I shoot at the Starfighter! (Mercenary vs High Guard)

[Dracous]

Here is the situation.

Small craft Fighter is attacking the party. Player Bob lines up his Anti-Material Rifle, and shoots at the starfighter.

Now I need to go to the collective wisdom of this forum.

Do I;

• - As per Mercenary - Divide damage by 50 then apply as damage results to fighter?
  - As per high guard - use the personal scale hull and structure.... but how? Do I still divide by 50, then apply as spacecraft damage, or use damage as is, subtract armour, and apply as vehicle damage?

While the mercenary rules are pretty clear, it is far less clear what should be done with the personal scale hull and structure for the small craft in high guard.

Can anyone help?

 

[Golan2072]

I'd treat small craft as vehicles. After all, they're not larger by much and not THAT different from grav vehicles.

 

[rinku]

High Guard says to divide damage by 50 and apply it at the ship scale. It allows for volleys (i.e all the firers shooting at that ship in that round) to add their damage together. Rapid firing anti-aircraft cannon would have a decent change of doing something (and are likely to be the only things that would be able to track one, unless it's hovering.)

An unarmoured starfighter may not be too hard to take down, but in effect each armour value at ship scale is worth 50 personal scale armour value, so anything with more than a couple of points of armour is likely to shrug off ground scale fire.

A fighter is, in effect, a heavy grav tank with oversized engines.

Now, whether it could reliably *track* a ground target is another matter. I guess someone could be uploading it target designation data, it could be outfitted with extra personal scale weapons.

 

[dreamingbadger]

Now, whether it could reliably *track* ...

-1/10m of movement; fighters have been reliably killing things on the ground almost since they were invented... infantry have usually been ineffective using personal weapons to bring down fast moving aircraft, until the advent of personal anti-aircraft weaponary.

 

[rinku]

Now, whether it could reliably *track* ...

-1/10m of movement; fighters have been reliably killing things on the ground almost since they were invented... infantry have usually been ineffective using personal weapons to bring down fast moving aircraft, until the advent of personal anti-aircraft weaponary.

Yeees... but we're talking here about a vehicle designed to engage targets in space and that can descend from and achieve orbit in a few minutes. I'm just doubtful that a stock space fighter is going to be equipped with the kind of sensors and tracking equipment to let it acquire dirtside infantry and vehicles. And in the event that it is so equipped, even a pulse laser is equivalent to a tank heavy artillery laser. Dual role starfighters in a ground attack mode would be best equipped with dirtside weapons (which is addressed in the design sequence).

Mercenary p.73 has the rules (I was wrong about it being High Guard - oops), which do mention this issue. It also specifically mentions that ship weapons fire every third turn in personal scale, that there is a +4 to hit ship scale targets and that ship missiles may not target personal scale targets at all.

 

[GJD]

A real pilot only needs one sensor, the Mk 1 Eyball... :wink:

I guess this is simmilar to the debate in the 60's that led to the first Phantoms not carrying guns - does a space superiority fighter need to carry weapons that will be used against ground/air targets as opposed to space targets?

A multirole fighter (equivalent to F16/F18) may well have those capabilities built in, but a pure space superiority (early F14 and F15 (before the Bombcat and Strike Eagles), F22 et al) may struggle without the relevant systems/programs.

Of course, in later tech levels, the sensor suite might be sophisticated enough to become an omnicapable system, space, air, ground, naval, whatever. Coupled with multirole "Brilliant" weapons, a TL12 fighter might be as at home intercepting another fighter as it is straffing a platoon of insurgents.

G.

 

[rust]

... and that ship missiles may not target personal scale targets at all.

True, but I suspect that they would still explode when hitting the ground,
doing considerable damage to anything nearby, even as a non-targeted
weapon. And some targets, like old fashioned infantry formations or big-
ger buildings, are just too easy to hit, especially at low speed, even with-
out a functioning target aquisition. So, I would not count ship missiles out.

 

[phavoc]

Since you are engaged in a ground-to-air activity, you should use the Mercenary rules to engage and do damage to an aircraft, regardless if it is a space-capable craft or not.

One thing to remember is that spacecraft have weapons designed to engage other spacecraft, so most like engaging ground targets is going to be difficult, unless they are big fat buildings just standing there. Plus you may want to take into account that a space fighter pilot might be ace at engaging other fighers in vacum, but have almost no ability to engage ground targets. Just like your sensors and targeting computers might be at a disadvantage engaging ground targets as well.

From the ground, trying to track and engage a fast-flying space ship by hand is (or should be) a difficult issue at best. Any weapon optimized to kill bipeds should have almost no chance of damaging a ship who's hull can take the stress of entering-leaving an atmosphere.

Now if the people were playing 'dead' and the opposing fighter pilot stopped and was hovering to check out the bodies and a player roller over and aimed his rifle at a stationary target and hit a sensitive spot... well, then maybe something should happen to the ship.

 

[BP]

Traveller Spacecraft engaging ground targets...

Gravitics

 

[AndrewW]

A real pilot only needs one sensor, the Mk 1 Eyball... :wink:

That pilot better have two of them or depth perception is going to be non existent...

 

[DeadMike]

True, but I suspect that they would still explode when hitting the ground,
doing considerable damage to anything nearby, even as a non-targeted
weapon.

As long as the missile was fired over 10 km away. Locking onto a man size target over 10 km away shouldn't be too hard for a high enough TL ship.

 

[BP]

Or you could just hover over them and drop the missile out the starboard hatch!

 

[Jon Brazer Enterprises]

I'd treat it as a personal scale vehicle and multiply the damage it deals by 50. Remember to use the high guard errata personal scale hull/structure point.

 

[dreamingbadger]

Or you could just hover over them and drop the missile out the starboard hatch!

If you have fusion drives just hoverinbg over them

 

[BP]

Or just land on them!!! :roll:

 

[DeadMike]

Or you could just hover over them and drop the missile out the starboard hatch!

I don't think that would work. I imagine there are safety concerns that keep the missiles from arming before 10 kilometers. Hence page 147 in the core book "Missiles cannot be used at Adjecent or Close range.". I cannot think of another reason why they could not be used at those ranges.

 

[BP]

• 

Who said anything about arming the blasted things?

 

[apoc527]

I house rule the scale difference to be 20 points. Then I give an automatic 20 points of bonus armor to unarmored ship vs any weapon that uses Gun Combat. This way, only Heavy Weapons reliably hurt starships. I just don't think that the starships in Traveller deserve to be 50 times tougher than everything else. Makes no sense, especially since there's no reason a gravtank can't make reentry.

 

[phavoc]

Which version of Traveller had many starships using collapsed metal for hull plating? There was some example of a squad using an anti-vehicle missile against a starship that was taking off from a spaceport and it just didn't have the damage capability to do more than scratch the hull.

At least that's how I remember it... I just dont' wanna dig through all the different books to prove me right or wrong. Does anybody else recall something similar?

 

[apoc527]

I think bonded superdense is "collapsed metal" and would create the same effect in MGT. A ship with bonded superdense is probably more armored than most non-starship weapons can deal with.