Missile Flights

[RumRogue]

Ok, I am new to the Mongoose Traveller and have never played it.
I have been looking through the Main Book and The High Guard book and I am rather confused and lost when it comes to groups of missiles.

In the Main Book in the Starship Creation section, I see a Bay weapon that is a Missile Bank. The description states that it "fires flights of 12 missiles."
In the High Guard book there is a larger bay that has 24 missiles.

So then, how is a flight of missiles handled? are they just ready missiles that have no loading time, or can the ship fire off the entire flight in one shot?

If its one shot, then how are the dice handled for a flight?
What about point defence?

I have been searching the forums and not having much luck with this topic.
Thanks.
RumRogue

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Ah, missile flights... we are all trying to understand exactly how this should be done...

The bays (50 or 100 tons) fire all of their missiles at one time. Basically they fire a bank of 12 or 24 missiles in the Launch Phase of combat.
I believe that the gunner should roll ONCE for the launch and that Effect should be applied to each missile.

Using the Main Book, you would roll 12 "to hit" rolls. If you use the Barrage attack in HG, you can treat a missile bank as a Barrage of 12 or 24 missiles.

Barrages were created for those situations where a Referee is facing having to roll a LOT of "to hit" dice. So it uses a statistical average where you only roll 2d6 and based on the size of the Barrage, that determines how much damage you do. Saves a LOT of time.

Hope that helps.

 

[RumRogue]

Barrages were created for those situations where a Referee is facing having to roll a LOT of "to hit" dice. So it uses a statistical average where you only roll 2d6 and based on the size of the Barrage, that determines how much damage you do. Saves a LOT of time.

Hope that helps.

Yes. That should help. I skimmed the Barrage section thinking that it was more useful to capital ships and massive fleets.
Thanks again.

 

[locarno24]

It also has the secondary effect that it allows a sufficiently big horde of podunk gunboats or fighters to threaten a big capital ship, if they're sufficiently lucky and have sufficiently good gunners, because the nature of the combined armour/accuracy/damage roll means a ship with 6 armour points can still take damage from 1d6 damage weapons with a good enough roll, unlike the normal rules.

 

[AndrewW]

It also has the secondary effect that it allows a sufficiently big horde of podunk gunboats or fighters to threaten a big capital ship, if they're sufficiently lucky and have sufficiently good gunners, because the nature of the combined armour/accuracy/damage roll means a ship with 6 armour points can still take damage from 1d6 damage weapons with a good enough roll, unlike the normal rules.

Fire Control can take the place of a good gunner, or at least add to the capability of the gunner.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

It also has the secondary effect that it allows a sufficiently big horde of podunk gunboats or fighters to threaten a big capital ship, if they're sufficiently lucky and have sufficiently good gunners, because the nature of the combined armour/accuracy/damage roll means a ship with 6 armour points can still take damage from 1d6 damage weapons with a good enough roll, unlike the normal rules.

Any capital ship, with the possible exception of carriers (and perhaps not even then) should never have 6 armour points (yes, some of the designs in Fighting Ships are fatally flawed), they will have armour up to available tech level, plus rad shielding to help defeat particle beams etc. Even a gazelle gets 8pts.

On that basis the only weapon that small craft can carry which will do more than scratch the paint work are nuclear tipped torpedos.

Egil

 

[SSWarlock]

On that basis the only weapon that small craft can carry which will do more than scratch the paint work are nuclear tipped torpedos.

And even then small craft can't carry enough torps to get through a capital ship's point defense solo. So you'd need a large number of torp-carrying small craft to overwhelm the target's point defense. But then a carrier fielding a large number of small torp-carrying fighters can do that.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

On that basis the only weapon that small craft can carry which will do more than scratch the paint work are nuclear tipped torpedos.

And even then small craft can't carry enough torps to get through a capital ship's point defense solo. So you'd need a large number of torp-carrying small craft to overwhelm the target's point defense. But then a carrier fielding a large number of small torp-carrying fighters can do that.

yes, agreed, would be a long shot without lots of torp carrying fighters, and even then its a bit of a one shot attack, might be better to stock up on particle beam bays instead !!

Egil

 

[SSWarlock]

...might be better to stock up on particle beam bays instead !!

Exactly.