Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The target can take evasive measures.
Acceleration would be diverted to correct direction.
Acceleration would be diverted to correct direction.
Would a far/free trader ever use missiles?
- Thread starter k0k0pelli
- Start date
Only if you were using real physics, but if you did that everyone would be moving so fast that effective course changes would be virtually impossible. If you ever played the video game Asteroids with your finger jammed onto the thrust button you will know what I mean.
MGT2 didn't go that route and CT made it into a board game.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Game mechanicswise, you'd want the adjusted range to make hit within the same round you launch the missile.
KEPs have been proposed as ground weapons, but they aren't really good analogs for space-based weaponry due to distance of the ships and the need for a missile to contain a seeker, a warhead and then an engine w/fuel. I think it was special supplement 4 that had missiles being designed to play with those items. The problem with Traveller missiles speed after 10 turns is that if your target is also moving away for 10 turns your overall speed at impact isn't that (not to mention starships could have an overall higher velocity - and trying to keep track of all ships and their overall velocity and adding in head-on, fired at an angle, etc is just too spreadsheety for me). So giving Traveller missiles their kinetic bonus (or penalty) is difficult to game with.Ground scale projectiles do not tend to move at km/s. After 1 hour at thrust 10, a missile is travelling at 36 km/s. Kinetic impact at 36 km/s will probably put a crimp on your day even without any explosion. Even a single Kg of matter at that speed has an energy of over a billion joules or the equivalent of about a third of a ton of TNT.
The closer you are the slower the missile will be going of course but at the ranges you would be sensible using missiles they will be travelling at quite a clip.
For real-world example the CRV7 was found to travel sufficiently fast that a 10lb block of metal dummy payload was sufficient to penetrate a tank without having to bother with any complicated shaped charge.
That said quite a few ground support weapons CAN damage unarmoured spaceship (the FGHP doing 2 full dice damage). There are lots of vehicle heavy weapons in the CSC that do a few DD damage and the Heavy Gauss Cannon does 2DD and even gets Auto 2. By expending just Cr180 in ammunition the heavy autocannon could get 3x1DD hits in.
A Gauss Rifle is capable of 24 points of regular damage that would equate to 2 points of ship damage. With Auto 3 a couple of VERY lucky bursts could bring down a Ships Boat. Even a body pistol could do a single point of damage. On a ship with 10 Hull points or less every point of damage is also a critical. That critical could result in another 1D Hull points damage. A single hit from a 4D weapon could destroy a launch in this case.
You have got to be pretty close though
These rather silly results can be eliminated using the optional vehicle toughness rules in the Companion.
And sure, F=MxA is a truism in space. Accelerate something small enough that has mass and it becomes a weapon in and of itself. At the highest end of the TL tree you start finding ground weaponry that can damaged an unarmored starship, but then again you start seeing starships with collapsed matter hull plating around the same time, so it begins to equal out as well - assuming you are doing like for like TL comparisons.
Even the GAU-8 from a Thunderbolt is a grinder against all kinds of higher TL targets - and soup it up with better ammo and yeah, it's gonna be even more awesome sauce. But range and velocity are gonna play devil's advocate to everything when it comes to damage at starship ranges. I think most actual starship combat would be quite boring - it's not at hundreds of meters but 10s of thousands of kilometers, well beyond visual ranges. Makes for some easy illustrations when ships are kilometers apart or fighthing at those ranges with their weaponry - you only need to draw one ship at a time. But boring illustrations.
I don't have the Companion, so I don't have a frame of reference for the comparison. I suppose this gets back to the core argument that naval designers have today with weapons such as AS missiles - they prefer to put their credits into ECM and other fashionable goodies and they MAY put some kevlar around key compartments for spall protections, but other than that their aluminium hulls are nothing like the armor that naval architects came up with during the golden years of warships (circa Dreadnought to about 1945). Conways has an excellent series of books on ships, and the one that I think mirror's Traveller best is the Eclipse of the Big Gun: The Warship - 1906 -1945. It discusses in great detail, but not technically, the rise of armor design, guns, trade offs with levels of armor, and some of the more successful (and less) designs that were good balances between armor, costs and missions. Some really good cruiser designs like USN Baltimore class, or the Atlanta. I really liked it and ended up buying most of the series after reading that one.
Unless you are putting nukes on your missiles - and let's face it most naval combat is going to be with nukes - Traveller missiles just seem to tiny to really do much damage. And cheap when compared to say the cost of an auto-rifle. And I see why - make them too expensive and players won't or can't afford to use them. One wold expect a navalized weapon system like an anti-ship missile to be far more expensive. Especially with how corporations like to make few bucks from milspec weaponry.
Anywhoo, I've enjoyed the discussion. And no neener-neeners!
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
It was Special Supplement :3, I posted about it a few pages back with regards to missile storage capacity.
The folks at Mongoose want Traveller to have Star Wars dogfighting starfighters. The physics and weapons of the Third Imperium setting make this ludicrous. So they fudged ship combat to allow it.
CT ship combat was iffy in its own way because the missiles are too small to have the performance they are given, and laser weapons have too long a range (an interesting exercise for those that can be bothered - go read Atomic Rockets, then dig out FF&S and build some ship lasers without grav focusing)
www.projectrho.com
The folks at Mongoose want Traveller to have Star Wars dogfighting starfighters. The physics and weapons of the Third Imperium setting make this ludicrous. So they fudged ship combat to allow it.
CT ship combat was iffy in its own way because the missiles are too small to have the performance they are given, and laser weapons have too long a range (an interesting exercise for those that can be bothered - go read Atomic Rockets, then dig out FF&S and build some ship lasers without grav focusing)
Beam Weapons - Atomic Rockets
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I think kinetic impact was the primary (starwar)ship killer in Fire Fusion Steel.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
TNE and FF&S used x-ray laser detonation warheads on ship to ship missiles, and they were seven metric tons each.
It is possible to build a kinetic impactor, but relative velocity dictates kinetic energy. You could also build explosive warheads or penetrator warheads, but the weapon of choice in the game was the detonation laser warhead.
It is possible to build a kinetic impactor, but relative velocity dictates kinetic energy. You could also build explosive warheads or penetrator warheads, but the weapon of choice in the game was the detonation laser warhead.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Programme them to go up the kilt.
True, you're chasing it, but it's harder to dodge, and the engines glow hot.
You're paying for one shot propulsion, sensors, an armoured cap, and something heavy as payload.
True, you're chasing it, but it's harder to dodge, and the engines glow hot.
You're paying for one shot propulsion, sensors, an armoured cap, and something heavy as payload.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
That would depend on how long and how fast the target is accelerating.
A highly advanced missile could accelerate at thirty gees, and someone else can go figure out how long that would take to intercept in six minute rounds.
Up the kilt is a called shot, and if successful, the target is going to drift.
A highly advanced missile could accelerate at thirty gees, and someone else can go figure out how long that would take to intercept in six minute rounds.
Up the kilt is a called shot, and if successful, the target is going to drift.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
True, if the crew is virtual.
And doesn't mind allocating a large part of the volume to fuel tanks.
And doesn't mind allocating a large part of the volume to fuel tanks.
Were drifting off mission 
Sticking to what is currently in the MGT2 game. Missiles accelerate at 10-15G. There are few ships that can match that. Relative velocity is a thing certainly but it can just as easily be in your favour. A 1G ship will be doing almost 3600 m/s after a single turn, but a 10G missile will be doing 10 times that so even in a stern chase it will be impacting at 9 x 3600 m/s. A 10kg brick of superdense material will generate over 5000 million joules (maybe a few Kg of TNT equivalent). After 2 turns the relative speed is enough that 21,000 million joules are generated and so on. Whilst it is not tons, it is still far more energy than you could fit in as explosives.
Sticking to what is currently in the MGT2 game. Missiles accelerate at 10-15G. There are few ships that can match that. Relative velocity is a thing certainly but it can just as easily be in your favour. A 1G ship will be doing almost 3600 m/s after a single turn, but a 10G missile will be doing 10 times that so even in a stern chase it will be impacting at 9 x 3600 m/s. A 10kg brick of superdense material will generate over 5000 million joules (maybe a few Kg of TNT equivalent). After 2 turns the relative speed is enough that 21,000 million joules are generated and so on. Whilst it is not tons, it is still far more energy than you could fit in as explosives.
actionman
Cosmic Mongoose
Were drifting off mission
It's about the journey, and the friends we make along the way
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I am sure we could build one of those using the robot rules
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah, I immediately thought drone.
If it hasn't been mentioned in the previous 21 pages of this topic: 2300 has totally different missile rules. They are drones, either suicidal drones with bomb pumped lasers or what are essentially unmanned fighters armed with lasers or particle accelerators.
In neither case do they actually expect the drone itself to impact the target.
In neither case do they actually expect the drone itself to impact the target.
