A medley of missiles
- Thread starter locarno24
- Start date
I would think that starships do have a moderate level of protection from EMP/radiation, what with them travelling between the stars and all that.
Merchies should have 'basic' level of sorts, giving them protection from the odd flare or what not, but maybe repeated blasts of EMP radiation could overwhelm them.
Military vessels would be of a tougher variety, hence more expensive, but be immune to emp totally.
I'm not a physicist, so I don't know of repeated and continual emp bursts would be able to overwhelm emp-resistant circuits and devices. I did read back in the late 80s that they had perfected synthetic diamond circuits for deployment in milsats.
But as far as I know, nobody has really tested the concept of continually nuking something just to see if it would break....
Merchies should have 'basic' level of sorts, giving them protection from the odd flare or what not, but maybe repeated blasts of EMP radiation could overwhelm them.
Military vessels would be of a tougher variety, hence more expensive, but be immune to emp totally.
I'm not a physicist, so I don't know of repeated and continual emp bursts would be able to overwhelm emp-resistant circuits and devices. I did read back in the late 80s that they had perfected synthetic diamond circuits for deployment in milsats.
But as far as I know, nobody has really tested the concept of continually nuking something just to see if it would break....
phavoc said:
Well, based on having to survive solar flares (imagine jumping into the inner system right in the middle of a large event) even civilian star ships would have to be all but immune. After 7000 years of star ship development/knowledge, this would be standard and relatively low tech (TL 9+). The main thing about repeated exposure to EMP would be replacement of surge arrestor/filters. These would be stocked in abundance in the spare parts bin of the engineering dept. on-board.
DFW said:
Well, that may be dividing line between military and civvy systems then. Civvy systems just can't take as much radiation before they fail, hence they are less costly, but cheaper.
Gives players something else to spend money on
"Gee Captain Bob, don't you think it would be cool if we could get some military-grade hyper-spanners for the Lollipop?"
"What, do you think I'm made of MCr?"
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Nope all ships should have the same level of rad protection. The military class ships should be more robust and designed to take combat damage where the civilian ones cannot but the radiation threat is the same to either type of ship.
No way are you going to get away with giving those passenger liners less protection
As an aside military ships should, but never seem to, have reinforced hull and structure along with hi tech hulls. 125% of hull price isn't that much compared to the price of the drives and so on.
A 400 ton merchy with 4 arm and 8 hull/structure (built cheap at tech 12) compared to a military 400 tonner with 6 arm, 10 hull and 12 structure. (tech 14 armour, hull and 5% structure.
No way are you going to get away with giving those passenger liners less protection
As an aside military ships should, but never seem to, have reinforced hull and structure along with hi tech hulls. 125% of hull price isn't that much compared to the price of the drives and so on.
A 400 ton merchy with 4 arm and 8 hull/structure (built cheap at tech 12) compared to a military 400 tonner with 6 arm, 10 hull and 12 structure. (tech 14 armour, hull and 5% structure.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
AndrewW said:
Yep but tech 14 fits with getting superdense armour and its the"below cutting edge but still good enough" tech level for a lot of the non line of battle warships
Hull costs should go below 100% though, 90/80/70/60/50% as you drop below tech 12, cheap crap for the tight wad merchants
The basic rules just give 500 rads protections from "spaceship armour", but thicker hulls would provide more protection. Given the huge amounts of rads a flare can output, what about reading that as 500 per armour point (plus 500 for just having a hull)? Even an armour 15 battleship would need to be wary - they'd have about 8 hours before they started to cook.
Edit: Just realised this is fully justified by the space combat rules, as armour is a -DM vs a crew radiation hit. 8 points or armour or more will fully protect a crew from non-meson radiation hits.
Edit: Just realised this is fully justified by the space combat rules, as armour is a -DM vs a crew radiation hit. 8 points or armour or more will fully protect a crew from non-meson radiation hits.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
rinku said:
A subsidised merchant has no armour and takes upwards of 6 hours to travel from 100D to a planet. Jump into a major flare and by the time the ships auto pilot had reached the planet's shadow the crew would be glowing in the dark nicely
Captain Jonah said:rinku said:
A subsidised merchant has no armour and takes upwards of 6 hours to travel from 100D to a planet. Jump into a major flare and by the time the ships auto pilot had reached the planet's shadow the crew would be glowing in the dark nicely
Yep, that's true. Time to face the fact that ships aren't designed so that passengers and merchant crew regularly die due to common, in system occurrences. EMP and ionizing radiation are WELL protected against by the standard civilian designs.
Well, the good news is that you might have an hour or two before the proton storm hits your ship*. The bad news being that you can't do much about the x- and gamma-ray spike that precedes it. By the time it's detected, you're in it.
A more practical option than heavy armour all over the ship would be a storm cellar of very dense, thick material in which the humans could ride out the storm.
Also, you would think that boosting out to 100D with the planet between you and the star would be a good spacefaring practice...
It's also quite likely that a few thousand more years of stellar science will come up with reasonably reliable forecasts, especially for major flares. You'll note that in the random encounter charts, you cannot encounter a flare in a settled system, and are only likely to encounter one in unexplored space. This suggests possible adventure seeds to me - such as having all shipping grounded while a particularly strong solar storm is erupting...
*(Or not. A proton storm in 2005 with the highest concentration of protons ever measured only took 15 minutes to reach Earth - half the speed of light!)
A more practical option than heavy armour all over the ship would be a storm cellar of very dense, thick material in which the humans could ride out the storm.
Also, you would think that boosting out to 100D with the planet between you and the star would be a good spacefaring practice...
It's also quite likely that a few thousand more years of stellar science will come up with reasonably reliable forecasts, especially for major flares. You'll note that in the random encounter charts, you cannot encounter a flare in a settled system, and are only likely to encounter one in unexplored space. This suggests possible adventure seeds to me - such as having all shipping grounded while a particularly strong solar storm is erupting...
*(Or not. A proton storm in 2005 with the highest concentration of protons ever measured only took 15 minutes to reach Earth - half the speed of light!)
While I can imagine that it will be possible to predict major flares of a wellrinku said:
studied star comparatively early, I wonder how this information could be
transmitted to all the neighbouring systems in time to prevent starships
from jumping right into the path of such a predicted flare.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
rust said:
Newsflash Regina - Spinward Marches.
Final casualty reports are now in from the massive solar flare that happened yesterday. Death toll is now 1,174 with more than 200 critical cases undergoing intensive treatment. The Surgeon General of Regina said he expected at least half of those to die.
Most of these casualties came from the Super Liner Star of Regina that jumped straight into the leading edge of the coronal ejection. 23 more ships were caught in the burst.
Planetary authorities have denied any responsibility for the deaths. They say the solar observation platform gave them a 12% chance of a flare within 7 to 10 days. A routine warning was posted but the flare erupted 6 days after the warning from the S.O.P. meaning it was impossible to warn ships that were jumping in at that time.
The S.O.P. warns that the star is entering a period of increased Solar activity where such flares will become far more common. Due to the inability of civilian ships to survive the radiation the whole system has been declared a red zone. The Imperial navy is bringing in some armoured troopships in a bid to evacuate the several million people living off world in the system. While many such as asteroid miners are able to find shelter from the flares the inability to provide them with vital supplies due to a minimum warning time of an hour issued by the S.O.P. scientists at the University of Regina means they must be evacuated to the planet.
The Regina commerce authority has issued a trade warning and it is expected that the Imperial central bank will need to pump Trillions of credits into the system to prevent bankruptcy caused by the red zone in the subsector capital.
Without a way to issue flare warnings weeks in advance all ships hulls have to be proof against radiation. How else do you skim gas giants
Thinking of it, if a major flare could indeed be predicted weeks ahead,
there could be a certain temptation to invite some guests for a surprise
party ... :twisted:
"Yes, Nasty Neighbour LIC will auction off a dozen brand new freigh-
ters for half price next week, you really should come over to our sys-
tem on thursday - and remember to bring your family ..."
there could be a certain temptation to invite some guests for a surprise
party ... :twisted:
"Yes, Nasty Neighbour LIC will auction off a dozen brand new freigh-
ters for half price next week, you really should come over to our sys-
tem on thursday - and remember to bring your family ..."
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
DFW said:
Oh I don't know, the Imperium seems rather fond of it.
Speaking as one of those profit minded merchant money grabbers I'm kind of partial to making oddles of cash without ending up as a puddle of glowing goo on the carpet of my ship :shock:
Captain Jonah said:Oh I don't know, the Imperium seems rather fond of it.
Speaking as one of those profit minded merchant money grabbers I'm kind of partial to making oddles of cash without ending up as a puddle of glowing goo on the carpet of my ship :shock:
Speaking of money grubbers & market based econ. Any merchant who DID have a sanely built starship would be able clean up in this situation and, charge TONS to move cargo in and out of these systems...
I think ECM / ECCM missiles were mentioned earlier, but here's a variant:
Laser-Designator Missle
This missile is designed to close to Adjacent with the target, pace it as long as it has fuel remaining, and 'paint' it with a low-power laser, making it more visible to attacking ships' sensors. So long as the missile remains intact and adjacent, ships attacking the target vessel gain a +1 DM to Sensors checks made to lock onto the target, and the target vessel takes a -1 DM to Seonsors checks made to jam sensor locks or jam incoming smart missiles.
As an alternative game-mechanic, the missile could be used to designate specific external ship systems, making a hit against that system more likely. Any roll for external damage on the Location Table which does not result in a hit upon the targeted system may be re-rolled, once only, and the second result used.
Laser-Designator Missle
This missile is designed to close to Adjacent with the target, pace it as long as it has fuel remaining, and 'paint' it with a low-power laser, making it more visible to attacking ships' sensors. So long as the missile remains intact and adjacent, ships attacking the target vessel gain a +1 DM to Sensors checks made to lock onto the target, and the target vessel takes a -1 DM to Seonsors checks made to jam sensor locks or jam incoming smart missiles.
As an alternative game-mechanic, the missile could be used to designate specific external ship systems, making a hit against that system more likely. Any roll for external damage on the Location Table which does not result in a hit upon the targeted system may be re-rolled, once only, and the second result used.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
MarkB said:
Well you are already laser painting the ship, Ladar is one of your targeting sensors. Targeting individual bits of a ship moving at a fraction (small but still) of light speed at ranges of a fraction of a light second is going to be a tiny bit hard, thats a star trek sort of thing
What we need is a real time and not as slow as light speed sensor but I have already been threatened with the cat for mentioning that one :shock:
Odd that startrek has much more advanced tech and yet they close to visual range to fight whereas Traveller has a 1970s version of 1950s tech in a 21st century game based on the 17th century and fights happen at a big chunk of a light second apart
Keep the ideas coming though.
