Point-Defence Laser Batteries in HG - Am I Holding This Right?

[rinku]

Stepping slightly back, sand is probably too close to the ship to do much more than turn the incoming intact missile into an incoming mass of exploding missile...

High Guard does have anti-missile missiles that do the whole cloud of fragments thing a bit further away from the ship.

 

[MattL]

Stepping slightly back, sand is probably too close to the ship to do much more than turn the incoming intact missile into an incoming mass of exploding missile...

Off topic, but a bit of math tells us that a missile accelerating at 10g for an hour (that's Thrust 10 for 10 rounds) reaches a velocity of 353km/second. If a chunk weighing just 10kg hits, it does so with 623 Gigajoules of energy - 10x the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

If we bring in real physics, these missiles don't even hardly need warheads....

 

[rinku]

Some of that thrust may be going towards deceleration and definitely on maneuvering, but yes.

 

[Condottiere]

Knock out guidance, and have the target do minimal evasion.

 

[MonsterX]

Off topic, but a bit of math tells us that a missile accelerating at 10g for an hour (that's Thrust 10 for 10 rounds) reaches a velocity of 353km/second. If a chunk weighing just 10kg hits, it does so with 623 Gigajoules of energy - 10x the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

If we bring in real physics, these missiles don't even hardly need warheads....

True, but you don't want to count on it having that much velocity relative to the target. It might be too close to the target. It might have to catch up with a fast fleeing target. You want it to do lots of damage regardless of relative velocities. Also, it might just punch through the target leaving holes on both sides, which is not great for ship functioning, and maybe not for the crew either, but it is less damaging - that won't happen if it blows up.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Off topic, but a bit of math tells us that a missile accelerating at 10g for an hour (that's Thrust 10 for 10 rounds) reaches a velocity of 353km/second. If a chunk weighing just 10kg hits, it does so with 623 Gigajoules of energy - 10x the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

If we bring in real physics, these missiles don't even hardly need warheads....

Such a missile, starting from a dead stop, has also covered 635000+ kilometers.

 

[Condottiere]

It also has a tendency to wander off, after thirty minutes.

 

[rinku]

It does bring up the interesting point that missiles may be actually MORE effective at longer ranges (until they run out of Thrust).

Launch a missile at 1000km range (Short) and Thrust 10 (100m/s) and it takes 141 seconds to arrive, and arrives at a velocity of 14 k/s.

Launch a missile at 10km range (Close) and Thrust 10, and while it only takes14 seconds to arrive, it's also only moving at 1.4 kps... about the same as a speeding bullet. And is much slower than that for much of its flight.

As the space combat rules correctly say, at both ranges the missiles will hit the space combat round they are launched.

Point defense actually has an easier target, at Close range than at Short. Although my guess is that most PD is looking to engage the short range missiles well before they get to close range. But shooting a missile at 5km is also far easier than shooting one at 995km too.

This also underlines the problem with PD that's anything that's not a laser, at space ranges. A laser can hit that missile at 995km in microseconds; the best you might hope for from a gauss weapon would be in under a second. Which may well be good enough for slow things.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

IMTU, we have Kinetic Kill missiles that are (effectively) dogfight missiles launched from a Railgun Turret or "standard-equivalent" missiles launched from a Railgun Barbette. This was derived from the displacement of ammunition for each roughly equating to each other. The end result is an echeloned engagement of Instantaneous at railgun range (sans Smart Trait, and immune to PD and EW), followed by effectively doubled thrust for the "normal duration".

 

[Condottiere]

I kinda suspect that a railgun calibre is somewhat minuscule, compared to the missile diameter.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I kinda suspect that a railgun calibre is somewhat minuscule, compared to the missile diameter.

Modern railguns are between 40mm and 155mm.
That is roughly equivalent to submunitions for a Traveller missile (or the dogfight missile which is 1/4 the size of a standard missile)