Mechanics check - Capital ship combat

[kirstar]

I am stuck and need help.

In the core rules ship combat say

hits cross referenced on he table on page 150 based on damage roled per attack - armour.

So superdense armour @ 6pts per 5%. You spend 10% = 12 pts of armour to be immune to all lasers correct ? Somebody could shoot you with 1000 lasers beam or pulse and you would by the RAW take 0 damage.

But in high guard its different. Now beam lasers are 1d6 in HG which is fine. A barage of 10 beams lasers would then be
10-beam laser-medium-1

Using the same dice mods for the Bucephalus from the example on pg74 - dodging
range (+0), skill (+3) and fire control (+5) for a total of +8. The Bucephalus rolls
7 on two dice. The net score, before taking account of defences is 15.

armour -12
no sand =0

total 3

So looking at the table it does 10% damage = 1 hit.

So if it was
100-beam laser-medium-1 (100 beam lasers)
would it be 10 hits for 2x5 from the 50 table ?

what about
100-pulse laser-short-2
is thatthe same damage or am I missing a table. Ignoring the to hit penalty of pulse lasers. With the -2dm they do 0 damage ?

really confused, help

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

You were doing fine until you threw in another game rule set. Stick to either the core rule book or Book 2 for your game sessions. Pick one only.

 

[locarno24]

hits cross referenced on he table on page 150 based on damage roled per attack - armour.

So superdense armour @ 6pts per 5%. You spend 10% = 12 pts of armour to be immune to all lasers correct ? Somebody could shoot you with 1000 lasers beam or pulse and you would by the RAW take 0 damage.

Correct. There is no meaningful chance for a laser to punch through double-thick bonded superdense armour in the core rules (at least, not until the ship suffers armour damage from heavier weapons first).

But in high guard its different. Now beam lasers are 1d6 in HG which is fine. A barage of 10 beams lasers would then be
10-beam laser-medium-1

Using the same dice mods for the Bucephalus from the example on pg74 - dodging
range (+0), skill (+3) and fire control (+5) for a total of +8. The Bucephalus rolls
7 on two dice. The net score, before taking account of defences is 15.

armour -12
no sand =0

total 3

So looking at the table it does 10% damage = 1 hit.

Also correct. Note that whilst Barrage Combat rules are a 'shortcut', they are not a perfect model. Some weapons and situations will do more or less damage than if you were to work them out longhand. Also, a sufficiently good gunner (or fire control) makes a massive difference with barrages (beam lasers aimed by a gunner with gunner/4 does more damage than particle barbettes aimed by a generic spod) whilst he's pretty irrelevant normally. Personally, I like the rules for this reason.

As noted, stick to one or the other because they don't translate into one another perfectly.

what about
100-pulse laser-short-2
is thatthe same damage or am I missing a table. Ignoring the to hit penalty of pulse lasers. With the -2dm they do 0 damage ?

Correct. The table you're after is at the end of the High Guard weapons section, and is titled "Capital Ship Barrage attack characteristics". It lists 'damage per weapon' - Beam Laser 1, Pulse Laser 2, but also 'Attack Roll DMs' - note the DM-2 for pulse lasers.

Equally, Long Range Missiles have a DM-1, because they do D6-1 damage, not D6, which can't be modelled in the Barrage system easily. The DM-1 is the easiest way of reflecting this.

 

[kirstar]

Cool thanks.

Was wondering if I had it wrong.

another question


Now by the rules you can use lasers defences. to shoot down missiles. Why not other turret based weapons ?

Also the rules talk about sand stopping beam weapons, I assume this is only lasers and not all beam weapons.

 

[locarno24]

Now by the rules you can use lasers defences. to shoot down missiles. Why not other turret based weapons ?

So there's a point to having lasers, I guess. :mrgreen:

Particle beam shots must move nearly light speed but lasers are actually light-speed. Theoretically you should be able to use both; if you can hit a fighter evading at 6G a light second away, a missile moving at 10G a few hundred kilometres away shouldn't be too much worse.

A lot of people suggest that ship's guns do fire more than once per 6 minutes - each attack is a 'spread' of shots. In which case, lasers may have a rate of fire which actually allows their use against missiles.

Sandcasters actually just say 'beam attacks' in the core rulebook. In High Guard it does specifically talk about using them against lasers, though.

Sandcasters CAN be used for point defence against missiles as well. See High Guard "Point Defence" section.

 

[Nerhesi]

If you look at advanced tech in Highguard , you'll notice that they say at higher techs (past TL 16) Sandcasters exist that can be used vs non-laser weapons. I believe that clarifies that at the current TLs they cant be used vs anything but lasers and missiles and boarding parties