Art: Starship Grade Missiles/Torpedoes

It seems to me that the best way to get good missile performance in Traveller is to power them with maneuver drives and batteries. Looking at figures forwhat the batteries are supposed to be able to do, and that seems to add up pretty well.

Long digression:

Since all Traveller batteries are rechargeable, that creates the interesting possibility that if missiles are dodged, run out of power before reaching a target, or otherwise survive a battle, they could be recovered and fired again, if a sufficiently fast missile recovery drone can be dispatched to go after them. That may not be economical, but a missile would always be recoverable, even if the chase drone had worse acceleration than the missile. (Example: a 6 G, 6 turn missile would reach a velocity of 36 and travel a distance of 108. A 3 G, unlimited endurance drone would take 12 turns to reach a velocity of 36, over a distance of 216. From the point where the velocity matched, matching the location would be just like traveling from one point in space to another. Grab it with a magnetic clamp and head back to a salvage station.

Missile recovery wouldn't make sense for starships on campaign, but it might make sense if they were on a long-term patrol, and it would for system defense fleets. It would all depend on the cost of a missile relative to the cost of a drone, and the number of friendly missiles (retrieving enemy missiles might be a bad idea) that are launched but make it through battles without being destroyed.
 
Fuel was the stumbling block I have run into every time I try to figure out how the missiles MIGHT work. cramming enough fuel to produce 12 gees of constant acceleration for an hour would require a very potent fuel. Currently, our biggest rockets cant match that sort of performance.

The drive itself may also help - a reactor, M-drive and fuel might be more compact if it only has to produce 12 G for an hour once. Much like an F1 car engine, it's essentially designed to get across the line and then break down almost immediately.... Almost any tool can be made more power- or volume- efficient if it doesn't have to survive the process of being used.

Since all Traveller batteries are rechargeable
All 'normal' batteries are rechargeable - again, if you want higher performance in a given volume (since, if we're talking M-drives, dTons matters rather than mass) you may choose a one-use thing (a TL12 equivalent of a thermal battery or something which damages itself in the process of discharging.

Plus, I'd be very hesitant to try and recover a missile once it's been armed!
 
Fuel was the stumbling block I have run into every time I try to figure out how the missiles MIGHT work. cramming enough fuel to produce 12 gees of constant acceleration for an hour would require a very potent fuel. Currently, our biggest rockets cant match that sort of performance.

The drive itself may also help - a reactor, M-drive and fuel might be more compact if it only has to produce 12 G for an hour once. Much like an F1 car engine, it's essentially designed to get across the line and then break down almost immediately.... Almost any tool can be made more power- or volume- efficient if it doesn't have to survive the process of being used.

Since all Traveller batteries are rechargeable
All 'normal' batteries are rechargeable - again, if you want higher performance in a given volume (since, if we're talking M-drives, dTons matters rather than mass) you may choose a one-use thing (a TL12 equivalent of a thermal battery or something which damages itself in the process of discharging.

Plus, I'd be very hesitant to try and recover a missile once it's been armed!
 
Infojunky said:
I like the Vanes.....

I have been toying with the idea of adding Vanes to all of my freeflight Grav vehicles...

Yeah but vanes make sense in a atmosphere where they act as air brakes to change direction as they do on a plane. They make no sense in space where there is nothing for them to react with. I am all for creativity but only one where 'form follows function'. Now the function here could be to detonate the missile head after it penetrates past the ships bulkhead and armour for shrapnel anti personnel missiles or something like that. That might make sense.
 
nats said:
Infojunky said:
I like the Vanes.....

I have been toying with the idea of adding Vanes to all of my freeflight Grav vehicles...

Yeah but vanes make sense in a atmosphere where they act as air brakes to change direction as they do on a plane. They make no sense in space where there is nothing for them to react with. I am all for creativity but only one where 'form follows function'. Now the function here could be to detonate the missile head after it penetrates past the ships bulkhead and armour for shrapnel anti personnel missiles or something like that. That might make sense.

Okay to repeat myself I've explained why they are there and what the function is....

nats said:
Infojunky said:
I like the Vanes.....

I have been toying with the idea of adding Vanes to all of my freeflight Grav vehicles...

Yeah but vanes make sense in a atmosphere where they act as air brakes to change direction as they do on a plane. They make no sense in space where there is nothing for them to react with. I am all for creativity but only one where 'form follows function'. Now the function here could be to detonate the missile head after it penetrates past the ships bulkhead and armour for shrapnel anti personnel missiles or something like that. That might make sense.
wbnc said:
The vanes deployed fro the midline of the core section are grave plates by altering the "thrust" generated by each plate the flight controls can precisely alter the missile's flight path. grav plates are mounted on both sides of the vanes allowing them to be far more precise than a single sided vane alone.

the dark sections near the nose of each missile are additional grav plates for additional control of the missiles attitude in flight.
wbnc said:
nats said:
I would say the best use of the vanes would be for ortillery where they are shot out at the correct initial trajectory to the target and then the vanes are used for steering just like the laser guided munitions of today. That was the warhead can be kept to a maximum. But they serve no useful purpose in space.

A way to steer a missile in space other than vector thrusting would be either small reaction control thrusters or alternatively gyroscopic reaction control wheels. But I am not sure either of those would be all that useful for a fast missile - more useful for spaceships and large slow rockets.

In an atmosphere, they act as aerodynamic control surfaces but not in space the vanes are simply a mounting surface for grav plates.

The grav plates do not need to generate any considerable amount of thrust at all. In space other than the inertia of missile itself there is no resistance to changes in the direction the nose of the missile is pointed. the attitude control system does not have to generate any significant acceleration at all. the attitude control system only has to change which way the main motor is pointing.


The reaction drive is actually the means of controlling the flight path of the missile. the grav plates create a change in yaw, pitch, and roll, this points the reaction drive in the desired direction and it does the heavy lifting.

other systems such as vectored/gimballed motors and flywheels would be fine for slow steady changes in attitude. but a missile needs t make snap adjustments in its orientation, especially in its terminal attack run.
 
nats said:
Infojunky said:
I like the Vanes.....

I have been toying with the idea of adding Vanes to all of my freeflight Grav vehicles...

Yeah but vanes make sense in a atmosphere where they act as air brakes to change direction as they do on a plane. They make no sense in space where there is nothing for them to react with. I am all for creativity but only one where 'form follows function'. Now the function here could be to detonate the missile head after it penetrates past the ships bulkhead and armour for shrapnel anti personnel missiles or something like that. That might make sense.

It really depends on YOUR view of how Gravity Drives work. My version is that Vanes shape the thrust vector, providing precision control in the case of missiles in free flight.

In the case of more conventional Grav vehicles they provide control similar to a Helicopter's rotating wings.

In both cases they provide control over gravity instead Aeronautic forces, though with proper design they could do both.
 
Using batteries to power gravitic motors is viable, but aren't energy dense enough for high speed, even medium endurance.
 
Condottiere said:
Using batteries to power gravitic motors is viable, but aren't energy dense enough for high speed, even medium endurance.
I don't know how much energy batteries hold under Mongoose rules. Sure, real batteries have pretty modest energy density, but what kind of battery powers a PGMP?
 
Weapons are a discrete burst of power, with gravitic motors it's a constant drain, if you don't count basic.

And that's what's new in Mongoose Second, constant measurable energy drain.
 
Condottiere said:
Using batteries to power gravitic motors is viable, but aren't energy dense enough for high speed, even medium endurance.
That's kind of why I went with a Hybrid reaction/gravity system. Low power gravitcs,with very high power reaction drives...it allows for precise control and raw power without having to play too fast and loose with tech...well no faster or looser than we already play.


AndrewW said:
steve98052 said:
Sure, real batteries have pretty modest energy density, but what kind of battery powers a PGMP?

Traveller Core Rulebook said:
It is powered by a built-in micro-fusion generator...


Hmmmm marine grunts running around with portable fusion reactors what could go wrong...
 
I forgot about those things.

It does prove that you now can scale fusion generators in Mongoose Second, it's a question of cost and power output.

But having a gravitic motor tends to make it more a cruise missile.
 
Condottiere said:
You utilize cruise missiles differently, otherwise why bother putting in a more expensive propulsion system.

Still not seeing you objection. Cruise missiles thrust all the way to their targets.
 
Infojunky said:
Condottiere said:
You utilize cruise missiles differently, otherwise why bother putting in a more expensive propulsion system.
Still not seeing you objection. Cruise missiles thrust all the way to their targets.
A cruise missile only has meaning in atmosphere. It's a self-piloting airplane with a warhead. The alternative is a ballistic missile, which is a rocket powered and guided only in boost phase, after which it coasts under the influence of gravity, sometimes with limited terminal guidance (particularly in the case of multiple warhead MIRV missiles).

With reaction engines -- real life -- a space missile would be mostly a ballistic missile. With maneuver drives, it's under power throughout its flight, not ballistic, but because it's not under the influence of atmosphere it's also not a cruise missile.

It's a maneuver drive space missile.
 
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