Anti-air weapons

B

barnest2

Mongoose
I'm currently in the middle of an essay on strategic air warfare and its proponents and it made me think.
Do any of the books have references too, talk about, or even detail anti air weaponry? Especially that used against Star-ships, but I mean atmospheric craft as well..
I assume CsC has AA missiles, but I'm not sure, and I just wondered :D
(especially since I'm planning on having some very low tech appearing at some point.)
 
The Central Supply Catalogue indeed has a number of anti-aircraft and
anti-starship weapons, up to an Orbital Defence Cannon with a range of
5 km (a bit low, in my view) and a damage of 20d6.
 
thats... stupid...
and is being changed in my book... seeing as I bet a modern arty gun could get a shell higher than that.... or we could design one at the very least...
 
kind of like this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP

perhaps using a form of canister to take out satellites and LEO ships? on a lo-tech world?
maybe with rocket assisted rounds for higher altitudes?
 
Ha, that's awesome... I may have to steal that, thankee...

I was flicking through my copy of the CsC (just managed to find it :evil:)
The support weapons and artillery... is it just me or are they at tech levels too high for them really... I mean surely there should be a MG at tl4?
And some artillery? other than the field gun I mean...
 
As far as I know the first real machine gun was the one designed by Ma-
xim in 1885, and the description of TL 4 at the beginning of the Central
Supply Catalogue explicitly mentions "primitive machine guns".
 
prior to Maxim, there was the 'Gatling gun' that saw use in the American Civil War (1860's), but it was not self powered like the maxim; it was hand cranked, but could still put out a fair decent rate of fire.

The Puckle Gun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_Gun
patented in 1718 had a high rate of fire compared to other muskets.

The Belton Flintlock used stacking rounds like today's modern 'MetalStorm' gun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belton_flintlock

and then there are volley guns such as first used in 1339

Of course, I'm assuming that 'machine gun' is meant to describe a rapid firing gun regardless of how the actual mechanism works.....

and a bit of trivia...
the term "chain gun" is copyrighted by McDonnell Douglas
 
There were some descriptions of PAD (Planetary Aerospace Defence) systems in the TNE books Smash and Grab and RC Equipment Guide. Mostly missiles, with nukes. It also talks about deep meson batteries within mountains used to snipe at incomming ships - shoot through the planet and all that...
 
Ranges for a lot of "low-tech" weapons are ridiculously off in CSC and Mercenary. They have 150mm howitzer TL7 at a range of 24km. Which wasn't bad, if you are looking at say howitzer tech from 1930s.

Today South Africa G6s can hit targets out to 70km (with the newer shells and gun tech).

The TL10 disposable MLRS pod has a rnage of 15km... except the TL7 version of MLRS (in reality) can range 30+ clicks.

You should definitely adjust the ranges to fit your campaign.
 
Not apologizing for the ranges and such (I've heard the same criticisms earlier and not seen the actual books) but I've wondered if maybe the intent was they be treated as the optimum range and penalties be imposed for exceeding them?

per Core pg 64 (personal combat)

Each attack form has an optimum range (or spread of ranges).
Attacks within this range have a +0 DM. Attacks outside the
optimum range suffer a negative DM.
Click to expand...

The personal combat ranges table wouldn't apply of course, and the space combat ranges table is no more appropriate either (unless using space combat weapons, presumably in vacuum). One might well need different ranges tables for each large weapon, but was there at least a generic vehicle combat ranges table published? Something between personal and space ranges?

Granted though, some of the range examples I have seen used to critique the books are well out of scale unless a range table was pretty open.
 
far-trader said:
Not apologizing for the ranges and such (I've heard the same criticisms earlier and not seen the actual books) but I've wondered if maybe the intent was they be treated as the optimum range and penalties be imposed for exceeding them?
Click to expand...

Don't know. The newest (TL 7) U.S. 155 system has ~4 meter accuracy at its max range. I think the authors were just looking at extremely dated equip when they wrote much of the info.
 
It is a bit strange anyway. The orbital defence cannon with the 5 km range
mentioned above uses armour piercing ammunition, which would normal-
ly mean that it has to be highly accurate at that range, since "flak" usually
uses other ammunition which does not require such an accuracy.
 
rust said:
It is a bit strange anyway. The orbital defence cannon with the 5 km range
mentioned above uses armour piercing ammunition, which would normal-
ly mean that it has to be highly accurate at that range, since "flak" usually
uses other ammunition which does not require such an accuracy.
Click to expand...

Could be proximity fuse with AP flechettes?
 
DFW said:
Could be proximity fuse with AP flechettes?
Click to expand...
Could be, although I find it difficult to imagine flechettes with a damage
potential of 20d6 in a 26 mm round, even at TL 14. I may well be wrong,
I do not know much about artillery, but somehow this does not seem all
that plausible to me.
 
rust said:
DFW said:
Could be proximity fuse with AP flechettes?
Click to expand...
Could be, although I find it difficult to imagine flechettes with a damage
potential of 20d6 in a 26 mm round, even at TL 14. I may well be wrong,
I do not know much about artillery, but somehow this does not seem all
that plausible to me.
Click to expand...

Oops. Didn't notice the 26mm. Pretty small for a 5km AA round. That's about the size of a current day air to air fighter cannon. The A-10's cannon is 30mm.
 
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