Confused about how Gunner skills interact with weapon mounts

[MarcusIII]

The pilot has to line up the target with the weapon system.

Which is why he needs Gunnery training

 

[Sigtrygg]

Without a facing rule then the whole fixed mount paradigm is ridiculous.

Ship A is fleeing towards the 100D limit, ship B is in pursuit, both have fixed mounts.

Ship A, moving directly away from ship B can still fire is fixed mounts at ship B.

Ship A decides to fight so swings round and now accelerates towards ship B, somehow the fixed mounts magically now point in that direction.

Ship B decides to run back from whence it came and so swings around so it is now facing in the opposite direction, and tet once agin the fixed mounts can magically still hit.

Fixed mounts need a facing rule.

As to dogfighting, those rules are broken thanks to the change of time scale, they are ridiculous from an established in setting Newtonian movement paradigm, the only place for them is in the cartoon pew pew cinematic physics of a Star Wars like setting, which Traveller in all its nearly 50 years, has not been... until Mongoose decided to make it so.

By all means have dogfighting rules, but they should not be applied to the Third Imperium setting if you want to maintain "canon consistency" (nearly a fortnight and still hilarious)

 

[Condottiere]

This would be the ideal weapons layout.

If not, you have to design a spacecraft that will win initiative.

 

[MarcusIII]

In my game space combat rounds are 6 minutes long with the firing of the weapons taking place in a couple of seconds. So Newtonian movement is not a problem for fixed mount weapons. Spinning the ship to point the weapon takes but an instant. Then back to maneuvering.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

Just to add my two cents in- several years ago, I started installing sensors and fire control from the Vehicle Handbook on turrets and barbettes for improved engagement at Close and Adjacent ranges….anti-missile systems help too. These represented improvements in the otherwise static weapon mount system.

 

[rinku]

If you do want a rule re fixed mounts and firing, just assign a Thrust value to taking a shot with them. 0.1 Thrust for example.

Simple.

 

[Endie]

Without a facing rule then the whole fixed mount paradigm is ridiculous.

Ship A is fleeing towards the 100D limit, ship B is in pursuit, both have fixed mounts.

Ship A, moving directly away from ship B can still fire is fixed mounts at ship B.

Ship A decides to fight so swings round and now accelerates towards ship B, somehow the fixed mounts magically now point in that direction.

Ship B decides to run back from whence it came and so swings around so it is now facing in the opposite direction, and tet once agin the fixed mounts can magically still hit.

Fixed mounts need a facing rule.

As to dogfighting, those rules are broken thanks to the change of time scale, they are ridiculous from an established in setting Newtonian movement paradigm, the only place for them is in the cartoon pew pew cinematic physics of a Star Wars like setting, which Traveller in all its nearly 50 years, has not been... until Mongoose decided to make it so.

By all means have dogfighting rules, but they should not be applied to the Third Imperium setting if you want to maintain "canon consistency" (nearly a fortnight and still hilarious)

I didn't think that grav drives had a facing rule in MgT? If that's the case, the ship can maintain thrust in one direction while rotating to unveil other turrets. If not, then for a few seconds in every six minutes the ship rotates to unveil other turrets and loses a percent or so of the thrust for that turn. A rounding error.

Most players clearly don't want to run a complex space sim with vectors and facings, judging by the popularity and commercial success of MgT over any alternative Traveller ruleset these days, but the extra complexity that you want from a game was delivered in Megatraveller with its rule for the percentage of turrets that can bear, so have at it! Does T5 support it out of the box?

 

[rinku]

Percentage of turrets was a CT High Guard rule, but only applied to big ships. It was assumed that the usual ships that could only harry a handful of turrets could always bring them to bear.

Certain circumstances will cause a distinction between fixed mounts and turret mounts:

* Dogfighting, or other close maneuvering.
* Damage to the ship's drives.
* Damage to the ship's ability to change heading (attitude jets, gyros etc).
* Needing to orient the ship in one particular heading for reasons. Perhaps to shield a particular part of the hull from incoming fire? Perhaps there is NO spare Thrust - you HAVE to max it out on the current vector and can only spin the ship around the vector of thrust.

And a special mention should be made of ordnance. Most missiles won't matter if they're turret based or fixed mount based. Missile turrets appear to mostly be a weapons option convenience; Turrets are the standard weapon mount, so it makes sense to offer a Missile option to go with the laser ones. Sandcasters potentially could work in fixed mounts, but in practice you may well want to launch in *THAT* direction while pointed in *THIS* direction, so may as well stick em in a turret too.

 

[rinku]

I didn't think that grav drives had a facing rule in MgT? If that's the case, the ship can maintain thrust in one direction while rotating to unveil other turrets. If not, then for a few seconds in every six minutes the ship rotates to unveil other turrets and loses a percent or so of the thrust for that turn. A rounding error.

They can thrust in any direction but at a reduced value away from where the thruster plates are placed, which are usually aft.

There's a discussion on it on HG p45, under "Concealed Maneuvre Drive". 100% thrust aft, 25% thrust laterally and 10% thrust forwards for a normal setup with the thruster plates on the stern. Those numbers date back to MegaTraveller days at least; they were stated in the DGP Starship Operator's Manual Vol 1.

So in practical terms, turning the ship to point at a target (which itself can be done pretty quickly), doing something like firing, and then resuming the original heading to apply more thrust will mean a period where the ship was not thrusting in the desired direction, or doing so at a reduced rate.

Of course, if you're using Thrust for evasion, you can probably get off some shots while you evade without making any special accounting of it. But otherwise you would need to lose some thrust to do it. I am assuming normal at range combat here - Dogfighting assumes a whole lot of thrust use to get Advantage and covers turrets vs fixed weapons specifically.

 

[Condottiere]

Dogfighting divides the window(s) of opportunity to one sixtieth of default.

You can't cheat on magazine, nor power, usage.

They're limited resources, within their context.