Starship Weapon Range

[Licheking]

Unfortunately T5 doesn't do danger space or area of effect for any weapons other than explosives (WMD/Missiles/Grenades). So how the Meson gun works in T5 is still a little vague as are any weapons with Blast effects.

I personally use the Size of the weapon and the Blast effect together to give a Danger Space and that affects everyone in that space. Size determines the radius of squares. For example and assault rifle Blast-2, Bullet-2 and using a Size 1 Missile (Bullet) would only affect the target Square. A Cannon with Blast-2, Bullet-2, Size 2 would affect the target square and 1 square all around it. While a Size 3 Rocket with Blast-2, Pen-2 would affect the target square and 2 squares all around it.

For me this makes a distinct difference between a cannon/gun/Gatling gun/autocannon and smallarms which could have the same damage effects.

 

[aramis]

Holy McSpace Burgers!

I thought Meson Gun beams were small areas and yet everyone here is quoting huge beam widths for them. Those things are far worse than I thought they were, I mean I figured like 1 meter of diameter and here y'all are talking 10s of meters. Yikes!

And that diameter is exploding inside. That is sick-house seriously dangerous.

Thanks all for pointing out how much I don't know about my beloved game. Still learned something new, so still a win.

Striker's effect of a meson gun bracket is "turns the danger space to rubble, kills everyone inside"... the space combat systems undervalue them compared to MegaTraveller and Striker.

 

[elbmc1969]

Just an idea, but you could have pretended to answer the question ...

I think that it would be safe to assume that a meson gun with a range of 500,000 kilometers is a spinal mount.

So, let me get this correct. Your sensors report a target at a range of 500,000 kilometers from you, or 1.67 light seconds. You now know where the target was 1.67 seconds ago. Presumably, the target is moving at a reasonably high speed, on the order of many kilometers per second. You then align your ship so precisely that you can hit a moving target of say Azhanti High Lightning dimensions, 405m long by 61.2m wide by 36.4m high, at a distance of 500,000 kilometers with a meson particle beam with the meson particles timed to decay inside of the target hull. According to T5.0.9, page 367, meson particles travel at "near light-speed". I will assume light speed to simplify things. Your particles have to be timed to decay with an accuracy of at least one-ten millionth of a second in order to order to decay within a variance of 30 meters. The beam arrives at the target range 3.34 seconds AFTER your last firing position data. In the mean time, your target has traveled for 3.34 seconds at a velocity of maybe 50 kilometers per second. You know precisely where your target is going to be after it has travelled 167 kilometers from your last position data, and you know to within 50 of so meters precisely what the range to the target is going to be, at a distance of 500,000 kilometers.

Note, your target can alter course in three dimensions, including decelerating. If it changes course by one degree, at the end of 3.34 seconds, it will have changed the straight line projects course by a matter of 2.91 kilometers.

I invite all who read this to think long and hard about the likelihood of hitting the target with your meson bean.

 

[Hal]

Striker's effect of a meson gun bracket is "turns the danger space to rubble, kills everyone inside"... the space combat systems undervalue them compared to MegaTraveller and Striker.

For what it is worth, this is one of the things that made me question the approach GURPS TRAVELLER took in declaring Meson weapons under a certain energy requirement to be illegal.

Striker rules hint at smaller meson weapons, as does the fact that meson weapons can be placed in bay mounts instead of spinal mounts.

The real hard part at times is trying to make one game system emulate another game system in "effect" that sometimes just can't be done.

One thing I've always wondered about...

If you feed X amount of energy into a given space within a given amount of time - doesn't the conservation of energy require that the damage effects can not outstrip the original energy put into the effect (aka energy weapons)? Since I don't have the math to answer that question, I've just taken it as an article of faith that even if the rules are wrong - it applies as much to the bad guys using it against the player characters as the player characters using it against the bad guys. <shrug>

Ah well, time marches on.