A Couple Missile Opinions

[kilemall]

As part of my CT/HG hybrid I've been looking hard at the missiles and think I've got a working system, including bay missile buys and TL effects and the like.

But it involves altering a long-standing bit about missiles, at least since the Missile Supplement.

I'm allowing for faster missiles then the ships can go. This achieves two things, I can factor in kinetic impact effects that can go up for the faster missiles, and the missiles 'clear the board' faster since I'm actually having them move just like the ships.


However, it DOES affect the interaction of missiles and ships.

With a 6G limit on the missiles, the slower ships can be run down even if they have some delta vee away from the shooting ship, but a faster 5-6G ship will likely escape impact entirely and even a 4G ship at some distance may be out of a reasonable engagement envelope.

But if you have 10G, 12G or higher missiles pretty much nothing escapes at anything medium or shorter (500000 km or less).

IYO how important is it to have that 'fast as ship' missile speed?






Second opinion, lately I've been visualizing missile warheads as delivering an optimized to-hit pattern of solid AP penetrators accelerated the last few 1000km with an explosive charge.

However, it occurred to me that like PA fire or plasma/fusion guns, missiles could fire off several HEAT bolts that do not dissipate quickly in space due to no atmosphere or charged particles. Is that reasonable?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

But it involves altering a long-standing bit about missiles, at least since the Missile Supplement.
....
With a 6G limit on the missiles, ...

I see no such limitation in the missile supplement? Or the LBBs?


Obviously a missile must be more manoeuvrable than the target ship to have a reasonable chance of interception. The standard 5G missile might be enough against slow civilian ships, it will not cut it against fast military ships.

 

[whartung]

In TNE, of course, your missile can be as fast as you want. Then again, so can the ships. (Mind I do not know what, if any, limits their are on gravitic compensation for ships -- people don't do well at high Gs for sustained periods.)

In CT we simply didn't have (or were not allowed) to have a faster than 6G drive.

Being able to outrun missiles is an important aspect as it basically empower maneuverability to affect outcomes and be used as a tactic.

If the missile are too fast, then I won't bother "dodging" them, or trying to out run them, I'll simply armor up and build more point defense to counter them directly.

In SFB (I know, I know, I keep coming back to it, but it's really good at this kind of stuff) it's not uncommon to see ships fleeing seeking weapons. This gives the weapons power not so much in their ability do actual damage (though, of course, that is there), but it their ability to control space an territory.

You'll see ships closing, then someone lobs out a cloud of drones or plasma torpedoes, and watch the attackers fire (at a longer range than they'd have liked), turn tail, and run. You'll see folks fire them not so much to damage the attackers, but to make them turn away. Keep them out of overload range, give you some space. Heavy drone users are skilled at using them to control the board. Nothing like letting a lingering scatter pack (a space shuttle filled with 6 drones...or is it?) as a deterrent to keep folks away.

If that can't work, if you can't out avoid these seeking weapons, then...you won't. You'll just armor up, bite down hard, and try to shoot them out of the sky, and eat what's left over but never losing your focus on closing with your real target. It's not that they're not a deterrent, but the opponent can't do much about them. That makes the ship carrying them a deterrent (since they may let fly at any time), but not the missiles themselves. They're just an artifact of damage coming your way just like a meson beam.

This is a key, to me, issue with the game play in general, about "space combat". It's just a slugfest in open space. Who can do the most damage to who, faster. Just two armored boxes running in close to each other, firing as often as they can hoping they open up the other guy first. Pedal to the metal, *WHAM**WHAM**WHAM**WHAM**WHAM**WHAM**WHAM* until somebody breaks.

There's no dance.

In Ouray, a town in Colorado. On the 4th of July (I should say, on the the 4th of July I happened to be there, but it felt like an annual event), they would cordon off one of the down town intersections. It would be surrounded by spectators. Then they would hook up firehoses to the juxtaposed hydrants kitty corner from each other.

Two teams of 3 (maybe for) folks in padded rain suits, safety goggle, and plastic face masks would then pick up their respective firehouse, turn them on full blast, and proceed to pound the other team with it. Each team would then close on each other, occasionally rotating the person in front to the back, until they're on top of each other. Hoses pummeling them until, eventually, one of the teams succumbs.

The one I saw, it seemed that one of the teams lead guy managed to take the stream of water under the chin. His mask went flying one way, he went flying the other, the hose got loose and the water scythed in to the crowd like a bunch of suicidal groupies before they managed to get it under control.

Space combat, I think, is something like that.

 

[Condottiere]

With missiles, if you can't outrun them, you have to be agile enough to dodge them; they could, of course, reacquire the target.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

In CT we simply didn't have (or were not allowed) to have a faster than 6G drive.

The limits to M-drives are only on inertial compensators, that hardly applies to missiles.

Tech level requirements for maneuver drives are imposed to cover the grav plates integral to most ship decks, and which allow high-G maneuvers while interior G-fields remain normal.

 

[Grav_Moped]

With missiles, if you can't outrun them, you have to be agile enough to dodge them; they could, of course, reacquire the target.

If we're talking LBB2/Mayday, the missiles will have a significant closing vector so if they miss, they'll have to kill that vector before being able to re-target what they were aimed at. Probably won't have to worry about look-angle (target acquisition field of view) issues though.

 

[kilemall]

I see no such limitation in the missile supplement? Or the LBBs?


Obviously a missile must be more manoeuvrable than the target ship to have a reasonable chance of interception. The standard 5G missile might be enough against slow civilian ships, it will not cut it against fast military ships.

Missile supplement has no dodge factor for regular intercept, you get within X distance and the missile automatically hits. Dodging is only an issue if you are going for the direct contact kinetic bonus.


The 6G limit is built into the table for buying your propulsion system, on the revised version that is Page 15.


Of course I have no problem ruinating this standard and indeed want to, but I'm asking the question if I am missing some content thing people treasure.


The other question also stems from the Missile supplement, in that the warheads all seem to be near detonation effects with only the hard contact/kinetic try involving impact by the missile itself. I've been trying to visualize this so it works within the HG tables logically, along with a simplified build/buy option for missiles, including bay missiles that aren't really covered anywhere as discrete designs. Just the Striker ortillery impact/bay count definition.

 

[kilemall]

If we're talking LBB2/Mayday, the missiles will have a significant closing vector so if they miss, they'll have to kill that vector before being able to re-target what they were aimed at. Probably won't have to worry about look-angle (target acquisition field of view) issues though.

For the purposes of any posting where I reference my CT/HG hybrid, the goal is to have CT LBB2 maneuver paired with LBB5 HG ship designs, and preserve the relative cost/system values within a different battle context then the classic HG line em up battle.

 

[kilemall]

In Ouray, a town in Colorado. On the 4th of July (I should say, on the the 4th of July I happened to be there, but it felt like an annual event), they would cordon off one of the down town intersections. It would be surrounded by spectators. Then they would hook up firehoses to the juxtaposed hydrants kitty corner from each other.

Two teams of 3 (maybe for) folks in padded rain suits, safety goggle, and plastic face masks would then pick up their respective firehouse, turn them on full blast, and proceed to pound the other team with it. Each team would then close on each other, occasionally rotating the person in front to the back, until they're on top of each other. Hoses pummeling them until, eventually, one of the teams succumbs.

The one I saw, it seemed that one of the teams lead guy managed to take the stream of water under the chin. His mask went flying one way, he went flying the other, the hose got loose and the water scythed in to the crowd like a bunch of suicidal groupies before they managed to get it under control.

Space combat, I think, is something like that.

I'm hoping what I have come up with does induce maneuver, a juxtaposition of beams doing less damage and less likely to hit further away and closing creates more damage/likely to hit, but at a price of possibly closing with a gaggle of missiles which the combined closing speed allows them to do more damage. Closing TOO close, less then 100,000 km and an order of magnitude more at less then 10,000 km means terrifying mutual beam destruction.



The key is to make armor more a full penetration damage/no damage effect thing, simplify the rolls to less then a few per firing ship, and missiles be VERY kinetic such that you get less damage even if they do hit with drawing away, and conversely in some situations a heavily armored ship will close before the missile can get up to penetrating speed.

 

[whartung]

Missile supplement has no dodge factor for regular intercept, you get within X distance and the missile automatically hits. Dodging is only an issue if you are going for the direct contact kinetic bonus.

Mechanically from a rules standpoint with Mayday, if you get within the Missile maneuver envelope, they hit. Just how they work.

In that sense, with that rule base, missile act like moving mines. Anything within their zone of control (i.e. their maneuver envelope) is going to get smacked, so it behooves the target to stay out of that envelope.

This is also a reason traveller missiles historically don't have much maneuver (notably fuel for maneuver). A lot of missiles are 6G missiles with 12Gs of fuel.

They adopt the vector of the attacking ship.

So, in a simple example, you can see a ship moving with a vector of magnitude 10 (i.e. speed 10, 10 hexes). The ship launches the missile, which immediately adopts the same vector.

It can use it's 6G drive and 12Gs of fuel to make a 6 hex correction on its vector to get it in place. But after that, it just coasts. It's now a 6 hex radius bubble waiting to pop. If the target ships vector crosses that bubble, the missile burns the rest of its fuel (up to 6Gs) to "correct" it vector and smack the ship.

A missile floating around is a force to be reckoned with, it's "controlling" quite a bit of space (almost 100 hexes).

For example, if the launching ship has a vector of magnitude less than 6, then the missile can use its initial maneuver to "stop". Leaving a "mine" with a 6 hex radius zone.

In game terms, there's really no maneuver here. It's not a Sidewinder jinking and turning. Missiles just maneuver like ships, they just have the ability to maneuver last. Actually, I think they get to maneuver "whenever". The get the benefit of the doubt. If you have a ship with a high vector, it's easy to see a turn where they start outside of the maneuver envelope of the missile, "pass through it" and end up, again, still outside of the envelope. i.e. image a ship going "16", starting head on to the missile 8 hexes out. It tried to maneuver "through" the missile, and at the end of the turn, it's now, still, 8 hexes out, but behind the missile. But the missile still gets its shot in simply because the ship crossed the envelope. Just makes the game play easier, they get an exception to the normal rules.

 

[Condottiere]

Current MongoVerse rules set allow a technological level fifteen production model with twenty five gee acceleration (factor nine manoeuvre drive combined with a high thrust factor sixteen gee afterburner), which is distinctly faster than any known missile, or torpedo, which I believe are capped at fifteen gees.

 

[kilemall]

Whartung I'm more looking at using CT miniature movement on graph paper, not Mayday. It could be used with hex using Mayday movement, but the time and distance scales and beer and pretzel mechanics won't.


I don't know if you missed the conversation, but I showed that the Missile Supplement revised missile burn is actually number of turns to burn.

So the 'standard homing missile' has 5G6, meaning 5G burns for six turns. Or put another way, 5G for 6000 seconds, or 100 minutes. It can therefore reach a delta vee difference from the launching ship DV of 30G.

It's all under Propulsion systems, page 4. I think what happened is everyone took Mayday as the word on burns and transposed to CT Missiles, when the time scales are VERY different between the two games.


Given the impact rules in the selfsame supplement, a successful kinetic hit will deliver 10 more hits at 'max velocity', assuming the target at 0 DV and the missile launched at 0 DV and impacting near it's maximum velocity. Less or worse depending on relative velocities.

That kinetic impact is the basis for my thinking up how to do this in HG and provide that yes I do wanna rush the line/no I don't/maybe I'll just dump my missiles outside the lethal beam zone and slow down after they are away.


The 'floating mine' behavior you describe is only if you have the propulsion control with the off/on option. Ahh here it is, discretionary burn. Costs extra but doable. The standard missile is continuous burn and it just keeps on going on it's course, it's a pretty stupid short range missile. You should be able to dodge outside of it's intercept arc as is.

The extra potential power of the missile has to draw a line through the target position to get impact, which the standard missile can't do, only the gussied up ones. Otherwise the missile is assumed to 'hit' with getting within 25mm, or put another way within 2500 km and it will home in from there.

There is an evade module option, which for Cr1300 can make the missile harder for PD to hit and extra Gs give an agility-like miss factor. Also, most missiles that are not fire and forget will have radio control, which is vulnerable to ECM. ECM itself can be defeated with an intelligent detonator option, for a mere Cr1000 per missile. Pretty cheap defeat for a MCr1+ type program, I'm not sure that was thought out.


I'm not going to get into the minutiae of missile propulsion differences with this CT/HG set of rules, just some basic big scale options like warheads and speeds which affect kinetic damage.

I'm trying to stick with the HG to-hit numbers, which does show a chance to miss. I'm assuming that this represents a certain amount of ECM, agility 'dodge' is already baked into the resolution. The missile attacks will still need to get close to have a chance at the to-hit, of course with higher Gs it's tougher to avoid, but I'm not looking to use the Missile Supplement 2500km.

 

[kilemall]

Current MongoVerse rules set allow a technological level fifteen production model with twenty five gee acceleration (factor nine manoeuvre drive combined with a high thrust factor sixteen gee afterburner), which is distinctly faster than any known missile, or torpedo, which I believe are capped at fifteen gees.

I'm intending to have a class of interceptor missile that has higher Gs but only 1 turn burn, they would be used for short range rundown of slower DV ships or as assault by light ships/fighters closing on a target with high DV themselves.


I think we should be very mindful of the different time scale/distance differences between these versions of Traveller and Traveller-related games. They are all intended for different effects and gaming experience and are not directly transferable even if the hardware and feel are 90% similar.


Mongoose is more a 50000km or less fight with character action oriented task/time scale. CT is more a fight between the planet and the 100D limit battleground.


Among other things, I think piracy is more doable in MgT because all you have are those IR dots on the screen for that whole area out to 100D, it's IFF and course matching or nothing and a lot more opportunity for trickery or getting the goods and getting away since the weapons don't reach multiples of 100000km.

 

[BRJN]

For deep space combat, I don't see why navies would shy away from faster and faster missiles. The 6G limit could be explained in-game as the Vilani Imperium Standard, not the limits of technology.
For near-orbit work, the slower missiles might be preferred because of 'burn up during atmospheric entry' considerations.

It will not bother me to see progressively higher-G missiles whipping around (unless I am the target; then FOUL!) as time goes by, cultures change, and technology improves.

 

[kilemall]

One further thought I had, about the ships going faster.
I had in mind a pretty simple rule, for every TL past 9 one more G is possible for M-drives. Each additional G level consume 3% space.

That means by TL15 you could have 12-G ships/craft for 35% of the space of the ship, plus matching power plant and fuel. Not a casual design decision.

But then technically if the ship has sufficient power to the M-drives, the agility could be -12 on to-hit rolls, duplicating in large ships the same extreme conundrum as small fighters unable to hit each other.


That's an example of why you have to think through the extremes of what could be min-max gamed, or you get Eurisko fleets.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how much inertial compensation is available at each technological level.

That would explain the acceleration caps, but since I've never seen a clear explanation, so you have to wonder why you couldn't just brute force it by increasing the percentage at any technological level.

 

[whartung]

I just brought up the g-rating issue because of its affect on play.

Very fast missiles are not evaded, and have little impact on maneuver. They're just dealt with in situ.

Slower one can impact maneuver. Making ships move out of the way in lieu of engaging them directly. It gives the attackers options (which isn't necessarily a bad thing for defenders if the attackers take the options the defender wants).

 

[kilemall]

I just brought up the g-rating issue because of its affect on play.

Very fast missiles are not evaded, and have little impact on maneuver. They're just dealt with in situ.

Slower one can impact maneuver. Making ships move out of the way in lieu of engaging them directly. It gives the attackers options (which isn't necessarily a bad thing for defenders if the attackers take the options the defender wants).

It's true about G-rating in HG proper- my goal is to have all the HG ships and their tasty tasty weapons able to fight in CT maneuver.

Meaning range determination and effects for relativistic energy weapons (essentially less chance to hit and less damage the greater the range, and at less then 100,000 km increasing accuracy and damage), and the kinetic effects of missile speed to include better penetration the faster the converging impact, possibly no penetration with low speed and armor.


So a 12-G force would have definite advantages over say a more conventional 4-G squadron, remember no Imperium-type range determination just measuring distance at time of fire. Also, they could put on a heck of a kinetic boost to missile launches, then flip and reverse accel to avoid kinetic damage from the enemy's missiles.

Problem with 12-Gs in that scenario and hit resolution is that ships that go to that extreme can be immune to anything that has the same computer level, maybe only Meson spinal weapons can hit them with the +2 short range bonus. Seems a bit game breaking, so I will have to decide on a different faster then 6-G building option just on that mechanic alone, never mind the missiles.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Depends on how much inertial compensation is available at each technological level.

That would explain the acceleration caps, but since I've never seen a clear explanation, so you have to wonder why you couldn't just brute force it by increasing the percentage at any technological level.

And then there's the cinematic-vs-hard SF deckplan issue.
A 6G ship with 1G artificial gravity at right angles to the thrust axis (cinematic, like airplanes or waterborne vessels) is assumed to have 6.08G of artificial gravity (net force of 6G pulling forward, 1G pulling sideways/"down").*

But if it's a "hard" SF tailsitter (artificial gravity in line with the thrust axis) with all of that 6G directed "up" (forward), the drives can be up to 7G while still maintaining 1G net internal grav. Under the HG formula [(G rating + 3) = % of ship], those drives would take 20% of the ship -- a big commitment, but certainly plausible. It'd be a lot less under LBB2, of course. Add acceleration couches and the crew might be able to keep functioning at 8G or more...

The only in-universe handwave for that which makes sense is that artificial gravity is cheap and easy to generate for up to 5G, and expensive and very difficult beyond that, so anything with 6G has to be a tailsitter. (In canon, they're not of course!)

Doesn't explain the slow missiles though, unless I've missed something.


*specifically, sqrt(1^2+6^2).

 

[kilemall]

Alright, working up a cost system that aligns standard 'civilian' missiles with the bay 'military' missiles, and a few more opinions I'd like to hear....

• Do you agree with the missile supplement's valuation of effectively 1MCr per nuke missile warhead? Arguments for/against cheaper or more expensive?
• Is it important to keep the relatively stupid homing 5x6 civilian standard missile at Cr5000? It was always kind of a crazy fire sale price anyway even with the limited burns most players apparently saw it as, kind of an intercontinental battleship shell at RPG prices. I'm thinking something more in the Cr17000 category with bay missile equivalents being 20x that.