Space ships and anti-personnel weapon mounts

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Greetings,
According to the info text on the Vargr scout ship it is often used for ground support. If I were to do that I'd like some anti-personnel guns, which leads to my question: are there any rules on mounting anti-personnel weapons on space ships? As far as I can tell, High Guard has a table for small craft, but what about proper ships (100+ tons)?

 

[Reynard]

The ship weapons, as is, could be considered anti-personnel at 50 to 1 scale and if you think that's unfair well so are present day naval guns and missiles aimed at the coast. Putting personal scale AP weapons on a starship is more than wasteful. Best advice for something close to ship support is carrying planet side military vehicles to launch as infantry support.

 

[dragoner]

Usually with mine that I design, I use pulse lasers.

 

[wbnc]

Antipersonnel weapons would be useful for repelling boarding parties. and Since Small craft in High Guard have personal scale hull and structure rating I'd have to say they would be of some use in dealing with small craft at very close range...such as boarding craft.

if the ship is intended to support ground troops I can see them mounting smaller weapons such as plasma guns and rocket launchers to suppress troop around landing areas as well as defending the ship against unwelcome guests.

However I have to partially agree with a previous post, on anything the size of a frigate, or larger anti-personnel weapons are a bit of a waste. The do not take up tonnage ( at least in High Guard ) so the tonnage isn't an issue. However Plasma guns and other heavy weapons are fairly expensive, a few hundred thousand, ( a few million for more advanced weapons) adds up quick. And as I often say Bean counters get to have their say in arming military vessels.

It might be of note, most modern warships have .50 caliber machine guns and other weapons on the deck to assist in dealing with small boats, and unwelcome guests...so if you want to add them go for it.

I'd suggest simply extending the numbers of weapons for a 100 ton small craft, and requiring a percentage of the weapons cost for its mounting and controls...since its not likely someone will be standing on the hull firing them. The mountings would most likely be similar to the mount for an Apache gunships chain gun...operated a small screen, or remote station somewhere in the ship itself.

 

[Reynard]

The Core Rules state you use Point Defense ship weapons and Sandcasters against boarding parties. Small craft still use ship weapons in their turrets, they are still considered ships and have both Personal AND ship scale Hull and armor. Small craft acting as boarding craft still are attacked as a ship, not a vehicle.

If you actually want to put a PGMP into a ship turret, sure but it's normally a waste of space. A full sized compliment of ship PD or Sandcasters will make a much better deterrent to any trooper or vehicle that's 'brave' enough to get that close.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Sure, I can use ship scale weapons for ground support - but sometimes it might be preferable to just defeat the enemy and not take down the entire block

Sand casters are an options, I don't know how of why I forgot about them

But I can see some anti-personnel weapons being useful, such as VRF Gauss guns, tac missile launchers and so on, for suppressing and defeating enemies as well as supporting groundside allies, especially on a small hull, say 100-500 tons or thereabouts.

In my eyes, anti-personnel weapons would be useful for bounty hunters, mercenaries, vargr and others who might use a small space ship like an assault transport

 

[wbnc]

The Core Rules state you use Point Defense ship weapons and Sandcasters against boarding parties. Small craft still use ship weapons in their turrets, they are still considered ships and have both Personal AND ship scale Hull and armor. Small craft acting as boarding craft still are attacked as a ship, not a vehicle.

If you actually want to put a PGMP into a ship turret, sure but it's normally a waste of space. A full sized compliment of ship PD or Sandcasters will make a much better deterrent to any trooper or vehicle that's 'brave' enough to get that close.

From a mechanics standpoint you are correct. I have to agree with the mechanics portion of the 'waste of space" position. From a role play standpoint there is no reason why the weapons wouldn't be there. other than the cost of the weapons there isn't a reason a sip designed for ground support, or to deal with boarders wouldn't mount at least a few.

However if it's a roleplay decision, where the referee, or the players want to use those sorts of systems. there are a few reasons to mount anti-personnel weapons.
However in a situation where firing a ships gun would be a huge problem, such as in a starport when being pursued by bad guys as you race up the boarding ramp,since basically your firing heavy artillery in an area that ma react poorly to such things. Or to deal with locals who figure the best way to deal with a grounded ship is getting in close where the big guns can't fire. having an ace in the hole might be a legitimate reason for someone to mount weapons better suited to the situation on their ship.
On more than one occasion there has been situation in games where it was a referee call that the ships guns could not fire on targets due to local conditions, or the layout of the ship made it impractical. at that point a dinky little PgMP mounted on the belly of the ship would have been a real comfort.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Exactly! Look at the millennium falcon, when it deploys a small rapid-firing blaster to cover the crew while they embark, instead of using the main cannons!

Lighter guns can be useful from time to time. To go back to the vargr scout one more time its turret is mounted on top, not the best position to provide covering fire. A PGMP/VRF gauss in a small belly turret on the other hand...

 

[Reynard]

Well now we're getting into the realm of homebrew and personal gaming group taste and there's no problem there. Yes, I will agree it's your game, stick lots of little weapons on a ship like Han Solo did. Use the Vehicle guide to determine a personal weapon mount plus the volume needed for the firing crew. That combined volume and the stateroom and life support requirements will have to be the limiting factor to how many weapons a ship can mount since there's no actual rule like there is for ship weapons plus there's no facing rules so every weapon bears on a single target.

It is that easy.

 

[wbnc]

Exactly! Look at the millennium falcon, when it deploys a small rapid-firing blaster to cover the crew while they embark, instead of using the main cannons!

Lighter guns can be useful from time to time. To go back to the vargr scout one more time its turret is mounted on top, not the best position to provide covering fire. A PGMP/VRF gauss in a small belly turret on the other hand...

exactly the scene I was thinking of


I don;t always make design decisions based on purely mechanical considerations. I like to add touches for roleplay reasons as well. Sometimes imagining the look on someones face when a Plasma gun drops out the side of a ship, to back up my characters side of an argument is worth the money

 

[Infojunky]

Now if I where going to figure out something like this I would go to Vehicles 5-6 and rough it out from the rules provided there. I would start with a small turret and weapon mount and then use then use the resulting shipping size for the ship's mount.

So call it 1dTon, Cr35,000 for a Heavy MG (5d, rifle, auto 6, mag.7,000rds) in a popup turret, note I used the rules as a rough guideline as there is a bunch of systems subsumed in the non-spaces space of the vehicle design system.

 

[locarno24]

If I remember correctly, High Guard defines the number of personal scale weapons a small craft can accomodate.

[Rustling noise of checking the book]

It works out at 1 per 10 dTons, maximum, with no supporting space required for turrets/fire control/etc.

I see no particular reason you couldn't extend that up to 'proper' spacecraft - so you can pack a maximum of 20 personal weapon mounts on a 200 dTon 'assault pinnace'. Provided you've got the crew to man them, I don't see the weapon mount itself taking up much space. If you want to fire them under central control, of course, you'll need fire control tonnage.

As far as tonnage is concerned, 2dTons is an 'amoury' - sufficient secure storage for weapons, ammo, unpowered armour and similar gear for a 10-man infantry section.

Note that if you've got a significant number of personnal scale weapons, I'd be tempted to invoke the bearing rules for barrage weapons - yes, there are no facing rules by default, but a the limits on the percentage of weapons which can be brought to bear on any one target sort of makes sense.

 

[sideranautae]

I allow these type of weapons (a la Millennium Falcon) up to one per 50 tons, rounded down, without additional hardware. If there is already a weapon control system they can tie into that when not used by the main weapons and auto fire at any targets with in 100 meters. Just designate whether vehicle or persons as the target.

 

[EvilDM]

I remember that the Safari Ship from a supplement has anti-personell autocannons in its turrets. No idea how they work though.

 

[AndrewW]

I remember that the Safari Ship from a supplement has anti-personell autocannons in its turrets. No idea how they work though.

Supplement 2: Traders and Gunboats, page 50.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Thanks everyone for participating, I value your input!

Seems the best way is to start with High Guard's 1 per 10 tons and then improvise from there. Before starting this thread, as far as I knew one of the career books (such as Agent, a book I don't own) could have featured somehing close to what I was asking about, so one reason for asking was to hear about possible existing rules on the matter.

As for whether it's a good or bad idea, well that's for another thread