Missiles as capital ship weapons.

DFW said:
I see what you mean now. I agree. The tables need to reflect the reality you point out.

What you really need is a much bigger table :D
Something like a D50 or D100 table would do it, but most of the results would be hull hits or armour hits. It would give enough randomisation though :D
 
Hmmm ... roll 2d6, only a 12 is not automatically an armour/ hull hit,
proceed to the normal table ... ?
 
rust said:
Hmmm ... roll 2d6, only a 12 is not automatically an armour/ hull hit,
proceed to the normal table ... ?
That would work, particularly if you are not using barrage rules. It's possible I may experiment with this.
Plus, I just genned a big bunch of damage rolls for the large particle bay (9d6 damage) and I never went over 44 which is the biggest number on the table.

Say you get 44, two triple hits, roll 2d6 twice. 6, 12
One triple hill hit, one additional triple hit to 5. Fuel tank destroyed :shock:
The system works... kinda. People are gonna need to start splitting up their fuel bays :P
 
rust said:
Hmmm ... roll 2d6, only a 12 is not automatically an armour/ hull hit,
proceed to the normal table ... ?

2-dice-charts.gif



If you figured that ~85% of surface area was just hull, 5+ on 2D6 = hull hit.
 
DFW said:
apoc527 said:
Yes, but only by a +3 DM. The difference won't be as dramatic due to that and the lesser Barrage Strength. But against lightly armored ships, they will be more than sufficient.

Okay. Makes sense within the barrage rules. Not that the barrage rules alone, make sense. :)

Makes more sense to me than rolling out the attacks on a 3000+ ton ship. It's fairly clear where you stand on your "fidelity requirements" for a game, but for many others, those Barrage rules make ship combat with big ships possible. The only other way it would work is if you used a computer to generate out the combat results, and what fun is that?
 
apoc527 said:
Makes more sense to me than rolling out the attacks on a 3000+ ton ship. It's fairly clear where you stand on your "fidelity requirements" for a game, but for many others, those Barrage rules make ship combat with big ships possible. The only other way it would work is if you used a computer to generate out the combat results, and what fun is that?


Actually, combat between ships that are match for each other, with appropriate weapons isn't that long.

What takes a long time is having 20 soldiers armed with M16's only, attacking an M1A1 tank. Now, in order to speed that up, one could create "barrage rules for the m16's but, not many people would find doing so logical...
 
DFW said:
apoc527 said:
Makes more sense to me than rolling out the attacks on a 3000+ ton ship. It's fairly clear where you stand on your "fidelity requirements" for a game, but for many others, those Barrage rules make ship combat with big ships possible. The only other way it would work is if you used a computer to generate out the combat results, and what fun is that?


Actually, combat between ships that are match for each other, with appropriate weapons isn't that long.

What takes a long time is having 20 soldiers armed with M16's only, attacking an M1A1 tank. Now, in order to speed that up, one could create "barrage rules for the m16's but, not many people would find doing so logical...

Ah, and if that was a fair analogy to the Barrage rules, I'd definitely agree with you. The reality is that the Barrage rules do a pretty decent job of differentiating between the weapon types. A ship with 3000 beam lasers in triple turrets is going to be pretty useless against an armored dreadnaught. You just aren't going to overcome the Armor Defense DM with beam lasers...heavy particle bays, now, that's a different story.
 
Ah, and if that was a fair analogy to the Barrage rules, I'd definitely agree with you. The reality is that the Barrage rules do a pretty decent job of differentiating between the weapon types. A ship with 3000 beam lasers in triple turrets is going to be pretty useless against an armored dreadnaught. You just aren't going to overcome the Armor Defense DM with beam lasers...heavy particle bays, now, that's a different story.

Agreed. Armour versus weapon damage does affect barrage fire just as much. I don't really see the problem with it as a rule-set given the simplicity.




Just as an observation:

You can get 'm-16's killing tanks' but only in very rare cases and only with light damage from exceptional shots. If (in your example) someone has enough marksmanship skills to overcome a -16 DM to hit, then in normal traveller combat, they will be able to generate sufficient effect that they most definitely can hurt a tank with an assault rifle!

Certainly I would expect that whilst punching through the armour of a tank will always remain impossible with an M16, with sufficient quantities of fire I can see you hitting the laser rangefinder and periscopes (sensors), track links (drive), the M2 0.5" mounts (weapons) and for that matter, in extreme cases even put a round down the main gun. It won't set the shell off (that's movie logic, not reality) but will damage the round if it's loaded.

You can't cause armour or hull damage, but you can cause significant damage (i.e. damage that will meaningfully affect the combat ability of the tank, not just mess with the paintwork). Since traveller uses a global armour value, rather than rolling to see where on the tank you hit and assigning an armour value to each location, that's what we're stuck with.


There is no need to use anything other than weapon damage, unmodified by addition. Otherwise, you would be having triple turrets in small ship combat acting as "barrage attacks". MGT just added this illogical "accelerator" to speed up combat. In reality, if you pound on an Iowa class BB with 2 & 4 inch guns, you're in for a LONG fight. As it should be.

Which wouldn't work with traveller barrage combat either. Beam lasers can whale on an armour 14 dreadnought until the cows come home and will irritate it and nothing more.


i still maintain my endurance thing If you're not coming up against massively armoured ships, then you can carry many more missiles than torps...

Hmm, maybe missiles are better for mercs and customs patrols?

Yes. Missiles are a civilian and paramilitary weapon. My main complaint is that they do no more damage than the beam laser - which is the primary point defence weapon used to shoot them down. Which makes the standard round seems unutterably pointless to me.

The nuclear missile, or multi-warhead round, is better, but in both cases it's for engaging unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents.
 
locarno24 said:
If (in your example) someone has enough marksmanship skills to overcome a -16 DM to hit, then in normal traveller combat, they will be able to generate sufficient effect that they most definitely can hurt a tank with an assault rifle!

Not in any sane game. :lol:
 
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