It's time to have realistic Missile systems

[phavoc]

I found this in relation to providing better drawings related to wnbc's missile launch system, but after going through a few dozen pages, it's clear to me that the concepts surrounding the missile systems in Traveller are a joke.

Why in the hell would any manually load a missile in a launcher? That's just..... so stupid! The linked article goes into great detail over missile launch systems, showing the mechanical differencs between single, dual and VLS-launch systems. Hell, Traveller has failed consistently at the concept of magazines, of auto-feeds and lots of other things when it comes to missiles.

It's NOT rocket science any more. The USN, among other navies, has been using automated and very efficient missile loading and firing systems for decades. It's about time the 52nd century get in on the act too.

http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Weapons/NAVEDTRA_14109_Ch7-8.pdf

 

[wbnc]

I had a few ideas But they seem to be overkill compared to the current missile systems. Basically a VLS made up of three 1 ton cells can theoretically loose 36 missiles in a single salvo.

which is right up there with the 50 ton bay.

It seems that to accurately simulate the abilities of a VLS to rapidly discharge it's entie ready supply of missiles, the bays would need to be upgraded as well. Making the missile bay a fast way to fill the air with hundreds of missiles.

which would defeat most PD systems, and turret based lasers in rapid order when you have multiple missile bays on a single ship.

 

[phavoc]

I had a few ideas But they seem to be overkill compared to the current missile systems. Basically a VLS made up of three 1 ton cells can theoretically loose 36 missiles in a single salvo.

which is right up there with the 50 ton bay.

It seems that to accurately simulate the abilities of a VLS to rapidly discharge it's entie ready supply of missiles, the bays would need to be upgraded as well. Making the missile bay a fast way to fill the air with hundreds of missiles.

which would defeat most PD systems, and turret based lasers in rapid order when you have multiple missile bays on a single ship.

Yes, any change in the missile launching requires an update to the missile defense protocols - anti-missiles, true dedicated point-defenses, etc.

But missile attacks have always been (modern at least) a question of can you overwhelm the defender with enough firepower to get past their defenses? This active/passive dance is no different than using outrageous armor layers and screens to render all but the most potent beam attacks useless. We might as well make the missile systems equivalent with beam weapons - but at range.

With missiles being more deadly now as they should have been in the first place, it behooves both sides to engage fully to start, from a distance, and then close to energy range for the either the coup de grace, or putting that last required shot into their engines to disable them for boarding.

The firing rates of missiles (not to mention the ludicrous man-handling reloading procedure) has always begged to be fixed. Since we are making wholesale changes via the 2.0 rules, lets fix this problem, too.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok, I'll Bite. Where do you want to start?

At the Launcher?
At the Fire Control Consol?
At the Weapons Director?

What does a Launcher look like? Heck what does a Missile look like? One school of thought is a 15 cm tube either a meter or a meter and a half long. The boys over at Games Workshop figured a Ton per shot. Now in historical documents the 15 cm standard missile and the 25 cm Bay missile have been mentioned as well (These are kinda the numbers I use as the are supported by the Missiles Special Supplement).

So how many Missiles can the Consol direct at one time? And related How many targets can the Weapons Director keep track of and provide firing solution for? Yah 2 and 3 are related in this question.

My current question is what does it take to shoot at a missile while it is in flight? Before it gets into its attack phase.

 

[phavoc]

Ok, I'll Bite. Where do you want to start?

At the Launcher?
At the Fire Control Consol?
At the Weapons Director?

What does a Launcher look like? Heck what does a Missile look like? One school of thought is a 15 cm tube either a meter or a meter and a half long. The boys over at Games Workshop figured a Ton per shot. Now in historical documents the 15 cm standard missile and the 25 cm Bay missile have been mentioned as well (These are kinda the numbers I use as the are supported by the Missiles Special Supplement).

So how many Missiles can the Consol direct at one time? And related How many targets can the Weapons Director keep track of and provide firing solution for? Yah 2 and 3 are related in this question.

My current question is what does it take to shoot at a missile while it is in flight? Before it gets into its attack phase.

In a word - yes. To all of the above.

The concept behind missiles has been broken for some time. With no fire directors there's no limitation on how many missiles you should be able to fire aside from timing to clear the launch zone. At the time Traveller came out (the 70s) VLS didn't exist as a technology. You had Talos and Terrier-style launchers where the crewmen did indeed physically put fins on the rocket, the rocket was pushed out on via rails, etc. Now we have VLS technology that lets you launch as many missiles as you can (or want to) control, at firing rates of seconds between missiles.

There should be more depth in this arena. The 'standard' missile is really almost too tiny to do much damage to larger ships, or anything with armor at it's current size. You still have a balance between a VLS system (one shot till you reload) vs. an internal launcher system with magazine capacity.

The point of the rant (and others like it over the years) is that the missile concepts have been outdated nearly since the beginning of the game. I do realize that there is always going to be a tradeoff between playability and becoming bogged down in minutae. Which means if you want to address issues you have to take a holistic view and ensure that things properly scale up as well as scale down. That might mean you have probability charts for High Guard and you roll against an attack wave for ship vs. ship combat. It means you have to look at offensive and defensive concepts to ensure you don't overbalance it in either direction. As history has shown us repeatedly, for every new technology invented there's always a counter of some sort to offset it.

The first step begins with a discussion. Which is better than the preceeding silence. If nothing else it would be nice to acknowledge the various launch system types and provide additional background. Perhaps it can be shoe-horned into the existing framework, though I don't think it can without breaking a lot of other things. Even if the system itself doesn't change that much I'm a HUGE fan of additional background material.

 

[Infojunky]

Ok then Deployment systems....

I have always thought that the turret mount Launcher was a tube/canister sort of launcher At least for the common weapons in commercial service. Then there is the Military ships with large missile magazines, These i see being serviced by fairly large autoloaders with some internal choice on what type of munition to be fired. In that I can see the entire ships missile ready loadout being in the autoloader at the beginning of the cruise.

As well as I can see the Merchantman's Steward and 3rd assistant wiper lugging a pallet jack full of missile from the ship's explosives stores to feed a turret....

So maybe the 1st question isn't about the launcher, but about what sorts of Missiles do y'all see a ship having?

I can see HARM missiles that home of sensor emissions, and generally deal a hit directly to sensors. As well as seeing missiles that home in on the emissions of the maneuver drive and power plant. I also see missiles with semi active homing i.e. the home on targets illuminated by their firing ship or another friendly platform.

 

[phavoc]

Civvy missile systems would be somewhat like that, though they should be more modeled on box-type missiles. Civilians aren't going to spend a lot of time doing maintenance on the missiles like a military ship would (or even could). It would be more economical for a civilian ship to purchase a set number of boxed rounds and mount them in the hull somewhere for eventual use.

Turrets (or similar launcher mechanisms) imply that there is a magazine available from which you are going to use to store ordnance to be fired. I really don't see having a random crew member lugging a pallet full of missiles from the cargo bay to the turret that happens to be above the passenger section.... CT said a gunner's duties included reloading the launcher during combat manually. Uh, no?

You could easily have a number of different types of homing systems in missiles - HARM missiles, Infrared, Visual, etc. The question becomes more of how do you want to model that within the game system? Does having the various homing mechanisms provide additional value? I think having a generalized discussion and adding more flavor to the game discussing them or talking about the options does. But would you also model different damages for each one? If you aren't, then the verbiage makes for nice flavor but no changes to gameplay.

There's merit to both views. Sometimes having more details just makes it more enjoyable to read about the universe and the system. Sort of like fiction in your rulebook. Or you actually do implement the changes, so now instead of that poky Free Trader having a maximum of six missiles to launch, you might get 24 in your face in a single turn - at the expense of blowing through your entire missile arsenal. Depending on what your opponent invested in defenses, you could win, or now it becomes a question of can you dodge him long enough before he disables you (with an ion cannon!).

Adding some more options to the missile arena means (potentially) more flavor for campaigns that have space combat as part of them. If your group doesnt' bother much with space, then it's a moot point. But lots of people seem to enjoy building ships just for the fun of it (and some of us buy some of those designs, just to support and encourage those who do).

 

[Infojunky]

Civvy missile systems would be somewhat like that, though they should be more modeled on box-type missiles. Civilians aren't going to spend a lot of time doing maintenance on the missiles like a military ship would (or even could). It would be more economical for a civilian ship to purchase a set number of boxed rounds and mount them in the hull somewhere for eventual use.

That really depends, I can see a Merchant man manuel launching from a open cargo hatch as well as having a fixed set of canisters strapped to the hull. I actually could see a Canister mount mounted in a standard cargo container that is secured next to a cargo hatch to fire through, with only a data bridge and power connector being the only external bits.

Turrets (or similar launcher mechanisms) imply that there is a magazine available from which you are going to use to store ordnance to be fired. I really don't see having a random crew member lugging a pallet full of missiles from the cargo bay to the turret that happens to be above the passenger section.... CT said a gunner's duties included reloading the launcher during combat manually. Uh, no?

I didn't say random crew, I stated to two most likely to be available in a crisis situation to act as loaders for a mount distant from the flammable stowage locker. As I was talking about a civilian ship that isn't focused on combat. It also depends on how you view turrets and gunners, I tend to have modern view of weapons turrets in that they are remote mounts with loading and operation happening outside the mount. (Note the USN's 5 inch guns have a crew manually loading the autoloader below the gun while it's in operation, thus some of my view)

You could easily have a number of different types of homing systems in missiles - HARM missiles, Infrared, Visual, etc. The question becomes more of how do you want to model that within the game system? Does having the various homing mechanisms provide additional value? I think having a generalized discussion and adding more flavor to the game discussing them or talking about the options does. But would you also model different damages for each one? If you aren't, then the verbiage makes for nice flavor but no changes to gameplay.

Hey you are the one who called for more realistic missile systems, I just responded with trying to find out what you where looking for. As for flavor and options they are the spice of life in a RPG, there is always room for another gag to be added to the PCs gear. HARM, Whack him in the eyes so you can run away, Drive seeking slow him down, middle of mass when you really want him dead. Mind you these are just the civilian Traders in a bad patch PC's I'm talking about. you don't know what my bad'uns want... Heck right now Neither do I since I just disabled their getaway ship on the doorstep of a Haunted Abandoned Habitat....

As for the Ion Cannon, I am pretty sure those won't appear until we play Star Wars again...

 

[phavoc]

During WW2 many merchantships had naval gun crews manning the weapons, though this was not universal. The merchant marines were quasi-military, but gun crews were often US Naval Armed Guard. Since there isn't a regular war going on in the 3I, gun crews might just be bodies that received basic training on how to properly tow a missile pallet around (hopefully!).

You do bring up a good point about having non-standard weapon systems. Maybe a merchie finds it more economical to carry that missile pod in it's cargo hold and only 'rents' one on runs where they think they might have trouble. Otherwise they need not take up the space with weapons or ammo storage. From a missile perspective all you need to do is eject it (gas, mechanically, etc) and as soon as it's cleared the ship it can orient itself and ignite it's drives. Missile launchers don't provide any bonus. You could even toss an entire pod out the airlock ala Weber's HH universe and let that engage the enemy for you.

I think we see mounts in the same manner. There's no real need to put a gunner IN the mount, or even next to the mount. It would be more efficient to have a central compartment(s) that controlled all the fire. Or it's directed from the bridge. Either way doesn't require a person on the mount itself. The only thing you need at the mount is space for ammo if you have missiles/torps/sandcasters. Since we aren't talking about having a crewmember there to do an equivalent of breech-loads you would have automated feed mechanisms that had the ability to let you switch out rounds (jump breaker or standard missile, pebble or sand cannister, etc) based on the gunner preferences. This idea definitely lends credence to the concept that you would NOT have a crewmember schlepping reloads. Plus it gives more credit towards the idea of having a dedicated magazine to feed the weapons.

I'm all for variety in things - as long as it doesn't hinder the gameplay. The US has it's own AAM, the Europeans have a similar model as do the Russians. But from a gaming perspective you could lump them all into the exact same category with the same performance and damage characteristics, even though they are all slightly different. That's more towards the idea that I was speaking too. So the jump breaker missile is definitely a different variety of missile that merits being separate. But the variety needs to make sense and not impact game play. Which is why I posed that question back to you to determine what you were thinking.

Ion cannons for everyone! But you only get two shots...