Combined Turret Batteries

[Ol'Weedy]

I seem to recall my long lost original LBB#5 (Original High Guard), having a rule about combining multiple turrets into a single attack roll (i.e. battery fire). I don't think it's mentioned in Mongoose 2nd edition.
I also can't recall if it worked like a single combined turret, or just gave a plus on the attack dice.
With the first option, a pair of triple pulse turrets would be doling out 2D+10 damage on a hit.
A pair of triple fusion gun turrets, would belch out a warming 4D+20 per hit + radiation, and therefore a guaranteed crit on anything under 600 tons... once you install the requisite 2nd fusion plant.
If this isn't all a figment of my imagination...

 

[wingsday]

This is sort of the baseline functioning of the fleet combat system, except you group all weapons of a given type or scale, such as all the turret mounted pulse lasers, all of the large bay railguns, all of the ion barbettes etc.
In this case you just multiply the damage by the number of weapons being fired after subtracting armor but before applying screens

 

[Condottiere]

I rather doubt thirty twenty millimetre Bofors would penetrate battleship side armour.

Probably there's some maximum damage point, and increasing chance to hit.

 

[Galadrion]

I rather doubt thirty twenty millimetre Bofors would penetrate battleship side armour.

Probably there's some maximum damage point, and increasing chance to hit.

Since you're supposed to subtract the armor value from the weapon damage before multiplying for the number of weapons, lighter weapon fire (i.e. turrets) will mostly just bounce off of heavy warship armor, no matter how many weapons are used. (Oh sure, you'll get the occasional golden BB, but for the most part strong enough armor will simply shrug off civilian-scale weapons fire.)

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

The new Imperial Navy book has battery rules.

 

[Condottiere]

Multiple repulsor bays can stack to hold larger ships.


Presumably, not just turrets can be coordinated and routed to a single fire control console.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

The Imperial Navy rules lets you cut down on number of required gunners, and offers two new types of attack.

Focused battery fire for additional damage, or dispersed for increased hit chance.

 

[Shadowblayde99]

Hi. Just been reading the turret rules. It doesn't seem to make sense that a single pulse laser does 2D damage but having 3 pulse lasers in a triple turret doesn't do 6D damage but instead does 2D + 4. Any reason for this?

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, it wouldn't do 6D6. It would do 2D6 three times. An important distinction because of armor.

But the main reason for that is simplicity. It avoids needing to make 3 to hit rolls, 3 damage rolls, 3 armor calculations, 3 damage resolution rolls, etc for each turret. If there is some "realism" argument, I am unaware of it.

 

[Vormaerin]

Hi. Just been reading the turret rules. It doesn't seem to make sense that a single pulse laser does 2D damage but having 3 pulse lasers in a triple turret doesn't do 6D damage but instead does 2D + 4. Any reason for this?

But if you want a rationalization, though, here's one:

The gunner is at the fire control console trying to hit a small, fast moving target at ranges where it is just a sensor blip. Each roll of the dice does not reflect one pull of the trigger. It is six minutes (a space combat turn) of the turret firing based on a firing pattern established by the gunner that is designed to bracket the possible paths of the ship being targeted.

A triple turret is not firing 3 shots simultaneously. It is increasing the number of shots in the array. This, on average, results in a few more hits but not three times as many. This average increase in effectiveness amounts to +2 per additional weapon system on that turret.

 

[Condottiere]

I wouldn't count on the game mechanics making actual sense.

The reason we tend to install multiple barrels, and/or increase the rate of fire, is to increase the chances of hitting something.

It's possible that a subsequent round hits a weakened area.

If multiple shots are fired from an energized weapon system, you either have to clarify or recalculate the power input.

 

[J. L. Brown]

The gunner is at the fire control console trying to hit a small, fast moving target at ranges where it is just a sensor blip.

Under those circumstances, fine. But the general rule for auto-fire or extra weapons in a turret also apply even when you are firing at a group of targets who have moved to point-blank range in an attempt to melee, or when a scout has been unwillingly pulled into a bay on an enemy ship. Such 'target rich environments' create situations where a jam or other weapon malfunction is more likely than a miss -- and yet each extra 4D bullet fired only manages to do 1 damage.

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, you aren't firing at a group of targets with burst fire. Hitting multiple targets is full autofire.

But, yeah, it is designed to be game-able, not optimally realistic. It is designed to be easy to use (one die roll sequence, not 3) and make automatic weapons actually usable not instant death in a game where 20hp is normal. Traveller combat is already on the higher end of the lethality scale for gaming. Making it more so does not seem overly useful.

But if you want to be able to hit your players' characters for 4D6 x 3 instead of 4d6+3, it easy to house rule.

 

[J. L. Brown]

But, yeah, it is designed to be game-able, not optimally realistic. It is designed to be easy to use (one die roll sequence, not 3)...

To a large degree, this is perfectly understandable. Speeding things up at the table, and making calculations easier to get right, is a good thing.

... and make automatic weapons actually usable not instant death in a game where 20hp is normal. Traveller combat is already on the higher end of the lethality scale for gaming. Making it more so does not seem overly useful.

This is where we diverge. Traveller combat punishes bad decisions. If the players ever get into a situation where their Far Trader is trading fire with a Tigress, then they deserve to die -- no exceptions, no die-rolls, no 'oh, but we are players so we get to be special' crap; just fiery death. Charging across an open area to melee an emplaced automatic support weapon is similar; don't do it -- or arrange to have smoke coverage, good armor, an overwhelming advantage of numbers, support of protected assets from your side, and use of what cover there is. Doing stupid stuff has harsh consequences.

By the same token, it is easy to imagine fairly common-place scenarios where the players could get short-shrift from the current rules -- a merchant facing a similar vessel recently turned into an impromptu pirate, or a wilderness expedition where the encamped travellers are charged by a huge wave of TL 0 whatsit tribesmen. In these cases the players are right to expect that the time, resources, and effort they have invested in better equipment will give actually better performance. The same '... actually usable and not instant death ... ' line of reasoning could be used to make FGMP-15s do one point of damage, and that seems counterproductive.

 

[Vormaerin]

You would use full auto, not burst fire, against the swarms. Burst Fire is a single target attack.

Regardless, do what you want. Characters are generally too accurate to start with (because shooting and missing as often as really happens is unfun), so I don't care that burst fire is only slightly better than single shots.

 

[Condottiere]

Y'all recall, that this happens over an expanse of six minutes.

Mostly.

 

[Vormaerin]

Y'all recall, that this happens over an expanse of six minutes.

Mostly.

That was my original point. He switched the topic to automatic personal weapons.

 

[Condottiere]

There's always dogfight mode.

This is where how the power pool gets distributed, gets very interesting.

 

[J. L. Brown]

That was my original point. He switched the topic to automatic personal weapons.

Because the rules for automatic weapons do not distinguish between personal weapons, vehicular weapons, and ship-scale weapons. The same rules govern automatic fire for all of them; and the same rules about multi-mount weapons govern all of them.

The rules as written incorporate some ridiculous ideas in the name of 'simplicity' -- like full auto-fire can only hit multiple targets if they are all within 6m of each other. This worked well for the one specific case of close-range SMG fire, and becomes less applicable to a multi-man support weapon firing at hundreds of meters, is wildly inappropriate with vehicular weapons, and is blatantly unacceptable at ship-combat scales.

The idea that a ship firing multiple weapons in a turret only score one additional point of damage per die of additional weapon fire is one of those ridiculous 'simplifications'. It pretends that there is never a 'no-miss edge case' where the damage would matter, and it interacts poorly with High Yield and Very High Yield weapons which cannot even score a '1' on their damage dice. I would rather that the authors gave us something more complex but believable. I can pre-calculate the abilities of the player's ship, and doing so presents no appreciable burden; whereas having to make up a house rule to cover scenarios which the authors of the rules ignored is much more work,

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, it is possible that most people don't want your thing that needs to be pre-calculated, especially if it applies to personal weapons. That's generally been the history of Traveller. They publish a cool complicated system for vector based space combat, fancy gear designs, complex ground combat, whatever. And 10% of the population is thrilled and the rest chuck it out.

It is possible the current burst fire rules are super unpopular, but it isn't something I encounter complaints about very often in the various social media platforms I frequent that relate to Mongoose Traveller. I don't really care one way or the other about the complexity, but I don't feel any particular need to make the game more deadly for the PCs than it already is. And this applies for starships, too, as space combat is already a great way to go super bankrupt even if you win.