Game ruling - slow missiles & torps vs. fast ships

[Chas]

So we have the bulk of missiles and torps jogging along at thrust 6, with a vast number of ships now with M drives faster than that at thrust 7, 8 and 9.

So how to rule this in actual combat? Simplest would be that missiles only get one shot attack and are then ignored (which then of course makes a mockery of the smart trait). You might want to consider actual movement, if the player chooses a thrust of greater than 6 to out pace them. But do you need to get into an ongoing multiple salvo calculation as ships move in the first turn after being attacked then use thrust for defense and firing 2 turns later allowing missiles to catch up.

It could get messy.

I had suggested that missile thrust could be allowed to scale with TL. That initial though had just been something that might have been considered logical, just like reaction drives fuel advantage can reduce the tonnage. It might help in the combat sense. But will still leave the scenario being quite common with old TL vs new.

Thoughts?

 

[phavoc]

The speed was supposed to have been moved back to 10 as a default.

 

[Chas]

The speed was supposed to have been moved back to 10 as a default.

Ah, thanks. :arrow:

The issue will still occur with reaction drive ships, but I guess they'll be rare enough encounters that you can do the calculations for the relative movements on case by case mode.

 

[phavoc]

New missiles are supposed to be out, too. So I would very much hope that they include missiles that cannot be outrun.

 

[PsiTraveller]

New release of High Guard has Thrust of 6 missiles for the standard types, going up for the Long range and Higher Tech types.


The alternative is to state that 9% of a TL 13 missile is M Drive, and there is an energy storage to drive that Drive for X number of rounds and make missiles faster.

lets sat 10 missiles to a ton to make my math easy, so each missile is 1/10th of a ton. 10 percent of that is 1/100th of a ton.
M Drives cost 2000000 per ton, so 100 of that is 20 000 Credits worth of M Drive per missile, cost of a missile is 25 000 each, so you have 5000 credits to put in the capacitor, computer and the stuff that goes boom.

That's just off the cuff, it makes missiles more dangerous.

This could end up with Traveller becoming more and more like the Honor Harrington Universe with missile pods and Super Dreadnoughts.

 

[phavoc]

If missiles are still at speed 6 that should be (I hope) regarded as a typo. No ship should ever be able to outrun a missile of the same TL or greater (with the normal parameters of it not being fired at max range, not being a short-range missile, etc).

 

[Chas]

How this is managed is very important. Slow mutli-warhead torpedoes are going to be a primary weapon across many tech levels...

 

[Nerhesi]

How this is managed is very important. Slow mutli-warhead torpedoes are going to be a primary weapon across many tech levels...

Correct - I was just having the white spy vs black spy duel in my head about multi-warhead anything. Multi-warheads are so freakishly awesome - more so than sliced bread. Unless, speed becomes a very big issue for them, which I believe it should. If basically multi-warhead is relegated to slower, damaged, stationary targets then that seems balanced since they'll be "situational"

 

[Chas]

Well, this is in the Core Rule Book update and currently the bottom line:

Flee: A spacecraft under missile attack may simply turn
around and engage its manoeuvre drive, thrusting away
from the missiles. Missiles are extremely long-ranged
weapons and so it is not normally possible to outrange
a missile but this can buy enough time to prolong
electronic warfare or perhaps make a jump. This means
that ships that dedicate Thrust 5 or 6 to fleeing cannot
be caught by missiles at all – they are simply too fast.
Note that ships flying towards missiles will effectively
add their Thrust to that of the missile’s, shortening the
time to impact.

pg 162

This last line is particularly meaningful and one I had been thinking about. Gives a real edge to M 9 drives and high thrust designs.

Yet also here is a contradiction with the High Guard rules and what is stated above. The Core Rule book has:

Missiles effectively have a Thrust of 10 and will reach
their target a number of combat rounds after they have
been fired, as shown on the Missile Flight table.

pg. 161

 

[phavoc]

Flee: A spacecraft under missile attack may simply turn
around and engage its manoeuvre drive, thrusting away
from the missiles. Missiles are extremely long-ranged
weapons and so it is not normally possible to outrange
a missile but this can buy enough time to prolong
electronic warfare or perhaps make a jump. This means
that ships that dedicate Thrust 5 or 6 to fleeing cannot
be caught by missiles at all – they are simply too fast.
Note that ships flying towards missiles will effectively
add their Thrust to that of the missile’s, shortening the
time to impact.

pg 162

This is in contradiction of the star craft movement, too. If you have been travelling for say 10 G-turns towards your enemy and you engage in combat, you cannot turn around and 'thrust away' because you still have to expend 10 G-turns of thrust to come to a relative stop.

If the idea is to drop the newtonian thrust rules and essentially go with a reactionless drive system for combat, that's fine. At least put a few sentences in the starship combat section that states, essentially, for combat purposes ship drives are assumed to hold no residual acceleration values and do not follow the normal starship movement rules.

Or else just drop newtonian movement alltogether and state that M-drives are reactionless and fix the dichotomy once and for all.

 

[Nerhesi]

Or perhaps this is simply clever maneuvering as you don't need to flee - just exert Thrust=Missile-Thrust at an angle away from the missiles while still closing??

*ducks* I know... now we're like complicating things with missile approach, versus velocity, inertia, and so on...

In all honesty, I think there will have to be some "fudge" about assigning X-Thrust to out run missiles with thrust X or less, without it generally affecting your current range band. As long as that Thrust is NOT being used for other purposes (dodging, range changes and so on). You could technically just out-thrust the missiles as they close by going in circles - since we're assuming this is the turn-of-impact?

 

[phavoc]

Basically all of that violates the basic concept of maneuvering elsewhere in the game. And a starship shouldn't be able to out turn an object that is far smaller and would have an equivalent smaller turn ratio.

In that case you should just go to stand off nukes which avoid screens. You can't out turn that. Your only protection is distance.

 

[Nerhesi]

Definitely didnt' intend to mean out-turning or some last minute sharp turn - not at all. Just matching thrust as they close.

Matching thrust at a closer distance inevitably makes the missile trail you, and therefore never connect. The missile would infact need more than your thrust to close since it is coming in at some angle, AND assuming you're not closing with the missile. If you're perpendicular or at some obtuse angle, you need less thrust to some degree, then ultimately matching thrust to keep it forever trailing at some distance. Well.. less than forever, till fuel is done.

Again - too much stupid realism for the game however. We do need a "workable" option for out-thrusting missiles.

 

[phavoc]

I think missiles really need to be far more 'zippy', which would solve a few things. First it would be more realistic, as missiles have outsized power to mass ratios that ships can never hope to get. They also have no humans to worry about overacceleration damage to the flesh. They can take huge acceleration changes with no issue.

It also resolves the problem of what to do when it misses. At that point when you roll and 3 missile missed, it was because they were coming in too fast and at the last second you juked and they were too close to make a course change so the blow past you. And because of how acceleration works, they can't turn around and try to hit you again (not very smart logic wise...). So they just get removed from play as they self-destruct like good little missiles should.

As far as 'outrunning' a missile... meh, I'd say unless you were at extreme range to begin with, that's not going to happen. Just nip that idea in the bud and take your chances with combat. It keeps the game flow much more simple. Not to mention you don't need to use minatures for combat to see if it's even possible for you to do so.

 

[Nerhesi]

I don't mind that approach at all.

We should probably apply a negative DM to hit based on thrust of the craft though. A simple -1 per G above 10 for example or something like that.

Missile launch rate needs to be looked at. Even with point defence, missiles have quickly gone from a poor-man's non military weapon (mgt1) to the premier cost-effective choice (mgt2). Fantastic damage per hardpoint per powerpoint per ton.

We just need to be careful from over-reactions and creating a "pick missiles or you're silly paradigm"

 

[MongooseMatt]

Flee option now revised so automatic running away is not possible - you will just delay things (hopefully until the missile runs out of fuel!).

 

[Chas]

What would also be good Matt is if you can please make sure you mention absolutely crucial bits of rules in places that will be immediately noticeable with what they are applying to.

So that under the missile table, and then again under the torpedo table, there is an * along with the thrust speed to say:

* combine the launching ship's thrust to this thrust to work out the total thrust.

If there has been one major fault of the rules layout is that there is a tendency to have the absolutely crucial bits of rules as a one liner tucked away somewhere obscure in one book, rather than be reiterated where applicable (and with no index a biaaaatch to find if like me ones memory is not what it was :lol: )

 

[MongooseMatt]

* combine the launching ship's thrust to this thrust to work out the total thrust.

I am really trying to avoid this

Yes, it makes absolute sense, and yes, it is realistic. But it is also a pain in the bum unless you have missile solution software running on a laptop next to your table (smart people could do it on a calculator or a scrap of paper, but most of us are not in that realm).

I think we will need to accept their is some fuzziness in the range bands and work from there. And keep things simple.

 

[Nerhesi]

* combine the launching ship's thrust to this thrust to work out the total thrust.

I am really trying to avoid this

Yes, it makes absolute sense, and yes, it is realistic. But it is also a pain in the bum unless you have missile solution software running on a laptop next to your table (smart people could do it on a calculator or a scrap of paper, but most of us are not in that realm).

I think we will need to accept their is some fuzziness in the range bands and work from there. And keep things simple.

I kinda agree on this. Otherwise, we also need to start figuring out target thrust... a ship with as much thrust or significantly more thrust than a salvo can trivially avoid all missiles through some basic math