Geir
Emperor Mongoose
And... no. Screwed up (okay, I really don't like this but I really can make it work). A Space is the whole cube on this inside and two on the outside. I was being overly clever with structures and... well at least I caught it.
Updated Vehicle Handbook in the works
- Thread starter Geir
- Start date
collins355
Cosmic Mongoose
A Battlefield Meson Accelerator would use the rules in the "Forward Observers" box on page 164 of CSC '23. It is an indirect fire weapon, using a spotter to call in its fire.
Once again, the absence of power consumption requirements for weapons in Vehicle design in MGT are exposed though - the CT/Striker meson required 250MW of power from the vehicle powerplant, which was a significant limitation on the size of the vehicle that could carry it.
Shardan13
Banded Mongoose
Would be nice to have some energy weapons that could fit in a small turret. If the Imperium can build a laser weapon that can fit a large turret and one that can be carried by hand it should be able to build one that is between the two sizes.
Also perhaps a limit on the size of the large turret. At the moment it's theoretically possible to have a large turret bigger than the vehicle's chassis.
Also perhaps a limit on the size of the large turret. At the moment it's theoretically possible to have a large turret bigger than the vehicle's chassis.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Meson weapons are by definition a direct-fire weapon. They just do not need line of sight or line of effect since they can pass through solid matter before "detonating". They still fire in a straight line, unlike indirect fire weapons. Since you can't see the target, you need a forward observer, but this could just be a simple surveillance satellite. Underground Meson Sites work the same way. They direct fire on their targets, intervening matter is not relevant.
If you point your weapon directly at the target, it is a direct-fire weapon.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Doing a range of light-heavy-medium down to the small turret size - but the heck with small turret: a turret is just a quarter of the weapon size , regardless of size. Plus room for a gunner and/or loader if not remote or automated.
It's not well spelled out in the current book, but there is a 25% of total Spaces general rule half-explained for most weapon systems. That works well for most things, but I added a Primary Mount, where, basically you build the vehicle around the weapon (like spinal, but more like a tank destroyer or railroad gun.. or an MRL truck) - because only 25% of the turret (or in this case primary) mount is 'in' the vehicle, you can get away with 100% of the Space size of the vehicle, but good luck trying to fire it unless stationary.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
English is not the issue, functionality is. If you can't see your target, it is not a direct fire weapon.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Name one actual indirect fire weapon that you actually shoot directly at your target's position.
If you start using words with the exact opposite of their established meaning than words mean nothing and will simply create more confusion.
Your logic is flawed. If you point directly at your target it is by definition a direct fire weapon. The definition of an indirect fire weapon is not, a regular weapon but with forward observers. Real-time surveillance allows you to "see" your target and so fire directly at it. No ballistic arc, no indirect fire. Direct fire is line of effect, not line of sight. A direct line of effect. Not an indirect arc of effect.
So, English is exactly the issue if you are misusing words. People calling a tomato a vegetable, doesn't actually make it a vegetable.
Absolutely. Thinking howitzers, mortars, rockets and of course the targeting solution for a Meson gun.
But…
While a projectile weapon obviously needs an elevation system to fire over stuff does a Meson gun need to point directly at its target? If so it makes for an interesting mounting system that would need to allow it to point into the ground to engage its target.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Already covered by the canon answer:
"Although technically a direct fire weapon (the beam travels in a straight line), a meson gun's ability to fire through intervening obstacles and the need to know the distance to target makes it functionally an indirect fire weapon."
"Although technically a direct fire weapon (the beam travels in a straight line), a meson gun's ability to fire through intervening obstacles and the need to know the distance to target makes it functionally an indirect fire weapon."
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Even if you saw your target in a direct line, it would still be indirect.
Since it's like teleporting a bomb.
Since it's like teleporting a bomb.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
So is a HEAP round for a tank. Tank is direct fire and a HEAP round explodes on impact. Same thing.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If the round misses, it continues on it's flight path.
Or, if something interrupts said flight path.
Or, if something interrupts said flight path.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Almost every weapon today, attacking at range needs to know distance to target. That is true for all slug-throwers, not just the indirect fire ones.
It is no different than firing a sniper rifle blindfolded. Is that sniper rifle now an indirect-fire weapon? No. It is still a direct fire weapon.
So, saying that a meson gun is functionally an indirect-fire weapon is inaccurate. It has no ballistic trajectory. A meson gun has no intervening obstacles as matter doesn't affect them. It is the same as shooting a rifle through the air. Air is not considered an obstacle. Add a densitometer targeting system on your meson gun and now you fire directly at your target with no forward observer. Or as I said earlier. Satellite targeting.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah. It misses. Same as if you did not aim your meson gun correctly.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
If you fire your sniper rifle directly you miss.
My thoughts on this:
1) make sure whatever is written passed the common-sense sniff test. Example - in the MGT CRB it talks about a "tow cable" for a starship, and in previous editions things like "Jump nets" are mentioned and in some book there is an illustration of a ship with a literal net of rock being towed behind it. In a game that says we use Newtonian movement that is just plain.... stupid. I don't know if anyone has ever towed a vehicle before with a tow rope and no breaks on the towed vehicle, but you kinda get where this is going. Sure, as long as you never turn or never have to slow down it can work. Otherwise it's just a damn silly idea. A very SIMPLE correction would have been to add one sentence that says the "rope", when charged by the towing ship, become rigid - still messy as all hell, but with some slight understanding you could make it work.
2) There shouldn't be much time spent on sail, animal or steam-powered vehicles. In fact I'd lump anything that all together. Anything that primitive and basic isn't going to be much use in the game. A horse is a horse is a horse, and whether you have a 2-space cart or a 14 space Connestoga covered wagon, there isn't much difference other than hauling capacity. Same goes for making differences known between various forms of galleys or the differences between a schooner, barque, brig or brigantine. While it's entirely possible star-faring civilizations may devolve for a variety of reasons on a planet, building these vessels doesn't do a whole lot for the game as a whole, in my opinion. The fact that you might be able to design the Titanic liner seems a bit pointless. Doesn't mean you can't mention them, but making up design rules that fit within the system is where I'm going with this.
3) Ideally things will scale up and you can mix and match the items. Though that's may be too tall of an order. In theory you could have internal combustion engines being replaced with hydrogen-powered ones, or fuel cells). Perhaps space remains the same but power output will go up/down to try and keep things simple. Dunno what the final model may be, but obviously some parts will have to get combined if one is going to try and keep things within a design system.
4) It would be nice to see some acknowledgement that just because you have flying things, there are still concepts like the laws of aerodynamics that must be observed. Many an argument about supersonic fat traders has been made - except when you see the various illustrations of said ships you'd realize that the aerodynamic stress forces on such a ship would be massive (air flow abhors such configurations at high speed). Anything that's meant to fly fast either needs to do so in the upper atmosphere or else it needs to concede through its design that its gonna be smooth and sleek. Otherwise it's limited to a few hundred KPH. Even Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor would have to acknowledge that "more power" does not fix everything.
5) Scaling of weapons would be nice as well. Starships don't have meters-thick armor, so if a lowly Free Trader can have 0 armor why can't a flying tank do the same? And if that's the case, then the weapons created to hurt or kill tanks can do the same to starships that don't have that meter-thick armor. Of course that's probably beyond the scope of the Vehicle book, but maybe it needs to be fixed here and applied elsewhere. Wouldn't be the first time in the history of MGT books for such a thing to be the case.
Finally, hopefully it gets some good editing and play testing, with enough time to incorporate the feedback before the PDF version is published. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but publishing the PDF prior to sending it off to the printer does offer a great deal more opportunities to catch things that weren't caught prior to getting put into print.
1) make sure whatever is written passed the common-sense sniff test. Example - in the MGT CRB it talks about a "tow cable" for a starship, and in previous editions things like "Jump nets" are mentioned and in some book there is an illustration of a ship with a literal net of rock being towed behind it. In a game that says we use Newtonian movement that is just plain.... stupid. I don't know if anyone has ever towed a vehicle before with a tow rope and no breaks on the towed vehicle, but you kinda get where this is going. Sure, as long as you never turn or never have to slow down it can work. Otherwise it's just a damn silly idea. A very SIMPLE correction would have been to add one sentence that says the "rope", when charged by the towing ship, become rigid - still messy as all hell, but with some slight understanding you could make it work.
2) There shouldn't be much time spent on sail, animal or steam-powered vehicles. In fact I'd lump anything that all together. Anything that primitive and basic isn't going to be much use in the game. A horse is a horse is a horse, and whether you have a 2-space cart or a 14 space Connestoga covered wagon, there isn't much difference other than hauling capacity. Same goes for making differences known between various forms of galleys or the differences between a schooner, barque, brig or brigantine. While it's entirely possible star-faring civilizations may devolve for a variety of reasons on a planet, building these vessels doesn't do a whole lot for the game as a whole, in my opinion. The fact that you might be able to design the Titanic liner seems a bit pointless. Doesn't mean you can't mention them, but making up design rules that fit within the system is where I'm going with this.
3) Ideally things will scale up and you can mix and match the items. Though that's may be too tall of an order. In theory you could have internal combustion engines being replaced with hydrogen-powered ones, or fuel cells). Perhaps space remains the same but power output will go up/down to try and keep things simple. Dunno what the final model may be, but obviously some parts will have to get combined if one is going to try and keep things within a design system.
4) It would be nice to see some acknowledgement that just because you have flying things, there are still concepts like the laws of aerodynamics that must be observed. Many an argument about supersonic fat traders has been made - except when you see the various illustrations of said ships you'd realize that the aerodynamic stress forces on such a ship would be massive (air flow abhors such configurations at high speed). Anything that's meant to fly fast either needs to do so in the upper atmosphere or else it needs to concede through its design that its gonna be smooth and sleek. Otherwise it's limited to a few hundred KPH. Even Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor would have to acknowledge that "more power" does not fix everything.
5) Scaling of weapons would be nice as well. Starships don't have meters-thick armor, so if a lowly Free Trader can have 0 armor why can't a flying tank do the same? And if that's the case, then the weapons created to hurt or kill tanks can do the same to starships that don't have that meter-thick armor. Of course that's probably beyond the scope of the Vehicle book, but maybe it needs to be fixed here and applied elsewhere. Wouldn't be the first time in the history of MGT books for such a thing to be the case.
Finally, hopefully it gets some good editing and play testing, with enough time to incorporate the feedback before the PDF version is published. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but publishing the PDF prior to sending it off to the printer does offer a great deal more opportunities to catch things that weren't caught prior to getting put into print.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
I'm going to stick with the canon answer for meson guns. (which may or may not also apply to cannon - oh, never mind, that was bad, even for me, and I'm not even a dad.) It does to allow forward observers to be used. And if the editor doesn't agree, its not hard to move the meson guns to a different section and a different table.
The way Heavy Weapons skill is written in the Core book is unhelpful, because the specialties are Artillery and Vehicle (and Portable - but that's not as important), are whether they are mounted on a vehicle (Vehicle) or put in emplacement (Artillery). Not as either direct or indirect fire. Heck, even the definition of Portable isn't exact since it describes things that could be a lot bigger than what even a Virushi could carry.
And the examples both indicate an 'Artillery Piece' and talk about 'at a visible target' and 'using indirect fire' with the Heavy Weapons (artillery) skill.
The specialties could be described as (direct) or (indirect) but the same weapon (in the case of cannon, anyway - howitzers certainly) could potentially be fired directly or indirectly. So are you skilled in the weapon system (which could do both) or in the way a whole bunch of otherwise unrelated weapons are aimed? Or are you only good at firing the same weapon system if its installed in a vehicle (regardless of whether its a tanks of a battleship) on in an emplacement (which could be in a concrete bunker or just siting in a field weighed down with sandbags?
I dunno.
The way Heavy Weapons skill is written in the Core book is unhelpful, because the specialties are Artillery and Vehicle (and Portable - but that's not as important), are whether they are mounted on a vehicle (Vehicle) or put in emplacement (Artillery). Not as either direct or indirect fire. Heck, even the definition of Portable isn't exact since it describes things that could be a lot bigger than what even a Virushi could carry.
And the examples both indicate an 'Artillery Piece' and talk about 'at a visible target' and 'using indirect fire' with the Heavy Weapons (artillery) skill.
The specialties could be described as (direct) or (indirect) but the same weapon (in the case of cannon, anyway - howitzers certainly) could potentially be fired directly or indirectly. So are you skilled in the weapon system (which could do both) or in the way a whole bunch of otherwise unrelated weapons are aimed? Or are you only good at firing the same weapon system if its installed in a vehicle (regardless of whether its a tanks of a battleship) on in an emplacement (which could be in a concrete bunker or just siting in a field weighed down with sandbags?
I dunno.
agentwigggles
Cosmic Mongoose
Meson Energy Weapons
An M109 155mm SP howitzer is a self-propelled weapon that has direct fire capability. An 1861 3" ordance rifle was standard issue artillery for Union artillery in the civil war. It could fire in either direct mode or indirect. The German 8.8cm gun was used as a naval gun, a direct-fire anti-tank gun, as a flak weapon. There are many more examples from history.
There are SOME indirect weapons (such as mortars) that are not able to fire in direct mode except in extreme times of desperation or creativity. But many, many, many types of artillery weapons have dual capabilities. However, if they are designated as IN-DIRECT fire weapons, firing them in DIRECT mode means the enemy is too close to you (the artillery version of a Claymore mine having lettering to show you which way you point the explodey part - never underestimate the stupidity of a private).
A meson gun absolutely needs to know the range to the target because of how it works. When fired the mesons pass through normal matter until they reach their designated location and then through techno-magic come together and go boom. This is how you can have deep-sight meson guns in a planet and they are invulnerable to enemy fire unless and until they know WHERE to shoot their meson guns at the installations. Range is the primary requirement, and then expected location at the point of where the mesons are to re-integrate is your secondary requirement. It's somewhat different than regular artillery firing logic, but not too much. Just be careful and don't knock over the box of grid squares...
I'm former artillery (MLRS), but we had basic training in artillery concepts and I spent a lot (unfortunately) of time hanging around gun bunnies and FAO's because, well, that was the people stationed on my bases. We just made fun of the guys who had to walk to work. The logic you are denigrating is not, in fact, flawed. You are taking it too literally without apparent experience or knowledge of the topic. There are numerous instances throughout the age of warfare where weapons were used quite successfully in different modes. I think your issue here is that you are hung up on the literal definition of the word rather than what the weapon's primary DESIGN is meant to be. The German 8.8CM weapon is probably the best example of how applying only a single label is insufficiently explanatory. The limiting factor for the 88 was it's carriage for it's usage. There were numerous instances where 8.8cm flak weapons with their much higher angle mounts were employed in direct-fire mode. For such things you really need to get into discussing shells and fuze-types. THAT is your biggest limitation as air-burst shells are useless as indirect fire weapons, just as standard anti-tank round are useless when employed as flak. There are so many other ideas around this that, in reality, have to be factored into things. An AA crew makes a terrible artillery crew without knowing all the things you have to do in order to HIT your target. Just as they would not do well as an anti-tank crew with no experience in how to lead a tank that's moving in order to hit it. The gun itself doesn't care, but the crew and shells do.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Towing will gets some clarification. And needed equipment, even if it's a tow hitch or a coupler or whatever. Or docking clamp.
There's differences between wind and muscle for sailing ships and other archaic tech, and some ships may have sails as one of two modes (like a screw frigate), but I am not going to care about rigging or anything like that: It's a 'sail' big enough to move the vehicle with enough sailors to deal with it. You can add the Fast Feature to make it more like a clipper ship or the Slow Feature to make it a clunky merchant ship.
There's some give and take beyond just the Fast and Slow Features to change costs (and just cost). I'm keeping the things where you can trade Spaces for range or speed.
There are limits on what can go supersonic and how you get there (in an atmosphere obviously). Most strict for things that are not grav vehicles, which can just power through it with enough thrust or money (but even then it helps to be Streamlined - a Feature!) - but that doesn't work with things requiring aerodynamic controls: aeroplanes have to be both Jet (though rocket could work to boost speed or to fly for a short time) and have either the Supersonic or Hypersonic Feature to go faster than the subsonic speed band, and anything with an external rotor pretty much can't have those blades spinning at supersonic speeds, so they're limited.
The 'add TL to armour unless it's a big gun' thing described earlier in this thread should deal with at least most Armour 0 Starships having Armour 10 or 12, at least. But scale-wise if a gun does 1DD damage to a vehicle it will do 1D damage to a spaceship at spaceship scale and it will ignore the TL bonus of the armour. For smaller guns, I think the way it is currently written is to divide by 10 and round down, so if you don't cause at least 10 (little) points of actual damage to spacecraft, the damage is ignored.
I'll have to discuss it with Matthew as it gets closer, but I'd like to have some people pick at the rules and at the spreadsheet.