Sand Casters

[Whipsnade]

I'm not seeing where cannons are mentioned.

You mentioned "bullet speed" a few times and the OP worried about the sand cloud having a vector large enough for it to diverge from the ship within a game turm.

I visualized...

What you visualize is of no consequence. What GDW visualized is all that matters and what they visualized was modified to meet the needs of the specific game in question.

... the original Mayday sandcaster ... Then Book 2 decided ...

You've got things backwards again.

You're having problems distinguishing design features from general descriptions again too.

LBB:2 came first. Mayday was designed later as a Series 120 game that also happened to be usable for Traveller, a "two-for" if you will.

LBB:2 presents ship combat as miniature rules, something which isn't surprising considering GDW's origins as wargame designers. In order for sand to be useful on the turn it was deployed, the cloud had to be a certain physical size on the game table so that it can intersect the "lines of sight" of opposing weapons.

Mayday handled sand differently because, as a Series 120 game, it was designed to be played with less than 120 counters in less than 120 minutes. Design and the choices driven by design are what matter here.

GDW could have said sand doesn't work until X number of minutes after being deployed because the cloud has to form, they could have said that a ship's maneuvering is constrained in some manner the turn sand is deployed because a ship needs to slip inside the cloud, and they could have added all sorts of additional rules which would further detail the use of sand in order to minutely detail an operational description of sandcasters. Instead GDW tweaked, fiddled, and otherwise modified the general idea of a ship deploying a laser occluding cloud of particles in a manner which would allow the general idea fit seamlessly into the specific game in question.

Having the cloud "magically" expand to 25mm isn't meant to be a wholly accurate description of the sandcaster's operation. Having the cloud "magically" expand to 25mm in one turn is a deliberate design feature of LBB:2 meant to ease and/or speed play.

That's the part you and too many others never seem to understand. In game design, reality - even the fictional reality of sandcasters - gets modified for the purposes of play.

... it was a 25mm (2500 kilometer) cloud. Okay, but if you create a 25mm cloud in one turn, then - unless there's something to decelerate the grains - you have a 50mm cloud of 1/8 density in 2 turns, and a 75mm of 1/27 density in 3 turns...

That makes perfect sense and it also makes for a perfectly lousy game. Just imagine keeping track of the expanding cloud you just described. You could spend time calculating expansion, densities, and the effects of both lasers OR you could simply put down a 25mm marker and keep playing.

Well, it wasn't the only oddity in the game, so we just HYNAP'ed it (Hold Your Nose And Play).

The only oddity here is your inability to recognize deliberately chosen game mechanics and comprehend the need different game mechanics for different games.

Then Book 5 did something else. Then Striker threw in a complete monkey wrench. Then MegaTrav gave the monkey wrench its stamp of approval and added a complication of its own, and here we are.

Being a different game with different design considerations, HG2 needed to treat sandcasters differently. Speed and ease of play was essential, HG2 was meant as a relatively quick way to fight large battles involving large numbers of large ships. Markers couldn't be used either because HG2 has no map. Once again, GDW took the idea behind sandcasters and then fit it to the game in question.

Guess what? GDW also took the idea behind sandcasters and then fit it to Striker, MT, Brilliant Lances, and Battlerider. In every case, while the idea behind sandcasters remains the same, the game mechanics involving sandcasters are different because the games in question are different.

Let me use an example involving a real world weapon in the hopes you might finally understand all this.

Avalon Hill published hundreds of wargames. Many of them, including Tobruk, Squad Leader, Advanced Squad Leader, and PanzerBlitz, featured the Pz.Kpfw.IV, a famous WW2 German tank design. In every game design, the Pz.Kpfw.IV was presented differently. Were the designers at Avalon Hill so completely stupid that they couldn't manage to present the same tank in the same manner? Or did the designers at Avalon Hill take the idea of the Pz. Kpfw.IV and deliberately modify it for the specific needs of the specific game being designed?

Of course, you know the answers to those two questions. The same questions and answers apply to sandcasters.

I really, really think some of the writers had never played Classic - or else the directive was forget Classic and focus on evolving the Striker system into a nifty role-playing game for the gearhead set.

As for them never playing CT, check out the writing credits between CT, MT, and Striker. As for them wanting to "evolve" the Striker system into a "unified" design system for MT, that's been known for decades.

 

[tater]

Sand vs beam weapons is unfortunately less than realistic. It's hard to imagine a way to make it not absurd. Vs missiles, OTOH, a different story (traveller missiles close targets at huge velocities, and hitting a cloud of particles would be unhealthy for them, but it needs to be far away from the ship).

For use vs beams, the "cloud" needs to be very, very close to the ship, and extremely dense.

For use vs missiles it needs to be dense enough (haven't done the math yet), but far from the ship.

Assuming a beam can penetrate a hull, or a turret, anyway, then we know that the sand must absorb/scatter enough of the beam that while it may still intersect the target, it will not have enough energy to do damage (or maybe just mitigates damage).

I think the low TLs for SCs probably need to go away, frankly. Maybe SC bays at lower TLs, lol. At higher TLs, I think you'd require hull material for the sand, or something equally tough.

HG makes more sense, actually, with the fire sand per attack. For this you must assume beam shots are really barrages of shots over 20 minutes, and the to-hit and damage rolls represent the cumulative damage done over the turn (entirely reasonable). In this case, maybe the first beams hit, then sand is "cast," and further shots from those mounts are mitigated, and the total damage done is less than it would have been. This makes sense, and gibes with HG. This of course then commits HG to the idea that each beam is firing many shots per 20 minutes, which means that ever missing targets becomes very unlikely at closer ranges with c or near-c weapons.

In this case, the sand can be far more dense as it is literally thrown down the beam path of incoming shots. The ships using this should not be allowed to use their agility, IMO, however (or do anything but drift, in fact). You could make an alternate rule where if the ship is maneuvering, it fires some multiple of maneuver gs (or agility). Ie: 3 canisters per agility used per attack. Dunno, something. Doesn't matter for huge ships, but does for players with limited reloads.

 

[Whipsnade]

Sand vs beam weapons is unfortunately less than realistic.

shrug Like the collapsing californium rounds in Striker, sand is more about when the game was designed than current knowledge. Anti-laser aerosols and other media were "no-brainers" in the Seventies just as laetrile and interferon were.

You want a wholly realistic space combat system? Play Assault Vector: Tactical instead. Just don't be surprised when it's out of date 35 years from now too.

 

[tater]

Hence the next comment that I made that we "have to make it work" because SCs are traveller.

Some stuff is worth working around, other stuff isn't. SCs are totally a feel thing for traveller.

The trouble with the space combat systems is they were designed without care about a few initial assumptions. Pick those well, and you can have a good, traveller system that is internally consistent, with the least amount of unrealism

 

[tater]

Another reason the HG paradigm for sand is better (apply sand to specific attacks). Missiles. The latter supports the "shotgun" use in OP.

Missiles are seen inbound, you shoot sand at that attack. In the case of beam attack, you want the sand as dense as possible, and disperse it to maximize density. Vs missiles, density is also better, but it MUST intersect the target as far from the ship as possible. 2500km away means a hypervelocity cannon. It's just a regular cannon at maybe 1000km.

So I'd say the shotgun use is fine. The SC would be set to "missile."

Dump the B2 cloud floating along, and stick with HG using SC to mitigate specific attacks*, even for players.

*for players, I'd make a beam vs missile distinction, and have it block all attacks from a given enemy ship of that type for a turn. Each group of missiles count together.

 

[Ishmael]

I don't see how sandcasters can work as described by the game, thus I describe it differently.
IMTU, sand is actually chaff which can affect the incoming fire by causing it to lose its lock and miss.
After all, the various rules' "to hit" dice rolls are abstractions of the entire process.

Consider the volume and mass of a single cannister shot, and then figure the entire volume which it is assumed to fill during the turn. Now explain how such a cloud of such low density can stop a missile or laser....

 

[Enoki]

I don't see how sandcasters can work as described by the game, thus I describe it differently.
IMTU, sand is actually chaff which can affect the incoming fire by causing it to lose its lock and miss.
After all, the various rules' "to hit" dice rolls are abstractions of the entire process.

Consider the volume and mass of a single cannister shot, and then figure the entire volume which it is assumed to fill during the turn. Now explain how such a cloud of such low density can stop a missile or laser....

The "sand" could actually be higher tech than just sand. It might be alumina or silica sand with a specific particle size and shape that is coated with say, mirrored aluminum. That would make the particle reflective of electronic signals to some degree (each particle acting as a small reflector) and abative in that SiO2 and AlO are both pretty heat resistive.
The mirroring would also scatter light to a degree.

So, it would work against homing missiles and against energy weapons as well in that configuration. As for volume, this depends on two things I'd think:

Size of the round fired (which would require very little velocity)

and

How densely the material was packed inside the round.

So, you could have a very large round being fired at very low velocity with a very high initial density that has a small burster charge in it. I could even see the "canister" itself being the burster charge since there would be next to no requirement for strength beyond keeping the round together while loading and storing it.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

What if the Canister containing the sand is a bit more high tech than just a container. Sensors inside the canister match the ship's speed and course of the ship emmitting the sand like a smoke screen behind it?

 

[Dragoner]

or that the sc turret has a focusing array and the "sand" is actually a high tech smart nanotech ablative substance.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

...As for missile defense and anti-personal, the canister is programed to explode in front of the incoming missile to "shred" it as it enters the blast zone. Set for anti-missile launch at open bay on a starship, the canisters reach the point where they were meant to have the maxium shredding efect on missile and denote. Instant spaceborne claymore...

 

[tater]

Breaking lock makes no sense (the chaff idea).

One, it assumes active sensors.

Two, it would have to be as hot as the ship to distract real sensors, then it would have to act like a ship. In the HG sense of shooting after the first beams hit, the shots are already "in the air" and lock doesn't matter.

As for the sand being "high tech," that goes without saying. Sand wouldn't work using even the most optimistic extrapolations of modern tech. So nano-bonded-superdense prisms is the least we could expect if we want them to be plausible and STILL not very effective

Regarding low density stopping a missile, that is actually plausible. Missiles are closing at possibly 100s of km/s. Hitting anything will damage the missile. Warheads on such missiles (short of those to disperse clouds of penetrators) are pointless, usually, as the missile has more KE than explosive energy. Also, the delicate bits (sensors) are pointing towards the target.

It's tougher with the beams because lasers in traveller by definition can damage ships. If sand material was better armor than armor, then they'd use it as armor instead... So beams can ablate sand.

 

[Dragoner]

Even if it is a substance similar to armor, it could be in effect acting as another ablative layer of armor, similar to how ablative personal armor acts.

 

[far-trader]

The "sand" could actually be higher tech...

What if the Canister containing the sand is a bit more high tech...

Or that the sc turret has a focusing array and the "sand" is actually a high tech smart nanotech ablative substance.

As for the sand being "high tech," that goes without saying.

High tech solutions? Well, does TL5 do it for you? No, I don't think so.

That's what CT has it at in LBB3. Even HG only bumps that to TL7, with added improvements for TL8 and TL 10 (all of which I generally put down to military sensor improvements, the LBB3 TL5 base is standard).

Nope, the high tech ideas for the actual mechanics of the sand caster are not a fix imo. It's throwing a handwave at the problem, at best.

 

[tater]

The HG method at least has it obscuring only a single target. Still, distances are great enough that attacks will be coming in roughly parallel. As such, to defend you need to cover the entire cross-section of your ship facing the shooter.

All the various combat systems have assumed multiple hits in a turn measuring minutes, where some effective damage is applied that sort of sums up the various hits that likely occur.

Sand is amazingly effective in B2, where it is already hard to hit, and pretty rapidly becomes effective in HG. Dunno any rational way to make it seem realistic, particularly at low TL. Sand is unfortunately silly, and always has been.

The idea that it was plausible in the 70s doesn't cut it, the math is simple, and doesn't require a background in materials science or nano physics (as an aside, the wife and I had to go to a banquet last night, and both kids where at different houses where the dad is a PhD nano physics guy at the labs. LOL, what are the chances?

Anyway, the energies have to be such that they do real damage because traveller never took to the Nivenesque "comm laser" heating the enemy feel. It was burning holes in stuff. As such, the beam will be very slightly mitigated as the laser punches through sand.

If it "broke lock," it does't work for a reason I forgot above---then sand would work against ALL attacks.

Of course the laser will also push the sand back towards the ship. Or the plasma it makes...

Might have to take a IMTU take and make them cease to work vs beams, and treat them as a sort of anti-missile shotgun CIWS.

 

[BytePro]

IMTU, things were based on Sci-Fi (i.e. not real Science) enough to be pass casual entertainment believability only (considering gravitics, Jump and Psionics were part of the game), with a tip of the hat to science. Maybe I read the same Sci-Fi as the authors, but I never had much of a problem with making starship combat 'work'.

Didn't have Mayday or Striker to confuse the mix... so the rules covering sandcasters were actually pretty meager.

Given the 1000s/20 min game turns... I 'explained' that:

• Energy weapons 'hit' by maintaining fire on a localized region of a vessel.
• Lasers do damage by shifting frequencies rapidly over a region.
• Sandcasters disrupt by being discharged into firing 'path' during that time.
• At one per turn - firing a canister actually dispersed 'sand' over that time.
• Canister stayed in turret while 'puffs' of sand were discharged at beam.
• Canister was basically a railgun winding tube that destroyed itself.

This lacked the idea that sand 'hung' around with the ship (as this was not in the Traveller rules that I had at the time), though, since it was discharging over the turn, I guess it would have the same net effect. Sandcasters worked like a machine gun firing 'ablating chaff'. The 'canister' was basically part of the firing mechanism - metal windings embedded in the upper part of a composite shell that were used like linear accelerator rings and burnt up in the process - over the span of a turn. It was not discharged all at once in order to disrupt a beam over time, and because the metal rings had to stay just cool enough not to melt apart. Yet, when allowed to cool, the rings would shrink and fail to function. Thus, a canister discharging 'packets' of 'sand', was useless past one turn - even if all the 'sand' didn't get used up. (And since the shell was very hot and deforming - the casing smoking while the rings melted and shrunk - it was ejected ala shotgun shell fashion, from a turret to avoid 'jamming' the slot in a turret barrel.)

IMTU, firing ordnance, required power - so even firing missiles couldn't be done if a power plant was disabled. (Missiles could only be fired one per turret barrel per turn - they have no propellent, needing to be 'charged' (ala a capacitor). As missiles discharge quickly, they can not be pre-charged.)

 

[Carlobrand]

You mentioned "bullet speed" a few times and the OP worried about the sand cloud having a vector large enough for it to diverge from the ship within a game turm..

Ah, right. I was considering the main force coming from the cannister, but the description does tend to make one think of a cannon. My mistake.

What you visualize is of no consequence.

What you consider of no consequence is of no consequence.:devil:

What GDW visualized is all that matters and what they visualized was modified to meet the needs of the specific game in question.

What they visualized is sometimes as clear as mud. There was no pressing need to "modify" sandcasters for Striker; it was part of a "just in case there happen to be space vessels in the battle zone" type of rule, not something central to that game, certainly not to the extent of having to weaponize the sandcaster. They could easily have "visualized" a canister coming out a launch tube and bursting in a 180 or 360 degree arc with some sort of low-damage particles more akin to the "... small particles ... similar to ablat personal armor" hovering around your ship that Book 2 and Mayday envisioned, and Striker would have still been the same game. A penetration of 2 or so in a half-circle danger zone, and we wouldn't be sitting here scratching our heads and trying to conjure up believable handwavium. Instead, they gave us a giant shotgun.

But, you're right about one thing: it is "modified to meet the needs of the specific game in question." Or, as I put it, and as it relates to the original poster's concerns regarding the conflicts between its use in Striker and its use in Book 2: "this is definitely not your grand-dad's tame cloud meekly following your ship."

So, contrary to your later assertions, I have things about right: it's not an issue of differences in scale, as you earlier asserted, but - as you now agree - an issue of differences in the games themselves.

LBB:2 came first. Mayday was designed later as a Series 120 game that also happened to be usable for Traveller, a "two-for" if you will.

Whup, you're right. I came across it in reverse order: Mayday showed up in the game store, and then they started pushing Traveller material. They were heavily wargame-oriented, a wee bit behind the curve in responding to the RPG phenomenon. However, the RPG has the older pblication date, so clearly it came first. That was ... a long, long time ago. I feel old now.

...[much explanation]...
That's the part you and too many others never seem to understand. In game design, reality - even the fictional reality of sandcasters - gets modified for the purposes of play.

No, that's the part we understand but are not satisfied with. As the original poster notes, he's dealing with an apparent conflict between its behavior in one setting and its behavior in the other. He's playing a campaign where his players are asked to believe that a sandcaster projects with wickedly lethal violence and yet in some manner manages to create a reasonably cohesive protective cloud that lingers around the ship. With all due respect to "the purposes of play", I don't know of any Traveller role player who has ever been satisfied with, "it's the rules" as an explanation for an event that defies common sense.

[re: cloud expansion] That makes perfect sense and it also makes for a perfectly lousy game. Just imagine keeping track of the expanding cloud you just described.

Absolute agreement.

You could spend time calculating expansion, densities, and the effects of both lasers OR you could simply put down a 25mm marker and keep playing.

Or they could simply have made a rule that the cloud persists one turn only. That's not really a game-busting way to see things; you get three rounds in a launcher, and if it created game problems, they could have ruled that the thing's size entitled the launcher to store 6 or 9 rounds, whatever - effect would be the same without having to defy people's common sense. Or they could have said a nonspecific, "per cloud," and left the cloud dimensions to the gamer's imaginations. But, that's all water under the bridge - they did what they did, and we're left trying to come up with a handwavium that doesn't leave us feeling like we're playing under D&D magic rules.

We can at least agree - as we seem to have - that Striker/MT and Book-2 are very different games with very different base assumptions, and he might do better to use Book-1/Book-4 rules if he's going to fly under Book-2 rules. In other words, sandcasters are not a weapon in a Book-2 universe and would not have done what they'd have done under Striker rules.

The only oddity here is your inability to recognize deliberately chosen game mechanics and comprehend the need different game mechanics for different games.

The only oddity here is your regrettable - and remarkably consistent across forums - tendency to resort to personal attack rather than stick to the issues. The original poster presented a concern: an apparent conflict between two versions of rules "physics" being used in the same game. I do not see, "It's the rules, live with it," as an answer his players are likely to accept, and I do not see, "Live with it or I'll insult you," as an answer in keeping with the spirit of the forum.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Dated military experience here:

If Sand is a TL5 then at that tech level it's smoke, because I was told the smoke we used to obsure our movements contained particles which screwed with IR devices which were on Russian tanks and vehicles. It could of been a load of horse hockey to make us feel safe or it could have been the truth. The point here is reflective material was put into the smoke grenades and pots and possibly the smoke generators to cause this. Therefore it is possible, that reflective material which could deflect some of the laser's energy could be mixed in at that Tech Level.

 

[mike wightman]

I get the feeling we wouldn't be having this discussion if the folks at GDW had worded things in LBB2 ship combat a little differently.

First - it is an absurdity that a sand canister produces a cloud that fills a hex/25mm range band/25mm circle - therefore common sense says it doesn't.

The marker you use to indicate there is a sand cloud present does cover the hex/25mm range band/25mm circle though - this is so you can see it.

The rule is a DM of -3 to be hit per 25mm of sand - if that rule had been written as -3 per sand canister fired it makes more sense.

As to the sand casters themselves, they are subtly different between LBB2 and Mayday - I'll give a star to anyone who can list the differences

I personally go for the depth charge like munition that is launched (you need the launch program running to use them remember) either electromagnetically, pneumatically or by pixie power (sorry , gravitics) which then explodes in a cloud of ablative crystals.

Higher TL sand canisters include an electromagnetic or gravitic core to maintain cloud density vs dispersion.

At planetary combat ranges this basically has the affect of a rather large grenade...

Love to know why they didn't just go for the screens idea from T2300 though - the sand is held in an electromagnetic field around the ship.

 

[tater]

Wouldn't work no matter what tech you use to hold it. A laser powerful enough to punch holes in traveller ships will punch holes through "sand." There is no real way to concentrate the sand, you'd be better off taking all the mass of carried sand and adding it as armor.

 

[mike wightman]

Ah, but it's not sand - that is just what they call it in the alternative universe that Traveller exists in.

It is made of the same stuff as ablative personal armour.

Is it realistic - no

But then this is a universe with so much magic tech that a little more doesn't hurt.