Reloading Missile Racks

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

So now a missile launcher is a Missile Rack with 12 missiles in it. OK

A gunner can reload a turret in 1 round, OK.

What provisions are made for Autoloaders? Also what, if any, benefit should you get from having a missile magazine right next to the turret as opposed to a spare missile rack sitting in the cargo hold 3 decks away?

 

[Captain Jonah]

So now a missile launcher is a Missile Rack with 12 missiles in it. OK

A gunner can reload a turret in 1 round, OK.

What provisions are made for Autoloaders? Also what, if any, benefit should you get from having a missile magazine right next to the turret as opposed to a spare missile rack sitting in the cargo hold 3 decks away?

It takes 1D x 10 mins to reload ONE missile rack, 6 minute space combat turns. So worst case it could take 10 space combat turns to reload ONE missile rack. Given how variable ship designs are deck plan wise its not viable to give case by case but if a turret has dedicated ammo I would allow that to be autoloaded and fired continuously.

So Triple turret + 1Dton of ammo space allocated on the ship for example. Ammo space not cargo.

Still the description for missile rack says the rack has 12 missiles and makes no mention of how many per ton. This means a triple turret with three racks holds 36 missiles, if missiles are still 12 per Dton as they were in 1st ed that triple turret is holding 3Dtons of ammo.

 

[jamesken1954]

Page 157
"Each missile rack holds 12 missiles and costs CR250000 to refill. It takes 1D x 10 minutes to reload a missile rack."

Page 161
"During prolonged battles, turrets mounted with
sandcasters or missile racks may run out of ammunition.
A turret may be reloaded by any Traveller with the
Gunner skill but it will be unable to make any attacks in
that round."

These two different rules create a couple of problems for me, one minor, the other not so much. First of all the cost of replacing missiles indicates that individual missiles cost the rather awkward price of CR20833.33333333333........ This is assuming of course the intention was not to indicate that to replace one missile you have to replace the entire rack, which is just silly. I plan to make the cost of a missile rack some multiple of 12 close to the CR250000 price indicated in the rules.

So much for the minor problem. The major problem is reload time and the inability of the turret to fire while being reloaded. Take note, the rule on page 161 specifies turret, not just missile rack. This certainly makes sense if the turret gunner is doing the reloading but what if another crewman is doing the reloading while the gunner remains in place? According to the rule on page 161 no weapons, even energy weapons, in that turret can make an attack while the missile rack is being reloaded though it apparently still remains available for point defense. This makes no sense and personally I will change the rule to read 'rack' instead of 'turret'. Then there is the question of just how long it takes to reload just one missile and can you just load one missile and fire or do you have to reload the entire rack before you can fire and if so, why? If you take the 1D6 x 10 minutes rule and simply divide the resulting number by 12 you get a time of 50 to 300 seconds to reload one missile which would allow a lone turret gunner to get off one missile every other round. Of course you could just forget the time to reload roll and allow the gunner to fire every other round. Which brings us back to the previously mentioned (in other posts) problem of just where are all these extra missiles stored? In my opinion it would make more sense to return to the one dton per 12 missiles and require at least one such magazine per missile rack installed giving four displacement tons per triple missile rack turret. Extra magazines could be installed to increase the number of missiles available for a given rack. In this situation reloading a missile rack while actually in combat would not be possible.

 

[phavoc]

Ammunition reloading should be as automated as it is today as in the 52nd century. The ONLY time a gunner should have to try and manually load a sandcaster launcher or missile rack is if the loading mechanism is broken / offline.

So if a turret has three missile launchers included, each time all three have been fired (assuming max firing rate here), a new trio of missiles has been automatically taken from the ready ammunition and placed into the feed mechanism for launch and a new trio is loaded into the ready slot so the turret essentially always has 9 missiles ready to fire (as long as the ammo holds out). You may want to clarify the explanation and state that a turret has one ready round and one (or two) ready to be launched. Any more must come from the magazine (which hopefully is adjacent to the missile launcher). In the very odd cases that it is not, then the reloading time frame makes sense if you have to move the missiles from storage.

If you wanted to off-set the size differential of missiles and sand launchers you could increase their space requirements by 1 ton to reflect they require machinery and loading mechanisms while energy weapons do not. Though that may be moving away from your efforts to simplify things.

 

[Bense]

Cr250,000 per full twelve missiles. Presumably you buy them in lots of 12. If you buy them one missile at a time you pay Cr21,000 per missile or more and don't get the dozen discount.

Probably there should be a note about how much space a dozen missiles take up, so you can store them in cargo or a magazine. No doubt that will be in High Guard.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Ammunition reloading should be as automated as it is today as in the 52nd century. The ONLY time a gunner should have to try and manually load a sandcaster launcher or missile rack is if the loading mechanism is broken / offline.

So if a turret has three missile launchers included, each time all three have been fired (assuming max firing rate here), a new trio of missiles has been automatically taken from the ready ammunition and placed into the feed mechanism for launch and a new trio is loaded into the ready slot so the turret essentially always has 9 missiles ready to fire (as long as the ammo holds out). You may want to clarify the explanation and state that a turret has one ready round and one (or two) ready to be launched. Any more must come from the magazine (which hopefully is adjacent to the missile launcher). In the very odd cases that it is not, then the reloading time frame makes sense if you have to move the missiles from storage.

If you wanted to off-set the size differential of missiles and sand launchers you could increase their space requirements by 1 ton to reflect they require machinery and loading mechanisms while energy weapons do not. Though that may be moving away from your efforts to simplify things.

Where do you get three missiles per launcher from? I know this has been a thing in the past, but from the text in the new book I read it as the turret can hold one missile per launcher (up to three in a triple turret) and a standard missile launcher has a supply of 12 close-by (should mean that a triple turret has 36, though this is not 100% clear).

As long as there are missiles left in this magazine, the gunner can keep firing each turn. When those 12 missiles have been fired, a reload action is required.

 

[phavoc]

Like ammo reloading systems from the fifties and before you get your reloads from machinery that to moves the preloaded ammo from your magazine to your launcher. You should never be manhandling missiles in a fight.

The idea of magazines hasn't been implemented in the game and so rarely have decks reflected storage properly. CT had a JTAS article (think it was there) that stated for the first time that a missile launcher turret tonnage included one ready missile and two spares. Anything else had to be loaded by the gunner.

 

[jamesken1954]

It states very clearly on page 157 that "Each missile rack holds 12 missiles...". That is one of the first things that caught my attention on this subject. If a single 1 dtn turret can hold three missile racks with their 36 missiles just how tiny were the bleeping things? A modern day AIM-9 Sidewinder missile weighs in at 85.3 kg, 12 being 1023.6 kg, slightly more than a metric ton (12 missiles at 1 dtn comes to 83.33 kg each). To fit 36 missiles into a 1 dtn turret they would have to mass less then 27.78 kg each as that mass leaves no room for either gunner or launch system, just missiles. That seems awfully small for a TL9 weapon that can travel tens of thousands of km and do 4d damage. That is assuming that missiles are still TL9. Personally I find 80 kg missiles acceptable given the TL which is part of the reason I suggest going back to the 1 dtn magazine.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Yeah, autoloaders should be standard. Going to make this one round to reload, but the turret cannot fire while it does so (must have some tension!).

As for missiles being on another deck across the ship, that is not an ammo hopper, that is cargo (was about to say it is not a magazine but, by definition, it would be ).

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Just to be clear, is that one round of reloading after each missile has been fired, or one round of reload after emptying the 12 missile magazine?

 

[MongooseMatt]

After you empty the magazine.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Cool. Thanks


So one shot per round, until the 12 round autoloader magazine is empty, and then one (space combat) round to refill with 12 new missiles, assuming there are spares aboard the ship?

 

[phavoc]

After you empty the magazine.

Then we'll need to know how much on-mount ready ammo is available;
and what does it cost to have your magazine (as opposed to your correct point about storing missiles as plain cargo) so that you never have to reload during combat (i.e. you can keep shooting as long as you have power, ammo and a target).

 

[MongooseMatt]

Correct.

 

[Captain Jonah]

From a dedicated magazine, that being space allocated on the deck plan for a magazine next to the turret. Takes 1 space combat round to reload.

Reloading from the cargo bay somewhere else still takes 1D6 x 10 minutes? Or maybe 1D6 x six minutes to reflect the space combat rounds being 6 minutes.

So the ship sheet says:

Triple missile turret + 3Dtons missile magazine (which takes 1 round to load another 12 missiles into each rack

Or

Triple missile turret. Has 3Dtons of spare missiles in cargo (Which then takes 1D6 x time to reload but the cargo space can be used for something else where as the dedicated autoloading magazine can only be used for missiles or sand).

Is that what you mean ?

 

[Bense]

Is it the case that a single turret holds 12 missiles but a triple turret holds 36? Or do all turrets hold only 12 and a triple turret uses up its missiles three times as quickly? What if it's a triple turret that has a beam laser, sandcaster, and missile rack - does that hold 12 missiles and 20 sand barrels?

 

[phavoc]

The number of missiles stored at the turret should be a fixed number. The turret itself holds the weapon, though all turrets have the same amount of displacement (1 ton). So whatever number is allocated for on-mount storage of ammo should be a fixed one.

The question will be how would you calculate the space for a turret that has a sandcaster and missile launcher, since sand barrels and missiles are different sizes.

If we know how much space is at a weapons mount we can figure out the rest.

 

[MongooseMatt]

The number of missiles stored at the turret should be a fixed number.

Agreed, changed to per turret.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

The number of missiles stored at the turret should be a fixed number.

Agreed, changed to per turret.

The alternative would be variable turret size based in the number of guns it holds.

On a related note, do sandcasters also contain a number of reloads within the turret, or how are they handled? If they do, what happens in a sand/missile turret, do both get half their regular magazine?

Perhaps sandcaster barrels are lighter and easier to reload manually, and just need some storage nearby?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Sandcasters will follow the same rule.

For obvious reasons, I don't want to muck about with variable turret sizes in Core. High Guard would be the place for that although, to be fair, there are already a multitude of options in mounting weapons in that book