Merchants weapons

[Vormaerin]

There's also a point where you have to have some common sense. Yes, the rules let you extend the range on sandcasters, but it's basically meaningless. Sandcasters function by putting a cloud of magic dust in the space between the enemy and they function like missiles that deploy chaff at a designated point. At least, that's how they worked back when they weren't time travelling into the past to block light speed weaponry that you were firing in reaction to.

You can also immediately detonate the canister to make it basically a shotgun to shred nearby personnel, whether in space or atmosphere. Even if you could design a weapon to fire improvised canister at extended range, this isn't a thing that would actually be built. You would build something actually designed to deal with boarding parties, not make your half arsed desperation action into a 3/4 arse desperation action for the very rare times it would come up.

Because for that to actually matter, first you need personnel trying to board by spacewalking while you still have a facing turret weapon manned and functioning. Which is the dictionary definition of seeing a pink unicorn.

 

[Condottiere]

It all depends on what exactly a caster is.

It could be a trebuchet, but I tend to think it's a mass driver.

Existing ammunition performance does indicate it could damage a spacecraft hull, if you assume double dees from a plasma or fusion man portable gun can damage a hull, or any other groundscale weapon system with double dees.

Or, potentially, any damage caused by a groundscale weapon system that manages at least ten points of damage.

Logic might discount a twenty two long rifle with maximized damage achieving that.

But, a light howitzer should manage that.

This is designed as a basic offensive round for a sandcaster. When targeting boarders, pebble canisters cause 1DD damage (Ground scale).

Limited to canonical ammunition types available, a double dee should be sufficient to punch a hole through a low armoured spacecraft hull.

My guess is, it's rather similar to a rocket propelled bunch of ball bearinged warhead, bearing down on a target.

Switch that for a missile warhead, sans guidance and propulsion, that's anywhere between a fragmentation to a bombardment effect.

 

[swordtart]

For anti-barding actions where sand casters might be used, I would have thought that the leveraging the Smaller Weapons rule (HG2022 p40) would be more efficient and flexible. Depending on the weapon(s) chosen it could eliminate small craft at close range and deal very effectively with personnel. There is a small cargo overhead, but by using lighter weapons you are free of the limitation of hardpoints and firmpoints and can keep the sandcaster ready for any incoming laser fire.

 

[Vormaerin]

I'm sure at some point someone will try to make another attempt at making sandcasters make sense.

Yes, it mentions both Pebble and Anti Personnel sand. No explanation of why you would actually expect to use that or need to stock them. Do someone imagine that boarders are spacewalking onto the ship when the ship has a working turret facing the approach? The way the Anti personnel one is described, apparently you shoot your own ship to kill people outside the hull?

I'm kind of thinking if you explode a regular sand canister in the middle of a crowd, it'll kill everyone pretty nicely too considering it has to expel the particles with enough force to form a meaningful space cloud to ablate the incoming laser fire. And the core rules say it does 8D ground scale damage (More than the anti personnel bomblets).

The sandcutter is may favorite, though. Is there a reaction to reactions phase? Because someone fires a laser at your ship and your gunner instantly fires a can of sand into space at FTL speeds to protect your ship from that specific laser attack. So then the enemy ship (IF Adjacent or Close) can counter fire sandcutters to defeat your sand so that original laser shot is less impaired by your sand... (So we have two reactive launches of sandcans before the original laser can cover 10km).

(I am assuming whoever invented sandcutters thought sandcasters worked like in CT, where you had to deploy them in the missile phase of the previous round and they were physically represented as a sand cloud between the two ships.)

 

[swordtart]

I'm sure at some point someone will try to make another attempt at making sandcasters make sense.

Yes, it mentions both Pebble and Anti Personnel sand. No explanation of why you would actually expect to use that or need to stock them. Do someone imagine that boarders are spacewalking onto the ship when the ship has a working turret facing the approach? The way the Anti personnel one is described, apparently you shoot your own ship to kill people outside the hull?

I'm kind of thinking if you explode a regular sand canister in the middle of a crowd, it'll kill everyone pretty nicely too considering it has to expel the particles with enough force to form a meaningful space cloud to ablate the incoming laser fire. And the core rules say it does 8D ground scale damage (More than the anti personnel bomblets).

The sandcutter is may favorite, though. Is there a reaction to reactions phase? Because someone fires a laser at your ship and your gunner instantly fires a can of sand into space at FTL speeds to protect your ship from that specific laser attack. So then the enemy ship (IF Adjacent or Close) can counter fire sandcutters to defeat your sand so that original laser shot is less impaired by your sand... (So we have two reactive launches of sandcans before the original laser can cover 10km).

(I am assuming whoever invented sandcutters thought sandcasters worked like in CT, where you had to deploy them in the missile phase of the previous round and they were physically represented as a sand cloud between the two ships.)

Yes, I would treat them like smokescreens (but with inherited velocity). You would put one between yourself and the enemy and give it a little forward thrust on deployment so that you remained in the shadow of it until the following combat round. It should not be a reaction.

I think they wanted to treat it like a diving for cover in ground combat, but not every sort of combat needs to follow the same mechanism.

It would be easier on a top down wargame style of space combat with vectors etc. as you can put a sand counter on the actual map, but that might not be as fun for the yoof who think all wargames should be WH40K and all RPGs should be D&D 5th edition