Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
The twenty tonne ball bearing is also used in the five hundred tonne mass driver.
It's optimized for the ortillery role at default short range.
It's optimized for the ortillery role at default short range.
Rail Gun for Space weapon?
- Thread starter pendragonman
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
FASA's Renegade Legion games used mass drivers as ship scale weapons, in Leviathan the spinal mounts are mass drivers.
The scale is 75km per hex though with a maximum range of 15 hexes for the biggest spinals.
Battlespace - the BattleTec ship combat game I have - has 1 min turns and 18km hexes.
The scale is 75km per hex though with a maximum range of 15 hexes for the biggest spinals.
Battlespace - the BattleTec ship combat game I have - has 1 min turns and 18km hexes.
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While ship-mounted railguns and point defense cannons are short ranged, it is unclear how short ranged ship fired torpedoes are.
Yeah, how often in Traveller does a major warship have to shut down it's fusion drive in the middle of a battle to keep the reactor from melting?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Judging by the attack on the Cam, missiles/torpedoes are fairly long ranged.
I keep toying with the idea of adapting Battle Tech heat rules somehow...Yeah, how often in Traveller does a major warship have to shut down it's fusion drive in the middle of a battle to keep the reactor from melting?
Ducks are not in combat. Ducks are targets. If a duck turns out of the line of fire, it's because it had an itch or saw a cute lady duck. The failure to bring down a duck is (almost) entirely based on the skill of the shooter.
As for railguns, the whole "assuming railguns were possible". That's the wrong way to present it. Rather, it should be about what would combat be like with practical railguns. The Expanse used railguns, but they seemed to fight at Wooden Ship ranges.
The reason for all the "railguns unpossible" chatter is because light speed weapons, as presented in canonical Traveller, completely overwhelm any kind of ballistic weapon.
One could argue that at the ranges, velocities, etc. for which a railgun that could compete with Traveller light speed weapons, well, that railgun effectively becomes a Plasma Gun, because that's what's going to happen to that projectile in order for it to compete with light speed weapons. If you want to go in to the far reaches of handwavium to make a railgun practical well, then, perhaps it's not really a railgun any more. "We surround the projectile in a inertialess bubble to prevent the material from fusing when the round is fired under the extreme acceleration necessary to get the projectile to .5c."
Then we get to ask whether the value of the railgun is there over the other available weapons, to where the technology was worth escalating to the point of making super hi tech railguns.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Another possibility is to rethink the range of Traveller lasers and bring them into line with real world physics too - especially with regards to heat. Get rid of grav focussing.
This would change the scale of combat somewhat, but would make railguns, mass drivers, coil guns, gauss weapons useful additions to Traveller ship combat.
This would change the scale of combat somewhat, but would make railguns, mass drivers, coil guns, gauss weapons useful additions to Traveller ship combat.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
And warplanes?
I like the Wooden Ships/Iron Men ranges. Matches up with the Age of Sail speed of interstellar communications.
I don't believe that would be the case as missiles, as originally presented in CT, often end up in ballistic courses (out of fuel, coasting to target) and no one, not anyone, argues that missiles aren't useful. Perhaps the real problem is that most everyone is looking at this from a big ship universe perspective. Maybe the railgun is meant for the small ship universe that is CT (i.e. before High Guard).
What we all seem to accept without the handwavium physics to back it up is the plasma weapons and fusion weapons. Plasma is currently an unstable 4th form of matter, if we could sustain a plasma reaction we could have practical fusion reactors.
Or that lasers can be mounted in multiples to 1 dton turrets and not have issues with long range focusing equipment overwhelming that space. Or the mere idea of a sandcaster.
Meson guns? Where is the support? At least PA's are part of current scientific experimentation. At least railguns are actually being deployed to the American Navy (and maybe others?).
So giving me the argument that they can't exist because they can't reach .5c without significant extra handwavium is moot until it is explained how these other canon ideas can exist without extra handwavium.
So, I posited that railguns exist, without the handwavium physics to support them. How is that any different than lasers, plasma weapons, fusion weapons, and meson weapons?
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Hmm I dunno, missile nukes are a real good small warship/poor man's spinal weapon in CT:HG. Effectively so in SS3.
Well I can think of one, less then the total war effect of the PA/Meson radiological weaponry.
Re: spitting relativistic ammo turned energy, I realized it might end up looking like those Space Angel weapon shots, example following-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbEla3FLDcQ
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Generally, you try for a rock, paper and scissors aspect to combat.
In this case, twenty tonne balls bearing down on you at near relativistic speed can't be negated, only evaded.
In this case, twenty tonne balls bearing down on you at near relativistic speed can't be negated, only evaded.
Ducks don't know they're in combat, just that they're are random loud noises happening below them. They are also not conscious of what perhaps may be a better behavior when such noises occur other than, perhaps, "fly faster". Warplanes don't have that issue, save when taken by complete surprise (then it's the same problem).
Then say that. Again, the problem isn't railguns don't exist, it's simply that they're a crummy idea at ranges of 10's of thousands of kilometers. If you want the ships to close to 10's of kilometers, then rock and roll. And by "crummy" I mean what folks who know anything about what a railgun is, thinks a railgun is (electromagnetic acceleration of Things to hit other things).
Anyone who gets hit by a "coasting", well, ANYTHING, "IN SPACE" (cue Douglas Adams), over "10s of thousands of kilometers" is, well, a Duck I guess.
"Captain, there's a coasting missile approaching us!" "ETA???" "OMG! 12 MINUTES!" (endure 12 minutes of "hopeless screaming" as the ship runs headlong in to the missile). Yea, ok. May as well get hit by a blimp...."AHH! AHH! - checks watch - AHHH!!!"
Perhaps that happens to be a cogent ruling for the sake of gameplay, hmm? It works with Det Laser missiles as they're more a proximity mine than "big tube slamming in to the ships hull" kind of thing.
Which is how a fusion gun is described -- containing the plasma THAT much longer for it to fuse before it's jettisoned out on it merry way. But, I think we can agree, whatever handwavium is involved, accelerating plasma particles to Ludicrous Speed doesn't suffer the same issues that chunks of metal do, they're already blobs of matter and energy. Accelerate metal to those speeds, and they, too, become blobs of matter and energy rather than chunks of metal.
We have Lasers cuz "sci fi haz lazers". In CT+, they were "you know, lasers! Lasers do that!"
TNE didn't hand wave away lasers -- they addressed them directly with the invention of the granitic lens. I'm not saying they're reasonable leaps, but the narrative is good -- we "know" that manipulating gravity is a given in the TU, we know gravity can, and does, affect light, so, what the heck, why not.
I dunno, particle physics aren't my strength. I don't know what issues of Popular Science Mark was reading at the time he came up with Meson Guns.
And they're not anywhere close to the velocities necessary for space combat, unless you want grapeshot at Age of Sail ranges.
The authors, particularly later on, strived and made an effort to explain their handwavium.
They went with the classic sci-fi concept of "change one thing to make this real".
So, since RGs exist in your TU, how do they work?
Fundamentally, RGs and Light speed weapons "don't mix". Things "hard to hit" at Age of Sail ranges are, well, "sitting ducks" to LS weapons. There's no "roll to hit", just roll to damage in those cases.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I am done. Clearly the idea of discussing a weapon based in reality that was posited to exist is too much for people to just answer the question instead of attacking the idea of existence (which was stipulated that they do).
Enjoy continuing to grind your axes.
Enjoy continuing to grind your axes.
Sorry pendragonman, I just popped in here now. I think it's an interesting idea. In the old Starfire game starships used a combination naval-gun/missile launcher, designated as a "W" on the damage chart (we thought it stood for "WEAPON").
And if naval guns using an explosive charge can be used in starship combat, then why not the high-tech equivalent?
I don't see a problem with it. Then again I haven't read the whole thread. I think the only drawback might be ammo and how much "damage" or how fast you want to accelerate your projectile. Last I checked current technology could accelerate something to something like three or ten percent the speed of light.
That's moving. There isn't a material on this Earth that can withstand that. Possibly not even in the far future either.
Just my 0.02 ImpCr.
Funny thing this discussion Had me thinking along those lines as well. But in my case it was the Sandcaster and the missile launcher. Thinking that a Sandcaster should be able to fire a missile as well as a canister of sand. And along this line a wider selection of munitions...
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
I have a whole range of sandcaster munitions, plus my redo of lock-on mechanics involves a massive chaffroc like launch.
I'll bring that thread back up in the fleet forum.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I am aware of the W weapons. I used it regularly in Starfire myself.
It seems that folks on here can't seem to think that a mass of some far future material can't be accelerated to near .5 C without becoming plasma.
They can see VRF Gauss guns and Gauss rifles, plasma and fusion turret weapons, particle barbettes, particle and meson spinal weapons. They can accept FTL drives, but they can't get to rail guns existing. So the great majority chose to deride my attempt at developing a rule and description for the rail gun as a weapon.
Even though I began my question with hypothesizing that they exist and only asking for thoughts on possible range and damage qualities. The mob could not get to that and so kept attacking my position without posting any useful ideas beyond pointing to the rail gun spinal in Mongoose or making the damage like the PA spinal except 2 surface hits instead of the one and one.
I know this isn't a board for collegial, friendly exchanges of ideas but it the resistance I encountered makes me not want to ask questions here because only a handful seem to come here for information and the rest come here to tear people down.
The key thing to remember is to only answer the people who are trying to work with you, and ignore the rest. There is a lot of reflexive knee-jerk about cannon, even though it has changed a lot in the past few years.
Okay. I should have been finishing painting the house or working on the car, but ... well, you know, priorities.
My 0.02 ImpCr. worth;
I think the argument of light speed / (energy) weapons verse projectile weapons is premised on the idea that you want to use them at the same ranges for the same effect. This may not be the case.
But then the counter to that is arguing the merits of a Gaussian-weapon over a radiation weapon at closer ranges.
It strikes me (no pun intended) that at long ranges you'd want something that can hit with more immediacy, or more reliability, than something that can deliver a heck-of-a-punch but can't get on target as fast as a beam of light (or near light speed weapon).
I think that for ACS ships a rail gun would probably be a good point defensive weapon against missiles. But would require the players to get their ship close to the attacker in order to do any kind of damage.
For HG ships the RG probably is used at certain ranges for more punch, and probably a good cheaper / lower-tech answer to all those fancy TL15 fleets sporting all kinds of high energy weapons in spinal mounts (or even turrets ... are there fusion gun turrets? I can't remember).
I think there's probably three ranges here;
1) Starship Close "Let 'em have it!" range where the speed of the weapon can give reasonable hit results with or without software or sensory assist (radar, sensors of somekind, etc.).
2) Starship "Medium" or "I think we can hit 'em" or "the computer says we got a good chance" range; where this becomes your WW2 (or even ironclad era) type of BB on BB fights; i.e. fire away, wait a couple of seconds, wait for results.
3) Starship "far" range, or "there's no way in hades that my mark one eyeballs can figure this out, so ..." you rely solely on the computer to rank up the energy, and the software decides whether it's going to fire a projectile at relativistic speeds, or spit out a ball of plasma (that used to be your projectile), or even say to the captain and gunnery crew "Sorry, but that thing is just too far away and/or moving too erratically for me to do anything about it".
From that, come up with some rules as per infojunky, and have fun.
I'm a genius
My 0.02 ImpCr. worth;
I think the argument of light speed / (energy) weapons verse projectile weapons is premised on the idea that you want to use them at the same ranges for the same effect. This may not be the case.
But then the counter to that is arguing the merits of a Gaussian-weapon over a radiation weapon at closer ranges.
It strikes me (no pun intended) that at long ranges you'd want something that can hit with more immediacy, or more reliability, than something that can deliver a heck-of-a-punch but can't get on target as fast as a beam of light (or near light speed weapon).
I think that for ACS ships a rail gun would probably be a good point defensive weapon against missiles. But would require the players to get their ship close to the attacker in order to do any kind of damage.
For HG ships the RG probably is used at certain ranges for more punch, and probably a good cheaper / lower-tech answer to all those fancy TL15 fleets sporting all kinds of high energy weapons in spinal mounts (or even turrets ... are there fusion gun turrets? I can't remember).
I think there's probably three ranges here;
1) Starship Close "Let 'em have it!" range where the speed of the weapon can give reasonable hit results with or without software or sensory assist (radar, sensors of somekind, etc.).
2) Starship "Medium" or "I think we can hit 'em" or "the computer says we got a good chance" range; where this becomes your WW2 (or even ironclad era) type of BB on BB fights; i.e. fire away, wait a couple of seconds, wait for results.
3) Starship "far" range, or "there's no way in hades that my mark one eyeballs can figure this out, so ..." you rely solely on the computer to rank up the energy, and the software decides whether it's going to fire a projectile at relativistic speeds, or spit out a ball of plasma (that used to be your projectile), or even say to the captain and gunnery crew "Sorry, but that thing is just too far away and/or moving too erratically for me to do anything about it".
From that, come up with some rules as per infojunky, and have fun.
I'm a genius
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Traveller starship lasers are magitech.
If the were reduced in range then railguns would have their place, and may even be a weapon system of choice.
But that would require a major re-write of traveller ship combat tropes...
(you can get an idea of what would happen to laser ranges if you remove grav focussing in the FF&S design sequence)
If the were reduced in range then railguns would have their place, and may even be a weapon system of choice.
But that would require a major re-write of traveller ship combat tropes...
(you can get an idea of what would happen to laser ranges if you remove grav focussing in the FF&S design sequence)
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
I would like to see what infojunky's rules would look like. While close/medium/long aren't defined, we could apply what some suggested earlier, 50,000 km for long, 25,000 km for medium and maybe 10.000 km for short? Thoughts?
My FF&S is buried in a storage locker. If anyone has their's more handy, could they enlighten the thread as to how losing grav focusing shortens the range?
IIRC, every version of Traveller has missiles striking at longer range than lasers, but often a multiple turn attack run for longer ranged launches. In T5 the missile is the queen of the field as it's stand off power outclasses the rest (T5 does not currently have rules for ships bigger than Adventure Class).
I know it is not canon, but I have let rotary slug throwers work close point defense since the CWIS was deployed to the US Navy. So having RG/VRF Gauss have a close in point defense setting is an easy extension for me.
Also, someone mentioned using the RG as a potential variant launcher for sand and various kinds of sand munitions. I would be interested in the various thoughts on sand munitions as well.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Re: sand munitions you can review the rounds from my thread brought up for Infojunky, although it occurs to me that this would be a distinct weapon from the usual hipervelocity/relativistic mag weapon conception. More like a howitzer or large direct fire mortar.
In Striker the 250 MW laser worked out to 1 million km ranges once the vacuum multiplier is applied. The system doesn't work very well for mass drivers, works out to 5,500 km. if one applies the same vacuum rule.
Appropriate to bring up the ULTIMATE short range ship killer, the mass driver loaded with Californium rounds. Horrific beyond words.
In Striker the 250 MW laser worked out to 1 million km ranges once the vacuum multiplier is applied. The system doesn't work very well for mass drivers, works out to 5,500 km. if one applies the same vacuum rule.
Appropriate to bring up the ULTIMATE short range ship killer, the mass driver loaded with Californium rounds. Horrific beyond words.
