Sand Casters IMTU - Comments Welcome

[Solomani666]

In my Traveller universe the basic sand caster works like a variable velocity and aperture fire hose, spraying a stream of prismatic sand, chaff, or metallic balls at incoming attacks.

IMTU when a ship is attacked by a beam laser, the ship sensors detect the beam strike point on the hull and then the turret gunner 'hoses down' the area with prismatic sand, following the beam along its path across the hull.

IMTU Pulse lasers can not be blocked in this fashion because of the short duration of the laser pulse. For sand casters to work against pulse lasers, a 'cloud' of sand must be placed between the attacking and defending ships. The sand cloud thus defends BOTH ships from laser fire. The sand is generally sprayed using a variable velocity and pattern to maximize the cloud coverage for a 6 minute turn.

IMTU chaff is sprayed at incoming missiles at a relatively low velocity within a short range of the defending ship, but slightly askew of the ships actual position, thus they do not effect outgoing missiles.

IMTU pebbles can be used to disable incoming missiles.

 

[locarno24]

Whilst I don't, as a rule, use sandcasters, this more or less ties up with my view - essentially I see it as the spacegoing equivalent of a warship "making smoke"...

 

[hdan]

It might be worth mentioning that in the original Traveller, Sand casters were exactly like smoke - you launched a cloud during the "ordinance launch phase", and it had your initial vector. Which means you had to plan ahead. You could also launch multiple clouds in different directions, or even "stacked" in one direction.

If you stayed behind it, you could use it as cover, but if you continued to accelerate, you'd outrun your sand cloud. It was a great defense for slow tubs like merchants who had neither the speed nor agility to run from a fight, but who could "sand up" and try to use missiles to keep away the bad guys. (Sand affected your shots, too.)

I kinda dig MgT's more active sand rules, but they make a lot less sense.

 

[Ishmael]

I prefer to think of sandcasters as chaff/flare dispensers.
the original descriptions of how they affected lasers and missiles made little sense to me.

I consider them as making the target harder to hit by preventing the attacking ship from getting an accurate firing solution. In fact, I'll often use the effect from a form of lock-on task as a dm to the actual to-hit roll.
Naturally, the sand makes the sensor lock-on task more difficult and more likely to have a negative dm for a hit.
A sharp sensor operator is less affected by such a counter-measures dm and thus can pass better targeting info to the gunners ( which must also succeed in their task to hit ).

That how I use sand, anyways.