Some high guard questions/observations

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

2) Armour, in barrage combat. The book says "yes, this means armour is more capable in barrage combat than normal"... but is it really? I agree at a low scale, when you're only firing a relatively small number of guns in each barrage (under 50). But over this, isn't it less effective? It is only applied once to a whole battery of guns, and with large numbers and good crew skill, a beam laser barrage can damage ships with an armour of over 10...

Noticed this as well, tend to rationalize it by "quantity has a quality all of its own", numerous beam weapon hits in one move start to overwhealm the armour, in the same way that a burst of bullets will batter armour more than single hits with lots of time in between attacks.

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

3) I have a feeling like the cost of railgun bays are a misprint, or at least that I'm missing something. My reasoning is that the railgun 50 ton bay is 30 mega credits. However, the barbette is only 4 mega credits... this is a little odd. Even the particle beam bay is only 2.5 times more expensive than its barbette, and I consider it the much better weapon. And the particle beam bay ends up being cheaper. So, why is this so much more expensive? I don't understand this jump in numbers, even if the railguns are suppposed to cost so much.

Hmm, perhaps, but the railgun bay is a mean weapon, autofire 8, so 4 chances to hit, could inflict 4x3d6= 72 pts dam. Wow. Is that better than buying 4 babarrettes for 16MCr? No, but you only get 1 mount per 100 tons, so 4 barbarettes would take 400tons of mounts (even if only taking up 20tons of space).

Buy a large bay and get auto 12, could get 6x 3d6 = 108pts dam!

Ok, if your adversary keeps at long range and uses his particle beams you have a big problem.

Egil

 

[DFW]

Noticed this as well, tend to rationalize it by "quantity has a quality all of its own", numerous beam weapon hits in one move start to overwhealm the armour, in the same way that a burst of bullets will batter armour more than single hits with lots of time in between attacks. Egil

This would only be true with a space ship hull if all the weapons shared the same aim point (like batteries in Mega Trav). I haven't poured over this rule in MGT, so it might be the same. But, wouldn't work if hitting different parts of the hull.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Noticed this as well, tend to rationalize it by "quantity has a quality all of its own", numerous beam weapon hits in one move start to overwhealm the armour, in the same way that a burst of bullets will batter armour more than single hits with lots of time in between attacks. Egil

This would only be true with a space ship hull if all the weapons shared the same aim point (like batteries in Mega Trav). I haven't poured over this rule in MGT, so it might be the same. But, wouldn't work if hitting different parts of the hull.

Well spotted, I was, of course, doing a bit of cheap salesmanship there, the damage would be from up to 4 or 6 separate hits.

Of course, especially against a lightly amoured target, that could stilll hurt a lot.

Egil

 

[DFW]

I just realized that for a barrage rule (concentrated fire adding its dice of damage) to actually be logical, a double or triple laser turret would have to also have this capability. Actually, even more so than separate turrets.

This would make double & triple laser turrets a lot more effective against armour.

 

[locarno24]

This would only be true with a space ship hull if all the weapons shared the same aim point (like batteries in Mega Trav). I haven't poured over this rule in MGT, so it might be the same. But, wouldn't work if hitting different parts of the hull.

Yes and no - there are two possible justifications:

One - the odds of a single shot striking a relatively unarmoured point on a ship (sensor nacelle, gun port, RCS cluster, etc) is low to the point where the basic rules discount it, but when barrage firing masses and masses of pulse lasers, there's enough of a chance that it's worth leaving in (which is why pulse laser barrages can in theory hurt an armour 12 ship).

Two - much as you say, the more guns you fire as a synchronised attack, the more the odds that two shots will either strike the same point simultaneously (ideal) or at least one volley will strike the region of armour damaged by a previous hit.

The triple pulse turret, I agree, should have some benefit if you can concentrate all the guns in a sustained burst. Not a direct addition, obviously - 6d6 would be a bit harsh from a low TL turret - but it would help make the pulse laser something other than "the thing you fling out the airlock the moment particle beams turn up".

 

[hdan]

The triple pulse turret, I agree, should have some benefit if you can concentrate all the guns in a sustained burst. Not a direct addition, obviously - 6d6 would be a bit harsh from a low TL turret - but it would help make the pulse laser something other than "the thing you fling out the airlock the moment particle beams turn up".

What I do is allow a turret with multiple identical beam weapons to fire in one of two modes:

Linked: fires 1 or more identical weapons on a single roll - each additional weapon adds 1d6 damage
Multiple: fires each weapon with a separate attack roll - weapons do individual damage.

(Once I playtest this some more, I may give a -DM for linked fire to encourage the use of FiCon programs to assist linked mode)

In linked mode, triple pulse lasers can theoretically do 4d6 (at short ranges) and triple beams 3d6.

(The rationale for the +1d for linked is that with beams, you will be able to focus them more easily, so they each get their full damage. Pulse lasers get half damage for additional weapons due to the difficulties aiming and timing the pulses.)

Each such attack is reduced separately by armor, but then the sum of all remaining points is used for the final "hits" table lookup. A double beam is still not going to punch Armor-12 without some fancy shooting, but a triple beam fire-linked might do it, and a couple such shots could really add up to some damage.

Cost-wise, a triple beam turret is 4MCr, a particle beam turret is 4.2MCr and a triple pulse turret is 2.5MCr.

The 3-beam v. particle balance is about right - they are both 3d damage weapons, with 3-beams being more flexible and useful for point defense and "dialing down" the damage, and particle beams adding radiation damage and range.

The 3-pulse comes out to be relatively inexpensive, but they are not very useful at longer ranges, so won't get much play against higher speed enemies armies with beam/particle weapons.

 

[DFW]

hdan, those rules make sense. Thanks.