseless against you. Turret mounted weapons throw those tactics out the window. While maneuvering for position can still provide a bonus to defense against fixed mount weapons by keeping out of their firing arc, a turret can be swiveled in any direction to attack so should suffer no penalties due to ship position.

In my opinion, turret mounted weapons should not suffer the DM -2 for losing the dogfight roll. The DM -6 to all attack rolls for ships massing 100 tons or more should also be ignored except for any fixed mount weapons the ship may carry.

7. Cooking up small batches of illegal drugs could be done with the Science (chemistry) skill. To go to mass production, I would suggest he buy/build a Specialist manufacturing Plant from the Space Stations section in High Guard. (p. 60-61).
 
Carolus said:
4. On the topic of space combat: the close combat/dogfighting rules. ... And how do you actually end a dogfight you don't want to be in? Can you simply expend thrust?
Technically you don't use the Spacecraft Combat rules, but the Personal (and Vehicle) rules including movement for Dogfights.
Core said:
Combat rounds in dogfights are six seconds long and follow the normal combat rules as detailed on page 71. The combat steps detailed on page 158 are not used in dogfights.
But all spacecraft are capable of any speedband so they can't outrun each other.
Core said:
Spacecraft are capable of any Speed Band listed in the Vehicles chapter, and will typically be going at Hypersonic speeds when entering an atmosphere.
Hence dogfight continues as long as any party wishes:
Core said:
If one of the vehicles’ drivers chooses to initiate a dogfight again in the following combat round, ...




Carolus said:
5. Regarding critical hits on spacecraft: I get that they are cumulative, but if a vessel immidiatly gets a crit of a severity higer than 1, do I also have to apply the lower effects?
I assume they get all the lower effects, otherwise it would be great for the target to skip some effects, e.g. Armour crits or M-Drive crits. I believe that is covered by "All effects are cumulative, ...".




Carolus said:
6. The central supply catalogue introduces special ammunitions and states that any heavy weapons that specifically mention it may use variant ammo can use it. One of those heavy weapons is the machine gun (and its cousing, the rapid fire machine gun).
The official answer is Referee discretion. (I asked about nuclear ammo and HMGs.)
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=117978
 
I didn't realise there was a missile discrepancy. I just got the value from High Guard and never looked in Core. Wouldn't HG override CRB for this? (One can assume the extra space needed for off-mount storage is magazine protection and ammo feed to the mount; Mongoose doesn't have a dedicated magazine system).

You should be able to leave dogfight by increasing the range.
 
When they say "all crits are cumulative" I take that to mean two separate "thrust -1" means apply thrust-1 twice and don't ignore the second one.

Crits including lower effects is an unusual game design choice for an RPG. It forces the player to read the whole row and decide in what order to apply the hits (it matters), it is not supported by the wording of some of the table results e.g. repeating "power reduced to 0" on the power hits line and '3' on cargo is effectively cargo lost as it's (3d6+1)*10%. I also don't understand how it works with the repair rules because it's a multi-hit.
 
Moppy said:
You should be able to leave dogfight by increasing the range.
Possibly, but by RAW you can't as far as I can see.

You really have to house-rule dogfights to make it work. I use a simplified system:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=926994#p926994
 
AnotherDilbert said:
Moppy said:
You should be able to leave dogfight by increasing the range.
Possibly, but by RAW you can't as far as I can see.

You really have to house-rule dogfights to make it work. I use a simplified system:
http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=926994#p926994

The dogfight requires some range bands, if you're outside that range, it won't apply. Therefore leaving dogfight range will end it.

However, while looking for an explicit rule, I did a cmd+F in High Guard, there's an explicit note in the Fighter Squadron rules, under Dogfight, about ending by leaving close range. Nothing about vehicles though :)
 
Carolus said:
1a. The particle barbette. Reading the rules my understanding is that it can't be used for point defence, only laser turrets can. But is there any logical reason for this (other than balance)? It seems to me that point it toward a missile should work.
1b. The particle barbette is a radiation weapon. The radiation trait says the effect extends a number of metres equal to the number of dice the weapon rolls for damage, but if it's destructive this is multiplied by ten. Should the particle barbette be considered a destructive weapon for the purpose of this trait? Compared to traveller-scale weaponry it does multiply its damage by ten, as a destructive weapon would. And it would make quite a big difference, 4 meters might not even hit anyone onboard an enemy vessel, but 40 meters is a whole different story.

A:) Lasers have an inherent bonus to gunnery checks and presumably low latency compared to other weapons.
B:) Particle Barbette has the weapon external to the ships with the 5dt representing the interconnect, further vehicle / ship weapons include shielding where such shielding would render personal radiation weapons too unwieldy.

2. Sticking to spacecraft weapons: the missile rack turrets. If you have a triple missile rack turret, I'm assuming you can fire 3 missiles a round, but for how long? The description of the number of missiles it can hold is a bit ambiguous. Does it hold 12 missiles per missile rack, or per turret independent of the number of missile racks it contains?

There are two parts to this.

1.) Each rack is just that a rack of missiles, this is considered ready use which is important if the ship doesn't have an ammunition magazine.
2.) If a ship dedicates displacement to missile ammunition, it is assumed to have an auto-loader.

3. Last question about spacecraft weapons: the fusion barbette in highguard has the radiation trait, but the bays do not. Is either a misprint?

The bays are supposed to have radiation trait as well.

4. On the topic of space combat: the close combat/dogfighting rules. I'm I correct that when fighting takes place at close (or adjecent) range the travellers can still fire weapons etc. once/round, meaning they can effectively fire their weapons 60 times faster than at a longer range? And how do you actually end a dogfight you don't want to be in? Can you simply expend thrust? Seeing as the rounds are now so much shorter it seems strange that the same amount of thrust could simply put you at a longer range. Seeing as short range combat is probably coming up a lot in a piracy campaign, I thought I'd better be certain.

Normal ship combat over distances require more time to track and coordinate then in a dog fight, not to mention a dogfight provides more opportunities to take shots.

Combat ships tend to have thrust 6 and fighters tend to have thrust 9, so unlikely to pull distance without some deception.

Commercial vessels tend to have thrust 3 or lower so not much chance to pull range without again some deception.

5. Regarding critical hits on spacecraft: I get that they are cumulative, but if a vessel immidiatly gets a crit of a severity higer than 1, do I also have to apply the lower effects? For example, say that an undamaged ship suffers a crit of severity 2 against the sensors, does that ship now have sensors that are inoperative beyond medium range AND DM-2 on any sensor checks it could still make? If the same undamaged ship suffered a severity 3 crit against its power plant instead, would it's power be down by 70% and its thrust reduced by 3, or should I simply apply the worst modifier if it's mentioned multiple times?
Use the most severe crit effect, with each further critical of equal value or less increasing the crit severity by 1 step or if the critical severity is greater, apply the new critical severity.

6. The central supply catalogue introduces special ammunitions and states that any heavy weapons that specifically mention it may use variant ammo can use it. One of those heavy weapons is the machine gun (and its cousing, the rapid fire machine gun). One of my players claims that since it's a man-portable heavy weapon that mentions it may use variant ammo, he can use any of the variant ammo suitable for the heavy weapons catagory. While technically correct, to me this seems... odd. It seems to me the machine gun was meant to use the rifle catagory of variant ammunitions, as I can't inmagine a machine gun creating the effects of say a fuel air bomb. It's probably one of those questions where it's up to the referee, but I would like to hear some opions on how others would handle it.

Some of the variant ammunition have specific restrictions as to what weapons may be used.
 
Moppy said:
However, while looking for an explicit rule, I did a cmd+F in High Guard, there's an explicit note in the Fighter Squadron rules, under Dogfight, about ending by leaving close range. Nothing about vehicles though :)
Quite, but how do you move out of range if both craft are equally fast? It would require both sides breaking off, same as both sides choosing not to roll for dogfight.
 
Just like fighter craft do today, mislead your opponent on the direction your going in and then attempt to jam his sensors so he follows where he thinks you should be.
 
AntoherDilbert is right in that there's no written rule to cover disengagement. The pilot skill made in dogfight rules is to compete for attack DM, and you cease to use the regular rules, which prevents you from changing range.
 
You can always agree to disengage:

Core said:
Dogfight: A vehicle within 1 km and within one Speed Band of another may initiate a dogfight.

Core said:
If one of the vehicles’ drivers chooses to initiate a dogfight again in the following combat round, ...


If neither side want a dogfight, there won't be one.
 
Condottiere said:
Thus would be where initiative is rewarded; the other pilot would have to play catch up to re engage.
Unfortunately it's the other way around: the lower initiative moves last, so controls relative movement.
 
AnotherDilbert said:
You can always agree to disengage:

Core said:
Dogfight: A vehicle within 1 km and within one Speed Band of another may initiate a dogfight.

Core said:
If one of the vehicles’ drivers chooses to initiate a dogfight again in the following combat round, ...


If neither side want a dogfight, there won't be one.

Spacecraft automatically shift to dogfighting rules depending on range band (close range combat section of space combat). It's not optional for them. Says it ends when one side leaves range but I can't see a way to do that, as you can't spend thrust to change range band in dogfight due to the close range rules replacing the regular turn sequence (says regular turn sequence isn't used). RAW it's pewpew until one side is no more.

Vehicles/Travellers might be different.
 
Moppy said:
Spacecraft automatically shift to dogfighting rules depending on range band (close range combat section of space combat). It's not optional for them.
Certainly, spacecraft can't fight at Close range except by Dogfight, by RAW. But you can always decline to fight. If both sides decline to fight there will be no dogfight.
 
AnotherDilbert said:
Moppy said:
Spacecraft automatically shift to dogfighting rules depending on range band (close range combat section of space combat). It's not optional for them.
Certainly, spacecraft can't fight at Close range except by Dogfight, by RAW. But you can always decline to fight. If both sides decline to fight there will be no dogfight.

I would run it that way because it would be silly otherwise, but that's RAI.

RAW the space close combat rules don't provide the oppportunity to make this decision as they replace the combat steps, and the decision to end a fight when there are no more fighters is defined in the combat steps. It's one of those bugs humans will automatically fix without thinking, but will break a computer.
 
Whoever wins initiative, whether through sheer piloting skill, cunning ship tactics, superior maneuverability, faster ship, and/or a controller giving him guidance (fleet tactics), that should be the attempt to break out of the furball.
 
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