Point Defense Weapons

Vormaerin

Emperor Mongoose
So what is the point of the new Point Defense weapons? A single beam laser Turret has the same to hit bonus as a PD Turreted Gatling laser, does the same damage, and has a longer range, costs the same, does basically the same damage (1D6 vs 2d3). I guess it the PD uses 3 Power instead of 5.

In what situation would you gain an advantage by using PD vs a beam laser? Is there something I missed in reading the section?

Also, how am I intended to read this statement: "Any hardpoint can mount a point defence turret instead of a standard turret, and it is
always possible to do so, even alongside combat weapons."
 
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I think the advantage here is that you would have a double-turret with a single Beam and a PD Gatling Turret, with very different capabilities.

This is also a cultural and role-playing opportunity: "Defences are still desirable however and in some cases the authorities prefer civilians to arm ships only with short-range defensive weaponry rather than long-range missiles and combat lasers"

There is also the argument that "Point Defence (Gunner)" initiated Gunner (turret) check against any missile salvo is not an attack roll, but something different entirely- thus the Beam Laser DM would not apply.

I really like them as alternatives to heavily armed civilian vessels
 
I like the idea. I just don't understand the implementation. The point defence reaction wouldn't use any of the DMs, beam or PD, as far as I am aware. If its intended that PD turrets give a bonus to the PD reaction, that's interesting. But it specifically says bonuses to attack rolls, which is not a PD reaction.

And if the idea is that you have two turrets on every hardpoint, one regular and one PD, that would be a thing for folks who want missiles or sandcasters. But if you had regular laser turrets, you wouldn't benefit from the PD turret since point defence with a laser turret is as good or better than PD with a PD turret. Again, unless I'm missing something. I'm also not superfond of the having a second turret on your hardpoint idea. But that's a different issue.
 
1. This removes the need for separate gunners dedicated to point defence, needing only a command from the bridge to activate when an incoming attack is detected.

2. A point-defence battery automatically intercepts missile and torpedo salvoes just before they make their own attack rolls.

3. A point-defence battery reduces the number of missiles attacking a ship each turn by its Intercept score. This can be applied to any salvo or spread between several salvoes.

4. A point defence battery uses 1 Hardpoint.

5. I don't see any damage potential of Point Defence against spacecraft or personnel mentioned.

6. The advantage a turreted laser weapon system has against dedicated point defence, is that it can be used offensively against spacecraft
 
I might be reading to much into this, but I'm seeing it as a way around sector laws. It is marketed as a "defensive" weapon with limited short range, but the punch of beam/pulse laser when compare to the "offensive" beam and pulse lasers medium and long range weapons.

Authorities might not like to see a civilian registered ship with medium/long range lasers, but would not think twice about "defensive" short range weapons.
 
Sure, but there are no such laws as far as I am aware. Civilian ships have been allowed to have missiles, lasers, and sandcasters as weapons uninterruptedly since 1977 and in every edition of Traveller. Those are the weaksauce civilian weapons. Military ships are gonna use plasma weapons, torpedoes, and bay weaponry. :P

But, regardless of RP reasons, I'm just trying to parse the mechanics. As far as I can tell, PD Turrets are not more effective at PD than regular laser turrets. They just have shorter range against other targets, take up half as much space, and slightly less power. If that's intended, okay. Just want to be sure I am reading the rules correctly.

The other question is whether this statement:

"Any hardpoint can mount a point defence turret instead of a standard turret, and it is always possible to do so, even alongside combat weapons."

is supposed to mean that you can have a PD Turret and a regular Turret on the same hardpoint or if it is just intended to refer to have a PD laser as one of the weapons in a multi weapon regular turret.
 
Unfortunately, "Point-defence turrets must be used by a Gunner." per Trailing Frontiers.
Sure, but there are no such laws as far as I am aware. Civilian ships have been allowed to have missiles, lasers, and sandcasters as weapons uninterruptedly since 1977 and in every edition of Traveller. Those are the weaksauce civilian weapons. Military ships are gonna use plasma weapons, torpedoes, and bay weaponry. :p

But, regardless of RP reasons, I'm just trying to parse the mechanics. As far as I can tell, PD Turrets are not more effective at PD than regular laser turrets. They just have shorter range against other targets, take up half as much space, and slightly less power. If that's intended, okay. Just want to be sure I am reading the rules correctly.

The other question is whether this statement:

"Any hardpoint can mount a point defence turret instead of a standard turret, and it is always possible to do so, even alongside combat weapons."

is supposed to mean that you can have a PD Turret and a regular Turret on the same hardpoint or if it is just intended to refer to have a PD laser as one of the weapons in a multi weapon regular turret.
I read it as you could have a PD weapon as one of the options on a standard turret.
'A single point-defence laser can be mounted in a point-defence turret or replace standard weapons in a normal turret. In the latter case either the point-defence weapons or standard weapons can fire in a given round as the targeting parameters are quite different."
Not too much of a negative impact, as you can't fire at a target and then point defense anyway.

Silly question- can you put a PD laser on a firmpoint (fixed-mount or turret)?
 
The rules for PD overall is just a mess honestly, and as written the new dedicated point defense turrets have no usage as they are just a less capable version of a pulse laser. same goes for beam lasers as they offer no bonus worth having when it comes to defense.

Now if the point defense turrets and weapons in the frontier did offer a bonus to actually defending the ship then they would be rather interesting I will admit as they are lighter and less power hungry compared to a "normal" laser but then the question becomes why does not other weapons accuracy bonus apply to a point defense action.
 
Can only agree. The point defense turret doesn’t seem to add anything to the game - except if they are meant to be installable alongside a regular turret on the same hard point, which doesn’t seem to be the case.

If the various bonuses for point defense turret, dual laser and Gatling lasers turn out to be active for point defense reactions, and not just attack rolls, they become more interesting. They still need to compare with DM+2 for regular triple turret lasers however.

And/or if they got a separate statline for stacking ground targets (a defensive Gatling laser could clear a landing zone pretty efficiently if it had an auto rating and a ground attack mode)
 
So yeah my brain has been working away, but I don’t see a reason to invest in pdl over a regular laser.

1. Regular laser = bigger threat = pirates less likely to screw with you, and since they can already target missiles yeah
2. The PDL is only slightly cheaper which I under stand but may aswell go full on still as the cost in ship terms is negligible
3. The bonus of combining the PDL in a regular turntable on makes sense in turrets that are not laser based, but in that case same as first argument

Now if this had additional rules or Info for using on a more personal scale then I can get behind it a little clear landing zone, repel boarders, that sort of thing but even then I think I would still with full lasers over this and non mixed turrets cause extra missile is too good to miss out, it need to clarified further in the text and buffed to be worth it, and I personally would splurge to automate PD turrets so players aren’t stuck doing nothing with pea shooter have a gunner for important weapons that are fun.

P.S. Anybody worked out the confusion of launch rails and their limitations yet?
 
Why not insist that authors on the main stick to the myriad weapon systems in the core books without inventing new ones that are duplicates and burying the rules for the new systems in expensive books.

I thought the whole point of revising HG was to put all the rules for ships in one place - not immediately start making up new stuff that is not in HG.
 
Why not insist that authors on the main stick to the myriad weapon systems in the core books without inventing new ones that are duplicates and burying the rules for the new systems in expensive books.

I thought the whole point of revising HG was to put all the rules for ships in one place - not immediately start making up new stuff that is not in HG.
Well I agree somewhat the additions aren’t so much a duplication but a specialisation, the pdl bonus needs to be higher over all than a beam laser so +6 and more or other benefit made more enticing saving a minuscule amount of power and space isn’t enough to make them worth the effort
 
I thought the whole point of revising HG was to put all the rules for ships in one place - not immediately start making up new stuff that is not in HG.

One thing that was done with the 2nd edition High Guard was bringing in rules that had been scattered across various books. Which heped, but then you get authors that want something that High Guard doesn't offer and stuff starts getting scattered again.
 
Logically speaking, a point defense weapon should never be part of a mixed turret, since you are going to want your PD weapon to have unrestricted capabilities and field of fire - and you are also not going to want to mix your offensive and defensive weapons so you have a choice of one or the other. IF the weapons are complimentary (like a SeaRAM system for ships or the Avenger system - bothof which mount missiles and guns to engage targets at different ranges). The difference in this system is that SeaRAM/Avenger is meant for one task only, whereas Traveller lasers are more like rapid-fire 5in guns.

I've never liked how MGT has implemented PD weaponry. For PD you would want the gatling-type laser to put as many beams of light on your target to destroy it. Missiles can be quite maneuverable and difficult to hit. So your PD turrets would should really be placed based upon where they have the largest field of fire. To continue the realism you'd have to impose arbitrary limits on how many a ship could mount or else PC's would put one every very square meters. A naval architect having to deal with reality would be limited by real-world issues and not the goal of trying to make a defensive hedgehog.

A PD should be able to engage multiple missiles in an engagement, but each one after the first is done at a lower chance of hitting the target. More barrels would mean a higher DM to hit a single target, to your chances would not decline as much, but still they would decline. More power and better sensors would give you a bit more longer range, but I'd think anything beyond short-range for this type of PD should be considered unreasonable and defenses would need to be firing counter-missiles at that distance.

For a game it could get complicated quick, which is why clear and concise rules are best. MGT seems to dislike that concept, preferring to leave things more interpretable - which generates discussions like this.
 
1. In Traveller, lasers and missiles can be dual purpose, point defence and anti ship.

2. In terns of fields of fire, there's (spacecraft) agility.

3. In terms of every square metre, the loophole to that would be ground weapons, assuming you can translate that into space combat.

4. Originally, it looks like the mixed turret was designed for partial point defence: sandcaster, laser, missile launcher.

5. This stuff is complex, the fields of fire could be concentrated to a more narrow approach a group(s) of missiles could be coming from.

6. The computer could also prioritize which missiles get shot down first.

7. We used to have gatling lasers, which were defined by the number of lenses, or I suppose pulses.

8. You could group point defence together, which is why I suppose they're twenty tonnes each system, with interlocking fields of fire.

9. And of course:

 
Taking your points individually:
1) Today guns and missiles can be offensive/defensive. And, as we know today and throughout history, SOME things might work well as dual-purpose (88mm is a great example - anti-tank, artillery and anti-aircraft...even navalized versions), but it's not a universal answer. And, in the example of the 88 - not without changing out shells. So while the cannon remained the same, mounts and shells and even training was different for each variation. A CIWS or SeaRAM is far more effective at anti-missile defense than a rapid-fire 5' gun. Each has their purpose and each excels in different areas - though they can both be employed to shoot at small craft. So yea, Traveller falls within the same concept.

2) A 500 Dton craft is not exactly "agile", and a 1/12 Dton missile is far more agile. I don't see how agility means anything here.

3) I don't know what you are hinting at here unless you are talking about a ship not having any restrictions on mounting ground-weaponry vs. regular ship weaponry. If that's the case, then yes, players will abuse the hell out of it.

4) As I see it the mixed turret was to try to give smaller ships a little of everything. When you have only 1 hardpoint you want to try and cover all your bases.

5) Placement of defensive weaponry is going to be based upon field of fire. But since you can't guarantee you'll only engage the enemy from one vector, ships have to be able to engage in all directions, thus your weapon mounts are predicated upon mission and tactics. For general defense you'd want 360 degree coverage. Generally speaking you try to give yourself the best arc coverage you can. Like a naval ship, starships still have a bow, stern, port, starboard, dorsal and ventral sides.

6) For most point defense, it's going to be all computer-controlled anyways. An operator would prioritize longer-distance, or vague guidelines like torpedoes vs missiles. Beyond that its going to be too fast for a person to intervene and your system will use pre-programed guidelines. That's no different than it is today.

7) For point-defense, a gatling laser makes a lot of sense. A pulse laser, in theory, could do the same, by altering the emitter and releasing more bursts with less energy per burst. But that's never how the books have described them.

8) Grouping your point defense together is a bad idea. One hit and you lose them all. Plus you miss out on coverage. You are better to put them as overlapping.

9) The video is interesting, but logically the spin doesn't give the ship much of an advantage. It's PD cannons were spread around the ship, giving it arcs of fire. The cannons apparently were in continuous fire mode, thus rotating the ship didn't give you advantages - at most it would pass off firing solutions to another cannon. And the missiles were all coming from the same ship inbound, thus they all shared the same attack vector. While it looks cool, it is tactically pretty much meaningless.
 
Not everyone plays the OTU. Some may where well have a lot more weapns restrictions in their TUs or homebrews. I have for example (no missiles on civilian ships)

Oh and the defence turret is smaller (0.5dt)
Yes, that's true. But this book is supposedly about the OTU. Traveller 1977, Traveller 5, and Mongoose 1e were basically Traveller cookbooks for homebrew settings. But this stuff is in a OTU setting book, not a general rules supplement. So there should be some way they actually fit into the way things work in the OTU.
 
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