Firing Ship Mounted Guns at People

[dmccoy1693]

I had my first run of Traveller last night (atleast since the final book came out). It went well. Very well. Esp considering I never played in a Traveller game before. One problem that came up: a player jumped in the ship's gun turrent and tried to fire it at the BBG (despite the fact the ship was still on the ground and he was just holding a gun, aka not in a ship). I didn't anticipate that so I didn't think to look that up in the rules beforehand and I couldn't find that quickly. Plus it only did 1d6 damage. Obviously a ship mounted weapon is going to do more damage then a slug pistol.

Did I miss some rules or how would you rule that?

 

[Jame Rowe]

Treat it as a FGMP without the radiation.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Ship weapons against a person means a hit and the person is dead, toast, dust and gone. You won't even find a shoe.

I have seen various scaling factors for these things 1:5, 1:10 etc.

Using 1:5, that means that 1 point of ship weapons damage is 25d6 of personal damage = DEAD

MAYBE someone in BD will survive a Sandcaster hit, but even then it will be bad.

There are not many instant kill things in Traveller, but this is one of them in my book.

 

[Myrm]

Its buried in the ship weapons section somewhere when talking about boarding actions....sandcasters do something like 8d6 and actual weapons do a multiple (50 is the number in my head right now - Ill check the book later).

 

[EDG]

Yeah, don't even roll, if it hits their general area they're toast.

 

[LotusBlossom]

Its 50x dmg, as Myrm already alluded to.

See page 151 , the grey box bottom right.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Thanks everyone.

 

[ninthcouncil]

I'd say, however, that firing ship mounted weapons dirtside in any sort of public fashion is likely to attract the ire of the local authorities. If you're mad enough to do it inside a starport, expect to be staring at some heavy Imperial ordnance pretty soon...

 

[dmccoy1693]

I'd say, however, that firing ship mounted weapons dirtside in any sort of public fashion is likely to attract the ire of the local authorities. If you're mad enough to do it inside a starport, expect to be staring at some heavy Imperial ordnance pretty soon...

The local authorities were already present. The gun was aimed at the local authorities. :shock: :lol:

 

[atpollard]

The local authorities were already present. The gun was aimed at the local authorities. :shock: :lol:

MY local authorities would return fire with planetary defense weapons. Imagine the official reaction (IRL) to parking a quad 50 AA gun at a major airport and shooting down a coast guard helicopter. The Armed Forces would not be happy.

 

[dmccoy1693]

It was just a test run. Mostly just to use the rules instead of just reading them and hoping you know what you talk about. We're meeting again in 2 weeks for the first actual session. I wanted to end it off with "you all get away and fly away into the rising sun." That's what it allowed.

The player in that seat never fired the gun at the BBG but instead fired it at locking mechanism locking the ship inplace. But it almost happened.

 

[klingsor]

Would a landed ship even be powered up (and incidentally how long would that take) and would all a ships weapons not be locked down until the skipper turned a key, or the equivalent, to allow them to go weapons free.

You seem to have a fairly typical bunch of players though.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Would a landed ship even be powered up (and incidentally how long would that take) and would all a ships weapons not be locked down until the skipper turned a key, or the equivalent, to allow them to go weapons free.

You seem to have a fairly typical bunch of players though.

Ship was powered up, engines warm and everything. The player that did that, I've seen her do stuff like this before. Quite typical of her. She's the demolitions person, the one advocating to burn everything down, etc. But she does it in a fun way. She also paid a bunch of street urchins to go to every computer terminal and tell it that the BBG "sucks."

 

[rje]

Toast.

Maybe -- and only if I'd had a bad day -- I would impose a penalty for having to swing the turret gun around and aim a big 'ol ship's weapon at very small targets at very close range... and I'd make sure there was no possible problem with collateral damage, 'cuz if she blows up a multistory building right next door the thing might fall on the ship...

...but typically, just Toast.

 

[atpollard]

Would a landed ship even be powered up (and incidentally how long would that take) and would all a ships weapons not be locked down until the skipper turned a key, or the equivalent, to allow them to go weapons free.

As a short hop down this bunny trail, it once occured to me to design a TL 15 ship with no landing gear. It was alway's powered up and always hovered above the ground. I mean how much can 1 ton of fuel per month cost and how hard can it be to keep the tanks from going dry?

 

[Beastttt]

back in the day of CT we had a house rule on building ships
you could have 1 man portable weapon hard point per 100 tons
it took no space or wt but was run from the normal turret weapons station

 

[klingsor]

I was thinking about this today, it is a problem I might encounter myself so I want to be prepared. It would seem that no port would want a ship to land with potentially usable weapons so if I may suggest the captain has his key to lock the weapons down and the port can tell this via the datalink that controls landing. Should the ship go weapons hot then the port will get rather upset and probably press the panic button - which might be linked to COACC and the planetary defences. Accepting port landing control might even lock them down automatically.

I am not entirely convinced myself, it lets out information and potentially lets in control that could be abused.

 

[ninthcouncil]

It seems to me likely that Imperial regulations would require ship weaponry to have a "neutral" position from which it could not be fired, and which would be detectable to observers. Ships entering port would be required to place all weapons in this state with severe penalties for non-compliance.

There remains the question of backwards planets with poor starports possessing negligible capacity to respond to an aggressive vessel - where COACC is a couple of biplanes with Lewis guns.... Here I guess you have to rely on the deterrent of being hunted down by Imperial authorities once the misdeed becomes known.

 

[rust]

In my setting a report on the status of a ship's weapons is a part of the
transponder signal, and any foreign ship en route to the planet with ac-
tivated weapons systems is treated as a hostile intruder: Fired upon by
the sentry satellites and intercepted by armed spacecraft.

A ship without transponder (basically illegal) or a malfunctioning trans-
ponder (very rare) is ordered by the navigation satellites to stay away
from the planet, power down and wait for an (armed) inspection team.

Tampering with the transponder, which is checked as a part of the rou-
tine inspection of each landed foreign starship, is a capital crime and
gives the captain and the officers of the ship a new career opportunity
in deep sea mining or a similar interesting job.

 

[GypsyComet]

I'd say, however, that firing ship mounted weapons dirtside in any sort of public fashion is likely to attract the ire of the local authorities. If you're mad enough to do it inside a starport, expect to be staring at some heavy Imperial ordnance pretty soon...

To heck with the weapons. If you power up the active radar on the ground for a space-range target acquisition ping aimed even vaguely close to horizontal you'll be rattling windows, peeling paint, and cooking unprotected organics (ie. people). Now imagine the fine for doing that in an enclosed bay in a high port...