VHB 2026 Errata

[Condottiere]

One twentieth of fourteen cubic metres seems correct.

Make up of the current crop of missile chassis is somewhat vague, so mostly speculative.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Don't you mean one twentieth of the magic volume not occupied by fire control, launch mechanism, workstation...

 

[Libris]

If we take the Striker’s example of 500kg per cubic meter then a space missile at 1/20 of a dTon comes in at around 360kg each which seems a bit more realistic.

A Sidewinder is around 85kg, an AMRAAM about 160kg, and an AGM-88 HARM (which looks like a super buff AMRAAM) is around 360kg.

However, these are long super pointy atmospheric missiles and it’s likely a space missile would forego the aerodynamics instead being optimised for use in vacuum. Doesn’t mean you can’t fire them in atmosphere and while, being unstreamlined, their top speed would be severely curtailed being grav powered they’d likely be quite agile - if you’ve got nothing to shoot them down it’s going to be a bad day.

 

[Condottiere]

Don't you mean one twentieth of the magic volume not occupied by fire control, launch mechanism, workstation...

The whole thing is rather speculative.

The only reason I came to the conclusion that the missiles is one twentieth, instead of one twelfth, was because I was rereading Sword Worlds, and figured the only reason you could increase the magazine, was because it was packed more efficiently, not that they found more hammerspace.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If we take the Striker’s example of 500kg per cubic meter then a space missile at 1/20 of a dTon comes in at around 360kg each which seems a bit more realistic.

A Sidewinder is around 85kg, an AMRAAM about 160kg, and an AGM-88 HARM (which looks like a super buff AMRAAM) is around 360kg.

However, these are long super pointy atmospheric missiles and it’s likely a space missile would forego the aerodynamics instead being optimised for use in vacuum. Doesn’t mean you can’t fire them in atmosphere and while, being unstreamlined, their top speed would be severely curtailed being grav powered they’d likely be quite agile - if you’ve got nothing to shoot them down it’s going to be a bad day.

The spacecraft missile is canonically 50kg, until Mongoose changes it.

 

[Libris]

The spacecraft missile is canonically 50kg, until Mongoose changes it.

Yep, no argument here. Though it does seem to be down to the confusion that a dTon is the same as a tonne.

As somebody pointed out that’s about the weight of a Hellfire. There’s also the AA-8 Aphid air-to-air missile - only 45kg and extremely manoeuvrable but pretty short ranged. Given the performance of space missiles both seem a wee bit on the small side - a light air-to-air missile in the Vehicle book is 100kg - Sidewinder(ish).

IMTU I just work on the assumption that a missile with the kind of performance demonstrated cannot be picked up by a single person..Of course, in zero-G, a much heavier missile could be man-handled (carefully!) by one person.

 

[tytalan]

The 50kg ship to ship missile is a little small for a battlefield weapon system. Firing off a dozen hellfire missile equivalents is not much fire support,

Straight from HG the standard ships missile would do 4DD blast 10 since it’s being fire from a ships triple turret or possibly a barbette that 3 or 5 missile from the ship as fire support without wasting space that could be used for other vehicles.

 

[tytalan]

However, these are long super pointy atmospheric missiles and it’s likely a space missile would forego the aerodynamics instead being optimised for use in vacuum. Doesn’t mean you can’t fire them in atmosphere and while, being unstreamlined, their top speed would be severely curtailed being grav powered they’d likely be quite agile - if you’ve got nothing to shoot them down it’s going to be a bad day.

I do believe I mentioned the possibility of specific missile armament. “ Should there be special software for a ship to use its missiles with a forward observer or would special sensors be needed? Possibly special missiles for such use? What if the missile racks are put on a APC (I could see this for both artillery use and air/space defense.” The ideal was that a Space Ship should be able to use its missile racks to support its Mercs that it landed. Arguing about using space design missiles or the lack of aerodynamic is misleading and not the point. I can easily see a Merc company using their landing ship as a base/fortress and the ideal that you have to build in ground armaments when you have triple missile rack turrets is fairly ludicrous.

 

[tytalan]

So Sigtrygg and Condottiere is there a reason you are misrepresenting my post and trying to change the narrative or is that an automatic response from you to anything I post. I literally said that it might require special missiles or other modifications “ Should there be special software for a ship to use its missiles with a forward observer or would special sensors be needed? Possibly special missiles for such use? What if the missile racks are put on a APC (I could see this for both artillery use and air/space defense.” Instead of actually responding you try’s to change the meaning of my post.

I could easily picture a variation of the Merc cruiser that is streamlined replacing the cutters and extra modules with Grav Tanks and Grav APC bays as well as support systems for them dropping their armor vehicles to clear a landing position for the cruiser to land and act as a ground base. With 4 missile barbettes acting as fire support and 4 triple Pulse Laser turrets as close in defense. The lasers are easy and basically covered but the missile racks even if they had to be loaded with an atmosphere missile ordinance should easily be used for fire support. I just suggested while we are editing that this should be addressed.

 

[tytalan]

Are ship missiles necessarily deployable in non-vacuum conditions? Ship Interceptor Missiles (SIMs) are designed for space; they need not necessarily be streamlined - they may have smooth farings or breakaway panels for tube or rack launch, but otherwise have appendages and extensors deployed afterward for sensor-tracking et al in vacuum conditions.

Never said anything about having to use SIMs I was talking about ship missile racks which we already know can fire different types of missiles.

 

[tytalan]

What I would suggest is two new ship missile rack missiles one for air defense another as artillery support. Doesn’t seem all that unreasonable in fact it makes a lot of sense probably not for the Imperial army or marines since they have enough ships to maintain orbital fire support but Merc have different needs.

 

[Arkathan]

Why not just swap out missiles? You can use lots of different kinds of missiles in the standard launcher.

 

[Libris]

I do believe I mentioned the possibility of specific missile armament. “ Should there be special software for a ship to use its missiles with a forward observer or would special sensors be needed? Possibly special missiles for such use? What if the missile racks are put on a APC (I could see this for both artillery use and air/space defense.” The ideal was that a Space Ship should be able to use its missile racks to support its Mercs that it landed. Arguing about using space design missiles or the lack of aerodynamic is misleading and not the point. I can easily see a Merc company using their landing ship as a base/fortress and the ideal that you have to build in ground armaments when you have triple missile rack turrets is fairly ludicrous.

I would agree on the main points about specific missile armament.

Ship missiles would be usable as is but as I said they’re not optimised for it. If you were going to be fighting below low orbit and in atmosphere and you’re planning on hitting something that’s manoeuvring hard you’d equip your missile rack with something more appropriate.

If you’re targeting grid coordinates then space optimised missiles will probably work just fine - they’re more likely to resemble low speed cruise missiles in atmosphere rather than hypersonic drones or dogfighters but if your target isn’t moving and time isn’t off the essence you don’t need to worry about that. Really depends on the mission parameters and expected opposition.

 

[tytalan]

I would agree on the main points about specific missile armament.

Ship missiles would be usable as is but as I said they’re not optimised for it. If you were going to be fighting below low orbit and in atmosphere and you’re planning on hitting something that’s manoeuvring hard you’d equip your missile rack with something more appropriate.

If you’re targeting grid coordinates then space optimised missiles will probably work just fine - they’re more likely to resemble low speed cruise missiles in atmosphere rather than hypersonic drones or dogfighters but if your target isn’t moving and time isn’t off the essence you don’t need to worry about that. Really depends on the mission parameters and expected opposition.

Which is why I suggested two new missiles one for ground support and one for air defense. Your right a regular SIM is not the best for either but I’m not sure about speed since the maneuver drive would constantly accelerating the missile the velocity would be limited to it’s structure and terminal velocity. It would probably be good to have rules for using SIMs too.

 

[Libris]

Which is why I suggested two new missiles one for ground support and one for air defense. Your right a regular SIM is not the best for either but I’m not sure about speed since the maneuver drive would constantly accelerating the missile the velocity would be limited to it’s structure and terminal velocity. It would probably be good to have rules for using SIMs too.

The M-Drive would be very impressive in atmospheric combat as it effectively would supply thrust until impact whereas most interceptor type missiles have fairly short rocket motor burn times. An AMRAAM motor has around 8 seconds of burn time to Mach 4 and then coasts the rest of the way with mid-range course adjustments and drag gradually bleeding off speed - as it closes against a manoeuvring target it can pull 26G (or more) but this will rapidly burn off energy and speed and it’s unlikely to have enough energy or smarts to reacquire a target if it loses lock.

If you want there to be a need for specialised missiles for atmospheric use then there needs to be a meaningful performance penalty for SIMs otherwise why bother.

A fairly tidy way would be to limit them to supersonic speed rather than the subsonic speed of an unstreamlined vehicle - let’s call them partially streamlined. They’d still easily pull crazy G’s in atmosphere and against slower craft would be suitably lethal and still extremely dangerous to closing targets. Of course, against high speed crossing targets they would be less effective and useless in a pursuit intercept against faster targets - that’s where your specialised atmospheric capable SIM comes in. As you say you could also separate out for ground support and air defence but the current missile trend is moving towards - but not anything like there yet - air-to-air missiles with air-to-ground capability.

You could limit them to subsonic speed as I initially suggested and this would limit SIMs considerably making specialised atmospheric missiles almost a requirement rather than the exception and making the differentiation between ground attack and air intercept somewhat more obvious.

Both options work fairly well depending on how you see it going in your Traveller game.