Ion Spinal Mount

phavoc said:
A spinal-mount Ion cannon has the capacity to be like the ion cannon on Hoth in Empire Strikes back - a large, but not overly large cannon managed to disable an Imperial Star Destroyer with two hits. However for a weapon to have such destabilizing capacity would automatically guarantee some sort of defense against it. Otherwise the Empire would have either crushed the rebellion or vice versa with ships equipped exclusively with the weapon. SW played fast and loose with a lot of those concepts - no ship would suddenly go out of control and start "falling" from loss of power (nor would a SSD turn into a sword of Damoclese and impale the station below. It looks cool in video and sounds cool on the written page in a book - but translating into a game that's supposed to model things somewhat realistically... well, you get the idea.

Otherwise this weapon would be (almost) like a wave-motion gun from Star Blazers. It would simply dominate the field whenever used.
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I would say that on a ship that has Radiation Protection, count the armor value of the ship to lower the damage. A ship without radiation protection on the hull, would be screwed. As an opening idea for how it might work, but it would need to be play tested for balance.
 
I really dislike 'Buying option X makes you completely invulnerable to Y'; various levels of protections, which present trade offs, and changes in technology are far more interesting & believable. Higher TL defenses ought to be better against lower TL attacks, etc. Even a simplistic 'level of defense vs radiation protects like armor against Ion attacks' is better than what we currently have.

A couple other notes:
1} the 'Clone Wars' clip -- Traveller Ion weapons are FAR less effective than depicted; they only have multi-round effects on a critical hit.
2} A Tigress has a powerplant which produces 440000 power; even a 125D (x1000 for a spinal mount) Ion weapon is unlikely to affect it very much -- and this is pretty normal across capital warships. Even VERY large amounts of 'Ion' damage will be easily ignored, even without 'hardening' systems.
 
On the bright side, failure of inertial compensation field coincides with acceleration thrust cut off.

So, no pancake landings for the crew.
 
J. L. Brown said:
I really dislike 'Buying option X makes you completely invulnerable to Y'; various levels of protections, which present trade offs, and changes in technology are far more interesting & believable. Higher TL defenses ought to be better against lower TL attacks, etc. Even a simplistic 'level of defense vs radiation protects like armor against Ion attacks' is better than what we currently have.

A couple other notes:
1} the 'Clone Wars' clip -- Traveller Ion weapons are FAR less effective than depicted; they only have multi-round effects on a critical hit.
2} A Tigress has a powerplant which produces 440000 power; even a 125D (x1000 for a spinal mount) Ion weapon is unlikely to affect it very much -- and this is pretty normal across capital warships. Even VERY large amounts of 'Ion' damage will be easily ignored, even without 'hardening' systems.
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Ion Weapons should be able to cause Critical Hits, not just extend the duration of the lack of power.
 
J. L. Brown said:
2} A Tigress has a powerplant which produces 440000 power; even a 125D (x1000 for a spinal mount) Ion weapon is unlikely to affect it very much -- and this is pretty normal across capital warships. Even VERY large amounts of 'Ion' damage will be easily ignored, even without 'hardening' systems.
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You would not attack a Tigris with a single ship mounting an Ion cannon.
You use the ion cannon mount to pin and declaw the Tigress. Using your example spinal mount, a minimal hit prevents the Tigress from jumping. A weak hit prevents all maneuvering. An average hit prevents 40% of its weapons from operating. Roll an average of 4+ and it is dead in the water.

That said, who wants to wait ten minutes for the average gamer to roll and add 125D6? For context that is 4 of those 12mm Chessex boxes +1d6.
 
Arkathan said:
You would not attack a Tigris with a single ship mounting an Ion cannon.
You use the ion cannon mount to pin and declaw the Tigress. Using your example spinal mount, a minimal hit prevents the Tigress from jumping. A weak hit prevents all maneuvering. An average hit prevents 40% of its weapons from operating. Roll an average of 4+ and it is dead in the water.

That said, who wants to wait ten minutes for the average gamer to roll and add 125D6? For context that is 4 of those 12mm Chessex boxes +1d6.
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5D6 x 25 is way easier. I apologize if My math is wrong. I am seriously doped up on cold medicine today. Stupid cold. :(
 
MasterGwydion said:
5D6 x 25 is way easier. I apologize if My math is wrong. I am seriously doped up on cold medicine today. Stupid cold. :(
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Yeah, I wouldn't go with 125 rolls either.
The five dice also allows for easier variation off the average.

Sorry about the cold.
One D3, Zinc and Selenium daily will bolster your immune system. 1 D3, period. Up to 2 Zinc, when you have symptoms, and up to 6 Seleniums split throughout the day at meal time (only bad symptoms). 1 Se daily for prevention, 2 if a coworker has symptoms and 3 at onset of symptoms, 1 with each meal. more, up to six if symptoms get worse.
Note that this does not preclude a doctor if you see no improvement in the same amount of time you'd normally procrastinate before making that call.
My son was notorious for getting the semi-annual crud, and being out for at least a week - needing antibiotics to finally beat it off.
We got him the above, and he got well over the weekend. His boss was amazed. He hasn't needed the antibiotics to get over a sinus infection for two years.
 
Arkathan said:
Yeah, I wouldn't go with 125 rolls either.
The five dice also allows for easier variation off the average.

Sorry about the cold.
One D3, Zinc and Selenium daily will bolster your immune system. 1 D3, period. Up to 2 Zinc, when you have symptoms, and up to 6 Seleniums split throughout the day at meal time (only bad symptoms). 1 Se daily for prevention, 2 if a coworker has symptoms and 3 at onset of symptoms, 1 with each meal. more, up to six if symptoms get worse.
Note that this does not preclude a doctor if you see no improvement in the same amount of time you'd normally procrastinate before making that call.
My son was notorious for getting the semi-annual crud, and being out for at least a week - needing antibiotics to finally beat it off.
We got him the above, and he got well over the weekend. His boss was amazed. He hasn't needed the antibiotics to get over a sinus infection for two years.
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I live on a remote island in the Caribbean. Our local hospital (which is one island away) burned down over the last year and it hasn't been replaced yet. I usually order cases of medicine at a time so I have them on hand when needed. I almost never use antibiotics unless I have no other choice, since the more I use them, the less they work. (No other choice would include stuff like after surgery to prevent infections.)
 
Arkathan said:
You would not attack a Tigris with a single ship mounting an Ion cannon.
You use the ion cannon mount to pin and declaw the Tigress. Using your example spinal mount, a minimal hit prevents the Tigress from jumping. A weak hit prevents all maneuvering. An average hit prevents 40% of its weapons from operating. Roll an average of 4+ and it is dead in the water.

That said, who wants to wait ten minutes for the average gamer to roll and add 125D6? For context that is 4 of those 12mm Chessex boxes +1d6.
Click to expand...
No, any fool attacking a Tigress with an Ion cannon will be unable to ever mount an Ion weapon capable of inflicting 125D x1000 worth of hits; the reasonable response from the Tigress is to simply shoot the idiot with its' own spinal mount, inflicting 66D x1000 hits of actual damage. On average, that does ~62% of all the hits the Tigress (or, simply vaporizing a Plankwell or Kokirrak outright) starts with. So in a battle of exactly-the-same-ship-but-with-different-spinal-mounts, the Ion Spinal is a clear loser.
 
MasterGwydion said:
I live on a remote island in the Caribbean. Our local hospital (which is one island away) burned down over the last year and it hasn't been replaced yet. I usually order cases of medicine at a time so I have them on hand when needed. I almost never use antibiotics unless I have no other choice, since the more I use them, the less they work. (No other choice would include stuff like after surgery to prevent infections.)
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Oh wow. That sucks about access to medical, although I'd bet the sunsets are great.
Yeah, the sinus infections he had were on the scale of if this doesn't work we're admitting you. But do your own research and check out those three vitamins/minerals. They could reduce your use of those other meds. (I wouldn't take medical advice from an ex nuclear power engineering laboratory technician/ sheriff's office lieutenant, and you shouldn't either.)
 
J. L. Brown said:
No, any fool attacking a Tigress with an Ion cannon will be unable to ever mount an Ion weapon capable of inflicting 125D x1000 worth of hits; the reasonable response from the Tigress is to simply shoot the idiot with its' own spinal mount, inflicting 66D x1000 hits of actual damage. On average, that does ~62% of all the hits the Tigress (or, simply vaporizing a Plankwell or Kokirrak outright) starts with. So in a battle of exactly-the-same-ship-but-with-different-spinal-mounts, the Ion Spinal is a clear loser.
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I used your numbers for my example. You postulated the fool with a weapon that size first. I ran with it.
If the Tigress picks the wrong target, it might lose its ability to fire weapons for a while. Remember that since armor and screens are subtracted prior to modifiers, a few meson screens set against the meson spinal mount have the potential to deflect almost all damage, and eliminate the radiation effects.
While I am not stumping for ion spinal mounts, the RAW applied to a larger version would tend to suggest that your expectation for an easy victory COULD be thwarted by a prepared fleet with knowledge of Imperial capabilities.
 
Arkathan said:
I used your numbers for my example. You postulated the fool with a weapon that size first. I ran with it.
If the Tigress picks the wrong target, it might lose its ability to fire weapons for a while. Remember that since armor and screens are subtracted prior to modifiers, a few meson screens set against the meson spinal mount have the potential to deflect almost all damage, and eliminate the radiation effects.
While I am not stumping for ion spinal mounts, the RAW applied to a larger version would tend to suggest that your expectation for an easy victory COULD be thwarted by a prepared fleet with knowledge of Imperial capabilities.
Click to expand...
I postulated an obviously-ridiculous-and-impossibly-oversized (almost double the Dice of the Tigress spinal mount) weapon, because that was what would be required to negate the 440000 power of the Tigress -- and, as you point out, it is trivial to render even such a silly and expensive weapon useless. This underscores (yet again) the extreme weakness of Ion weapons in the current rules.
 
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J. L. Brown said:
I postulated an obviously-ridiculous-and-impossibly-oversized (almost double the Dice of the Tigress spinal mount) weapon, because that was what would be required to negate the 440000 power of the Tigress -- and, as you point out, it is trivial to render even such a silly and expensive weapon useless. This underscores (yet again) the extreme weakness of Ion weapons in the current rules.
Click to expand...
I use a house rule that allows Crits with Ion Weapons, including the sustained damage Crit rules.. It makes them a lot more dangerous. One good shot and you can have multiple crits due to "sustained damage"
 
J. L. Brown said:
I postulated an obviously-ridiculous-and-impossibly-oversized (almost double the Dice of the Tigress spinal mount) weapon, because that was what would be required to negate the 440000 power of the Tigress -- and, as you point out, it is trivial to render even such a silly and expensive weapon useless. This underscores (yet again) the extreme weakness of Ion weapons in the current rules.
Click to expand...
One of the Imperial capabilities I was referring to knowing in advance is that all existing Tigress ships lack EM hardening, making them susceptible.
However, as was pointed out previously, I am not a fan of making a new type of spinal mount. Just pointing out that without a go in a simulator with other fleet elements, we cannot rule out an L for the Tigress.
 
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